The Uninvited by Cat Winters

It took reading this whole book, putting it down for a week, and then picking it back up today to write this review for it to occur to me that every time I look at the cover I get a certain Alanis Morissette tune in my head, Uninvited.  Ah, I am so self-aware.  The moral of the story is that I think I have to review this book immediately or face the possibility of never getting this song out of my head despite it having nothing much to do with the book other than the title in common.

The Uninvited starts off with a bang when twenty-five year old Ivy Rowan, who has always seen ghosts when someone close to her is about to die, finally gives up her reclusive life on her family's farm and moves into the town of Buchanan.  On that night in 1918 as World War I rages, fueled by booze, paranoia, and grief Ivy's father and younger brother beat a German furniture store owner to death.  Finally realizing that there's nothing she can do to protect her family from her volatile father, Ivy determines finally to leave home to start a new life. 

In a chain of events that is nothing if not surreal, newly liberated Ivy takes a room with the war widow of the most popular guy in her high school class, assists two young women desperately if inexpertly driving an ambulance around the poorer side of town where influenza victims are dying by the dozen, and is lured by jazz music to a dance at the Masonic Lodge - a dance that seems to know no race or prejudice.  In the meantime, she is riddled with guilt over her father and brother's dreadful deed and comes to know and love the surviving brother of the man they killed.  As Ivy drifts through her new life with a sleepless fanaticism, making new friends, connecting with old ones, and trying her best to atone for her family's failings, she begins to see the ghosts of the people she knows to be dead and fears the worst for her mother and her newfound lover.  It's not long until Ivy's journey of self-discovery takes an unexpected turn, and everything she knows about herself and her new life is called into question.

It took a little while for me to settle into the reading of The Uninvited.  Being dropped into a life on the cusp of change and one that is changing so radically is hard to catch up with.  Ivy's new life is rendered in such a way that it seems almost dreamlike, with chance encounters and forbidden loves that spin her in a radically different direction than what she has ever known.  With an odd combination of jazz music, World War I generated paranoia, and the plague of influenza, Winters makes a vivid setting of downtown Buchanan.  The fear and frenzy there is palpable and contributes to the unsettled feeling of the narrative.

Ivy herself is lovable character, a young woman who waited too long to discover herself.  I was both amazed and appalled by the journey her guilt led her on.  Winters does a perfect job of rendering Ivy's new life in a way that is satisfying but feels, deliberately, just the slightest bit off so that when the unexpected occurs, all the pieces are ready to fall into place.   

I'll be honest, I was expecting more ghosts and less coming of age, but I still liked what this book delivered, which is a great historical coming of age story with a twist that makes it hard to put down.  In The Uninvited, Cat Winters has written a ghost story that is less about death and more about learning to live.

(Thanks to the publisher for providing my copy in exchange for review consideration.)

Loose Leafing: Trouble on Re-entry

 Belated happy holiday wishes to you and yours, and I hope you are already enjoying a happy new year! 

I live here. Apparently.

I dropped off the internet for a while there like I do.  December was neither a very good blogging month nor a very good reading month for me.  I was more than a little disappointed that I didn't get much reading in.  I started last year off with a reading bang, but I definitely finished it with a whimper, trailing off just short of 40 books read.

If my reading fell short, it was because I was a little busy with my life.  After 3 months of broken ankle seclusion and dependence, I finally got to start doing some walking and was occupied with the trappings of rejoining the world already in motion.  Going from doing nothing but sitting around my apartment to doing PT twice a week and heading back to work and generally getting back to semi-normal activity has been welcome but not easy.  Add in the extra activity of the holiday season, some car trouble and the unfortunate need to support a grieving friend, and it felt like I was trying to jump on a moving train Dauntless-style, only with a few notable impediments.  Most of December, by the time I got home in the evening, my brain was so mushy that only Netflix would do to pass the sleepy hours between work or PT and an acceptable hour for bedtime for a grown-up.

 

Train does not stop for the walking impaired

 

It's been good, though.  I was Tiny Timming it by Christmas (that's "down to only one crutch" for those of you who prefer political correctness in your dealings with handicapped literary characters).  It was nice to be able to attend all the requisite holiday festivities with a free hand for carrying delicious foods around.  Bonus points for getting to reply, "God bless us, every one!" to people mocking my semi-crutched status.  By New Years, I could hobble around crutch-free for short distances.  It's not easy, but life seems to be improving bit by bit.

 Disclaimer: No one carried me like this.

I've had a pretty quiet start to the new year.  I've been feeling kind of dull and uninspired, so no resolutions have been forthcoming, but I think one of the things I'd like to do this year is look for the good.  I have a tendency to see the bad in everything, so it's refreshing to try to reflect on what looks like an average day and find something good to note about it.  Once I start seeing some good, I'd like to make some good, too.

Reading is off to a glacial start.  I'm on pace to finish my first book of the year...tonight.  Instead of reading, I've been trying to take back my apartment after months of having no choice but to let housekeeping things go and also taking advantage of my sparkly new Blu Ray player to enjoy watching The Hobbit and Harry Potter movies all over again.  Winter is made for movie marathons, am I right?

 What have you been up to so far this year?

#AMonthofFaves : 10 Books That Made My Year

2015 has nearly drawn to a close, and it's been a rough one life-wise, but reading-wise it was certainly rewarding.  I think what's funny about my favorites this year is that so few other people seem to have read them, at least the ones that were published this year.  When I read great books published in the current year, it seems like they're never the same ones that everyone else is reading!  On a positive note, though, that gives me a chance to tell you about a few great books that maybe you haven't heard about from everyone and their mother......right? 

Anyhow, here is the top of the crop from my year of reading (in conjunction with a #AMonthofFaves).

 1. In a World Just Right by Jen Brooks - This book gets awarded the "Ugly Cry of the Year" award.  At first it's a strange little romance about a plane-crash survivor that can create worlds with his mind.  In one, his dream girl is his girlfriend, but what happens when the worlds start to meld together?  I never even saw it coming.

2. The Marauders by Tom Cooper - This one gets the "Surprise Hit" award.  When it first arrived, I thought I'd made a severe ARC requesting misstep.  However, this story of the hard luck people in a Louisiana bayou town turned out to be a hit for me because I've never been made to feel more sympathy for a bunch of less likeable characters, and I've never been so surprised at a book packing an unexpected emotional punch.

3. When She Woke by Hilary Jordan - I actually hate when I read a really great book at the beginning of the year because I know when it comes time to make this list, I'll nearly always forget to put it on the list because it seems like I read it an eon ago.  I loved Jordan's dystopian world where Christian fundamentalists dominate and dyeing people the colors indicative of their crimes has replaced imprisoning them.  Very believable world-building, very interesting retelling of The Scarlet Letter.

4. The Happy Christian by David Murray - Look!  It's a non-fiction title on my best of list, and it's not a memoir or even narrative non-fiction.  Be amazed!  This was a great read from last winter/spring full of practical ways to let God's promises make us more happy on a daily basis.  An ill-fit for my blog audience, perhaps, but a great fit for me as a human.

5. The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory by Stacy Wakefield - I fell in love with Sid, the narrator of this book, who is a girl caught up in the "romantic" idea of getting involved in the New York City squatter scene, which doesn't quite turn out like she expects.  The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory is a perfect slice of life book that follows Sid in her highs and lows with a little friendship and a little romance, nights when everything is perfect and others when everything goes wrong, but there's always a chance for a little happily ever after. 

6. Girl Underwater by Claire Kells - This one seems to have flown under the radar a bit, so all the more disappointed am I in myself for not having reviewed it.  It's the story of girl and the guy that dared to tell her to be true to herself, their survival of a plane crash and the long wait for rescue (with three young, newly orphaned boys in tow), and the aftermath. I loved Avery and Colin and their reluctant love story that emerges from tragedy.

7. Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum - I never fail to be captivated by stories set in World War II Germany, and this one didn't disappoint.  Those Who Save Us captures the moral ambiguities of surviving the war when a German woman, whose daughter is the product of her forbidden love affair with a Jew who has been taken away to a concentration camp, has an affair with a German officer to survive and to continue in the dangerous pursuit of supplying extra bread to the prisoners of the camp where her true lover is imprisoned.  

8. The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma - How to describe this book?  Eerie.  One ballerina in prison, one ballerina performing her final dance before she heads to Julliard, a prison haunted by a tragic event, guilt, innocence, and lots of lies.  I won't spoil it by writing more words.  It's way too good to be spoiled. 

9. The Visitors by Sally Beauman - I was a little daunted by The Visitors when I started reading it, lots of pages, small print, but I was totally captivated by this story of 1920s Egypt where the the last of the undiscovered tombs are being excavated in the Valley of Kings.  The narrator is a young girl who proves the perfect observer to the astonishing chain of events when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered King Tut's tomb.  Beauman's story is the perfect blend of reality and fiction that left me feeling like I'd learned something and enjoyed every bit of it.

10. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson - I wrapped up my reading year with this one, and it was a fantastic choice.  After a slow start, I was totally engaged in this story of a princess turned queen, chosen by God for some feat of service.  I loved the narrator, Elisa, a young, pudgy princess who feels ill-suited to her role as queen and for whatever service may be required of her.  Watching her come into her own amid desperate times made this book positively unputdownable.

Which books have been the highlights of your reading year?

Charlie and the Grandmothers by Katy Towell

Charlie is afraid of everything.  Ever since the terrifying day when his father was killed in a mill accident, Charlie can't help fearing the worst.  Even when there seems to be nothing to fear, Charlie can't help concocting worst-case scenarios in his ever-wakeful, overactive imagination.  Most of the danger lives inside Charlie's head, but even his sister Georgie and their mother recognize the oddity of the numerous children leaving their neighborhood to visit their grandmothers and seemingly never returning. 

One night, darkness sweeps over their house and Charlie, still awake in the night, can hear a strange voice whispering to his mother.  Days later, the impossible is happening.  Charlie and Georgie's mother has taken ill and the two children are being sent away to their grandmother's house while she recovers, which wouldn't be so strange...if they actually had any living grandparents.  Instead of a charming getaway to the safety of their grandmother's house, Charlie and Georgie are plunged into the stuff of nightmares.  These grandmothers are distinctly evil, and only terrified Charlie is equipped to save them.

Katy Towell has crafted a deliciously and imaginatively creepy horror story for kids that worked for this adult reader, too.  Sure, the premise is unlikely.  Charlie's unnatural terror and weird attachment is a little exaggerated, but here, it works. 

While Charlie and the Grandmothers is undeniably unique, I couldn't help being reminded of books like Neil Gaiman's Coraline with a little James and the Giant Peach thrown in.  I love stories like this, fast-paced and full of adventure, where a kid left to their own devices in a world that should be heart-stoppingly petrifying finds his courage and steps up to become the hero of his own story.

(Review copy received at no cost in exchange for review consideration.)

#AMonthofFaves : A Few of My Favorite Things (of 2015)

Today's Month of Favorites topic: These Are A Few of My Favorite Things in 2015 – eg. to eat, drink, wear, smell, see, do, enjoy, best thing I bought, most used gift received etc, favorite concert, outdoor activity, place visited, most squee worthy moment of the year, biggest change.

I have to admit, I won't be sad to see 2015 go.  It's been a year marked by injuries and injury recovery followed by other injuries and more recovery, and when I wasn't busy being injured (or recovering) I was working like a dog.  And when I finally finished working like a dog and was finally on the brink of a well-earned vacation I broke my ankle, successfully obliterating any semblance of normal life.  I'm still waiting to get back to normal life.  So, yeah, adios 2015, don't let the door hit ya.  

It's been tough trying to pick some favorite things out of the morass of this year, but good news!  I came up with a few! 

My New Apartment - Okay, so I'd lived here not quite a full month when I missed a few steps and see above, but solo living has its perks, like I get to live among my books now.  They're on shelves!  Where people can see them, and I can see them! And my apartment is big enough that 1000 or so books don't make it feel claustrophobic.  I can watch what I want on TV.  I can not watch TV and just read in the living room without being constantly interrupted.  My friends come over way more now.  Which is good, since I'm kind of stuck here.  Still.

That Train Concert - In between the injuries and the recoveries and the moving and the workaholism, I did kind of a bucket listy thing for me and got tickets to see Matt Nathanson, The Fray, and Train in concert.  I love Train and liked the other two acts, and it was a fantastic show and a great time with my cousin driving through the barren wilds of Pennsylvania and New York to get to the (beautiful) venue of Bethel Woods (original site of Woodstock) where they have the thickest grass and the most expensive bottles of water.

Movies -  Going to the movie theatre, is (yippee!) something you can still enjoy while you are fairly handicapped.  Since the movies are one of the only places I went for three months that didn't include x-rays, they easily make the list.  Highlights?  Bridge of Spies and Mockingjay the second.

Chopped - They put it on Netflix just in time!  Whose spirits aren't lifted by watching a professional chef attempt to create an entree from black licorice, kimchi, a species of mushroom that only grows in the hills of a war-torn African nation, and eye of newt?  Obviously, I made these ingredients up, but you get the idea.  

The Voice - It took me until I finally subscribed to Hulu Plus to finally get hooked on The Voice.  Love those blind auditions!

The Awkward Yeti - This was the best moment of serendipity of the year.  First, my friend had to get her gallbladder out, and then this happened to show up in my Facebook feed...

Picture credit: The Awkward Yeti

I looooove these comics.  They're pretty much all about bodily organs and pretty much totally relevant to everyday life all the time.  There is an Awkward Yeti comic for every feeling you've ever had.  There is a book, too.  I should get it.  What I did get was an adorable stuffed sad gallbladder for my now gallbladderless friend.  Too priceless!  

What's your favorite thing from 2015?