My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Marched to the beat of a different drum, did she?” “She marched to the beat of an entirely different band. One you’ve never heard of and under no circumstances ever expected to like.”

Whenever I think of Annika, my mind returns to the way we left things and the same unanswered question. It’s like a pebble in my shoe, uncomfortable but not unbearable. But it’s always there.

He had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen, which made me think his kisses would taste like Pep O Mint Life Savers. Joe’s kisses probably tasted like pot and Funyuns. And failure.

All my life, I’d been waiting for someone I could be myself with. It had never occurred to me that I could be that person for someone else.

It’s a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt… My best friend bought me a book of them. ‘Do one thing every day that scares you’ is what got me through my twenties.

My Review:

This is my favorite book so far this year, it was highly engaging, keenly insightful, and hit all the feels. The storylines were ingeniously crafted and flawlessly populated with an intriguing and captivating cast of characters. Ms. Graves’ writing was emotive and perfectly pitched; she bruised my cold heart, held me transfixed to my Kindle, and stung my eyes more than once.

The story was cleverly woven between two timelines and told from the equally mesmerizing POVs of the two compelling and intriguing main characters. This was my inaugural outing with the stunningly talented Tracey Garvis Graves and I am at a total loss as to why I have never availed myself of this clever scribe’s works before as it was nothing short of brilliant.   I covet all her lovely words and am greedy to amass her entire listing.

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Tracey Garvis Graves is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary fiction. Her debut novel, On the Island, spent 9 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has been translated into thirty-one languages, and is in development with MGM and Temple Hill Productions for a feature film. She is also the author of Uncharted, Covet, Every Time I Think of You, Cherish, Heart-Shaped Hack, White-Hot Hack, and The Girl He Used to Know. She is hard at work on her next book.

Favorite Quotes:

Squeezing in to a gap at the bar, I dug a ten-pound note out of my handbag and waited until I finally caught the attention of the young man behind the bar. Again, in days gone by I might have been tempted to pop a button on my blouse and lean forward to see if I could get served more quickly, but these days my bras were less a feat of construction, pushing my wares up and out with their scaffolding, and instead were more comfortable and practical. I tried to pretend that buying them in black was enough to keep them from being boring but it probably wasn’t true.

I’m a child psychologist. And no, that doesn’t mean that I have all of the answers when it comes to bringing up my own child. It just means I have more insight into where I’ve gone wrong.

My Review:

I greatly enjoy stumbling upon books featuring mature professional or established women facing significant life transitions or epiphanies, and such was the case for Karen – teacher, recently betrayed and abandoned wife, and somewhat of an unsociable loner – being dragged out by her only friend on her fortieth birthday. Her party attendees were limited to a few of her vaguely familiar fellow teachers who had required the incentive of a free meal and drinks to attend a celebration in her honor, ouch. Ms. Pearl’s amusing writing style was observantly insightful and often ironically humorous and fairly balanced in emotional tone with entertaining storylines which were easy to follow and relevant to many. Her characters were an interesting, authentic, and quirky mix of realistically flawed personalities with relatable traits and issues. And score, I noticed a new phrase for my Brit word list with “gee myself up,” which Mr. Google implied is to encourage and lift someone’s spirits.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… there’s a faint sheen of gray that adorns the landscape as though the entire city needs a good scrubbing. Havana is like a woman who was grand once and has fallen on hard times, and yet hints of her former brilliance remain, traces of an era since passed, a photograph faded by time and circumstance, its edges crumbling to dust.

I feel as though I’ve become a point of curiosity, an exhibit like the island of crocodiles at the Havana Zoo, those mighty animals sunning their backs with contempt for the gawking tourists and locals who point and exclaim over their size. Being a Perez in Havana— one of the sugar queens— is akin to wondering if you should charge admission for the window into your life…

There’s a different level of poverty in Cuba that suggests that not only is the deck stacked against you, but someone keeps stealing all the cards.

Terrible things rarely happen all at once… They’re incremental, so people don’t realize how bad things have gotten until it’s too late.

My Review:

I confess to blatant ignorance about Cuba, past or present.   Before picking up this exceptionally detailed account, my accumulated knowledge about Cuba was limited to a vague memory of the rafters, something about JFK and the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and that Fidel Castro had been an oppressive communist dictator who gave long boring speeches that he forced his citizens to listen to for hours on end in the heat and sun, I remember my severely strict sixth grade teacher fervently pounding that last fact home and later putting on a test. I also have a vivid memory of looking at a picture of the heavily reviled man with an unkempt beard and dressed in green fatigues and a billed cap and thinking him an unhinged monster; an opinion that apparently was deeply imprinted on my gray matter as it has held through to present day.

Chanel Cleeton’s highly descriptive and epic story was written in dual timelines and from a dual POV, and I enjoyed the juxtaposition. Sixty-years after her then nineteen-year-old grandmother had fled a dangerous and chaotic Cuba with her family, Marisol takes a trip to Cuba to spread her grandmother’s ashes and hopefully learn about her family history while traveling under the guise of a journalistic junket to gather information for a tourism article about Cuba. Careful what you wish for – she uncovered dark secrets that her beloved grandmother had never hinted it, as well as stunning revelations concerning her family tree.

The storylines were lushly detailed and swirling with atmosphere, and could easily be deployed as a fully fleshed-out screenplay. The emotional tone was fraught with tension and heavy with angst. I could have done with about one hundred fewer pages repeatedly outlining the abuses and folly of past and present political systems, as politics are just not my jam. However, the examples of basic day-to-day challenges the politically polarized Cuban citizens endured and continue to struggle with carried considerable more impact for me and were expertly executed. I have been schooled, and in a significantly more entertaining manner than my harsh and unyielding sixth-grader teacher could have ever aspired to.

Marigold Doyle’s life was perfect, with a successful career and a wonderful marriage. But when her husband, Julian, passes away, her life is thrown into turmoil as she discovers a trail of secrets Julian was hiding in the months prior to his death. Struggling with her grief, she knows she needs to find out Julian’s actions to help her move on.

Finn Schröder, a former police officer and now a private security consultant, is focused on an uncomplicated, unattached life and growing his business. He agrees to help Marigold find out the truth about Julian, but as they become closer, he realizes his feelings for her may be developing beyond simply professional.

As Marigold and Finn work through the web of Julian’s deception, will they learn to face the reality that things aren’t always exactly as they seem?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She’d end up running D-Line one day after her father retired, or she’d become the Prime Minister. They seemed like the only two jobs worthy of her.

Why was life so unfair? She’d lost her husband, she’d discovered he’d been keeping an entire, furnished apartment secret from her, she’d been barred from her work, and now she was going to have to spend all afternoon with her mother.

They’d host dinner parties, but the friends were always couples. They’d enter the property, two-by-two, like some form of well-heeled, impeccably-dressed human recreation of Noah’s Ark.

Perfectly imperfect. She’d take that. Perfect, after all, was totally and completely over-rated.

My Review:

I adored this cleverly penned book from beginning to end. The premise and writing were intriguing and original with a well-crafted mystery running through the center that kept my curiosity primed, although the complex characters were just as intriguing and unpredictable. The storylines were highly engaging and cunningly paced with a fair balance of humor, angst, and intrigue.

What sealed the deal for me was the wily Ms. Mayfair’s expert character development, as she has filled her tale with an authentic and uniquely complicated cast of characters who were not genuinely appealing or always likable, yet never failed to hold my interest. The observantly insightful and detailed manner in which characters’ emotional tones were narrated were an important part of the journey and frequently shifted with surprise revelations, humbling epiphanies, staggering stressors, irritations and annoyance, flashes of anger, relaxed amusement, and ultimately ending with a satisfying and sigh-inducing HEA. And as this is only her third published book within less than a year, I am quite eager to see what this crafty new talent comes up with next.