LOVE SHOULD COME WITH WARNING LABELS — A REVIEW

Clara’s relationship with Christian is intense from the start, and like nothing she’s ever experienced before. But what starts as devotion quickly becomes obsession, and it’s almost too late before Clara realizes how far gone Christian is–and what he’s willing to do to make her stay.

Now Clara has left the city—and Christian—behind. No one back home has any idea where she is, but she still struggles to shake off her fear. She knows Christian won’t let her go that easily, and that no matter how far she runs, it may not be far enough….

And so begins the story of an obsession that takes over the lives of Clara and everyone she loves. In alternating chapters, veering between the past and the present, and in Clara’s first person narrative, we learn how the love began and where it all led. Like most things about our emotions, even when we see the red flags and hear the warning bells, we are sure that we can still control things. That we can stop the bad things from coming.

Learning the lesson about how little control we have is Clara’s story and the core of Stay, a thoughtful and provocative glimpse of love gone wrong. As Clara and her father settle in to a beach town outside of Seattle, surrounded by islands and the whole aura of the sea and a lighthouse, we also experience with them the idyllic moments when it seems as thought life can start over. That the past can be gone. And we live through the glaring awareness that nothing could be further from the truth.

What will happen to ultimately show Clara and her father that sometimes the past cannot disappear, even if we want it to do so? I like this excerpt near the end that shows us that we don’t actually have a lot of control:

“Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite–that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish that remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father’s, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy…But the images are all wild things that will do what they wish….”

I loved the characters, the settings, and the message of this story. Recommended for anyone who has ever been in love with the wrong person. Five stars.

BOOK HOARDING: A PLAN TO CURB THOSE IMPULSES — JUNE 11

When I think of my various collections, including my obsessive need for books, I often ask myself if I’ve crossed the line into hoarding.

Which is probably why I’ve been reading a variety of both fiction and nonfiction books about the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder manifested as hoarding.  Coming Clean is a delightful memoir that is my latest journey into the world of compulsive collecting.

As a result, I’ve been systematically editing my collections over the past few months.  First, many of the dolls went out into bins in the garage.  I have not decided what to do with them….yet.  But they’re not coming back inside, unless others rotate out there to make room for them.

Now the shelves pictured below still have some dolls…but before the purge, there were dolls on the tops of all the shelves.  I chatted about this in another blog post awhile ago.

Some Shelves After the Doll Purge

I’ve also donated books to the library on occasion, and turned to the library and Sparky, my Kindle, for new reading material.  With some exceptions.  The ARCs are usually in a physical form…and I’ve been recycling some of them via my Reading Room, as well as a few other books that I’m passing along.  And, on occasion, I seemingly MUST have a physical copy of a book by a favorite author.  So I have to make room for more books on the shelves.

Today I cleared out two boxes of books that I am pretty sure I won’t be reading again.  That purge leaves a little space for some of the incoming books.

 

 

 

The boxes have gone into the garage to be donated…either to the library or to other readers.

Sometimes I have to be ruthless with my purges….but I’m sure that, even after my editing, I have more stuff than many people do.  But I’m slowly moving in the right direction.

What do you do about your incoming books and/or other collections?  Do you periodically purge?  Or are you still deciding what to do?

CURL UP WITH BOOKS ON MONDAY: WHAT ARE YOU READING? — JUNE 10

Welcome to our weekly bookish place where we share our adventures in reading.  Come along and join us as we explore other blogs and feel a community spirit.

This week, I’m posting my Monday Reading, hosted by Book Journey, at this site; I often feel that I’m neglecting it!

I’ve posted my Mailbox Books at still another blog.  Check out what I got!

ON THE BLOGS:

Serendipitous Mondays:  Musing About Reading Habits

Tuesday Potpourri:  Intros/Teasers:  Flora

Sweet Anticipation:  Waiting for “Accidents Happen”

So Many Choices, So Little Time:  Choosing

Taking a Risk on a Friday:  Coming Clean

Saturday Snapshot:  New Beginnings & Family Connections

Sweet Saturday Sample:  A Respite by the Bay

Sunday Potpourri:  Early Morning Breezes & Good Books

Reading-Click Titles for Reviews:

What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty

Kind of Cruel, by Sophie Hannah

The Lost Husband (e-book), by Katherine Center

All the Available Light, edited by Yona McDonough

All the Days of My Life (so far), by Alison Sweeney

What’s Up Next? (Click Titles/Covers for More Info)

Flora, by Gail Godwin

Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen’s decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II.At three Helen lost her mother and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died.A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories.Flora, her late mother’s twenty-two-year old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen.Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin’s memorable novel of growing up, The Finishing School. With its house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can’t undo.It will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

Coming Clean, by Kimberly Rae Miller

Kim Miller is an immaculately put-together woman with a great career, a loving boyfriend, and a beautifully tidy apartment in Brooklyn. You would never guess that behind the closed doors of her family’s idyllic Long Island house hid teetering stacks of aging newspaper, broken computers, and boxes upon boxes of unused junk festering in every room — the product of her father’s painful and unending struggle with hoarding.

In this dazzling memoir, Kim brings to life her experience of growing up in a rat-infested home, hiding her father’s shameful secret from friends for years, and of the emotional burden that ultimately led to her suicide attempt. And in beautiful prose, Miller sheds light on her complicated yet loving relationship with her parents that has thrived in spite of the odds.

Coming Clean is a story about recognizing where you come from and understanding the relationships that define you. It is also a powerful story of recovery and redemption.

44 Charles Street, by Danielle Steel (Mt. TBR Challenge)

A magical transformation takes place in Danielle Steel’s luminous new novel: Strangers become roommates, roommates become friends, and friends become a family in a turn-of-the-century house in Manhattan’s West Village.

The plumbing leaked; the furniture was rescued from garage sales. And every inch was being restored to its original splendor—even as a relationship fell apart. Owner of a struggling art gallery and newly separated from her boyfriend, Francesca Thayer does the math and then the unimaginable. She puts out an advertisement for boarders, and soon her Greenwich Village house becomes a whole new world. First comes Eileen, a pretty L.A. transplant, now a New York City schoolteacher. Then there’s Chris, a young father struggling for custody of his seven-year-old son. The final tenant is Marya, a celebrated cookbook author hoping to heal after the death of her husband. Over the course of one amazing, unforgettable, life-changing year, the house at 44 Charles Street fills with laughter, heartbreak, and, always, hope. In the hands of master storyteller Danielle Steel, it’s a place those who visit will never want to leave.

No Child of Mine (e-book), by Susan Lewis

What if you knew a child was in danger – and no one believed you?
Alex Lake’s day job is all about helping people, especially children. She cares about them passionately and does everything in her power to rescue them from those who mean them harm.
When the case of three-year-old Ottilie Wade comes to her attention, Alex feels an overpowering need to make a real difference in the little girl’s life, but no one is prepared to believe that Ottilie is in danger.
In the end, Alex makes a decision that has consequences that no one, least of all Alex, could have foreseen.

***

That’s a glimpse of last week and next.  I hope you will come by and share your blogging/reading adventures.

JUNE BOOKSHELF CLEARING EVENT — COME ON BY & JOIN IN — JUNE 6

Good morning…and welcome to another Bookshelf Clearing Event.  I have missed a couple of months, but now I’m eager to launch another giveaway from my Curl up with Books Reading Room.

The Reading Room will be open for exploration…and all you have to do to participate is to stop by, leave a comment, and add another comment if you are already a follower, or if you’ve started following this blog.  And please leave your contact info in the comment.

The event will last until June 30, 2013, so COME ON OVER AND PARTICIPATE!

SO MANY CHOICES, SO LITTLE TIME! — CHOOSING — JUNE 6

Welcome to another Booking Through Thursday, during which we ponder our bookish topics.  Like today’s:

 

What makes you choose the books you read?
Genre? Reviews? Certain authors? Covers? Recommendations?

 

***

Before blogging, I would choose a book in the bookstore based on its cover and blurb, as well as the author’s name.  I usually picked up books by favorite/familiar authors.  Maybe someone had recommended the book.

But nowadays, I find books I want to read from seeing them on blogs and reading what other bloggers have to say about them.  I also find books on Goodreads.  As a result, my world of reading has expanded exponentially.

And so have my stacks!

I still choose books from favorite authors, but my list of favorites has definitely grown.

Here are some books I’ve discovered from blogging that would not have been on my radar otherwise:

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (Read in 2010) (Click for review)

Godmother:  The Secret Cinderella Story, by Carolyn Turgeon (also read in 2010)

 

Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan (Read in 2012 – and When She Woke, by this author)

 

Ninepins, by Rosy Thornton (and her previous book, too! – The Tapestry of Love)

 

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (and the previous books Sharp Objects and Dark Places)

 

These examples are books I probably would not have known about or chosen without blogging.  So I can safely say that I find most of my reading material from other blogs these days.

What about you?

 

MAY READING WRAP-UP: ANOTHER GREAT MONTH! — JUNE 1

 

Another month is behind us!  Here’s what happened in my reading life this month.

What did your month look like?  Come on by and share….

 

MAY 2013:

1.      Bodyguard & the Show Dog, The, by Christy Tillery French – 298 pages (suspense) – 5/13/13 (Sequel Challenge)

2.     Cocktail Hour (e-book), by Tara McTiernan – 348 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/4/13

3.     Don’t Go (e-book), by Lisa Scottoline – 376 pages – (contemporary fiction/suspense) – 5/20/13

4.    Engagements, The - J. Courtney Sullivan – 377 pages (historical/contemporary fiction) — 5/2/13

5.    Finding Lily (e-book), by Lisa Ellis – 160 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/11/13 (Rev. to be posted on 5/30/13)

6.    Fly Away, by Kristin Hannah – 400 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/8/13 (Sequel Challenge)

7.    He’s Gone (e-book), by Deb Caletti – 352 pages (contemporary fiction/suspense) – 5/30/13

8.    Husband’s Secret, The, by Liane Moriarty – 394 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/28/13

9.    Instructions from a Heatwave, by Maggie O’Farrell – 290 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/10/13

10.  Just Breathe, by Susan Wiggs – 470 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/17/13 – (Mt. TBR Challenge)

11.  K Street Affair, The (e-book), by Mari Passananti – 362 pages (suspense thriller) – 5/24/13

12.  Some Are Sicker Than Others (e-book) – 390 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/21/13

13.  Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine (e-book) – 234 pages (historical fiction) – 5/19/13

14.  Summer on Blossom Street, by Debbie Macomber – 361 pages (contemporary fiction) – 5/5/13 – (Sequel Challenge)

15.   Sweet Salt Air, by Barbara Delinsky – 402 pages – (contemporary fiction) – 5/27/13

16.  Walled-In, by J. Elke Ertle, 329 pages – (memoir) – 5/13/13

***

BOOKS READ IN MAY –   16

PAGES READ IN MAY –  5,543

BOOKS READ YTD –   85

PAGES READ YTD –   27, 208

FAVORITE FICTION READ:  Fly Away, by Kristin Hannah; and Don’t Go, by Lisa Scottoline

FAVORITE NONFICTION READ:   Walled-In, by J. Elke Ertle

CHALLENGE PROGRESS:

      COZIES — 3/7

      SEQUELS — 20/?

      MT. TBR — 12/24

     WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB – 2/4

***

This month, it was really difficult to pick favorite reads, as there were so many!  How often does that happen?

 

LIVES UPENDED IN THE AFTERMATH OF TRAGEDY — A REVIEW

 

 

 

Twenty-five years after her fifteen-year-old brother Ben supposedly murdered her mother and two sisters, Libby Day is struggling and at a point in her life when she must find a way to bring money into the coffers. The fund that sustained her after the tragedies has dried up, and Libby flails about, seeking a solution.

And what she finds is a group of individuals devoted to proving her brother was innocent–and willing to pay for mementos and information.

Libby was seven years old when the murders happened, and the only survivor. Her testimony put her brother behind bars, but now she is wondering if things happened the way she believed it did. She reexamines the “darkplaces” to figure things out. And starts meeting with people to find out more, too. She also dreams about the events, with different scenarios each time. And she recalls how life as the orphan has changed everything for her, too.

The setting is a Kansas farm in a small town filled with gossipy, mean-spirited individuals seemingly bent on shunning the Day family long before the tragedy struck.

In alternating narratives, Dark Places: A Novel takes us back to 1985, to learn bits and pieces of that fateful day from the mother, Patty Day, and from Ben, the alleged perpetrator. As more is revealed, we begin to have our own doubts…and as we follow Libby’s first-person narration in the present, watching her accumulate data, the questions begin to grow until we wonder if there will ever be any definitive answers.

All of the characters are flawed individuals, but beneath the surface of each, there is a hint of how they could be redeemed. If only…

What mysterious person did Patty Day meet that night? Why is Ben so secretive about the events, and why is he denying having a girlfriend named Diondra? What, if anything, did his friend Trey have to do with the tragic events?

Like a tornado sweeping across the flatlands, the events come full circle until finally the reader knows it all. And there were definitely some surprises. Another unputdownable read from Gillian Flynn. Five stars.