Review of The Forest of Vanishing Stars

Harmel, Kristin.  The Forest of Vanishing Stars.  Gallery Books, 2021.

 

In 1922, Jerusza, an elderly mystic, kidnaps two-year-old Inge Juttner from her wealthy parents in Berlin because she feels the child’s parents are “bad people”.  Jerusza changes Inge’s name to Yona, which means dove, because she has a dove-shaped birthmark on her wrist.  She raises Yona in the forests of Eastern Europe as her own child.  She only has two rules Yona must follow—she must always obey Jerusza, and she must stay hidden in the forest, away from men who might hurt her.  Not only does Jerusza teach Yona how to survive in the forest, but she also teaches her practical things—more than five different languages and about the world’s religions.

 

In 1942, Jerusza passes away, and Yona is left on her own.  One day, she comes upon two men, one of whom is unsuccessfully trying to catch fish with his bare hands.  She discovers the men are part of a larger group of Jews who fled into the forest when Jews in their Polish town were being killed by the Nazis.  Yona joins their group and teaches them how to live in the forest and survive during the harsh winters.  After a romantic interest betrays her, Yona decides to leave.

 

Yona enters a German-occupied town and becomes friendly with a group of nuns, who have been quietly helping Jews escape from the country.  However, after she reconnects with a relative from her past, which leads to another betrayal, she goes back into the forest.  She realizes that everything that Jerusza had been teaching her was so she could help the Jews survive until World War II was over.

 

Kristin Harmel, who also wrote The Book of Lost Names, has written another mesmerizing World War II tale of courage and survival.  She has based her novel on true stories—that of the nuns, the Blessed Martyrs of Nowogrodek, and of the thousands of Jews who actually lived in forests during World War II.  She has peppered her novel with information about survival techniques, medicinal herbs, and shelter construction, all of which she researched extensively.  She even interviewed Aron Bielski, a 93-year-old World War II survivor, who survived the war by living in the forests.

 

The characters are well fleshed-out and developed.  Both Yona and Jerusza are strong, capable women, although rather untrusting of others.  Yona, having not grown up with her parents, feels she has missed out on family and deeply yearns to have one of her own.  Even though Jerusza lived to be very old, she was one tough cookie!  Both she and Yona have the ability to sense things, especially danger.

 

The Forest of Vanishing Stars is an extraordinary story, a tale of survival and hope.  It can be enjoyed by both adults and teens.  Give it to readers who read historical fiction and those who like reading about World War II.  I highly recommend it for high school and public libraries and give it five out of five fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for allowing me to read and review this book.

Review of All the Little Hopes

Weiss, Leah.  All the Little Hopes.  Sourcebooks, 2021.

 

In 1943, thirteen-year-old Allie “Bert” Tucker is sent by her poor father on a bus trip across North Carolina to stay with her pregnant Aunt Violet and help with her forthcoming baby.  However, through a series of circumstances, Bert ends up living with thirteen-year-old Lucy “Lu” Brown and her large family, instead.  Not only do Lu and Bert become best friends, but they also become sisters.  Because Bert is illiterate, Lu and her mother teach Bert how to read, write, and do arithmetic.

 

The Brown family lives on a tobacco farm in Riverton, NC and also has a thriving beekeeping and honey business.  In exchange for cane sugar and cash, the Browns agree to provide the US government with beeswax and honey from their hives.  Not only do family members help with working the hives, but neighbors and close friends chip in, as well.  

 

A Nazi POW camp is built on the outskirts of Riverton, and many of the townspeople are distrustful of the prisoners.  One Riverton resident, Terrell Stuckey, is particularly disturbed and sits outside the camp whittling all day.  Three of the prisoners are working on the Brown’s farm as part of their rehabilitation.  When a double murder takes place at the camp, everyone thinks that Terrell did it, but he can’t be located.  

 

Terrell Stuckey is the third man to go missing in Riverton.  Lu and Bert, who are avid Nancy Drew fans, decide to try to find out what has happened to the men.  They engage the help of Trula Freed, an eccentric neighbor, and Lu’s rich Aunt Fanniebelle and her Ouija board, which the girls name “Weegee”.  However, the mysteries remain unsolved until a close friend’s death, when Lu, Bert, and Helen, one of Lu’s older sisters, make a surprising discovery.

 

All the Little Hopes is a delightful read, filled with nostalgia, small town life, and love of family and friends.  The book contains short chapters and is told in the alternating voices of Lu and Bert.  The novel sails along while World War II is going on in the background, quietly affecting the town and the Brown family.

 

The characters, even the minor ones, are extremely well-thought out.  I love the whole Brown family, but especially the parents, Minnie and David.  They are caring parents and calming forces in their children’s lives.  Several of the characters very quirky, which adds to the charm of the novel.  Trula Freed, the town’s mystic, reads tarot cards, provides medicine for a variety of ailments, and seems to be clairvoyant.  Lu’s Aunt Fanniebelle, who is quite wealthy and lives in a mansion, gets her words mixed up, which makes her stories hilarious.  I also love that Lu and her whole family are bibliophiles, and they turn Bert into one, too.

 

Readers will be able to tell that Ms. Weiss has done her research, as she inserts historical anecdotes into the story.  The POW camp in the book is based on a similar one she was able to locate in Williamston, NC.  Other factual truths in the novel are the World War II beeswax contracts, the disappearance of band leader Glen Miller, the 1918 Spanish Flu, and folklore wolpertingers from Bavaria.  She has also provided recipes in the back of the book matching those in the novel.

 

There is a “Conversation with the Author” in the back of the book, where the author answers questions about her life growing up, beekeeping, Nancy Drew, the importance of reading, and the development of her characters.  She has also provided a “Reading Group Guide” containing questions and author’s notes explaining how the book came about.

 

All the Little Hopes is a charming, heartfelt, and touching read.  While it is written for young adults, it would be enjoyed by adults, as well.  Hand this book to readers who enjoy stories about family and friendship and World War II.  I highly recommend it for high school and public libraries and give it five out of five fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to Edelweiss and Sourcebooks for allowing me to read and review this book!

Review of Admission by Julie Buxbaum

Buxbaum, Julie.  Admission.  Delacorte, 2020.

 

Life is perfect for Chloe Berringer.  She’s living her best life as a senior at Wood Valley High School, the best private school in Los Angeles, and she has gotten into a great college.  She is going to the prom with Levi Haas, the boy she’s had a crush on since seventh grade.  Her best friend, Shola, is super-smart and fun to be around, and she can always depend on her.  She isn’t the smartest person at her school, but she gets by.

 

One day, at 6:30 in the morning, Chloe opens the front door to her home to find the FBI there…and they have guns!  Her mother, sit-com television star Joy Fields, is arrested for bribery in a college admissions scandal.  Chloe is shocked, but didn’t she have nagging doubts about all the preparations her parents were helping her with to get accepted to college?  She wondered why her college essay was rewritten and was about a different topic than she wrote about, but she didn’t question it enough.  She wondered how her SAT score could have gone up so much in such a short amount of time, so she thought it must be a mistake, but she didn’t speak up.  She wondered how her mother could find a private consultant that seemed so sleazy and never pushed her to try harder.  Why didn’t he want her to take her SAT test at the testing center?  She wondered all these things and knew her parents, especially her mom, wanted the best for her, but she never questioned them.

 

Now Chloe’s life is ruined, and her future is in danger.  Shola doesn’t want to hang out with her anymore; Levi has dropped her and has found another date for prom.  The mother of the young boy she was tutoring in reading no longer wants her to see him. Her dream school has now rescinded their offer of acceptance to her, and if she goes back to her high school, she will face public shaming. Wealth and privilege will not help her now.  She discovers her mom was participating in some underhanded dealings to give her a leg up on the competition, in order to secure her acceptance to college.  People are mad at her and her mom for using money and privilege to give Chloe this advantage.  While Chloe got into college, Shola, who works much harder and is smarter, is waitlisted, just like many other students.  

 

With her mom facing a trial and prison time, Chloe must now work to mend her and her family’s life back together.  She must learn not to take people and her privilege for granted and accept responsibility for her part in being complicit and redeem herself.

 

Admission is based loosely on the true-life scandal “Operation Varsity Blues”, and it hits all the same notes--doctoring an essay and photoshopping a sports photograph, concealing money behind a charity, and changing poor entrance exam scores.  False documentation of a learning disability is provided, which gives Chloe extra time on the SAT test.  Her mom is arrested and must go to trial, just like in the real college admissions crime. 

 

Ms. Buxbaum provides observations on how entitlement gives the elite the ability to work the education system and give themselves an advantage over others, who are usually more deserving.  However, she doesn’t preach; she lets the reader work though the problem with Chloe.  When Chloe realizes that her whole college application has been altered, she begins to wonder if her parents didn’t have confidence in her ability to get into college on her own.  This lowers her self-esteem, especially when she realizes that she may have been complicit in the crime.  Ultimately, Chloe let the masquerade go on because she did not want to disappoint her parents.

 

Give Admission to seniors preparing for college and those who are interested in the college admission scandal.  I highly recommend it for high school and public libraries and give it five out of five fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for allowing me to read and review this book.

Review of A Sitting in St. James

Williams-Garcia, Rita.  A Sitting in St. James.  Quill Tree Books, 2021.

In 1860, sugar cane was usually a profitable business for Louisiana plantations.  However, at La Petite Cottage in St. James, this is not the case.  The plantation has fallen on hard times, much to the dismay of eighty-year-old widow Madame Sylvie Bernardin Guilbert and is nearly bankrupt.  Much to her disappointment, Sylvie’s son, Lucien, has gambled, spent, and drunk their fortune away.

 

When she was only thirteen and being raised in a French convent, Madame Sylvie married Bayard Guilbert, twenty years her senior.  Sylvie, who lived at French Court for a time, was used to being pampered and having her way.  When Bayard takes her to Louisiana, she thinks she has been brought to a special kind of Hell, for it is nothing like France.  She hates the climate, the terrain, and the slaves that work on the plantation.  Not only that, but Sylvie thinks her social standing is way above anyone else’s in St. James, and she only speaks French by choice.  She is also the only heir to a vineyard in France.

 

On her seventieth birthday, Sylvie takes a six-year-old slave girl from her family to be her personal handmaid.  She declares the girl is her birthday present and renames her Thisbe.  As she grows, Thisbe learns to speak French and takes care of Sylvie’s every need.  Without showing it, Thisbe watches and listens to everything that happens in the house.

 

Lucien hopes to save the plantation by marrying off his son, Byron, who is secretly gay, to Eugenie Duhon, the daughter of another plantation owner.  He also has grand plans for his mulatto daughter, Rosalie, whom Sylvie disdains, and Laurent Tournier, the half Black, half Creole son of another plantation owner.  Sylvie is paid by her best friend, Juliette Chatham, to turn her tomboy daughter, Jane, into a lady.  During the midst of all this, Byron’s “friend” comes to visit, so Sylvie plans a party for him and decides she absolutely must have her portrait painted by a famous French artist.

 

For her novel, A Sitting in St. James, author Rita Williams-Garcia, has received starred reviews from three professional journals.  The author, who is a descendant of slaves, herself, has done a meticulous job of researching and writing about plantation life in the period just before the Civil War begins.  The thought she has put into interconnecting the lives of slaves and their white plantation owners is exceptional.  The novel is, at times, hard to read and digest because of the harsh descriptions of slaves’ daily lives and the horrors in the way they were treated by their white owners.

 

The novel is completely character-driven, most of whom are completely fleshed-out.  My favorites are Sylvie’s maid, Thisbe, and Jane Chatham, who comes to live with the Guilberts.  Thisbe is so smart and cunning, although Sylvie could never tell, because she hides it so well.  I could almost feel the hairbrush that Sylvie would beat Thisbe with when she was upset with her.  Even through the beatings, Thisbe is stoic, strong, and unwavering.  Jane, on the other hand, has only known love from her deceased father, and so she grows up emulating him.  He has taught her to hunt, fish, and ride her wonderful horse, Virginia Wilder.  Jane is literal in her thinking and brings humorous moments to an otherwise dark story.

 

A Sitting St. James is a treasure and a history lesson that every young adult should read.  Give this rich, saga-like, page-turner to lovers of historical fiction and those who want to know more about slave life before the Civil War.  I highly recommend it for public libraries and upper high school students and give it five out of five fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to Edelweiss and Quill Tree Books for allowing me to read and review this book.

Review of The Woman With the Blue Star

Jenoff, Pam.  The Woman With the Blue Star.  Park Row Books, 2021.

 

Nineteen-year-old Sadie Gault is living with her parents in the Jewish quarter in Krakow, Poland in 1942.  When the Germans come to round up the Jews, the Gaults and another family, the Rosenburgs, escape down into the sewers under the city.  While they are being led through the tunnels, Sadie and her pregnant mother, Danuta, watch in horror as Mr. Gault falls into the water and gets carried away in the current.  The living arrangements in the sewer chamber for Sadie, her mother, and the Rosenbergs are only supposed to be temporary.  However, the two families end up living there for months after Pawel, the sewer worker who led them there, is arrested by the Polish police.  After Pawel’s arrest, the two families have to figure out how they will get food and supplies without his help.  In the meantime, Sadie and Saul Rosenberg, the Rosenbergs’ son, begin a relationship when they start reading books together.

 

While Gaults and Rosenbergs are trying to survive underneath Krakow, nineteen-year-old Ella Stepanek is stuck living with her Austrian stepmother, Anna, in another part of the city.  Her father has died fighting in the Polish army and has left everything to Anna.  Much to Ella’s dismay, Anna is entertaining and consorting with Nazi soldiers right in their home.  One day, Anna sends Ella to the market, and Ella notices Sadie looking up at her through a sewer vent.  Ella and Sadie become friends, and Ella, with the help of her boyfriend, Krys, who is part of the Resistance, try to provide food for the sewer families.

 

More complications for the Gaults and Rosenbergs begin after Danuta gives birth to her daughter.  Afraid that the baby’s cries will give away the families’ location, Danuta leaves the sewer to take the baby to a hospital and never returns.  The two families continue to have to make decisions that will affect their survival during the war.

 

The Woman with the Blue Star takes place in Krakow, Poland, both above and below ground.  It is told in alternating chapters in first-person by Sadie and Ella.  Other parts of the story are filled in by Pawel and Lucy, Sadie’s sister, when they finally meet years later.

 

Pam Jenoff is a masterful world-builder.  Her descriptions of life in the sewers are horrifying and based on events that actually happened.  Readers will feel they are smelling the foul, stagnant water and hearing the nasty rats scurrying in the dark.  In addition, the depiction of life in Krakow during the war shows how the city was affected and how Jews were treated during this time.

 

The book shows both the good and bad of the human race during World War II.  Although they are from different walks of life, Sadie and Ella make a real connection and quickly become good friends.  Both girls have to reach down deep and find their inner strength to help others.  This fervent story is one of hope, survival, struggles, friendship, loss, and family.

 

Hand this book to readers who enjoy reading fiction stories about World War II and those who like tales of survival and adversity.  Although it is written for adults, it would be a good young adult crossover novel, as teens would also enjoy it.  I recommend it for high school and public libraries and give it four out of five fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to NetGalley, Park Row Books, and Harlequin for allowing me to read and review this novel.

Review of The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

Cobb, May.  The Hunting Wives.  Berkley, 2021.

Sophie O’Neill, along with her husband and four-year-old son, has just moved back to her hometown of Mapleton, located in the Piney Woods of Texas.  Sophie was previously a lifestyle editor for a magazine and lived near Chicago.  She is tired of the fast-paced city life and wants her son to grow up in a small town with a better environment and a slower lifestyle.  She chooses Mapleton because she spent her last two years in high school there and has a very good friend, Erin, who still lives there.  Moving gives her time to work on her blog and Instagram feed, @sloweddownlife.

 

However, after spending several months in Mapleton, Sophie is beginning to get bored with being a stay-at-home mom, gardening, and blogging.  She meets and begins to hang out with a group of women calling themselves “The Hunting Wives”, and hunting doesn’t necessarily mean just guns.  Erin warns Sophie that Margot, a socialite and the group’s leader, is dangerous, but her words fall on deaf ears.  Margot, Callie, Tina, Jill, and Sophie usually meet on Friday nights to shoot skeet, socialize, drink, and bar hop.   When the women go to bars, they have two rules.  Use first names only and don’t go all the way.  Sophie is, at first, shocked that Margot, especially, likes to indulge in cheating and bawdy sex.  Margot further complicates matters by hitting on men in their twenties and younger.  Sophie learns that Margot is having a secret fling with the town’s quarterback, who also happens to be Jill’s son.

 

Things go from bad to worse when a popular teenage girl is found dead on Margot’s property, and Sophie becomes a prime suspect.  Could one of her new friends be the actual killer?  In order to clear her name, Sophie must research, dig for any clues she can find, and then risk her own life.

 

This novel from May Cobb is filled with surprising twists and turns and has a shocking ending.  The members of The Hunting Wives act like mean girls on steroids.  All of the women are running around on their husbands, gossiping, and drink A LOT.  There is a lot of drinking, even when they aren’t with each other.  Jealousy, anger, marriages on the rocks, vengeance, sensuality, and drinking seem feed their relationships with each other.  All of them have a love-hate relationship with Margot.  Sophie is so obsessed and enamored with Margot that she even stalks her.  The amount of time Sophie spends with the women causes her to neglect her wonderful, understanding husband and young son.  It is ironic that Sophie is the one who wanted to move to a small town.  After her husband quits his job and they relocate, Sophie then goes crazy out of boredom.  

 

Kudos to May Cobb for keeping readers on their toes!  Just when I thought I had figured out who the killer might be, the author would throw in another curve, and I would have to start thinking again.

 

The Hunting Wives has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly will make its debut on May 18, 2020.  Although it is billed as domestic fiction, I would call it a murder mystery, instead.  Hand this book to readers who enjoy mysteries and books set in the south.  I recommend it for public libraries and give it 4 out of 5 fleur de lis!

 

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Books for allowing me to read and review this title.

Review of This Is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey

Carey, Anna.  This Is not the Jess Show.  Quirk Books, 2020.

Jessica Flynn is a seventeen-year-old junior who plays clarinet in the high school band.  She comes from a nice family; her mother is an interior designer, but her dad isn’t around all the time.  She loves Swickley, NY, the small town where she has grown up.  Jess has three good friends, Kristen and Amber, and Tyler, who she realizes is now her first crush.  The only sad thing in her life is that her sister, Sara, has Guignard’s disease, a terminal illness.

 

Jessica begins to notice some strange things happening around Swickley.  She realizes that many of her school classmates and townspeople are absent with the flu.  She can hear strange chanting in the distance, but no one else seems to notice.  A black object with an apple on it falls out of Amber’s backpack, and she pretends not to know what it is.  And the weirdest thing of all is, her dog, Fuller, seems different; he acts like he doesn’t know her.

 

Jess feels like someone is always watching her, and she eventually realizes that she a character on a reality show called Stuck in the 90s.  She decides to escape, although the cast is trying to prevent her from leaving.  As she is being hunted down by the network, she gets help from sympathetic cast members and learns the year is actually 2037!  She concludes that her whole life has been a lie, and she never wants to go back to 1998.

 

This Is Not the Jess Show has been billed as The Truman Show for teens.  Author Anna Carey has written a fun, engaging read that is a real page-turner.  The way the story unfolds is rather unremarkable in the beginning, until Jess finds out that she has been living a lie her whole life.  Jess seems very naïve at first because she is fooled by changing characters and people playing multiple roles in her “life”.  However, when she discovers that she has been misled, she shows what a strong character she is by running away.  This only adds to the show’s drama because the network is milking her escape and using social influencers—shades of today-- to poll viewers as to possible outcomes.  

 

The addition of the 90s nostalgia and memorabilia to the story enhances the authenticity of the reality show.  The story has some surprising twists and turns, and the ending sets readers up for the next book of the duology.  Hand this book to readers who enjoy 90s bands and nostalgia and reality shows.  I recommend it for middle school, high school, and public libraries and give it four out of five fleur de lis!

Thank you to NetGalley and Quirk Books for allowing me to read and review this book.