Category: Family Drama

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – Letting Go by Jacquie Biggar (book 1 in the Defiant Sisters)

Published on by dgkaye52 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Book Review. Today I’m reviewing Jacquie Biggar’s (book 1 in the Defiant Sisters) – Letting Go. A story about family loss and two sisters who share different opinions about handling what they’ve experienced.

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Blurb:

A coming-of-age novel about the pain of misconceptions and learning from them.

When life gives you lemons…


Izzy

Mom is barely in the grave and the prodigal child is here to pick the bones clean.

I don’t want her here. My sister’s defection is a wound that won’t heal, and her return simply rubs at the scabs covering my heart.

I’ve managed just fine without her. She can go back to her fancy college and forget about us- that’s what she does best anyway.

If only I didn’t need her help. Or miss her so much.

Renee

The day my dad committed suicide I ran. I’ve been running ever since.

Going home is supposed to be the answer. Instead, it makes me question every thoughtless decision I’ve made.

My sister hates me. My little brother barely knows me. And Simon… is engaged.

None of it matters- or so I tell myself. I’m here to make amends and face a past haunted by regret.

As long as I can convince myself to stay.

Letting Go is a new adult romance dealing with tragedy, restitution, and love in all its aspects. The story relates to sensitive topics that may be triggering for some readers.

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My 5 Star Review:

Grief, hurt, and family. Everyone is affected differently by death. And when the father of this family took his own life, daughter Renee flees the home after witnessing it, leaving behind her sister Izzy and younger brother Ben and their mother. But after the mother dies from cancer, (where the book begins), Renee returns to the unwelcoming arms of her sister Izzy who was left to take care of her brother Ben twelve years of age, and their mother. Renee had fled, and Izzy carried the load. We’ll also learn of Renee’s heart throb Simon, now a paramedic Renee left behind too – unsettled love.

Renee returns for her mother’s funeral and upon her return is faced with confronting all those she left behind, still carrying the torch for Simon too. But Simon is now engaged to Lacey and when Renee comes back to town there is a small accident that happens between Simon’s grandmother and Renee – bringing the two ill-fated lovers back into each other’s orbit – and those unsettled feelings between them bubble up.

It’s evident the two lovers still had feelings for each other, and in this story, the tension between the two is electrifying. Izzy holds a lot of resentment toward her sister Renee for abandoning her in their dire family time. But Renee begins to see the damage she has caused in abandoning her now small family and decides it’s time to move herself and her physiotherapy practice back to her home town to help her sister and raise her brother Benjamin. But Izzy can’t let go of the hurt, and we’ll have to read book 2 to find out how this plays out, and what will become of Simon and Renee.

The story is written from the POVs of Izzy, Renee, and Simon in first person. Each character takes us into their own thoughts, wounds, and aspirations. This book is written as a new age adult genre, which explores many growing up adult situations that the younger gen are faced with – feelings, life decisions, romance, hurt, grief, and love.

©DGKaye2024

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – Genuine Deceit by Joy York #Suspense

Published on by dgkaye72 Comments

I’m back! Just saying hello and sharing my review for one of five books I managed to read while on vacation in Mexico. The socials kept me busy, so I didn’t get to read all the books I had planned to, but I enjoyed the ones I managed to read. My regular midweek blog will resume on Wednesday. I still have a mountain of things that need tending to, and I have yet to write my vacation journey posts but I thought I’d get the ball rolling with the first of reviews for one of the books I enjoyed while away – Genuine Deceit by Joy York.

Blurb:

When a young woman finds herself unknowingly accountable for the past sins of her family, she must unravel their secrets and lies to stay alive.

When her grandmother is brutally murdered in her own home, Reagan Asher leaves her corporate job and rushes to her sleepy hometown in Ohio. She has barely entered the house before a second break-in attempt is made, prompting police to believe it’s not just a random burglary. Reagan’s lifelong friend Mattie asks Aiden Rannell, her brother-in-law and an ex-Navy Seal, to lend support and protection to Reagan as she navigates the investigation.

Aiden suggests a ring that Reagan’s grandmother owned may be more valuable than anyone realizes. Considering her frugal life growing up, Reagan dismisses the idea, showing Aiden an old pink box filled with similar colorful, ornate costume jewelry she and her friends played with as children. When they find a decades-sealed container with shocking contents supporting Aiden’s concerns, Reagan begs him to help her find the origin and if it is related to her Nana’s death.

Finding clues to solve a decades old mystery proves challenging as the threats to Reagan’s life escalate. Could the discovery of a water-stained, half-torn photo found in her grandmother’s safe deposit box be significant? Her mother’s suicide? Her father’s abandonment? Unanswered questions send Reagan and Aiden across the country in search of answers, with danger never far behind. With each new revelation of deception and lies, Reagan begins to doubt everything she ever knew about her life.

My 5 Star Review:

I will start by saying, whew! What a roller coaster of events!

An engaging suspense story. It all begins at Reagan’s Nana’s house when she is found murdered. Reagan flies from her hometown Chicago, to Ohio when she hears what happened to her Nana.

A seemingly frugal grandma murdered in her own home, for what? That’s what I savored every page to find out as Aiden and Reagan led a dangerous investigation of their own. The police had still assumed it was a burglary gone bad when Reagan and Aiden uncovered something big and they were determined to find out what some of the clues led to for themselves before sharing with the police. If Aiden hadn’t have had a sneaky suspicion about a ring Reagan played with as a child and believed her whole life it was costume jewelry, this story would have turned out very different – and not in a good way.

Besides the many chases and perilous moments in this great suspense – with a touch of romance, Reagan had to deal with realizing that some of the people she grew up with as family, had quite the pasts that left her questioning much of her childhood. With her father abandoning her as a child, and her mother committing suicide when she was only seven, her Nana raised her, and everything she thought she knew about her grandmother wasn’t truth.

Reagan’s best friend Mattie, since childhood asks her husband’s brother Aiden to watch over Reagan while the burglar/murderer is still at large. The pair begin searching the house hoping to find clues as to what this burglar wanted and come across some old photos of Reagan’s mom and some of her friends that piqued Reagan’s curiousity. And then a surprising discovery of a safety deposit key that belonged to her Nana.

During one of their many visits back to Nana’s house, Reagan and Aiden are faced with danger as the burglar comes back, still looking for what he didn’t previously find. And the hunt and chases begin. With many near death experiences, attempted kidnappings, plentiful twists and turns, this book was an addictive read. The author masterfully ties in all the characters, crimes, and red herrings. Also, there was a stunning revelation in the last chapter we don’t see coming. I certainly look forward to reading more from this author. If you love suspenseful page-turners, you will love this book.

©DGKaye2024

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – The Physics of Relationships by Chas Halpern

Published on by dgkaye46 Comments

Welcome to my last Sunday Book Review of the year. Today I’m sharing my review for – The Physics of Relationships by Chas Halpern. An interesting tale of a middle-aged widow and the various relationships she shares with interesting characters in her life.

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Blurb:

A highly readable, intimate story about loss, aging, female friendship, family, and renewal…told with grit and humor.

Lexi is a sixty-year-old widow whose solitary life is thrown into turmoil when a desperate young woman moves in with her, soon followed by the unexpected arrival of her best friend, who has separated from her husband of forty years. The mix of these three very different personalities – a powerful omnivore seeking to live life to the fullest; a sweet, self-denying vegan; and Lexi, a thoughtful, still grieving widow – leads to some surprising (sometimes humorous) situations that force Lexi to re-examine her life. In the physics of relationships, Lexi observes that nature abhors a vacuum. She begins to wonder if she herself has somehow manipulated her circumstances to fill that vacuum…simply to imitate the life she had before the death of her husband. 

“[The Physics of Relationships] was a joy to read. I loved the flow of the writing, the profundity of the observations, and the humor. You have truly sketched a very accurate, forgiving, and endearing picture of a woman at this stage of life. Thank you for writing this book.” -Kaiya Cade Smith Blackburn

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My 4 Star Review:

Lexi is a twice married, now widow in her early 60s who is re-evaluating and analyzing her current life. She divorced Greg, her first husband when her two children Tasha and Brandon were young children, and shortly after, married the love of her life, Lawrence. Lexi reaches a point of discovery with the relationships in her life. Her kids are off living their lives when daughter Tasha asks her mother if she wouldn’t mind taking in an old friend of hers, Danielle, who needs a temporary place to stay. Lexi welcomes her into her home, and eventually begins to wonder if she will ever leave. While Lexi is always trying to do the right thing to make others happy, she begins to wonder if Danielle is a good thing for her to have company in her now lonely home. Lexi wants Danielle to get her jewelry business going, and save up some money for her future move, until then Lexi won’t take any rent money, and daughter Tasha begins to feel a bit of envy that her friend has struck such a harmonious relationship with her mother.

Amy is Lexi’s best friend. She’s a bit eccentric and in my opinion, can be quite overbearing. Amy is going through a bit of wondering why she bothers staying married to her husband Phil when life has become too mundane for her liking. Amy decides she’s moving in with Lexi until she can decide what she will do with her own marriage. She is good company for Lexi, and sometimes pushes Lexi out of her comfort zone as we continue to read and wonder if Lexi will succumb to all Amy’s wishes. In this story we are taken in with how Lexi handles the various relationships of the people in her life. As Lexi is a cheerleader for everyone and always weighing the best way to handle life issues and delicate relationships, we discover the give and take of friendships, relationships, marriage, divorce, and children in this adult coming-of-age story as Lexi takes us through her thoughts in this well told ‘memoir-like’ story about life and loss and living, and the forgiveness she ultimately finds with her ex-husband Greg.

As Lexi discovers more about herself and her caring for others, she realizes she’s not looking for intimacy, rather, people in her life that fulfill her and bring her joy. Famous words of Lexi, ” The older you get, the more pain you carry with you. It’s just part of you. Your heart expands to accommodate the hurt.”

©DGKaye2023

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

Published on by dgkaye64 Comments

My Sunday Book Review is for Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson. Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy. This is a good escape read about a wealthy family of characters, their dysfunction, and for some – their oblivion about others who don’t come from money.

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Blurb:

“A vibrant and hilarious debut…Pineapple Street is riveting, timely, hugely entertaining and brimming with truth.” —Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest

Darley, the eldest daughter in the closely-tied, carefully-guarded, old money Stockton family, made the classic feminine mistake and gave up her job for her children before she realized she’d sacrificed more of herself than she intended; Sasha married into the Stocktons, and finds herself the outsider looking into the fishbowl, wondering if she will ever understand their ways; and Georgianna, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t (and really shouldn’t) have, and must confront the kind of person she wants to be.

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable if fallible characters (and a few appalling ones!), it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots and everything in between, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight of a read.

My 4 Star Review

A tale about how the 1% lives and their sometimes, oblivion to how the rest of the world live. It took one of the Stockton children, Cord, to marry out of money to bring awareness to the story by bringing in Sasha to bring attention to reality. The Stocktons come from old money and mother Tilda is both oblivious to those who aren’t as rich as much as she’s oblivious to the what’s really going on with her adult children – Cord, Darley and Georgianna.

Darley gives up her career for her husband Malcolm to raise two children and harbors a sore spot for her brother Cord who marries the middle class, artist, Sasha who were given Cord’s parents’ house on Pineapple Street to live in. Sasha finds it a bit like an old fashioned gaudy mansion of days of past and is scrutinized for her decisions, wanting more simplicity, by her upper class sister-in-laws and mother-in-law. Sasha tries to be friends with everyone, but her bougie sister-in-laws call her a gold digger behind her back – when clearly, she is not. In fact, her acceptance of signing a prenup (at her mother in-law’s insistence) with lame defense from Cord who fluffs it off as though it was for his own protection, would have been enough to send me packing – especially when his defense was ‘his family comes first’, before his wife to be.

Darley’s husband loses his important job and is afraid to let her parents know. Georgianna is a spoiled young woman who has no understanding about money. She falls in love with a married guy, believing he’ll leave his (pregant) wife for her some day, until tragedy strikes and Georgianna falls into a crazed depression, but her family are too self-centered to even notice until she loses it at Sasha’s baby reveal, and all the ugly truths start coming out.

At the end, the characters begin to recognize their flaws, apologies are made, and poor Sasha finally gets her wish for a brand new home – away from Pineapple Street. This was an enjoyable read, although I didn’t find it humorous, and except for Sasha, I found most of this family unlikeable characters. But that’s what keeps us reading!

©DGKaye2023