May's Book of the Month

After 2 months our book club met again tonight! We did something a little different tonight. Usually we meet at Bona and discuss our book over a cup of coffee. Tonight we met at Borders and chose our book from the store shelves. We got our drinks and discussed American Wife then we perused the "Borders Book Club", "New Release" and "Top Picks" sections of the store. We returned to our table with about 15 books to choose from. We then pulled out our phones and started reading reviews of the books we were considering. Finally we chose Love Walked In by Marisa De Los Santos. One of the reviews of this book said it was "a chic-lit with a little more meat." We are meeting again in 3 weeks due to Memorial Day and End-of-the-Year events with our kids, we needed something short and easy to read.

Now to address the picture...that's our book of the month along with the great Thirty-One bag we all got...yes, we're book club nerds. :-) They actually are really cute.

Here's what Love Walked In is about:

When Martin Grace enters the hip Philadelphia coffee shop Cornelia Brown manages, her life changes forever. But little does she know that her newfound love is only the harbinger of greater changes to come. Meanwhile, across town, Clare Hobbs-eleven years old and abandoned by her erratic mother-goes looking for her lost father. She crosses paths with Cornelia while meeting with him at the cafe, and the two form an improbable friendship that carries them through the unpredictable currents of love and life. Invoking classic movies to illuminate the mystery and wonder of love in all its permutations. LOVE WALKED IN is an uplifting debut that marks the entrance of an enchanting literary voice.

Belong to Me is the next book that follows these characters...GAB will most likely read that too, but for May we're embarking on a love story starting out in a 20th century icon...a coffee shop.

American Wife-Whitney's Review

I DID IT! I made it ALL the way through the 555 pages of this book JUST in time for Book Club! There was a period of time when this task seemed pretty daunting! I've learned my lesson about choosing a book without seeing it in person. It was long, but I'm glad I've read it.

I'm going to state up front that I'm weird about the books I read...I tend to judge books by their covers...and I prefer books to be broken up into chapters. American Wife was NOT broken up into chapters. It was broken up into 4 parts. There were "natural breaks" within these parts, but I look forward to the close of a chapter and the start of another. That threw me off a bit at first.

Okay, enough about my weirdness...on to American Wife. This book covered a longer time span than I thought it was going to. It starts when Alice is a child and ends when she's in her fifty's. We learn a lot about Alice and who she is in the first part of the book. There's also a tragedy that takes place in the first part. This tragedy becomes a huge part of who Alice is...things happen because of this event that wouldn't have happened otherwise. In the second part of the book Alice meets Charlie...her husband who becomes Governor then President of the United States. For me the second and third parts of this book were the peaks of the book...the fourth part is pretty anti-climatic. But, that was because of my expectations. I expected this book to start with Alice and Charlie already together then focus on his campaign trail and move right into him becoming President and Alice becoming the First Lady. I just thought Sittenfield would spend most of the book with Alice and Charlie in the White House...I was disappointed to find that the highlights of the book took place in the second and third parts.

Even though I expected something different I am glad I read the book. I like a lot of conversation in my books and this one did not have much conversation, rather A LOT of description. There were parts that I skimmed to get to the next event.

What I did love about this book is that Curtis Sittenfield described Alice and who she was and that character never wavered. Alice stayed true to herself and I found myself respecting her.

This book won't make it to my "Would Read Again" list, but I'm happy to have it on my "have read list".