Cape May by Chip Cheek

Hello everyone.

I live in the south, near the beach. I grew up in upstate New York. No, I don't have that accent, upstate people don't have the city accent. My parents loved the beach and were constantly pulling us out of school to go on beach vacations. I swore I was going to marry the pool boy at some sandy resort. Almost, my husband grew up four blocks off the ocean, renting bikes and at hotels, checking in tourists. Yes, he has a southern accent, just ask him to say theater...he stretches it into a four syllable word . It is odd living somewhere that people save up all year to come to on vacation. Weird and, during the summer, traffic filled. By the way, when you are a visitor you don't have to worry about hurricanes, the one drawback to living near the ocean.

When we were kids we could not tolerate a long car trip, or maybe truth be told it was our parents who couldn't tolerate it with us! (My sisters were total brats. I, of course, was an angel.) So we went to New Jersey to the beach. It was only six hours away. Now, for those of you who don't live on the east coast of the USA don't picture something awful. It's not all young men that say "yous guys" with open shirts and lots of jewelry or medical waste on the beach. Nope. We went to Cape May. It is a beautiful seaside town filled with old hotels and gobs of well kept Victorian homes. The next town north is the ever popular Wildwood, filled with original hotels from the 50's, perfectly maintained. Both towns are like stepping into movie sets. If you have not visited them, you are missing out.

When we were in Cape May, we rode bikes every morning on the boardwalk, got red shoestring licorice at Morrow's Nuthouse (not really for eating but for tying into knots then dipping into the sand driving my mother crazy), and learned to love steamed clams with my dad.  A few years ago, I returned with my husband to the same resort, he got us the same room my family had stayed in each year when I was a kid. I made a complete fool of myself breaking into tears in front of the desk clerk, my parents long passed and the place thick with memories. Guess what, I got my husband, the world's pickiest eater to eat steamed clams at Cape May. Amazing, huh? Okay, I'm boring, for me it was special and a little tribute to my dad.

I was so happy to receive an early copy of the book Cape May by Chip Cheek. I had heard you either love it or hate it. The people that didn't like it said they didn't care for it because it was filthy. It has some bad language and sex but I don't think it is filthy. Hell, 50 Shades describes and uses every sex toy known to man. Besides this is the story of two young people in 1957, from Georgia, who are on their honeymoon. They arrive in Cape May at the end of September finding much of it is closed for the season. (The same time of year I took hubby.) The story is about this couple really getting to know each other, losing some of their inhibitions, finding their way as newlyweds both physically and emotionally. After several days they notice one of the houses up the street is now occupied. As they interact with the people in that house the story shifts. It becomes a story of exploration and a warning. The events of those few weeks in Cape May end up shaping the rest of their lives.

When I first finished the book, I put it down not knowing what to think. Honestly, days later I keep thinking about the characters, what they did or didn't do. I think that is a sign of a good story. The writing was good, the story moved quickly and was well told. It is just a cautionary tale, but a good one. I don't know, I've gone from being unsure of my opinion to thinking this might be one of my favorites for the year. Guess I'm fickle, but I can't help it this book lingers!

 Enough book talk, I am going to book a room in Cape May, I need some clams.

Supermarket by Bobby Hall

Hello everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, boy and girls, I'm about to do something I absolutely hate. I am about to date myself. I know, the world is skewed toward the young. However, sometimes, yes sometimes us old farts must stand up for what we believe in. This is my moment. So to you, dear book world I say the following: Genesis was a great band, Styx was a great band, Van Halen was a great band, Aerosmith was a great band. Invisible Touch, Renegade, Hot for Teacher, and Walk This Way, are songs like nobody makes anymore. Not that I don't like much of today's music, but much of it I just don't know.

These bands I'm talking about didn't use auto-tune, or mouth the words while someone else actually sang. These were bands in the golden age of modern music.  I like older music too. Who cannot appreciate a great Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra or Perry Como song?  Heck, my mom's favorite song was Splish Splash, ever heard that? Then there is classical, too much good stuff to mention except my favorite, Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. I swear if you close your eyes during that song you can see your whole life replay in bits and pieces. Go on Google it, I'll wait......see it is amazing!

While looking at the NY Times Best Seller list one day I saw this odd book suddenly at number one on the paperback list. I hadn't heard any buzz about it, nobody I knew was reviewing or even reading it. It has a simple red front with no cover art. I quickly read the "jacket" and discovered it is about a mystery that takes place in a supermarket. Have you caught my blog name...The Fictional Housewife...yeah, grocery items and converting them into some kind of masterpiece is my life. This book seemed right up my alley, I ordered immediately. When it arrived I was surprised to see that it was written by some young rap star,  Bobby Hall, aka Logic. Really? Okay. A book is a book, I'd give it a go.

First let me say, overall I liked it. The writing was not the best, it felt a bit like a high school kid wrote it...not a talented writer with a wonderful editor. I noticed this lack of polished word play but it was not terribly distracting. The story is told in two parts. The beginning is about the main character, Flynn, and his experiences working in a grocery store. He has had a tremendous stroke of luck and has gotten a publisher to buy his first book on spec, they've paid him an advance now he must produce the manuscript. His novel is to be set in the grocery story where he works. Then in part two, still following Flynn we find that something major has happened and time has passed. I don't want to tell you more, it will ruin your experience. I found the ending pretty unbelievable, but then again, most books I read you have to push your disbelief aside and just enjoy. This is one of those books that is good, interesting, a quick read. Not genius, not my favorite of the year or even the month but definitely interesting and something I am glad to have read.

If you have time to give The Supermarket a go, I think you'll enjoy it. Oh, and if you do, I have one thing to say to you, "coffee, coffee, coffee." (You'll get it if you read the book.)

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

Hello everyone.

Hubby is back to work! I feel terrible about how he spent his vacation. He did some things around the house, one was cleaning out a walk-in closet to make it a mini library for me. After he went out and bought all the wood and brackets to build beautiful shelving I actually looked at the cleaned out closet and admitted I had forgotten how many shelves it already had and didn't want more. When I asked him to return all the lumber I think he might have hit me with it like in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. In fact, it is still sitting in my hall, days later, unreturned, taunting me. It smells so good, that new wood smell. The boards he picked are so nice, thick and straight, they'd make beautiful shelves. I don't know, maybe I should ask him to build shelves anyway. If you see me in divorce court you'll know why. Likewise, if I suddenly go missing in a very mysterious way, first alert the police, second call my sisters, third write a book about it and make sure you make me an innocent victim with a much smaller butt and better hair!

While we were on our staycation, I read My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing. I wanted this book the moment I saw it but resisted buying it. I had just read For Better and Worse by Margot Hunt. Frankly, I was afraid they were they same thing. For Better and Worse is about a murdering couple. They murder for a reason, someone has hurt their child. They have a purpose, a gore filled goal (it isn't really gory). Thankfully, My Lovely Wife is completely different.  I got lucky, my husband is a hopeless romantic, he sends flowers for notable occasions, big beautiful bouquets. In My Lovely Wife, the husband/father is the narrator and honestly, I don't think the author gives his name...ever. He is married to Millicent and they have two children. Life is perfect, their version of perfect.  Instead of showing his affection for his wife with flowers, jewelry or an exciting trip, this husband finds her someone to murder! It is so dark and twisted. They live everyday life like everyone else, making you wonder what the "normal" people you know do in private. Nothing like a Wednesday night of, "honey, can you pass the green beans and how do you think we should torture victim number three?"  As I was telling hubby the story I kept gripping the book, holding it up, laughing, saying it was so good. Makes me wonder about myself!

So, if you have read the latest round of husband/wife killer books, don't worry. You'll enjoy this too. It is well written, fast paced, full of twists that you won't see coming and perhaps a bit shame inducing for how much you'll like it. This was a heart racing rollercoaster from start to finish!

We have our wedding anniversary coming up next month, I'll have to think of "something" to do to celebrate!

Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with recipes)

Hello everyone.

If you look at the last review, I said I had a book I was supposed to be reading but stopped briefly. I have now completed that book. Since we are still on vacation, I'll be brief. The book is Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with recipes) by Lorna Landvik. To be totally honest, it was sent to me for review. It is not one I would buy. I crave thrillers, as you all know. I can't help it; I have an addiction! However, sometimes I get sent a book or someone strongly recommends just a regular good old story, that I have to read. Ninety-nine percent of the time I love them, in fact, my top five favorite books of all time are NOT thrillers. If people didn't insist I read a certain book or send it to me, I would be missing out. It is definitely a fault. Something I have to fix and quickly, as I would hate to have missed this story.

Chronicles of a Radical Hag is a wonderful book. It is about an older woman, Hazel, who has had a stroke. She writes a column for the local newspaper so while she is in the hospital (unconscious), the paper begins to rerun some of her old features. They basically tell her personal story and touch on things that are important at that time too, like the Challenger Space Shuttle exploding or about Princess Diana. Told moving between past and present, Hazel's life and those around her, the reader soon becomes enamored with many residents of the town. This heartwarming story illustrates, often with humor, how none of us is perfect but how we all are redeemable. If you like good stories this is for you, I cannot be any plainer. Get ready to laugh, cry and to think about this book for days after it is over.

The First Lady

Hello everyone.

I hope you are having a good day. Not so good here. Well, kind of is, kind of isn't. Hubby is on vacation this week. He has several things he wants to do around the house and was ready for a break from work. First thing on the agenda was to get our taxes done. Ouch! Like I keep hearing on the news, we usually get a refund and this year ended up owing, big time. This is unacceptable. I need my refund for book money. How dare the government want to spend it on things like defense and crummy old roads and bridges. Ok, I'll stop.

One of hubby's "honey-do" list projects is to build a little library. We have an old house, it was actually built with a room considered a library. Unfortunately, it has no bookshelves and lots of windows, a fireplace, and pocket doors, so there is little room for shelving. Besides the ole' spouse uses it as his office. Needless to say, when he is working on a huge problem for work, I do not want to be anywhere close by. Anyway, we have a sitting room attached to our bedroom and it has an unused walk-in closet. I've asked my oh so talented (yes, I'm buttering him up) man, to line those walls with heavy duty, hand built shelves that I can pile high with books. While there really won't be room to read in there, it will be nice to organize my unread books which seem to be everywhere these days.

One book I won't need any shelving for because I've finished it is The First Lady, by James Patterson and Brendan Dubois. I've read books by James Patterson which I very much enjoyed. I have not read anything by Brendan Dubois, so was curious especially when it came up on the NY Times Bestseller Paperback list. When it arrived in the mail, I was in the middle of something else. Something I needed to read right away. Sadly or happily, depending how you look at it, I just "had" to read the first few pages of The First Lady. I should have been patient and waited. Yep, I read the whole thing. I am really a slow reader, I swear I don't know how it happened. I whipped through this book in less than two days, and I didn't really have any marathon reading sessions. The book has 338 pages, it is not like it is a novella. I guess I magically got through this story so fast because it was so good and rapidly paced. The plot was strong and always in the forefront, not wavering. While it is obviously about the President and First Lady of the United States, if you are sick and tired of politics don't worry. The story is about people, supporting characters and settings of a political nature, it really isn't about any governmental issues. It is a great ride of a thriller that races (somehow way faster than I can read) through the twists and turns to the perfect ending. Highly enjoyable.

Too bad voting for politicians is not as fun or thrilling as reading this book! If it was, everyone would vote.

The Girl He Used To Know by Tracey Garvis Graves

Hello everyone.

I have a word for you...ready?  SEX!  Yes, sex. Okay, goodnight and have a safe drive home! No? Okay, then I'll go on. Sex is everywhere. It is getting checked out at the grocery store, in more ways than one, or being noticed while walking your dog. Sex is in movies, nature, tv, in books. I am assuming we are all adults here, if under 18 turn this off and go read a book. Back to being adults, being a few years out of my twenties, okay more than a few. No, not that many...okay maybe...let's get off my age. Let me just say, by now what I haven't done, I have ruled out or put in that side category of "maybe just once if I'm in a weird mood and have had a hell of a lot of wine." No matter where you are in your sex life journey, we all know what that attraction feels like. As with many things promoted for money, sex has been turned into a sales vehicle. Whether we like it or not sex sells. I remember being in a marketing class in college and being shocked when we were shown an ad for a certain kind of scotch. It was in a glass over ice. The teacher asked us to look very closely at the ice and sure enough the shape of the haze within the ice was that of a woman's body. Sex does sell, more than booze too, it sells books. No? Don't think so? Ask the author of Fifty Shades of Grey. It was a fan fiction version of Twilight but became SO popular, partly because of the sex. Result, book deal and well paid author.

Sex in a book is especially important in a romance novel. Perhaps not the sex act itself but definitely sexual tension. We root for the characters to get together, to fall in love, to have emotional as well as sexual chemistry. But frankly, if there is no physical spark it could end up like loving your brother not someone you have great passion with. This week I read The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves. First, let me say, I was very fortunate to receive an advanced copy from the publisher (thank you most excellent St. Martin's Press). I know several other reviewers who also received copies. They ALL LOVED it. Adored. Best thing since sliced bread. When looking at the author on Amazon you will see she is highly rated, a NY Times best seller.  You know it's coming don't you?

For me, this book missed the mark. This is the story of a couple that falls in love in college,  separates then reconnects years later. The story is painfully slow, they don't go anywhere or do anything. That is fine, it drives me crazy when I read a bunch of books where all the activity and settings are over the top, but when you stay in one place the reader is relying on the author to really develop the characters and for some wonderful dialog. The conversations between characters in this story seemed somewhat forced. Not playful, fun, or enjoyable. Not that all discussions have to be light but they didn't seem particularly meaningful either. In this story the girl is on the autism spectrum, the third book with that theme that I've read in six months. Makes me wonder if that is the next trend like vampires were a few years ago (betting female French spies during WWII follow as next major book topic). I can't really explain it other than to say what others found charming, I found flat and uninteresting. The writing was slow and bland. There was a big event at the end but frankly by then it seemed awkward and out of place. I know the work that goes into a book. I really do. It hurts me to say something bad about any book, please remember I am one of the very few people that don't like this. I just thought this whole story, minus the ending, could have been told in 10 pages.

Now that I've depressed us all, time to go to the grocery story to get "checked out", one way or another.