At her local drugstore, Amy Byler runs into her husband, who went on
a business trip to Hong Kong and stayed for three years. He’s
returned to make things right and be the father his children deserve.
School Librarian Amy signs up to present her reading program at a
conference in NYC, where she plans to reconnect with her college
roommate, during the kids’ week with their father. She meets a hot
librarian, makes a new friend, and starts a movement. Harms cleverly
uses the modern-day epistolary of email and texting in this humorous
exploration of a single mom becoming her own woman. Fans of Ann
Garvin, Katherine Center, and Kerry Anne King will appreciate Harms’
voice. I received a digital copy of this wonderful story from Lake
Union through NetGalley.
What happens when an overworked, underappreciated single mother of two
gets an opportunity to spend a week away from reality in NYC? What
happens when that week turns into an entire summer? And, what happens
when this rare gift of personal freedom, self-reflection, and fun comes
to an end?
These are the questions at the heart of former editor and literary agent
Kelly Harms’ delightful and empowering new novel, THE OVERDUE LIFE OF AMY BYLER
(Lake Union Publishing; May 1, 2019; hardcover), about a middle-aged
woman’s much-needed Momspringa.* Full of wit, heart, bookish-references,
and romance, THE OVERDUE LIFE OF AMY BYLER is next year’s feel-good read!
*Momspringa (n.): A period of time when moms are given time away from
the demands of daily life, including their children, so they can
recharge and reconnect with themselves as human women. Inspired by the
Amish term Rumspringa.
They say that cats don’t like change. But Luna, an imaginative tabby, understands that sometimes it’s necessary. When her owner, Annika, moved back to her small New England hometown six months ago along with her sixteen-year-old twins, Luna knew it was for the best. Ever since Annika’s husband, Peter, died suddenly, the family has been floundering. Luna, too, is guilt-ridden, sure she could have done more to save her favorite person. Luna also knows something the others don’t know. Peter’s spirit is still with them, and Luna believes there is something he needs her help to do . . .
Annika has been struggling to move on. It doesn’t help that her son, Donovan, blames her for his father’s death. Peter always told Annika that they had the best love story going, yet the fact is that much of their story has been hidden away, even from their children. When Annika’s first love, Sam, arrives to plow them out during an intensifying storm, the truth begins to emerge at last. And Luna—watchful and unwavering in her affection—may be her family’s best hope of learning how to forgive and to heal . . .
Wife. Mother. Breadwinner. Penelope Ruiz-Kar is doing it all—and barely keeping it together. Meanwhile, her best friend, Jenny Sweet, appears to be sailing through life. As close as the two women are, Jenny’s passionate marriage, pristine house, and ultra-polite child stand in stark contrast to Penelope’s underemployed husband, Sanjay, their unruly brood, and the daily grind she calls a career.
Then a shocking
tragedy reveals that Jenny’s life is far from perfect. Reeling,
Penelope vows to stop keeping the peace and finally deal with the
issues in her relationship. So she and Sanjay agree to a radical
proposal: both will write a list of changes they want each other to
make—then commit to complete and total honesty.
What seems like a
smart idea quickly spirals out of control, revealing new rifts and
even deeper secrets. As Penelope stares down the possible implosion
of her marriage, she must ask herself: When it comes to love, is
honesty really the best policy?
My Review
Penelope believes her life as a wife and mother inferior to her always perfectly put together friend Jenny, whose daughter is just as seemingly pristine as her mother. She is blindsided by the tragedy of her friend’s life, causing her to re-evaluate her own marriage and motherhood. Pagan brilliantly portrays the chaos that is raising children, with an opening scene of Penelope in the bathroom asking if she will ever have a moment of peace. The disconnect between spouses blares from the pages as they discuss who’s to blame for the lack of toilet paper, and Penelope notes that Sanjay barely looks at her to confirm that her appearance is satisfactory. Her re-evaluation puts them on a bumpy road back to each other and a cohesive family unit. Pagan juxtaposes the consequences of social comparison and lack of connection with an ever-increasing social problem in a credible and empathetic manner. This story is a reminder to pay closer attention to the ones you love. It’s a 5-star lesson in life.
One
tragic twist of fate destroyed Braden Healey’s hands, his musical
career, and his family. Now, unable to play, adrift in an alcoholic
daze, and with only fragmented memories of his past, all Braden wants
is to escape the darkness of the last eleven years.
When his ex-wife and son are killed in car accident, Braden
returns home hoping to forge a relationship with his troubled
seventeen-year-old daughter, Allie. But how can he hope to rescue her
from the curse that seems to be shadowing his family?
Ophelia “Phee” MacPhee, granddaughter of the eccentric old man
who sold Braden his cello, believes the curse is real. She swore an
oath to her dying grandfather that she would ensure that Braden plays
the cello as long as he lives. But he can’t play, and as the
shadows deepen and Phee finds herself falling for Braden, she’ll do
anything to save him. It will take a miracle of forgiveness and love
to bring all three of them back to the healing power of music.
Kerry Anne King lives with her Viking in a little house surrounded by
trees, the perfect place for writing books and daylight dreaming.
She spends her days working as an RN in a clinic, spinning her
tales early in the morning and in the evenings after work. She
believes passionately in the idea of the “whole self” and
is ever in pursuit of balancing mind, body, and spirit. She also
writes fantasy and mystery novels as Kerry
Schafer and provides coaching
services to creatives who are experiencing procrastination,
overwhelm, and other blocks that get in the way of their important
creative work.
“The
ring, please.” Father Monahan turned to Jeffrey, whose gaze sent
everyone’s eyes to the back of the room. Whatever he was looking at
was not apparent, and all returned their attention to the couple.
“Jeffrey,” the
groom stage-whispered angrily at his best man. He couldn’t be
bothered right now that his lifelong friend’s unrequited love
hadn’t shown. For god’s sake, it was his wedding. If Jeffrey
ruined it, their friendship was in question. It had been faltering
ever more as this obsession had grown.
Laila slowly opened
the heavy church door, hoping for a quiet entrance. She was late,
hadn’t been expecting to come at all. Susanna had begged her to
come. Her little sister’s wedding was a must, but she understood
that HE would be there. They agreed that no one wanted the commotion
that would ensue from her presence. Yet she desperately wished to see
her baby girl she helped raise marry the man of her dreams. The door
squeak echoed around the three-stories’ tall ceiling. Acoustics
were fantastic in here—as a singer, she was impressed. Then all
eyes turned again to the back of the room.
Halfway up, Laila’s
ex-husband Henri sat with two of their children, both of them excited
about baby sister as flower girl. Upon seeing Laila in the doorway,
with sunlight haloing her auburn hair, he stood up, snapped his
fingers for the kids to follow, and headed to the door. As he walked
down the aisle, he heard a gasp from the front, but didn’t turn to
find out from who. In his peripheral vision, he noted a tall man in
black on the left get up and head in the same direction. He did not
want to know who this guy was. Henri reached back for his children.
The sound of little feet running behind him assured him that all his
kids were coming.
A time travel criminal shot Kin’s Temporal Corruption Bureau retrieval beacon, stranding him in 1996. In the two decades it took his colleagues from 2142 to find him, he built a life with a wife and daughter. Regulations force him back to the future, where he’s been missing for only weeks from his work and his fiancee. His inexplicable disappearance, and her mother’s death, sends his daughter spiraling downward. He breaches protocol, reaching out to her digitally, endangering both. Chen brilliantly maintains time travel integrity, with its possibilities and limitations, placing his main character in an organization enforcing law throughout time, with strict safety policies for agents preventing him from aiding his daughter. This is a family drama that just happens to have a time travel element—a well-written, speculative suspense novel. I was fortunate to receive a digital copy from the publisher Mira Books through NetGalley.
Tell
me about your writing process: schedule, environment, strategies /
techniques, and inspirations material and abstract.
I’m
an organic writer—I think a lot ahead of time about the characters
and what my story’s central questions will be, but don’t outline
in detail or swear by any particular tools or strategies, beyond
reading voraciously, as much as I’m able. I’m very disciplined,
with daily and weekly goals, and believe firmly in the power of
forward momentum once I get going on a manuscript.
I
wrote my first two novels by night, as my babies/toddlers slept,
while working a demanding day job as editorial director for Writer’s
Digest magazine. Not long after signing the contract for Forget
You Know Me, I scaled back my role at the magazine and shifted to
writing by day as my primary focus. A writing career involves a fair
amount of evenings and weekends for things like book clubs,
conferences and festivals, so this is a much more workable focus for
my family, which always comes first.
Describe
your publishing process, from final draft to final product, including
publishing team and timeline. How did your work in the industry
prepare you for the writing world as an author?
It’s
been a little different for every book, particularly as staffing
changes at my publisher have led to a few editorial team transitions,
but I’m working at the pace of about a book a year. I refine a
draft until I think (hope) it’s close to working as what I
envisioned for the story, then get feedback from a few trusted
readers and revise yet again before turning it over to my editor.
Then comes another round to incorporate the excellent suggestions
from her professional eye.
My
work in the industry taught me what a team effort publishing is; I
have enormous respect for my editors, having been one, and deep
gratitude for the efforts of the hardworking support teams—marketing,
publicity, design and beyond.
Who
are your biggest cheerleaders online and IRL, and how did you get
into the Tall Poppies (beyond being an excellent storyteller)?
My
family and friends—who’ve seen firsthand my dedication to this
craft since long before I ever got published—are my biggest
cheerleaders, and their warm support means the world to me.
Also, at the start, were my colleagues at Writer’s Digest—we
were all writers with a genuine love for the work we were doing
there, and it was humbling to have them so enthusiastically in my
corner—as well as a debut author group called 17 Scribes—it was
invaluable to be tapped into a network of other authors publishing
their first novels in 2017, and many of us remain connected today.
I’d
met some of the Tall Poppy Writers through conferences, WD, the
Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and online, and had admired
their collaborative spirit and talented body of work for years; I was
elated when they invited me to join.
How
does your life influence your writing and vice versa? Please share
fun details about being the 2019 Writer-in-Residence for Public
Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
While
I don’t write directly from life experiences, of course we all are
heavily influenced by the phases of life in which we find ourselves
and the beautiful (and not so beautiful) aspects of human nature that
turn our heads. I’d find it impossible to separate the two!
It’s
a wonderful honor to be serving as the newly minted
Writer-in-Residence for the Cincinnati library system this year; it
encompasses more than 40 branches, and I’ll doing community
engagement with local readers (visiting library branch book clubs and
hosting a podcast) as well as aspiring writers (teaching free
workshops and holding office hours, for instance).
What
do you love most about your creativity?
Through
dreaming up a story from pure imagination, somehow, I end up feeling
more like me.
Daphne Maritch
inherits the yearbook that the class of 1969 dedicated to her mother,
their teacher. Attending every class reunion of that year’s class,
her mom dashed off judgment calls in that yearbook, while alienating
her family further. Daphne has no use for it and tosses it in
recycling, only to discover her neighbor has rescued it and has
documentary plans for it, focusing on her mother’s life. In her
attempt to repossess it, Daphne learns exactly how much she didn’t
know about her mother, and how much better her father knows her than
she realized. Secrets explode, Daphne explodes…romance ensues.
Lipman creates a
character whose complexity makes her less endearing than interesting,
leading dear reader to enjoy her ups and downs from outside the
emotions, yet still root for her as she makes terrible life
decisions. Choices made by all family members in the past reverberate
in the presence, causing confusion and offering challenging choices.
The integrity of the characters remains resolute as they fluffercate
over “9/10 of the law” and “right to know.” This is an
absolutely FUN story, whipping back and forth in allegiances, and up
and down in storyline. I was fortunate to receive a copy of this
fabulous book from the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt through a
Goodreads giveaway.
A sleeping sickness befalls the little college town of Santa Lora, CA, starting with Mei’s roommate Kara, prompting a quarantine of their dorm. Quickly overwhelmed, the hospital sets up the children who succumb in the public library. The patients wake up in random order with time span and chronology confusion, or they never wake up—dying or coming to consciousness days, weeks, months after succumbing. Mei becomes part of the relief effort by those immune to the illness. Thompson Walker brilliantly moves in and out of the epidemic containment through cordon sanitaire and the sleepers’ astonishingly realistic dreams. Graphic descriptions of virtual long lives lived for decades and anomalies that persist after awakening draw the reader into the deep wells of grief and confusion of those who wake to a lesser reality. The frustrated anger and desperation of family and friends prevented from contacting loved ones is credibly shown by such irrational actions as climbing the quarantine fence and rushing the police. The author references other such unusual occurrences, and how conspiracy theories can easily form from a frightening epidemic never diagnosed by doctors. It brings to mind the sleepy sickness brought on by the Spanish flu epidemic of the early 20th century, whose victims remained catatonic for decades. I was fortunate to receive a copy of this well-written, wonderfully told novel from the publisher Random House through a Goodreads giveaway.
Anna Roux’s life changed drastically when her husband moved them
from Paris to the American Midwest. Her profession as a dancer fades
to history, and she disappears inside herself, despair manifesting as
anorexia. In a holiday visit home, her family’s shocked reaction to
her appearance prompts her husband to commit her to a strict program
at 17 Swann Street, where Anna learns the hard way to eat again.
There’s so much more going on than Anna feeling fat, so much
involved in succumbing to an insidious disease. Zgheib carefully
maneuvers through the complexity of her character’s inner turmoil.
As a contributing factor as well as an integral part of Anna’s
support system, her husband is explored through his emotional roller
coaster, denial, and finally, tough love response to her illness.
This story paints a
detailed description of a unique life with an unfortunately common
disease, where one cannot point to any one action as a causation.
Readers with no connection to this illness still will reel from the
pain of a young woman who feels out of control of her own life, who
cannot reconcile her less than desirable circumstances with the love
she feels for her husband, sympathizing with her as she is forced to
confront the voice of anorexia telling her that she is not enough.
The slow, challenging journey is well told by a talented writer. This
is a must-read for the awareness and understanding it brings. If
anorexia has touched your life in any way, offer this story to
friends and family. Even if it hasn’t, read and share for the
compassion invoked.
Yara Zgheib’s poetic and poignant debut novel is a haunting portrait of a young woman’s struggle with anorexia on an intimate journey to reclaim her life.
The chocolate went first, then the cheese, the fries, the ice cream. The bread was more difficult, but if she could just lose a little more weight, perhaps she would make the soloists’ list. Perhaps if she were lighter, danced better, tried harder, she would be good enough. Perhaps if she just ran for one more mile, lost just one more pound.
Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears—imperfection, failure, loneliness—she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere eighty-eight pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live: women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day. Every bite causes anxiety. Every flavor induces guilt. And every step Anna takes toward recovery will require strength, endurance, and the support of the girls at 17 Swann Street.
Yara Zgheib is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University and a PhD in International Affairs in Diplomacy from Centre D’études Diplomatiques et Stratégiques in Paris. She is fluent in English, Arabic, French, and Spanish. Yara is a writer for several US and European magazines, including The Huffington Post, The Four Seasons Magazine, A Woman’s Paris, The Idea List, and Holiday Magazine. She writes on culture, art, travel, and philosophy on her blog, “Aristotle at Afternoon Tea” (http://www.aristotleatafternoontea.com/).
