The Hurricane Sisters

This was one of those books that I picked up because it was audio and I needed something to listen to in the car on a road trip. It was an interesting book. The plot was good, the characters were cute. There is quite a bit of language though.

It stars three generations of women. Maisie is the spunky, fiesty, opinionated grandmother. Liz is the judgmental mom. And Ashley is the 20 something daughter who dreams of becoming an artist and marrying the South Carolina senator.

It was a fine book, but nothing to praise. There's a bit of everything in the book, which makes it a little all over the place. It has something to say on families, domestic violence, Southern charm, affairs, and more. However, it's mostly a story on a family and how they stick together and love one another through difficult things.

My Name is Mary Sutter

This historical fiction gets mixed reviews from me. It's definitely worth reading though; I loved it. The story of Mary Sutter is amazing. What a remarkable woman she was! The characters were dynamic and it was a hard book to put down.

Mary Sutter was a midwife in the late 1800s who wanted to become a surgeon. Of course, women in that time should not and thus did not have those kinds of ambitions and definitely not the opportunities to fulfill those ambitions. Mary Sutter used her vast intelligence of facts and people to attempt to get what she wanted.

My only criticism of this book is the history part. It wasn't flawlessly woven throughout. It almost seems like Oliveria stops the story of Mary Sutter to throw in some facts about the politics and the war and the people involved.

That aside, the book is great and if you enjoy stories about strong women, unrequited love, the Civil War, or medicine this is a great book for you.  

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

This book got great reviews, so I decided to read with without knowing anything about it. Sometimes that works in my favor, as some books are just perfect when you don't know what to expect. This wasn't one of those books.

This was an interesting book. I didn't know it was fantasy until I was into the book. Had I known beforehand, I may have enjoyed the book better. It is an interesting story and fairly entertaining. It's a cross between Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time Ransom Rigg's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children but it's not nearly as good as either of those. It is a very simple book and had almost no explanations to the fantasy. At first I thought maybe it would be good for a child to read, but it's not appropriate for kids.

It's about a man who comes back to his childhood home and remembers a friend he had, Lattie Hempstock and some adventures they had together. The plot is ho hum. The characters are boring. The fantasy is just okay.

I will say that it has a bit of an interesting commentary on human nature, but not complex enough to really make anything of the book.

The Girl You Left Behind

This was a really, really good book. I do have some complaints, but they aren't big enough to not read the book.

Sophie, a Frenchwoman from the early 1900s is left with the task of keeping her family safe while her husband is fighting in WWI. Germany occupies the village and her life changes when German officers eat dinner at her inn every night.  The Commander sees a painting of Sophie, painted by her husband, and immediately falls in love with the art. That painting becomes a pivotal piece of what happens to Sophie and her family.

Almost a century later, Liv gets that same painting as a wedding present from her husband, who died young. By chance, the paintings value is discovered and the troubled history of the painting resurfaces.

Overall:
1. Perfect balance of suspense, tragedy, and relief. This would be a great book club book or beach read.
2. Some sex and language, but an amazing story.
3. The way Moyes narrates these stories can get a little confusing.
4. Although I really, really loved Sophie's story, Liv's was just ok. I felt that it was too modern. Too much of a juxtaposition from Sophie's story. Perhaps that was the point, but it made me care more about Sophie than Liv. In fact, the novel could have just been Sophie's story on its own and it would have been just as good, if not better. The modern story line was too contrived, too drawn out, and just not great.
5. You should read this.

The Martian

The Martian is on lots of book lists as a must read. I took one look and saw that it was SciFi and decided to skip it. Not my thing. When I kept seeing it come up everywhere, I told myself to buck up and read the thing. So I did.

I was under the impression that SciFi was aliens, different worlds and species, fighting space creatures, or people with tall pointy ears who live in large space ships. The Martian is none of those things. What enlightenment!

It's about Mark Watney, an astronaut who gets left behind on Mars. There are no aliens. There are no creature scenes. And there are no pointy ears. The SciFi in the novel is just the unrealistic or unscientific (at least as of 2014) reality of being able to survive on Mars.

This novel is gripping. Suspenseful all throughout the book, from the first page to the final. Although I will say that the end of the novel is a bit anticlimactic. I would have liked the ending to be just as tense as the beginning and middle.

There is quite a bit of language, but it's forgivable based on the setting of life and death tension. And it's pretty mathematical and has lots of engineering in it. Watney ends up having to make a lot of modifications to his space things in order to survive. Following all of the changes and the details of what things do and how they work is a bit tedious. Not in a bad way, but in a I-need-to-read-this-a-little-slower-than-the-average-book way. It took me longer to read it since I wanted to pay closer attention to the details.

Overall, I'd recommend the book. I enjoyed it and was happy to read something other than my usual stuff.