The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

Okay, I have to say that The Chaperone is the best book I've read in quite awhile. I love Laura Moriarty's books (she also wrote The Center of Everything, The Rest of Her Life, and While I'm Falling), and this one was her best.

The Chaperone is Cora Carlisle, who lives in Wichita, Kansas in the 1920s. She decides to chaperone the teenage Louise Brooks to New York City so she can attend dance school there. This book is historical fiction:  Louise Brooks was a real person who went on to be a silent film star. The photo on the cover of the book is a real photo of Louis Brooks.

But, back to Cora, because the book is titled The Chaperone after all. Cora is married and has two almost grown sons, who will go off to college in the fall, when she decides to take the train across the country one summer. She has her own reasons for wanting to go to New York.

I tell ya, this book is surprising but believable without being over the top. Cora turns out to be a fascinating character who is ahead of her time in small town middle America.

Book Read: The Chaperone

Author:  Laura Moriarty

ISBN:   978-1-59448-701-9

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

I love Jodi Picoult's novels and this one was just as good as the rest. I was pleasantly surprised that it ended on a positive note, a rarity in her writing.

The themes of this book include infertility, music and music therapy, lesbians, divorce, and the ethics of in vitro/frozen embryos.

I always find it amazing that Picoult can get into the minds of the characters to bring them to life in such a believable way. Read it? Did you love it? If you haven't read it, it's a winner!

Book Read: Sing You Home

Author:  Jodi Picoult

ISBN:   978-1-4391-0272-5

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

I finished reading The Age of Miracles night before last. I liked it, sort of. This novel is fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, whatever you want to call it but it could really happen (maybe). I like it and I didn't. I liked the reactions of people to the "slowing"(the days getting longer, as long as a week toward the end of the book), but it was too out there for me.


But I think that's just me. I'm not a fan of science fiction usually so it's all a little hard to believe. This is worth the read though.

Book Read: The Age of Miracles

Author:  Karen Thompson Walker

ISBN:   978-0-8129-9297-7

When We Were the Kennedys by Monica Wood

This memoir turned out to have next to nothing to do with the Kennedys but was wonderful! The name comes from the fact that in the same year Kennedy was assassinated (1963), the author's father died of a heart attack. 

When the president was killed, this family watched along with the rest of the country, the television coverage of Jackie Kennedy and the aftermath of JFK's death. The Wood family could relate.

Set in Mexico, Maine, this true story tells a little more than a year in the life of a pre-teen girl who lost her father. The themes of Catholicism, growing up in a small town and leading a sheltered life, the town's paper mill, and of course, death.
Read my choice of the top 10 memoirs on Squidoo.

Book Read: When We Were the Kennedys

Author:  Monica Wood

ISBN:   978-0-547-63014-4