The Breakdown Lane by Jacquelyn Mitchard

 
Last night I stayed up way too late to finish The Breakdown Lane by Jacquelyn Mitchard. This book was just as good as all of the others by Mitchard that I've read (she also wrote The Deep End of the Ocean, the blockbuster that Oprah started her book club/recommendations with).

Like I said, this was an excellent book, but the ending was a tad, just a tad, disappointing. It was a little too fairy tale for my taste.

Julieanne Gillis Steiner is a wife and mother who studied ballet and writes an advice column. When her reliable, responsible lawyer husband Leo becomes a crunchy new guy and changes his name to Leon, this "perfect" little life hits the fan. Julieanne learns she has multiple sclerosis and her children all react in surprising ways.

Have you read The Breakdown Lane? What did you think of the ending?

Book Read: The Breakdown Lane

Author:  Jacquelyn Mitchard

ISBN:  0-06-058724-5

Second Nature by Jacquelyn Mitchard

I finished reading Second Nature:  A Love Story by Jacquelyn Mitchard last night. This was one of those books that I didn't want to end. Or maybe more accurately, I didn't want to read the ending. I was sure something really bad was going to happen to Sicily or her unborn baby.

I won't reveal the ending here but briefly, the story centered on Sicily Coyne, a 25-year-old woman who was badly burned in a fire as a teenager. Her face was destroyed. This novel is set "in a possible but imagined future"according to an author's note at the beginning of the book. Limb and other transplants are often standard practice. Face transplants are occurring during this imagined future. I'll let you add up the pieces from there.

I've read most of Jacquelyn Mitchard's other novels, namely her most popular Oprah pick, The Deep End of the Ocean. Then she continued the Cappadora family's story, whose little boy Ben was kidnapped, in No Time to Wave Good-bye. Second Nature brings them all back again weaving this story in with that family. It was seamless and well done.

Are you a fan of Jacquelyn Mitchard?

Book Read: Second Nature:  A Love Story

Author:  Jacquelyn Mitchard

ISBN:978-1-4000-6775-6