Resistance Women, historical fiction about real life heroines in WWII Germany

Title: Resistance Women
Author: Jennifer Chiaverini
Publication: William Morrow, trade paperback, 2020 (originally published 2019)
Genre: Historical Fiction

Plot: From the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, a historical novel that recreates the danger, romance, and sacrifice of an era and brings to life one courageous, passionate American—Mildred Fish Harnack—and her circle of women friends who waged a clandestine battle against Hitler in Nazi Berlin.

The Bromance Book Club, in which some macho athletes use romance novels to improve their real-life relationships

Title: The Bromance Book Club
Author: Lyssa Kay Adams
Publication: Berkley, Trade Paperback, 2019
Genre: Romance

Plot: Pro baseball player Gavin Scott has a beautiful wife, Thea, and three-year-old twins, and what he thinks is a perfect life until he learns his wife has been faking orgasms since their marriage.  Hurt and ashamed, he moves out and Thea asks for a divorce.  Drinking himself to oblivion in a motel, Gavin is visited by his best friend Del and several other athletes and Nashville notables who urge him to join their secret group, which uses romance novels to improve their ability to understand and please the women in their lives.  Gavin is skeptical but has no better options, reluctantly accepting a pile of romance novels, including Courting the Countess, a regency historical that has some parallels with his situation.  Under the tutelage of this ramshackle group, he persuades Thea to let him move back in for one month, with the goal of winning her back.  During this time, he will try to show he understands her needs, convince her of his love, and cope with those who don’t want Gavin and Thea to have a HEA . . .

My Impressions: I don’t remember who recommended this book to me but I usually enjoy contemporary romance with a sports theme and found this entertaining and often amusing, if not quite as charming as I had hoped. While the source of Gavin and Thea’s problem is meant to be funny, their real issue is that they married quickly when Thea was pregnant, and the lifestyle/absences of a professional athlete put a strain on their marriage while they were still developing their relationship.   Now they have to decide if they want to work through their problems or just bail.

Thea and her sister Liv both have a lot of baggage from their parents’ unhappy marriage and divorce.  Their father is about to remarry someone close to them in age and their mother’s bitterness has rebounded on her daughters.  Gavin also (although this is less convincing, given that he is a handsome, talented athlete) has struggled to believe he could find a loving relationship.   The premise of the story is that until they can share their feelings and their troubled pasts, there cannot be a true meeting of the minds.  Thea also has a lot of resentment that Gavin’s job takes him away from home a lot and she dropped out of college after their marriage (not sure why as they can certainly afford a babysitter if she wanted to continue her studies either full or part-time).   Although Gavin’s attempts to woo her are sometimes poignant and sometimes funny – as when he takes her on a date to a craft warehouse to show he understands her interests, and his buddies stalk them in disguise), it takes Thea going to her father’s wedding to understand some truths about her own marriage, not to mention a grand gesture from Gavin to work everything out. I definitely enjoyed this enough to read the second book about Thea’s sister!

Harvard freshman Chris Ledlum (4) has been the Ivy League
Rookie-of-the-Week five times

Off the Blog: It was a busy basketball weekend with two “eyelash wins” by the Crimson over Princeton (61-60)and Penn (69-65), and a disappointing double OT loss by the University of Chicago to Brandeis (cheering for a family friend).  I managed to squeeze in a few hours at our VITA tax site as well.

Source: Library

Deep State, a White House thriller in which a young woman investigates a conspiracy against the President

Title: Deep State
Author: Chris Hauty 

Publication: Simon & Schuster, hardcover, January 2020

Genre: Suspense

Plot: Hayley Chill, who joined the military to get out of West Virginia yet sends most of her salary home to her family, is now beginning an internship at the White House.  Driven and patriotic, she is more mature than the college students with whom she is sharing projects and distinguishes herself from the beginning.  First, she helps bring down a trespasser on White House grounds and then when a jealous colleague tries to sabotage her work, she saves her boss from embarrassment and impresses him and the President.  However, when her boss dies suddenly, Hayley is the only one who wonders if it was more than a natural death.  Soon, she has uncovered a conspiracy that threatens the President, and anyone – such as Hayley – who gets in the way, in a thriller that seems realistic enough to be true . . .  

My Impressions: I had read a great review of this book so put it on my 2020 list, and I enjoyed it enough to keep reading until I finished it at 3 am.  The plot could be pulled from current headlines, and Hayley is an entertaining heroine because she is intrepid, confident, resourceful, and is not ashamed of being from small-town West Virginia.   Hayley is not as cartoon-hero invincible as Jane Hawk, in the Dean Koontz series I recently enjoyed, although she seems to triumph almost effortlessly.  Fans of David Baldacci will enjoy the political overtones, the intricate plotting, and the pursuit scenes.  Deep State is not as compelling as books by David Baldacci, which often disarm the reader with humor, and I found one aspect of Hauty’s style quite annoying.  His omniscient narrator (for want of a better phrase) sometimes warns the reader of the unpleasant fate of certain characters in the future ("Ten years later she would become a televangelist and would defraud her followers of millions of dollars"). This is a mistake because it disrupts the narrative and jolts the reader out of an absorbing story. Better to keep us reading!

Off the Blog: It’s the annual New England Betsy-Tacy Halloween Party today, hosted by Judith in her beautiful Worcester home where every piece of furniture and bric-a-brac has a story. I am bringing spinach squares.

Source: Library copy

Books I'm looking forward to in 2020

Historical Fiction

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel                                March 2020

This is the final novel in Mantel’s trilogy of historical novels about the life of Thomas Cromwell, and will cover the final four years of Cromwell’s life, starting with Anne Boleyn’s execution in 1536, and (spoiler!) moving to his own execution for treason and heresy in 1540.  And she'll be in Boston on March 20th!  Unfortunately, I know from a family member that she is quite unpleasant.

The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman                 March 2020

From the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Sharon Kay Penman comes the story of the reign of King Baldwin IV and the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s defense against Saladin’s famous army.  I have been a huge Penman fan since the summer I spent in DC, poor and only allowed to check out two books at a time by the library.  I bought The Sun in Splendor for $1 on the street and, entranced, made it last an entire week.  

The Second Midnight, historical fiction about an English boy's survival in Nazi Europe

Title: The Second Midnight

Author:  Andrew Taylor

Publication: Harper Collins, trade paperback, February 2020

Genre: Historical Fiction

Plot: From a bestselling author comes a World War Two tale of one boy’s fight for survival in Nazi Europe

A secret mission . . .

1939. As Europe teeters on the brink of war, businessman Alfred Kendall is asked to carry out a minor mission for the British Intelligence Service. Traveling to Prague, he takes his troubled young son, Hugh, as cover.

A terrible choice . . .

When Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, Alfred is given an ultimatum by the Czech Resistance. They will arrange for him to return to England, but only if he leaves his son Hugh behind as collateral.

A young boy stranded in Nazi terrain . . .

Hugh is soon taken under the wing of a Nazi colonel – Helmuth Scholl. But even though Scholl treats Hugh well, his son, Heinz, is suspicious of this foreigner. And as the war across the continent intensifies, they are set on a path that will ultimately lead towards destruction. . .

My Impressions: Not long ago my mother told me she had read and enjoyed a book called The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor.   I don’t think she realized it was a sequel until after she had finished it but, once she realized, she told me to begin with the first book, The Ashes of London, which I did in December.  Set during the Great Fire of London in 17th century London, it is well-written and an atmospheric page-turner.  Thus, I was very pleased when TLC invited me to review The Second Midnight.

Most of the books I read about World War II feature a heroine so it was a change of pace for the main character of this book to be an adolescent boy.  Hugh is an interesting character: when we meet him he is 12 and has just been (unfairly?) expelled from boarding school. Traveling to Prague with his verbally and physically abusive father, Hugh is fascinated by his exposure to a different culture and soon is studying Czech and modern history.   This stands him in good stead when his father abandons him and this child has to scramble for survival.  How he manages to stay alive and end up working for a Nazi colonel, who is kinder than his own father, is a compelling story.  Hugh comes to love the colonel’s daughter Magda but war tears them apart.  I have just a couple more chapters to go to see how this will end.

This book was originally published in Britain in 1988 and has now been reissued to take advantage of Taylor’s strong UK sales on his Marwood-Lovett series and (doubtless) the crazy for WWII settings.  It is full of interesting characters, although some are very disagreeable indeed, particularly Hugh's siblings and father, while his mother was weak.

Purchase Links: Amazon * Barnes&Noble * IndieBound * HarperCollins

Off the Blog: Watching for Iowa Caucus results – glad my state has a primary!

Source: I received a copy of this book from the publisher and TLC Book Tours for review purposes.  Please visit other stops on the tour by clicking below:

Tuesday, January 28th: 100 Pages a Day…Stephanie’s Book Reviews

Wednesday, January 29th: Booked J

Thursday, January 30th: Helen’s Book Blog

Friday, January 31st: Really Into This

Monday, February 3rd: Instagram: @hooked.by.books

Wednesday, February 5th: Welcome to Nurse Bookie

Thursday, February 6th: Book by Book

Friday, February 7th: Instagram: @rendezvous_with_reading

Wednesday, February 12th: Jathan & Heather

Thursday, February 13th: Laura’s Reviews

Friday, February 14th: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Six Degrees of Separation: From Fleishman to A Cure for Dreams

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Start at the same place as other avid readers, add six books, and see where you end up.

This month’s chain begins with Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner who often writes about celebrities for the New York Times Magazine.

I have not yet read Fleishman but the author’s name led me to my first book which is Daddy- Long-Legs by Jean Webster (1912), an old favorite.  At a fictional college based on Vassar, orphaned Judy learns how to have fun as well as to study, making choices and developing personality not previously available to her. There is plenty of taffy and fudge making (a pity that tradition has not endured) in these college stories. As Bronte Coates observes,

“A variant on the boarding school theme, these stories were set in fictionalised versions of women’s colleges and are credited as playing a part in normalising the idea of higher education for women.”