Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner
I think I’ve read just about all of Jennifer Weiner’s books and while it’s chicklit, it’s not exactly like the other books that she has written - it’s about a few girls that are the main characters that deal with issues, but only superficially. Addie Downs is the first of the main female characters. She’s lived in Pleasant Ridge for her entire life. As a young, pre-adolescent girl, her life growing up in the middle class suburb of Chicago was somewhat normal.  Then, Valerie Adler moved in next door and her life became, somehow, more glamorous. The two were quick and fast friends. Addie envied V

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, a review
Everyone has told me about Outlander (published as Cross-Stitch in the UK) and how if I loved anything Scottish, I had to read this historical romance/science fiction book by Diana Gabaldon.  And being that I’ve been on a Scottish kick as of late, I was willing to give it a try. When the book starts, we meet Claire Randall (maiden name Beauchamp) in the town of Inverness in post World War II Scotland. She is traveling there in 1945 with her husband, historian Frank Randall, on a second honeymoon and so that he can do some research on hi

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood - a review
Ever since I read The Handmaid’s Tale in college , I have been a tremendous Margaret Atwood fan. I have read all of her books, multiple times and had the privilege and pleasure of meeting her at law school when she was promoting Oryx and Crake.  When I heard that she had a new book coming out, I quickly put my name on the list for the book at the library and got the book first when it came in. The Year of the Flood begins in year 25, which is the year that the flood happens. I

Feeling for Bones by Bethany Pierce, a review
After a Church vote, 16 year old Olivia and her family are uprooted from her home and forced to move after her father loses his job as a minister in a small, Ohio town. Olivia, her much younger and oddly named sister (Callapher), her mother and father opt to relocate to West Virginia and the Appalachian Mountains. When they get there, the family rents a home from their Aunt Margaret and her friend Ruby, who are affectionately known around town as the Old Maids. Olivia feels that the suffering in her and her family’s life shows that God really doesn’t exist and, if He or She does, they don’t really care because if they did, they wouldn’t have made their lives so aw

The Killing Tree by Rachel Keener
I was really surprised to read the back of this book and learn that the author, Rachel Keener , was a law student. I think that law school, for me, was about learning how to think and write like a lawyer, which didn’t always mean exciting. Anyways, The Killing Tree introduces us to Mercy Heron the summer after she has graduated from high school. She is 18, working at a diner, not going to college and living in her tiny, rural town in Appalachia.  She lives with her grandfather (Father Heron) and Mama Rutha, her grandmother and they are the mirror opposites of one another. Father Heron is domineering and seemingly co