The Marker

 The Marker by Diana Savastano   346 pages

Despite this book’s less-than-creative title, I was eager to read it. According to the back copy, it was about a marker from a Civil War soldier’s grave and his attempt to have his body moved to its proper burial site.

I was worried when I first opened it. The spacing between the paragraphs screamed self-published. And spacing between paragraphs also, usually, means poor writing.  I’m happy to report that most of the book is well done.

The book opens in 1863 at Port Gibson, Mississippi. Dr. Bradley Taylor, CSA, is killed and is buried in a makeshift grave. He’s exhumed in 1867 for a proper burial but is mistakenly misidentified. A marker denotes the place of his burial.

The story then shifts to present-day New York City. Reporter Jennifer Beasley is in desperate need of a vacation, but her editor, Sam, talks her into doing one more story before she gets two weeks of rest and relaxation. So Jen and a reporter head to Florida on assignment.

After their arrival in Fort Lauderdale, they have a free afternoon before headed to their interview. In an antique shop, Jen purchases a grave marker that had been taken from a Mississippi national cemetery in 1952. She doesn’t feel right about owning such an object. Before she decides what to do with it, she has an unusual encounter. When she holder the marker, she hears a voice, begging her to take him home.

After her assignment is complete, Jen starts to look into the marker’s history.  What follows is a highly readable story. I can’t give away any more than I already have. I truly enjoyed this book from the beginning until almost the end, about a fourth from the end, the story falls apart and seems rushed.  Therefore The Marker receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Haunting the Deep

Haunting the Deep by Adriana Mather   352 pages

I was so excited when I saw Haunted the Deep in the fiction section of Blogging for Books. I love stories about the sea, and especially,stories about the Titanic. I’ve seen just about every special was has aired regarding all aspects of the luxury liner.

In this story, Samantha (Sam) Mather lives with her father in Salem, Massachusetts. It’s time for the school’s Spring Fling. The theme this year is the Titanic. Chosen not by the students or most of the faculty, Mr. Wardell, an AP history teacher, chooses it because the rest of the faculty can build lesson plans around it, thereby giving students an immersive experience. It seems, to me, odd that a theme would be chose that ends in tragedy rather than something light hearted.

A mysterious box containing a green velvet dress arrives at Sam’s home. When Sam tries it on, she is immediately transported to the ship’s desk. Sure a curse has been put upon her, Sam turns to a goth clique called the Descendants, all direct descendants of witches that hanged in Salem in the 1600s.

While not too deep, the book is confusing in that there the reader must have read author Mather’s first book, How to Hang a Witch, especially when a Revolutionary War-era ghost from the first book keeps popping up. The reader also needed to know the relationship between Sam and Jan, his mother and her father, Vivian the stepmother and others---but those are fond in the first book.

The story lacked tension. While it is labeled horror, there wasn’t much to be scared of. I was also disappointed that there was far less of the Titanic than I had anticipated. For these reasons Haunting the Deep gets 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Bringing Magge Home

Bringing Maggie Home  by Kim Vogel Sawyer    352 pages

Everyone has secrets, and secrets are the essence of this wonderful novel by bestselling Christian author, Kim Vogel Sawyer.  It has many of my favorite categories: dualing timelines, a cold case, a missing child, historical fiction and mystery.

The story begins in mid-July 1943 in a little town in Arkansas. Ten-year-old Hazel and her three-year-old sister, Maggie, have been sent to the blackberry bushes to pick the berries so their momma could make their daddy a blackberry cobbler for his birthday dinner. Hazel is distracted by a black snake that she saw headed in the general direction of a bunny burrow, complete with several baby bunnies. She runs after the snake, trying to change its direction, and when she gets back to the bushes, Maggie is gone. Without a trace. She is never found.

Maggie’s disappearance tears the family apart, and emotionally scars Hazel for life.

Fast forward to Las Vegas in 2013. Hazel lives there, a widow. Her only granddaughter, Meghan, is coming to visit for about six weeks, while she heals from injuries she suffered in a car accident. What neither Hazel nor Meghan, is that Meghan’s mother, Margaret Diane, also shows up on Hazel’s doorstep with her four dachshunds.

In alternating chapters, readers learn what makes each woman tick. Sometimes the identifiers of each woman are jarring. For example, when Margaret Diane is speaking, she refers to Hazel as Mother, while Meghan refers to Margaret Diane as Mom. But that doesn’t get in the way of a great story.

Meghan wants to create a scrapbook for her grandmother’s 80^th birthday, and it’s while they are gathering pictures that little Maggie’s is discovered and secrets are unearthed. It takes about half of the book for Meghan to realize that cold cases are her specialty. She then enlists the help of her partner to solve the riddle of Maggie’s disappearance.

Bringing Maggie Home  is highly readable and unputdownable.  I want to give it 6 stars, but the two flaws mentioned earlier are why it only gets 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world

I received this book from Blogging for Book in exchange for this review.

Secrets of Southern Girls

Secrets of Southern Girls by Haley Harrigan 400 pages

 Julie Portland killed her best friend, Reba, in 1998. In the ten years since, Julie has left their small hometown of Lawrence Mill, Mississippi, for New York. She attended NYU, studied acting, married a classmate who becomes a Broadway star, has a baby, divorces said classmate, and is now trying to make ends meet. Her daughter, Beck, is the light of her life. Julie has lived a full life, but every day that goes by, she remembers that girl from Mississippi---the one she killed.

In a crowded, Manhattan restaurant, Julie sees a man from her past: the man who came between Reba and herself. She tries to escape, but the man, August, manages to track her down to her apartment.

August hasn’t come there to cast blame or seek revenge; he’s come to New York to persuade Julie to return to Mississippi and free Reba’s memories. What follows is a page-turning story where author Harrigan feeds readers information slowly, like a stray breeze on a hot and humid Mississippi afternoon. Sometimes the tension is almost unbearable, and there are several twists in the story that I didn’t see coming.

August is sure there Reba left behind a journal that could unlock the mystery of her death. Julie may feel that is responsible for her friend’s death, but August isn’t convinced she is. He knows that the journal holds the answers to all his questions.

Dueling timelines between 1997 and 2008 make for fascinating reading. Especially when Toby, Julie’s cousin, enters the picture. I wanted to give this debut 6 stars, but it dragged a bit about two-thirds through, but picked back up near the end. Therefore, Secrets of Southern Girls receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Before We Were Yours

Before We Were Yours  by Lisa Wingate 352 pages

Warning: Don’t start this novel unless you have plenty of time to read because you won’t be able to stop reading.

Wingate has taken a footnote from history and turned into a page-turner. The reality of the story is Georgia Tann and her Tennessee Children’s Home Society. On the outside, the home appears to be just like any of the other orphanages that are common in 1930s America. But Tann had a  dirty secret. She stole children from rural, poverty-stricken areas, then sold them to wealthy clients, charging absorbent fees and treating the children as if they were a piece of garbage.

Based on this solid fact and careful research, Wingate creates a Mississippi River family whose home is a shantyboat named the Arcadia in 1936. The Great Depression is raging across America, so life on the river isn’t so bad…at least they always have something to eat.

The five children and their parents, Briny and Queenie, lead a wanderer’s existence, traveling up and down the river. The kids get schooling here and there, but they seem to always be on the move to where the fishing is better and the weather is warmer. When Queenie goes into labor and a river midwife can’t help her deliver, Briny is forced to leave the boat and take his wife to a Memphis hospital. Twelve-year-old Rill is left to care for the boat and her four siblings.

The parents have been gone a couple of days when strangers passing as the law come to collect the children, telling them they only be staying at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society until their parents can come and collect them. The abuse they endure at the hands of Tann and her minions are criminal.

Then flash forward to contemporary time. Avery Stafford and her father, Senator Stafford, have returned to South Carolina for the Senator’s health issues.  Avery is being groomed to take his place in the Senate, following in her father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. But it’s a chance meeting with an elderly woman during a nursing home photo opp, that changes her life forever.

The encounter compels Avery to dig through her family’s history to try to determine what the elderly woman and her dementia-addled grandmother have in common.

Waving between past and present, this is the story of how one family’s past has shaped its present. A highly compulsive read, the characters are complex and well-drawn. Before We Were Yours receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

I'll See You in Paris

I’ll See You in Paris by Michelle Gable   400 pages

One of my all-time favorite books is Michelle Gable’s debut novel, A Paris Apartment. I loved that story; if memory serves me correctly, I read it in three evenings. So naturally I was excited when Gable’s second novel, I’ll See You in Paris, was released. I purposely waited a while to read it as I was afraid that if it wasn’t as good as the first one, I would be horribly disappointed. I’m glad I waited. I’ll See you in Paris is not as good and at times was a difficult read.

Like A Paris Apartment, I’ll See in Paris has dualing timelines with the narrative weaving between 2001 and 1973. One of the biggest issues I have with this book is that the 1973 sections felt more like 1930s or ‘40s.  It just seemed like the timeframe was off.

The story has four main heroines. First there is Annie. She’s gotten herself engaged to a young man she barely knows who has joined the Army and is headed off to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. Her mother, Laurel, is less-than enthusiastic about this development. Laurel is our second heroine.

Laurel and Annie are about to leave for the English countryside to settle some business that Annie doesn’t really understand, but the reads figure it out pretty quickly. Right before their departure, Annie discovers a book her mother seems to be interested in, yet the only thing Laurel reads is legal briefs.

Then the story shifts to our third heroine, Pru Valentine. She is in desperate need of employment and answers a want ad. There in the English countryside, Pru becomes a companion/assistant to an eccentric woman in her early nineties, our fourth heroine, who has a penchant for running around waving a gun and not wearing a blouse.

This would seem too far-fetched is the woman wasn’t the real-life Gladys Deacon Spencer-Churchill. There is a mystery surrounding Gladys. Is she the Duchess of Marlboro who disappeared forty years earlier? It was that mystery that kept me reading, and the one that I didn’t figure out so easily. Gladys felt like a caricature to me.

The main theme of the novel seems to be people are probably not who you think they are. And that is certainly true for the male protagonists in this tale.

Although reading this review, it doesn’t sound like I cared for this work. I admit, again that I was disappointed that it was an excellent as A Paris Apartment. I’ll See You in Paris receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Lake House

The Lake House by Kate Morton    512 pages

Better clear your calendar before you start bestselling author Kate Morton’s fifth, and latest, novel; yes it’s that good.

The prologue is one of the best that I have ever read. A heavy rain is falling over Cornwall, England in August 1933. A woman is burying something…or someone. It doesn’t give away the ending as most prologues do, and it set the reader up to keep guessing what…or who…is being buried until almost the end…exactly where Morton wants the reader to figure it out.

Alice Edevane is sixteen when the events above occur. She lives there with her parents, an oder and younger sister, and a baby brother.  Previously on that day, the lakeside estate is bustling with servants and hired help in preparation of the annual Midsummer’s Eve party. It’s to be another grand affair. The next morning, eleven-month-old Theo has vanished without a trace.

Fast forward seventy years. Detective Constable Sadie Sparrow is on a forced leave of absence. She is visiting her grandfather who has recently moved to the area. While out jogging, Sadie stumbles across a decaying mansion. Peeking in the windows, the house is fully furnished. It seems that whoever lived there also vanished.

Sadie’s grandfather knows about the property and the supposed kidnapping of Theo. The lake house was once part of a much grander estate. The house is called Loeanneth, which in Gaelic means the lake house.

Sadie becomes obsessed with the cold case. Much to her surprise, Alice is still living in London. She is the famous mystery writer, A. C. Edevane.

The story weaves between past and present. I felt as if I’d known the Edevane’s all my life by the end of the novel. Be prepared to be drawn into their happiness and sorrow with many twists and surprise that will keep you guessing until the end.

In Julie’s world, The Lake House, gets 6 out of 5 stars.

June

June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore    400 pages

Dual timelines and dual heroines make up Miranda Beverly-Whitemore’s fourth novel, June. At the heart of this suspenseful tale are movie stars, inheritances, and the fine line between truthfulnesses and falsehoods.

I loved that the title had played three roles, first as the book’s title; second, as the 1955 heroine’s name; and third, as the month both timelines occurred: June 1955 and June 2015.

The book opens in June 2015. Cassie Danvers has retreated back to her grandmother’s home, Two Oaks, in small town St. Jude, Ohio. She seems a tad delusional, or maybe, it’s just sensitivity to the spirits that still lurk in the crumbling mansion. Even her dreams are made of the houses’ long-gone inhabitants. She also seems to be suffering from clinical depression.

The mansion is almost beyond repair, yet all the twenty-five year-old wants to do is stay in bed. She barely eats, lets the mail pile up on the foyer floor, and refuses to answer the landline. Cassie is not only mourning her grandmother, but she is reeling from the breakup, which instigated (I think), with her beau, Jim, back in New York City.

Then the doorbell rings.

The story then switches to June 1955. Told from Lindie’s point of view, the whole town is anxiously awaiting the arrival of a film crew, in town to shoot the exteriors for Erie Canal. Starring in the movie are handsomer-than-handsome Jack Montgomery and more-beautiful-than- a-spring day Diane DeSoto.

June is expected to marry Artie Danvers in three days’ time, provided he returns to St. Jude.

June is a wonderful novel, full of interesting characters and plot twists. It took me a little while to get into the story. I had hoped to be pulled in quicker to the story. Cassie’s section was slower to develop than June’s. I think Lindie’s strong character had a lot to do with it. That’s the reason I give June 4 out of 5 stars.

I received this novel from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.