Literary Treats

Treat yourself to good books!

Event Recap | Random House Canada Spring 2015 Blogger Preview

Posted on 6 March 2015 by Jaclyn

I was thrilled to receive the invitation from Random House Canada for their Spring 2015 blogger preview. I haven’t attended a blogger event in a while, and I was looking forward to seeing some fellow book bloggers and learning all about the titles to look forward to this Spring.

It wouldn’t be a blogger event without some treats, and true to form, Random House Canada treated us to pizza, pop and bowls of jelly beans. We were also given some book catalogue pages in a folder, which were very handy when it came to noting down titles I wanted to read (most of them!) and I’m sure they’ll come in handy as well when it comes time to write the reviews for my blog. I especially love the Penguin Random House tote that declared “Changing the world, one book at a time.” Great for carrying books home after the event, but also an awesome saying overall, for book lovers.

The Random House team took us through some of the exciting titles in their Spring 2015 catalogue. Below are some of my personal highlights:

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

I absolutely loved Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, and I was thrilled to discover there will be a sequel out this June. I was fortunate enough to grab an ARC from the blogger preview, which I devoured in less than a week. Watch for my glowing review this June, and definitely check this book out for yourself!

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

Judy Blume always takes me back to childhood. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is one of my favourite books of all time. So I squee’d in delight at the news of a new novel by her, coming this June. In the Unlikely Event is about three generations of families, friends and strangers whose lives are affected by a series of passenger plane crashes in Elizabeth, NJ in the 1950s. ARCs for this title are not available (understandably so!), but Random House Canada generously provided us with copies of Blume’s earlier novel Summer Sisters. Read my review here.

Someone is Watching by Joy Fielding

A private investigator’s life is turned upside down when she is sexually assaulted on the job, in Joy Fielding’s 25th thriller Someone is Watching. It’s described as a fast-paced, intense psychological thriller reminiscent of Rear Window meets The Silent Wife, and indeed this one’s a page turner. Quite a few too many subplots, in my opinion, but it’s a great way to spend a weekend. Watch for my review later this month.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

I’m a huge Kazuo Ishiguro fan, so I was thrilled to see he’d written a new novel. The Buried Giant follows the tale of elderly couple Axl and Beatrice whose set off to find their son, across lands where a mist has removed the memories of all who live there. It’s a story about the power of remembering, and the consequences of memories we may regret recovering. A tale with the air of an Arthurian legend, The Buried Giant enchanted me without quite transporting me as much as I’d hoped, but it’s still definitely a must read for Ishiguro fans. On sale now; watch for my review later this month.

Boo by Neil Smith

According to one Random House staffer, if Lord of the Flies and The Lovely Bones had a baby, it would be Neil Smith’s Boo. When 13 year old Boo Dalrymple is killed, he finds himself in “Town,” an afterlife exclusively for thirteen year olds. As he adjusts to his afterlife, another boy from his hometown, Johnny, appears, also killed by the same school shooter. I’m fascinated by the character of Boo, and by Smith’s depiction of the afterlife. The mention of a school shooter adds a dark touch to what appears to be a pretty awesome version of heaven, and I can’t wait to see how it all ties together.

Free Days with George by Colin Campbell

Free Days with George is touted as a heartwarming true story about a rescue dog who helps his new owner rediscover love and happiness, Marley and Me meets Tuesdays with Morrie and The Art of Racing in the Rain. A fellow blogger asked the question I immediately thought but was too afraid to ask, and fellow dog lovers can relax: the dog does not die. Instead, George the Newfoundland Landseer learns how to surf! I’m really excited about this one, and am keeping my fingers crossed for a book launch event where the dog will be here in Toronto. On-sale this May.

A Robot in the Garden by Deborah Install

On Deborah Install’s charming A Robot in the Garden, a Random House staffer said, “Everything good in the world is in this book.” She said it had a Pixar vibe, and a blogger quipped, “It’s like if Up and Wall-E had a baby.” Indeed there’s a very whimsical feel to this novel, about a 34 year old man who finds a robot in his garden and embarks on a trip around the world to find out where it came from and return it home. On-sale this August.

Deceptions (Cainsville Series #3) by Kelley Armstrong

I loved the first book in Kelley Armstrong’s Cainsville Series, and while I have yet to check out the second, I am also eagerly awaiting the continuation of the series with Book 3 this August. Heads up to the many Kelley Armstrong fans out there, as well keep an eye out for new YA standalone novel The Masked Truth, coming this October.

Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella

Finally, I loved Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series, and am eagerly anticipating her first YA novel Finding Audrey, about a fourteen year old girl with anxiety disorder who finds connection with her brother’s gaming teammate.

The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Handbook for Girl Geeks by Sam Maggs

While Random House Canada didn’t specifically cover this title in the preview, they included some copies of it on the cart of books after the event, which they invited us bloggers to help ourselves to some of the titles. I saw this and immediately dove for a copy, because my sister had been fangirling about it for months, and I knew she really, really wanted to read it. So on behalf of my sister, thank you, Random House Canada! This will be on sale in May; watch for my review closer to publication date.

Even More to Come…

As if that weren’t enough bookish goodness, Random House Canada also presented a sneak preview of their Fall 2015 titles. I’m personally super geekily excited about the new Margaret Atwood novel The Heart Goes Last!

Thanks to Random House Canada for the invitation to this event!

Author Encounter and Review | The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

Posted on 4 March 2015 by Jaclyn

I was fortunate enough to have been invited to brunch with novelist Paula Todd at Le Select Bistro last February. Her debut novel The Girl on the Train has been a runaway hit since the holidays, and it’s easy to see why. It’s tight, taut and thrilling, with an unreliable narrator all too aware of her unreliability, and a plot so twisty that Miss Marple herself would have a field day trying to parse it all out.

The Brunch

Author Paula Hawkins speaking at the brunch

It was my first time at Le Select Bistro and I found the brunch an absolute treat. The main course offered a selection of eggs, steak, salmon, or French toast stuffed with apples and cranberries (my pick, and it’s about as decadent as it sounds), which were served with a selection of freshly baked croissants, fresh fruits, mimosas and a really rich chocolate cake for dessert. Someone else at my table commented that the berries were fresh, not canned, which is a pleasant surprise in the dead of winter. All that to say: if you haven’t had a chance to eat at Le Select Bistro yet, definitely give it a shot.

The brunch highlight of course was author Paula Hawkins herself, who was in Toronto for only a day or two before having to fly out for the rest of her book tour. As I mentioned, her book is a major hit. It has been compared to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, a comparison I think is a disservice to Girl on the Train, which I actually find a much more potent, captivating read. I spoke to the author only briefly, but found her to be sweet and unassuming, far from the woman I imagined could come up with such a dark and twisty tale. She spoke a bit about how readers have responded to her book, and credits the book’s success to the voyeur in all of us. Whether we admit it or not, there’s something about other people’s secrets that fascinate us, and the book’s protagonist finds herself deeply enmeshed in one.

The Book

Have you ever read 4:50 to Paddington? It’s one of my all-time favourite Agatha Christie mysteries. An elderly woman witnesses a murder from a moving train, but when the police come, there is no evidence of a crime at all. Miss Marple happens to be a friend of the woman, so she steps in to investigate.

The Girl on the Train has a similar plot, except without a Miss Marple to come to the witness’ rescue. The protagonist, Rachel, commutes to the city every day. Her train takes her past a house with a seemingly happy couple she nicknames “Jess and Jason,” and she watches their lives through the window as the train whizzes by. Until one day, she sees Jess kissing another man, and when she finds out that Jess has gone MIA, she goes to the police with her fears about Jess’s safety. The problem is, Rachel’s also an alcoholic, who has a complete blank in her memory for the evening that Jess (real name: Megan) disappeared. Worse, Megan lives only a few doors away from Rachel’s old house, where her ex-husband and his new wife now live, and Rachel has had a history of showing up uninvited at their doorstep — again, incidents that because of her alcoholic blackouts, she can barely remember herself.

Hawkins’s writing reminds me of Elizabeth Haynes, one of my favourite contemporary thriller writers whose Into the Darkest Corner is still, bar none, one of the most powerful thrillers I’ve ever read. Like Haynes, Hawkins keeps us trapped within her protagonist’s mind, and when Rachel herself doesn’t fully understand what she knows, then neither do we. We not only empathize with Rachel’s confusion and terror over what had happened that weekend, we feel it ourselves, and like Rachel, we sometimes wonder if anything even happened at all, or if alcohol had caused Rachel to imagine everything.

I couldn’t put this book down. I was completely caught up in Rachel’s story, as well as in the stories of Megan and Anna (Rachel’s ex-husband’s new wife), both of whom also interject bits of their own story into the narrative. I love how all the plot threads came together, and above all, I love how much I was sucked into their perspectives. This is a potent psychological thriller — you end up caring about the characters, and whether you figure it out before the end or not, you’ll keep turning the page anyway.

The effects of addiction and of a relationship gone sour are presented with stark frankness by Hawkins, and Rachel feels utterly real as a person, which again makes her struggles real. Kudos as well to Hawkins for not prettifying her character. I’ve read books where the female protagonist feels overweight or frumpy, but others really see her as beautiful, but Rachel really is overweight and frumpy, and I love that the author shows how this affects the way others treat her and her credibility. If this is made into a movie, I’d love for Hollywood to take a similar approach and not present the standard beauty with a few extra pounds.

This is an amazing book, and it was actually a surprise to learn that such masterful plotting was in a debut novel. I look forward to seeing more of Paula Hawkins’ books in the future, and in the meantime, highly recommend this one for a weekend treat.

Thank you to Random House Canada for the invitation to the brunch, and for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Summer Sisters, Judy Blume

Posted on 2 March 2015 by Jaclyn

Judy Blume will always remind me of my childhood. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret was one of my favourite books growing up, and while a recent re-read didn’t quite affect me as I’d hoped, I still remember getting caught up in Margaret’s concerns about filling out a bra and getting her period and all sorts of rites of passage young girls go through. Fellow Blume fans, say it with me: “I must, I must, I must increase my bust!”

Great news for all of us who grew up with Judy Blume: she has a new adult novel coming in June! In the Unlikely Event hits shelves June 2.

I was fortunate enough to have attended the Random House Canada Spring Bloggers Event, where they told us about the upcoming novel. There were no ARCs available, but they generously provided us with copies of Judy Blume’s previous adult novel Summer Sisters. If you’ve ever read Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, Summer Sisters reminds me somewhat of that novel, being about the strong bonds formed in female friendship when young, and how these can last in some form or another all through adulthood. And like Cat’s Eye, Summer Sisters took me right back to my childhood.

The novel is about best friends Vix Leonard and Caitlin Somers, who go to Caitlin’s family house in Martha’s Vineyard every summer. Caitlin’s family becomes somewhat a surrogate family to Vix, and helps her out with scholarships to the best schools. Over the years, the girls grow apart — having grown up with money all her life, Caitlin can’t understand why Vix would choose to spend her summers working at a restaurant rather than travel with her to Europe; Vix on the other hand finds it difficult to explain why she feels uncomfortable accepting Caitlin’s parents’ offer to pay for her ticket to Europe. Vix sees a degree from Harvard as a necessity for a stable life; Caitlin thinks it’s settling for an ordinary one. And as the novel opens, Caitlin invites Vix to be maid of honour at her wedding to Vix’s ex-boyfriend, whom they both met during a summer at the Vineyard.

The novel dips into the girls’ stories once a year, at first during the summer season, and then later on, during Vix’s school year. Even though the novel begins with Caitlin’s wedding, the romantic angle is secondary to the story of their friendship, and the boyfriend is as secondary a character as the girls’ parents. I love this glimpse into the girls’ lives, and their adventures in the Vineyard remind me of the unbridled fun summers were as a teen, when they were breaks from the school year, and where even a menial job like cleaning houses could be fun because you were doing it with your best friend.

Blume tells the story mostly from Vix’s perspective, and while various characters are given a chapter or two to tell their side, Caitlin’s voice is notably absent. This adds to her mystique as a character — we see her only as others do, and while Vix may know her more than most, even Vix eventually realizes that there are many layers to Caitlin that she will never know. I actually wasn’t a big fan of hearing from the other characters — with the exception of Caitlin’s stepmom Abby, none of the other interludes really interested me, and I would have rather stayed with Vix the entire time.

I hesitate to call this novel simple, because there is a lot that happens, and so much more in terms of family dynamics that remains unsaid. But in a way, there’s a wonderful simplicity that marks this story, and a forthrightness in Blume’s narration that again takes me back to childhood, to a time where summer friendships meant something, and the potential of the future appears limitless. This is a lovely read, and I can’t wait for Blume’s new novel in June.

Thank you to Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.