Colorways by Vicki Welsh

I haven’t DNF’ed a book in a while, so I suppose it was time for a couple. Both of these books have great reviews, so maybe I just picked them up at the wrong time.
DNF Books
Go As A River by Shelley Read – This book as amazingly positive ratings, but after 3 hours, I just did not care about any of the characters

Still Life by Sarah Winman – I stuck with this book for 5 hours (30%), but I  found myself completely bored.

I finished 7 books and I liked all but one of them. The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau was a bit disappointing. I think my favorite was The Devil of the Marshalsea. I love Charles Dickens and this book reminded me of his classics.

What good books have you read this month?

TLDR: A well-written novel about the very real person, Blanche Auzello, wife of the manager of the Paris Ritz during the German occupation.

If you enjoy historical fiction then this one’s for you. Blanche is a silent film actress in the 1920’s when she arrive in Paris to meet an Egyptian Prince who has promised her the world. Instead she meets Claude Auzello, a hotel manager whose ambition is to manage the Ritz in Paris. They fall in love, marry and he gets his dream job. All is “caviar dreams and champagne wishes” until the Germans arrive in June 1940. Now Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are replaced by German soldiers. Claude believe that if he can keep the Germans happy that he and Blanche might survive the war.

Blanche and Claude live a life of secrets that causes endless strain on their marriage and threatens the survival of the hotel.

At the end of the book the author tells what we know about Blanche and Claude from actual accounts.

TLDR: A wonderful coming of age story about a young girl abandoned by her parents. She sets out alone to find her own home.

April Sawicki lives in Little River, NY. It’s 1994 and she’s failing out of high school. Her mother left when she was young and her father has found a new family. He leaves her to mostly fend for herself in a motorless motorhome. Only her music keeps her sane. One night during an open mike session she gets the feedback she needs to start to believe in her music.

After a fight with her father, she packs up and leaves to find a better life for herself. She has no destination but ends up in Ithaca. She finds a job at Cafe Decadence where she starts to find some friends. But she can’t quite settle yet and she eventually leaves to continue her search. She documents her life in unsent letters and songs as she travels the East Coast in search of herself.

I was hooked from the first chapter. Some of April’s decision making was a challenge until I reflected on her age and past. The characters she meets along the way are, mostly, wonderful and colorful.

TLDR: Wrongful conviction, amateur sleuth, family drama and new love all wrapped up in one great story.

Joe Talbert is trying to balance college, his job as a bouncer, his alcoholic mother and autistic brother. His life is a little chaotic. In his biography class he is assigned to write a biography of a stranger so he heads to the local nursing home to find someone willing to talk to him. There he meets Carl Iverson, recently paroled to the nursing home because he only has a few months to live. He has been in prison over 30 years for the murder of a teenage girl.

As Joe delves into Carl’s past he meets Carl’s only remaining friend, a Vietnam veteran, who is convinced that Carl is innocent. As a part of his project, Joe and his neighbor, Lily, start to look back at the old case.

I weeded the entire back juniper bed while listening to this book. It kept me focused. I’ve read 2 other books in this series and am going to try to read the 4th book in the series later this month.

TLDR: A Dickensian historical novel about London’s most notorious debtor’s prison.

It’s 1727 in England and Tom Hawkins has chosen a wild life over following in his father’s profession as a minister. His devotion to gambling, drinking and women has landed him in the Marshalsea. as soon as he arrives he learns that there was a recent murder that remains unsolved. There’s also a ghost and he will have trouble paying for his room and meals. He seems to have landed in some luck when a stranger, Samuel Fleet, offers to share his room. Unfortunately the room is available because the last roommate was the recent murder victim. Tom realizes that he will quickly have to find the murderer or become a victim himself.

This book is full of rich characters and you can feel the grittiness, hopelessness and corruption of the Marshalsea. This book is based in real people and some real events. At the end of the book the author provides a lot of background about the book and the prison. It was a fun read.

TLDR: A good sequel to The Life We Bury

I enjoyed The Life We Bury so much that I wanted to read this sequel while I still remembered the characters. A couple of years has passed since the events of the last book. Joe Talbert, Jr. has graduated college and is a Associated Press Reporter. He’s living with his girlfriend and autistic brother.

One day he is shown a brief article about the murder of a man named Joe Talbert. At the same time, Joe is starting a leave of absence at work. He doesn’t know if this Joe Talbert is his father but heads to the small Minnesota town to see what he can find out. The first thing he finds out is that the dead man was loathed by every person in town and no one is unhappy that he’s gone.

This book is a wild chase for information with lots of twist and turns. Another fun and fast read.

TLDR: It’s OK

Colette Marceau descends from Robin Hood and has followed the family tradition of theft for good. During WWII in France, her mother taught her to steal jewelry from the Nazis to fund the resistance. Her mother also saved a special two-part bracelet from her Jewish friend. Each bracelet half was sewn into the hems of her two daughter’s nightgowns. Eventually the Nazi’s discovered that Colette’s mother was supporting the resistance and they came for her. Colette was saved but her 4-year-old sister was abducted and murdered.

Seventy years later, Colette lives in the US. She is still a jewel thief and uses the proceeds to fund a Holocaust Museum. One day the missing bracelet half appears in an exhibit in a Boston museum. Colette might finally find out what happened to her sister.

This is the second book by Kristen Harmel that I’ve read. The first was The Book of Lost Names was also set in WWII and dealt with forgery of passports to help Jewish people escape France. I would call her writing style “cozy historical fiction”. The storyline is just a little too perfectly wrapped up and Colette is unrealistic in many ways. But if you want to dip your toe in historical fiction, this would be a good starter novel.

TLDR: Pride and Prejudice set in modern Pakistan. An interesting take on the classic.

It’s not as clever as Bridget Jones Diary, but this is a fun reimagining of Pride and Prejudice. It’s set in Pakistan around the year 2000. The Benet family has 5 daughters and Mr. Benet has recently lost his fortune to his older brother. The two oldest sisters, Jena and Alys are over 30 and unmarried but are happy teaching English in a local girls school. Mrs. Benet is distressed about her daughters’ marriage prospects. She’s hopeful that one of them can find a husband at a big local wedding.

It has a lot of humor woven in to this classic story. It sticks pretty closely to the original storyline.