Surviving Ben's Suicide

Surviving Ben's Suicide by C. Comfort Shields is the story of a woman whose college boyfriend and first love committed suicide. Sheilds describes how she met Ben and fell in love with him, and how she dealt with his mental illness and his eventual death by suicide. She illustrates their tumultuous relationship with great detail. Once Ben killed himself, Sheilds describes how it took many years to recover from the suicide and how she went through many phases of grief. I have never known anyone who committed suicide.personally, but I was still fascinated by the intricacies in Comfort and Ben's relationship and everything that led us to the suicide. I also thought it was very interesting how Comfort learned to accept Ben's suicide and not blame herself. Overall, I enjoyed the book. It was very honest and raw at times and you could feel the author's pain. I would recommend the book to anyone who has lost a loved one through suicide. 4 stars.

The Safety of Secrets

I really enjoyed The Safety of Secrets by Delaune Michel. It is the story of a woman, Fiona, who has been friends with her best friend, Patricia, since first grade. They share a secret of something horrible that happened to them as children, but despite that, have maintained their relationship into adulthood. Now their past comes back to haunt them and one of them betrays the other by telling their childhood secret. I really enjoyed the character of Fiona. She was down to earth, despite living among the plastic in LA. I identified with her because she was pregnant after having had a previous miscarriage and, having been in that situation, I felt Michel got the feelings and fear that go along with that right on. I wasn't too fond of Patricia and at times I wondered why Fiona remained her friend, but in the end I understood. Fiona's feelings as a new mother and facing her issues with her own mother were real and I identified with her easily. Overall I thought it was a very good book. It was an easy read and most of it was funny, light material, despite dealing with some serious issues. I would recommend this book to any woman, because I think any woman can identify with the character of Fiona and learn from her mistakes. 4 stars.

As Good As It Got

As Good as It Got by Isabel Sharpe is the story of 3 women going through huge changes in their lives and how they make the best of a bad time. The women all meet at a camp for women recovering from the physical or emotional loss of a loved one. They all made life changing decisions during their 2 weeks at camp. I really enjoyed this book. The 3 main characters were very likable and believable. They all had aspects of their personalities and personal stories that I could identify with. The book was an easy read and was easy to follow. Overall, the book was very good and I recommend it to anyone. 4 stars.

The New Yorkers

I was looking forward to reading The New Yorkers by Cathleen Schine. It had a cute dog pictured on the cover and the blurb on the back sounded like it would be interesting: a story about people living on a single block in NY and their dogs. It was a good idea for a book, however there was not enough to the story to make it entertaining. The story was very meandering, slow, and was very hard to follow with little "point". There were very few likable characters, except for the dogs! I did not like the way the book resolved. The story was dragged out so long it didn't make sense for it to have such a neat, tidy ending. Overall, I was very disappointed and would not recommend this book. 3 stars.

Bear with me!

I'm so sorry I haven't posted in awhile. My 2 year old daughter is having health issues and has been in the hospital 3 times over the past 3 weeks and is still in currently. Couple that with our home Internet not working right now, I haven't had much time to catch up (or to read much for that matter!). Please don't give up on me though! I have gotten 5 ARCs in the past few weeks and I'm going to be very busy reading and I reviewing! I also have one ARC I have already read to review. Hopefully I will get that done and posted in the next few days. I'll update my blog as soon as I can. Thank you for your patience!