Just Like Family by Tasha Blaine ~ Book Review

Just like family follows 3 very different nannies from 3 different areas in the U.S.A. The author got to know these nannies and wrote their stories over 5 years. First there was Claudia who was the inspiration for the book. She was a nanny who came from the Caribbean to New York City, leaving behind an infant son with family, so that she could make a better life for them by sending home money. Supporting herself and a daughter born in the States, she was a calm woman who handled things by not handling them, a nanny who didn't interfere with the decisions of the family she cared for, who knew how to disappear when there was tension or family fighting. Working long hours day after day, she had a secret dream of getting her GED and applying to nursing school.

 Then there was Vivian, a young, spirited nanny from Boston taking care of twin boys from birth, who was very driven, take charge and was not shy about telling her parents her opinion and what she felt was best for "her" boys. She was strict but also very loving. The boys were her world. Now they were growing up and she was struggling with her place within the family.

 Kim was a nanny from Texas who found her marriage on the rocks and was now finding work to survive. A live in nanny position was what she needed and being hired by a young couple about to expect seemed the perfect answer. But nothing was right about the job, nothing was turning out as expected or promised and Kim feels stuck having signed a year contract.

 I picked up this book because I was interested in the topic being a child care provider myself. While I am not a nanny looking after the children in just one family in their own home (I can have up to 6 different families at once and care is in my home) there are similarities and I could relate to lots of different parts and experiences of the nannies. I really liked how the author told the stories of 3 very different women in personality from 3 very different backgrounds working for 3 very different families. But the thing they had in common was their love for the children in their care. The book, though non-fiction, is written in a very easy storytelling style which made it so easy to read, not at all like slogging through a non-fiction book full of facts. It was real, relatable and had me tearing up in a few spots for the situations. Really enjoyed this read and would recommend it for anyone who is looking to understand the world of nannies, child care, and the hard to navigate relationships of nannies and the parents.

I gave this a 9.5/10

Quote that I totally connected with: 

"Like Claudia, Vivian, and Kim, this nanny in the park gave a part of herself that she would never get back.  For most nannies, the ability to love is part of the job.  And when her time is up with one family, a great nanny takes that love with her.  She keeps pictures of her old charges on her refrigerator or continues to tell stories about them to friends or just pauses once in a while and sighs, remembering a moment they shared or a funny thing a child might have said.  She puts her love in a box, shores it away, and labels it for that one specific child.  Then she opens herself up again for the next child, for the next family.  She starts the process of love and loss all over again."

Just Like Family

Inside the Lives of Nannies, the Parents they Work for,

and the Children They Love

by Tasha Blaine

pg. 19

Love Anthony by Lisa Genova ~ Book Review

Olivia is on Nantucket by herself.  No husband and no son with her.  She is there trying to make some sense of her son Anthony's short 8 years.  Anthony had been diagnosed with Autism at the age of 3.  It had been a hard 5 years, ones in which Anthony didn't speak to her, he didn't look at her and he hated being touched by her.  And it was hard on her marriage.  So hard that she and her husband were not together anymore.  But there was also happiness in the midst of the hard, but now Anthony was gone, her husband was gone and life didn't make sense.

While in Nantucket Olivia meets Beth who is going through her own life issues.  Beth is writing a book and what she writes will reopen Olivia's hurting and grieving heart.

This was a wonderful story by Lisa Genova.  The author of "Sill Alice" uses her knowledge as a nueroscientist to once again bring us into a story that brings compassion and understanding into a hard to understand area.  I was trained in working with disabled individuals and used to work in the school district with autistic children and this book brought me into places of knowledge, perception and sympathy that I didn't know I was lacking, not only for the autistic individual for their families.

The only reason I gave this a 9 out 10 instead of a 10 was the story line of Beth.  I felt distracted from Olivia and Anthony's story with Beth's issues of an unfaithful husband and was bouncing back and forth in my emotions between the two.  I wanted to concentrate on more on Olivia's story but Beth's life kept yanking on my emotions too.  Both story lines were intense emotionally and I felt a bit torn between the two.  I wanted my focus to be more on Olivia and Anthony's story as I thought the book was more about that.  Don't know if that makes sense but it's how I felt during the story.

That being said, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about autism and it's effects on the individual and the family.

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate ~ Book Review

In Tennesse in 1939 Rill Foss is the oldest of 5 siblings living aboard a shanty boat on the river with her parents.  Theirs is happy family life albiet a poor life.  When her mom, whom they all call Queenie,  goes into labor and comes up against major complications, the midwife insists her father, Briny, take her to the hospital.  But the hospital is across the river.  A family friend, another river dweller in the chaos and panic, offers to take them but Rill, who is only 12, is left behind and given the responsibility to care for the younger ones until Briny can come back.  While her parents are gone, strangers come who identify themselves as police and under duress remove the kids, telling them they have to stay in an orphanage until they can be returned to their parents.  Having a deep sense that they must stay together, Rill goes along with it, knowing she can't fight the adults anyway.

In present day South Carolina, Avery Stafford is being groomed to possibly take her Dad's political position.  When she returns home to help him out during a health scare, she comes across a lady in a senior's home who mistakes her for someone else.  But the encounter compels Avery to start a search into her family's history but what she finds can ruin her well off, upstanding political Southern family.

I saw this book on a Christian book reader's page on facebook and it came very highly recommended.  This was a new author for me and it sounded very interesting so I put it on hold right away.  Good thing because it had tons of holds.  It is based on a true story about Georgia Tann, who from about 1925 - 1950 when they finally shut her down, kidnapped and stole children from poor families and through her Tennessee Children's Home Society sold them to wealthy families, including the notorious actress Joan Crawford, whose adopted daughter from this orphanage wrote "Mommy Dearest", about the abuse she experienced at the hands of her adopted mother. Google Georgia Tann, you will be shocked!   The author wrote from the perspective of the children and though the family in it is fictional, all the goings on were from testimonies of survivors of this horrendous fake orphanage and adoption agency.  I was stunned that this could actually happen and that so many people, from police to judges to politicians were bought off and allowed this to continue for so long.  Some of the siblings that went through these orphanages spent years trying to find and reunite their families when they became adults.  The records were so contorted or "lost" that some never did.   It is a sad piece of American history that needs to be told so that it brings awareness to child trafficking and how it hides under the radar.

I loved the character of Rill.  Only 12 years old, but as is the nature of the oldest child, she has a strong sense of responsibility and of family and doing what she has to do to try and keep them all together and she deeply feels the burden of that.  She is strong and courageous for her young age and what she is going through and is determined to find a way to get back to her parents and home.  And I also loved the character of Avery, who dug and strived to find the truth even though it could have tough consequences for those she loved.

I, in turn, cannot recommend this read enough!  I rated it a 9.5/10

Secrets She Left Behind by Diane Chaberlain ~ Book Review

18 year old Maggie Lockwood has just been released from prison for her actions which led to a fire at a church that claimed a life and horrified the small town she is from.   Going elsewhere is not an option so she must learn to live in a town of people who's feelings toward her range from anger to horror to hate.  But no one hates her more than Keith Weston who's last year has been one filled with pain and suffering due to the fire.  Keith and Maggie grew up together and used to be friends but the fire burned him horribly and with the pain of the last year, he must now face life badly disfigured.  The only person who helps him to get through his days is his mom Sara.  But Sara left the house to go somewhere, no one seems to know where, and has not come home.  As hours turn into days and days turn into weeks, Keith must deal with her not returning and all the questions and feelings that raise.  Maggie's parents have offered to let Keith stay at their home but there is no way he's going to do and be so near to the person he hates.   Then Keith meets a girl who looks beyond the disfigurement to who he really is and he starts to think he just might be able to get through this.

The premise of this story sounded so good.  How the author explored how a young person who makes a horrible decision must face the ongoing consequences of that decision and what follows was really good.  Also how the people most affected by what happened and everything they also were feeling and struggling with as Maggie was released and back in town was really good.  And the mystery involving the disappearance of Sara drew me in.    Where the story derailed for me was the constant gravitation toward teenage sexual encounters.  I understood the need to develop Keith's relationship with the girl, and being a secular story, I didn't expect it to line up with Christian moral guidelines, but the constant encounters I thought really distracted from the more important elements of what this story was about.  I thought it could have risen above that so much better.  There also was a huge element of the story involving sin in church leadership that was sad and disheartening that the blurb on the back totally didn't let the possible reader in on so the story ended up being about more than just what was happening with Maggie and the fire and it's consequences.

I struggled with a star rating on this because part of it was good but part of it wasn't for me but finally gave it 6/10

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J.Watson ~ Book Review

Christine is a woman who wakes up each morning in a panic not knowing who the man next to her in the bed is.  And she doesn't recognize the middle aged woman staring back at her in the bathroom mirror.  And each morning the man patiently explains that he is Ben, her husband of over 20 years, and that she had a horrific accident 20 years ago that wipes her memory everytime she goes to sleep.   Each day she also gets a phone call from a man who tells her he is a Dr. Nash who is working with her without her husband's knowledge to try to bring some memory back.  Each day she writes in a journal what happened that day and hides it in her closet and each day Dr. Nash tells her where to look for it.  As the entries start to add up, and as she rereads them each, Christine starts to have some questions and some things are not lining up and making sense.  But who does she trust and believe?  Her husband? Dr. Nash? herself?  She can't even remember yesterday!

This was one tense, page turning, can't put it down psychological thriller.   Christine is totally dependent upon her husband, Ben, each and every day to fill in the facts of her existence.  But as she journals her days something in her tells her not to let her husband in on what she is doing just yet.  And the more she journals and rereads her days, while answering some questions it also raises so many more.  The tension in this book runs through each page  and doesn't let up.   The pacing is really good and keeps you riveted and turning the pages to find out what is going on.  Your emotions are really engaged with the main character as it is so hard to imagine this happening to anyone and the utter confusion they would live under on a daily basis yet the book is inspired in part by the lives of several amnesiac patients whom the author mentions in the author's note at the back of the book.  You really are rooting for Christine to get her memory back or at least to get the questions answered.

I gave this a 9/10

The Face of the Earth by Deborah Raney ~ Book Review

Mitch and Jill Brannon have a wonderful marriage.  Both have careers they love, Mitch is a principal at a school and Jill is a grade 3 teacher at another school.  Their kids are both grown, their son in university and their daughter soon to join him there.  Jill is struggling a bit with the thought of their daughter leaving at the end of summer for school, so Mitch encourages her to attend a teacher conference with her colleagues so she can unwind and get her mind off it.  Now conference is over and Mitch is excited to see her and hear all about it.  Just having heard that she is on her way home, he's planning a quiet steak dinner at home with her.

But Jill doesn't come home.  Hours tick away and still no Jill and no calls from her Mitch is beside himself.   Jill's best friend, and the Brannon's next door neighbor immediately comes over to be with Mitch as he calls police.  Days later police still have not a clue what has happened to her.  As the days turn into weeks and then months, Mitch is frustrated with what he feels is not enough proactive action on the part of the police and he starts to take matters into his own hands.  Bringing Shelley along to help in the search they spend days and miles together looking for Jills's car in ditches and trying to unearth even the smallest of clues that would help to find her.   With the common goal of Jill's well being and finding her driving them, Mitch and Shelley's friendship deepens to the point where Shelley's deep buried attraction to Mitch is starting to surface and becoming harder and harder to hide.

I  enjoyed the concept of the story.  It explored life going on after tragedy that has not had closure and when, if any,  time should be the right time to move on.  It delved into marriage vows, and explored the depth of them as Mitch's loyalty to the vows he made Jill where thrown into confusion and temptation when it was becoming more and more apparent that Jill had literally disappeared off the face of the earth. With the police believing she disappeared of her own accord, how long could and should he hold onto his vows to her?  I appreciated the author's portrayal of a character who took his vows seriously and treated them as sacred and important while still being very human.  Mitch's character was so well written and you could feel his struggle and confusion as he was torn between putting all his focus into finding any clues to Jill's whereabouts and facing maybe having to finally just give up and move on with life for the sake of family.  The characters of Mitch and Shelley had much to struggle with as the search for Jill kept coming up empty and Shelley was finding it harder and harder to squash her feelings for Mitch.  At times I really, really disliked her character as she seemed very self serving at points in the story and was very quick in justifying her words and actions in pushing Mitch to move on way too early, in my humble opinion, and  giving him the space and time he needed to grieve in his own way and time.  I liked how the author portrayed real people struggling with real temptations and justifications in hard situations, how she portrayed how selfish motivations can cause us to, while sounding like a good thing,  do wrong things and justify them,  but I also love how she portrays that good marriages and holding onto to vows don't always come easily and must be fought for.   A good read that makes one think what "till death do us part" really means. 

I gave it an 8.5/10

The Memory Palace - a memoir by Mira Bartok ~ Book Review

From the Reading Group Guide Introduction (back of book):

"When piano progidy Norma Herr was well, she was the most vibrant personality in the room.  But as her schizophrenic episodes became more frequent and more dangerous, she withdrew into a world that neither of her daughters could make any sense of.  After being violently attacked for demanding that Norma seek help, Mira Bartok and her sister changed their names and cut off all contact in order to keep themselves safe.  For the next seventeen years Mira's only contact with her mother was through infrequent letters exchanged through post office boxes, often not even in the same city where she was living.

At the age of forty, artist Mira suffered a debilitating head injury that leaves her memories foggy and her ability to make sense of the world around her forever changed.  Hoping to reconnect with her past, Mira reached out to the homeless shelter where her mother was living.  When she received word that her mother is dying in a hospital, Mira and her sister traveled to their mother's deathbed to reconcile one last time.  Norma gave them a key to the storage unit in which she has kept hundreds old diaries, photographs and momentos from the past that Mira never imagined she would see again.  These artifacts trigger a flood of memories and give Mira access to the past that she believed had been lost forever."


This book has been on my radar for quite awhile now and I finally got around to reading it.  With the recent releasing of a schizophrenic man here in Canada who committed a horrible, unimaginable  crime on a greyhound bus a few years back that shocked our nation, changed the lives of all those on the bus and was the direct cause of one of the first responders taking their own lives, I really felt the need to read this.   I can pretty much say people here are totally dumbfounded and angry as he was  given total freedom without conditions and let back into society because it was deemed the crime was committed during an episode and he's now "likely to stay on medication".  This made me dig into my TBR pile and pull this book out hoping maybe it would bring some kind of understanding into the life of a person suffering from schizophrenia and how it affects those around them and to somehow justify or explain in my mind the reasoning behind the release of this man here in Canada.

Mira Bartok was told at her mother's funeral that "people have abandoned their loved ones for much less than you've been through".  And even though for their own safety, Mira and her sister had no contact with their mother for many, many years and in fact, changed their names so she couldn't find them, Mira wrote a touching, heartbreaking account of their lives growing up with their mother.  The book really let the reader into a glimpse of the harrowing struggle for both the schizophrenic sufferer and their families.  And it also brought out how the loved ones can feel hostage to the illness and, in Mira's mother's case anyway, the  system that was incapable of bringing help to their family in crisis.  In order to protect themselves, they literally had to let their mother become homeless and living on the streets and in shelters.  No family should have to make that choice.  Mira's story also pointed out to me how memory can be affected by different things and even the one remembering as her and her sister sometimes had different recollections of the same event.  There were also beautiful moments throughout the book where Mira makes the mother/daughter connections while caring for her mom.  The moment when she was helping her mom in the hospital to walk from the bathroom back to bed and as they stood, her holding her mom up as her mom rested a moment leaning against her and the nurse came and asked if she was okay, and Mira realized she hadn't hugged her mom in 17 years was especially touching.  Though at times the writing style bogged me down just a little bit as I tried to make connections in the points the author was trying to convey,  this memoir was well worth the read just to gain some understanding of the struggles of those suffering severe mental health issues, to develop some compassion for them and their families and for those who are homeless, and an understanding of how the "system" works and lacks in actually being helpful and beneficial for those in this situation.  And most especially to read about that mother/daughter connection in spite of the illness.

9/10 rating

Linked to Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner

Kendra Van Zant arrives at an old English cottage in Cotswald, England to interview famous watercolor painter Isabel McFarland who is actually celebrating her 93rd birthday.  Isabel is a survivor of the London Blitz but up until now has never talked about it so it was a bit of a surprise that Kendra's professor was able to secure an interview for her.  As a visiting student at Oxford studying history, Kendra is writing a paper for the 70th anniversary of VE day with a chance for it to be published.  Kendra firmly believes that information is only half the story of an event and personal experience of people involved is the other half.   She's done her research and has her questions all lined up but before she can even ask any of them Isabel drops the bombshell that she is not even who everyone thinks she is.   And so starts the story of 2 young sisters who lived in London at the time of rumors of war in the 1940's.

Emmy Downtree is only 15 but has her dreams all planned out.  She has been drawing brides and bridal dresses and wants to design them.  When she has a chance to work in a bridal shop she takes the job even though her mother is very opposed as she needs to help look after her  much younger sister Julia while her mother does whatever she does when she is gone from them.  But Emmy's ambitions and dreams come to a halt as London orders the evacuation of all children to foster families in the country side to keep them safe from the threat of bombs.  Though she tries to fight it, Emmy is shipped off by train with her sister.  But she is determined to make her once in lifetime opportunity a reality and sees only that she has no other choice and steals away in the middle of the night to make her appointment with a designer in the city.  But this determination will have ramifications not only for her but for others in her life as well.

I loved this book.  It  grabbed me right  from the beginning.    As the story of the two sisters starts to build it was very easy to lose myself into the story.  A portion of the story towards the back is told in letter and diary entry form and though this is a format that I usually really do not like in books it worked for me in this story.    The author was really able to convey the terror and emotions of two young girls going through the Blitz as well as the adult characters and what they were going through.  The long term ramifications of trauma were really presented in a believable and realistic sense.  I really don't know a lot about the war as it affected England so I really learned a lot.  I didn't even have any idea that children were evacuated out of London.   As I was reading and the Blitz was happening I wondered what on earth the title had to do with the actual story, they seemed on opposite ends of a very large spectrum.  But under the reader's guide author  Q & A she poses the question "if there really are secrets to living a life that has happily ever after written all over it...and to being able to have everything you've always wanted".    In the beginning both Emmy and Kendra seemed to have their p's and q's all lined up for that life.  But as the story shows some things you just cannot control and it's the very choices during those times that may be the ones determining where your life goes.

Beautiful writing, realistic emotions,  wonderful characters earns this story a 10/10 for me.

Linked to Semicolon Saturday Review of Books

The Ringmaster's Wife by Kristy Cambron ~ Book Review

This is the story of two women who's lives were changed by the Ringling Brothers Circus of the 1920's.  Both had to find the courage to take a step of faith to make their dreams come to life.  Mabel was a young woman who left the comfort and familiarity of the farm she was raised on to head to the big city.  Taking a cigar box filled with clippings of her dreams she is working towards those  when a stranger comes into the restaurant she is working at and talks her boss into allowing her to escort him around the Chicago World's Fair.  Mabel at first has no idea who he is but later learns he was none other than John Ringling.  Meeting again in another city they eventually marry.  Mable is popular amongst the circus crew and performers for her quiet kindness and strength.

Rosamund Easling is a young lady who is raised in the wealthy parlors of her English Earl father.  He beloved brother lost his life in WWI and Rosamund misses him dearly.  She finds solace in barebacking riding with the precious horse her brother had given her.  But when her parents are forcing her into a marriage to another wealthy man and selling the horse to a man who is buying it for the Ringling circus in America, Rose is heartbroken.  When Colin sees her riding Ingenue he sees her potential as a performer and invites her to America with the horse.  Rosamund agrees and sneaks off with Colin on a boat to America leaving her parents a note.  Intending on returning eventually, Rose's life is changed when she encounters not only the fame and bright lights of the circus world but also the life of a type of nomad during show season and the harsh competitive nature of it.

I enjoyed this historical fiction novel that highlights the early life of the circus.  The story is told from the viewpoints of the two women and goes back and forth between them.  Though of both women's stories are centered in the 1920's Mable's starts of a bit earlier on the timeline.  There was a small issue for me in that a couple of times as the two women's stories started to intertwine that the timeline jumps got a little confusing and I did have to backtrack to the the beginnings of chapters to find out what year I was in.

Mable was the real life wife of John Ringling.  She was known for her wisdom and kindness and her and John built an amazing estate in Florida where they wintered in the off season but also had amazing parties whose invitations were coveted by both performers and the public. Rosamund and Colin are fictional characters added to the real life story of Mable and it makes for a good read.  It was interesting how Mable came from humble farming beginnings and rose up to be wealthy and Roseamund started very wealthy and chose to leave it and start from the bottom in the circus.  I thought the author did a wonderful job of conveying what the circus culture of the time would have been like.  How hard they all worked together and were like family and yet there was a competitive dynamic in some of the relationships.  A good clean read, I gave it an 8.5/10