The Memory Box

I quite liked this book. Pandora is the mother of nine year old Iris and yearns to make contact with Iris's father in Paris, whom she has not seen for 10 years. He is not so willing however. While I find this the not convincing, playing hard-to-get part of the story, the rest of the story is quite enjoyable to read. Pandora manages a shop selling secondhand designer label clothes, and she also organises the Shoestring Club, a group of women who buy secondhand dresses together and time-share them.

I found the entrepreneurial ideas in this book to be inspiring and refreshing, as were Pandora's interactions with her sister and closest friends. Her relationship with Declan, the recently separated father of the obnoxious Rachel, is irritating, as his ex Jessica is not over the split and is painfully and yet believably clingy and he can't seem to stop talking about her! As is typical of chick lit books, no one seems to be able to read anyone else's true feelings and they all spend their lives running away from what they truly want. 

Apart from that, The Memory Box is a good little sentimental story and I recommend it to those who enjoy fashion-themed or Paris-themed chick lit. 

My rating ****

Saving Grace

 

I nearly gave up on this book during the first few chapters, as I could not stand the way the main character Emily stayed with her cold and demanding husband. In fact, I couldn't understand why she had married him in the first place, until she admitted she may have married her husband to leave her mean and judgmental mother. However, I was also not convinced by the portrayal of Emily's mother and aunty who were both nasty pieces of work, especially when Emily's grandmother, their mother, had such a lovely character. 

McCallum needs to read Bryce Courtenay's Jessica to get some pointers on writing convincing nasty characters and their motives!

Once I got past the initial introductions to these characters I fell for the warm and accurate descriptions of the rural South Australian landscape and I enjoyed reading of Emily's relationship with her new friends Barbara, David and Jake, her father, and her new puppy Grace. When Emily moves into an abandoned farmhouse, the storylines involving the house renovation and the beginning of her new jam business were well-written and appealing. 

While there was some clumsy writing and character building in McCallum's book, I warmed to it a few chapters in. Saving Grace is part one of a three book series and I look forward to reading the other books in the series to see how Emily's adventures progress.

My rating ***

Between a Heart and a Rock Place

I fell in love with Pat Benatar's music again after watching Rock of Ages and becoming obsessed with its awesome 80s' rock soundtrack. My sister first got me interested in Pat Benatar back in the early eighties and we were mesmerised by her amazing voice and songs such as We Live for Love and Shadows of the Night. In the mid-eighties Benatar became a part of the extended dance videos craze with her Love is a Battlefield video which I must have watched a million times! 

So I had a feeling I would love this memoir. Pat Benatar tells the interesting story of her upbringing, her failed first marriage, her early experiences with singing, her great romance with Neil 'Spyder' Giraldo, and her subsequent fame and fortune. Along the way we learn of the difficulties she faced with sexist record company executives, strict recording deadlines, and relentless touring and promotion. We read of her utter determination to be successful in the music industry while being a good wife and mother. Included is the story of the fading popularity of the band after great success and the ways that Benatar and Giraldo worked together to find new ways to keep their brand alive, including TV appearances, double headline tours and including their songs on film soundtracks.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I loved reading about Benatar's life and the special bond she has with her husband and the stand she took and continues to take for women in rock. She is an amazing person!

My rating *****

Turn Your Workplace into a WOW Place

This book should be required reading in the workplace! Sandy Geroux is an inspirational writer, speaker and consultant who aims to help people make their workplace a more customer-friendly place of high achievers. How many times have you been into a shop and received poor customer service? Many a time. Do you look around your workplace and see people achieving the bare minimum, if that? Often. 

Sandy Geroux reminds us of all the things we already know and yet often forget to do to make work an enjoyable place to be for ourselves, our colleagues and our clients. This is a how-to guide for everyone on how to conduct yourself not just at work but in life.  Download it for your Kindle app from Amazon or buy the paperback from the author's website which has a whole lot of other resources to enrich your world.  A must-read!

My rating *****

The Best of Us

I read some of the reviews of this book and most people loved it! I on the other hand don't go in for sleazy school reunion stories in which the characters seem like they stepped out of Sex and the City. Partner hopping, binge drinking and pot smoking are not my scene and I felt these characters were tragic for the most part. Everyone's marriage was on the rocks for one reason or another and the reunion was just an excuse to try out old flames; a recurring sad theme in modern society. 

There were some poignant moments in this book for the characters who were dealing with issues of disability and disease, and there were some heartfelt moments between some of the partners. However I skipped big chunks of the book to avoid reading tacky passages about getting drunk or stoned and sleeping with other people's partners. The level of writing (ie chick lit level) wasn't satisfying for me as there was not even one  moment of literary brilliance.  Definitely not my cup of tea. 

My rating **

Confessions of a Wild Child

It has been many a year (probably 20, yikes!) since I have read a Jackie Collins book and I'm sure the other books were better than this. However I was young and impressionable and probably thought the lives of the rich and famous were quite exciting back then. In this story, however, the high and wild life does not appeal, although because it was a quick read I read to the end. 

Collins is famous for her books about Lucky Santangelo, and this is the story of Lucky's teen years in which she is both expelled and runs away from school, indulges in boys, alcohol and drugs, and lets her father know she wishes to be a hotel and casino mogul one day, just like him. Collins writes from Lucky's point of view for most of the book and portrays her as a spoilt brat, who has little in the way of common sense or decency. This story is every parents' nightmare! Unlike popular young adult novels such as the Divergent and Hunger Games series, this book does not portray the teen characters as mature, intelligent or sensible in the least. Lucky and her friend Olympia are sleazy, easy girls, who leap from bed to bed at a whim and disrespect their parents. It is a far-fetched story though, so if read for escapism, then it is a flight of fancy. However, this book will not enrich your life in any way other than to help you feel thankful that your own children are not like this! Unless they are, in which you will probably feel miserable, guilty or proud if you are that way inclined. 

There seems to be no good purpose to this book and yet it is going to be made into a movie! Sad! Hopefully the film will focus on the moral of the story which is, if you neglect your child, they will go off the rails, so let them know you love them. That is the one positive I take from this book. Otherwise it is just silly.

My rating**

What Alice Forgot

At thirty-nine, Alice wakes up from a fall at the gym to find it is 2008 and she thinks it it is still 1998. 

She has lost all memory of those ten years and slowly finds out that her life has panned out in ways she would not have expected. 

I love that there is a mixture of mystery, heartache, and humour in this book. I could feel the main character's bittersweet pain as she realised she had three children and yet had no memory of raising any of them, and didn't even recognise them. I felt devastated when she spoke on the phone to her husband and he swore at her with disgust, when her memories told her they were just newly married and wildly in love. So sad! I felt sorry for her as she realised she may have become a stressed out, self-obsessed woman over time, and in fact not a nice person at all.

The only problem I found was with the structure of the book, as there are subplots written from the point of view of a family friend, Frannie and Alice's sister Elisabeth, which could have really been skipped altogether, as I found myself wanting to jump ahead to Alice's story. The other narratives do add depth to the characters, but they slow down the pace of the book.

This is a study of the choices we make in life and an insight into the people we can become if we don't stay true to ourselves. Definitely worth a read for the self-reflection it promotes.

My rating ****