#BookReview: The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore
Reviewer: Annie I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Summary: The Hawthorne family has it all. Great jobs,…
Author Profile: Meg Mitchell Moore
Author Name: Meg Mitchell Moore
Website: Meg Mitchell Moore worked for several years as a journalist. Her work has been published in Yankee, Continental, Women’s Health, Advertising Age and many other business and consumer magazines. She received a B.A. from Providence College and a master’s degree in English Literature from New York University. The Arrivals is her first novel. Her second novel will be published by Reagan Arthur Books in 2012. Meg lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with her husband, their three children and a beloved border collie.
Titles: The Arrivals, So Far Away
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The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore
The Arrivals is the debut novel from Meg Mitchell Moore, and I was truly impressed by her writing style. The story follows Ginny and William Moore, whose grown children suddenly start appearing at their Vermont home with all their troubles. Oldest child Lillian comes with her two young children after finding out her husband was unfaithful. Stephen comes with his pregnant wife Jane, whose pregnancy complications put her on bed rest at the Moore’s home. The youngest, twenty-nine year old Rachel, flees from New York after a painful breakup and even more devastating miscarriage. Ginny and William are suddenly overwhelmed with their children and their problems, and must figure out how to help each individual through their issues. The story, which is told through multiple points of views along the way, teaches lessons of love and family, of strength and forgiveness, and that the job of a parent is never over.
I really enjoyed The Arrivals. Like I stated earlier, I was impressed with the writing style Meg brings to the book. There are scenes where she abruptly stops one story, switches to another, then goes back to the original. I found these mini-cliffhangers delectable and they kept me on edge. I couldn’t help but think of my own mother when I read this book. Not too long ago she told me how much she still worries about each of her kids’ happiness, even though we all are grown now. It made me think about how much goes into being a mom or dad, and the unconditional love some are so lucky to receive. The only real issue I had is that I kept feeling that Ginny was so put out with Lillian, but would give her right arm for Rachel. I didn’t fully understand why it seemed to come off that way, and was the only thing holding me back from really getting immersed in the full story and all the characters. Other than that, I really enjoyed this book, I would recommend it, and I’m grateful for the SheKnows Book Club that has provided me so many great reads throughout the year.
**Please join us on Thursday, November 17th from 5-8pm PST at the SheKnows Book Club to chat live with Meg Mitchell Moore!**
[Rating: 4]
In My Mailbox: Week of October 2
In My Mailbox: Week of October 2
Title: What’s Your Number?
Author: Karyn Bosnak
Received: From Transworld Publishers
Synopsis: Bosnak, the woman behind the popular “Save Karyn” Web site (she also penned a book by the same title), makes her fiction debut with the tepid tale of Delilah Darling, a woman on the cusp of 30 who loses her job and sleeps with her heinous former boss in an entanglement that’s the 20th notch on her headboard. It’s a painful realization, as she’d just read in the New York Post, that the average person has 10.5 partners in their lifetime. Fearing she has more than reached her quota, Delilah takes off on a cross-country trip, determined to find “the one” among the 20 of her former lovers. But she soon discovers that the men of her romantic past “an inmate, a rehab patient, a dog-obsessed Amway salesman and a Muppeteer among them” aren’t exactly life-partner material. Clever chapter breaks that feature maps and voice-mail transcripts are fun additions, but the story” hobbled by limp humor, razor-thin characters and phoned-in prose” takes too long to find its inevitably happy ending.
Title: The Arrivals
Author: Meg Mitchell Moore
Received: From SheKnows Book Club
Synopsis: An empty nest fills back up with alarming speed in Moore’s promising debut. Five years have passed since the last of their kids have left home, and Ginny and William Owens have settled into a comfortable rhythm at home in Burlington, Vt., that’s unexpectedly disrupted. Their exhausted and defeated daughter, Lillian, shows up with three-year-old Olivia, three-month-old Philip, and without her husband. Within days, Lillian’s brother, Stephen, and his pregnant wife, Jane, arrive for an unannounced visit that will turn into a summer-long stay. Daughter Rachel, still working in New York, is teetering on the edge of financial and emotional disaster, and will also end up in Burlington in short order. Moore finds a crisp narrative in the morass of an overpacked household, and she keeps the proceedings moving with an assurance and outlook reminiscent of Laurie Colwin, evoking emotional universals with the simplest of observations, as in “the peace you feel when you are awake in a house where children are sleeping.”
Title: Don’t Let Me Go
Author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
Received: From Transworld Publishers
Synopsis: Sometimes a child knows better…
GRACE
Ten-year-old Grace knows that her mum loves her, but her mum loves drugs too. And there’s only so long Grace can fend off the ‘woman from the county’ who is threatening to put her into care. Her only hope is…
BILLY
Grown-man Billy Shine hasn’t been out of his apartment for years. People scare him, and the outside world scares him even more. Day in, day out, he lives a perfectly orchestrated silent life within his four walls. Until now. . .
THE PLAN
Grace bursts into Billy’s life with a loud voice and a brave plan to get her mum clean. And it won’t be easy, because they will have to confiscate the one thing her mum holds most dear . . . they will have to kidnap Grace.
Title: Better Off Without Him
Author: Dee Ernst
Received: From Dee Ernst
Synopsis: Mona Berman is an expert at Happily Ever After – after all, she’s a best-selling Romance writer and happy endings are what she does best. So when her husband of twenty years leaves her for somebody 15 years younger, 20 pounds lighter, and French, she’s got a lot of adjusting to do, both personally and professionally. Lucky for her she’s got three savvy teen daughters, a few good friends, and Ben, the world’s sexiest plumber, to help her along the way.
First she decides that her next book will be the anti-romance – her heroine finds the best part of her life AFTER getting dumped. Next her daughters tell her she needs to start practice dating, and summer at the Jersey shore is the perfect place for that. She’s also juggling her soon-to-be-ex, a loony aunt, and a match-making neighbor, while Ben is sending her romance-driven imagination into overdrive. Can Mona’s life imitate art? Can she write her own happy ending?
