Blank Slate Kate by Heather Wardell

I finished reading Blank Slate Kate by Heather Wardell almost a week ago. Usually, when I offer my opinion of a book to our loyal following, I do it within minutes of turning the last page. This one, however, needed to marinate in my head; a long soak amid the gray matter before I felt I could articulate with any clarity how much I loved Ms. Wardell’s latest. I still don’t know if I can do that task justice, but I think I’m ready to try.

Imagine waking up naked in a stranger’s bed with no recollection of how you got there. And add to that the undeniable fact that you are in a thirty-two year old body with the thoughts of a seventeen year old and no memory of who you are, where you live and what you’ve been doing for the past fifteen years. This is exactly what happens to Kate Anderson as she abruptly discovers that the years between 1996 and 2011 are nothing more than a blank slate.  Terror, depression and acute frustration vie for top emotional billing as Kate (with help of Jake - the bighearted, gorgeous stranger) tries to find out who she really is.

This is not a flighty contemporary romance. Some heavy topics are tackled, including severe depression, teenage pregnancy, adultery and date rape. The sum of these rather grim parts could have easily swept me into a deep, black hole, but much to Ms. Wardell’s credit, they did not. Just the opposite, I think, as I found myself carefully examining my own life experiences during that same period of time and while I would clearly like to forget a few of them, unlike Kate, I have little to regret.  

For me, the greatest strength of the story is the inherent unpredictability of the plot. For two-thirds of the book, I leaned heavily in one direction and then the fragility of Kate’s new discoveries pulled me down an entirely different path. I loved that I needed to be coaxed and persuaded, just like Kate, to discover, embrace and savor what seemed familiar, yet was still completely unknown. And, as is usual for Ms. Wardell, the secondary characters are well written, playing their supporting roles perfectly. One character in particular (and I can't mention the name without spoiling Kate's journey for you) is ripe for a book of his own. I'm still a little in love with him, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  

Much in the same vein as Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros, Blank Slate Kate is an unexpectedly uplifting, surprisingly unconventional and deeply touching story.  It’s definitely worth the emotional investment. A must read. 

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

I was returning from a vacation in London and happened to have some time to kill in the departure lounge at Heathrow.  Steve Jobs had passed away just two weeks prior and this new biography by Walter Isaacson had just been published. I couldn't resist the half-price sticker on this huge 571 page book so I bought it, not stopping to figure that with the conversion it cost more in London than it would have at  home, even at half price. Not only that, but I now had to carry this huge thing onto the plane and through immigration and customs when I could have just as easily bought the e-book. No matter. It was worth every pound/dollar and  inconvenience it caused. This book is a must read, and once I started it, I could not put it down.

Walter Isaacson paints a brutally honest picture of the late Mr. Jobs. No holds are barred and no stone is left unturned in the journey through a life that started with birth parents giving their son up for adoption, then later marrying each other and having another child. The author goes on to paint a picture of a  childhood filled with curiosity, spunk and inquisitiveness. There's one particular story of a young Steve, perhaps in the 8th or 9th grade, who was working on a science project for school. When faced with the need for a certain part for what he was building, he wrote Mr. Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard, directly and requested it. Not only was the part sent, but it garnered him a summer job at a local HP plant, a harbinger for things to come.  Mr. Isaacson relates the birth of Apple Computers in Jobs' parents' garage and describes not only the timeline of his subject's life, but the relationships between Mr. Jobs and his contemporaries that developed along the way. I was endlessly fascinated with the stories of Jobs' relationship with Bill Gates, for example. There are hundreds of such stories scattered throughout the book. Mr. Jobs was not known for his diplomacy as a boss or even as a human being and Mr. Isaacson does an excellent job of putting the reader in the place of the hapless employees or acquaintances (and there were many) who somehow managed to incur Steve Jobs' wrath and ridicule. All the better for understanding that while Steve Jobs was an innovative genius who guided Apple and Pixar to unbelievable success, he happened to have a problem dealing with those who did not live up to his standards, or those whom he thought betrayed him in some way. He was also emotional, crying when things didn't quite go his way, and was known to hold a grudge when the situation warranted it. And sometimes when it didn't.

Mr. Isaacson describes Jobs' eight year fight against pancreatic cancer in candid detail, and his audience feels his family's horror as Steve decides to forgo what his doctors felt may have been successful treatment by surgery for experiments with herbs and diet for 9 months before finally assenting to the procedure. By then, the cancer had spread, and the rest is now, thanks to the author, well-documented history.

Isaacson had Jobs' full cooperation in the writing of this book, and it shows. Nothing is white-washed, and it comes across as an honest and thoroughly open account of this amazing man. For the first 200 pages, this reader couldn't stop wondering at how Jobs' got away with some of the things he did. For want of a better word, the man was truly an ass. But then, something happens and by the 300th page and beyond, I couldn't help smiling in places at his antics, because, say what  you will about Apple and Steve Jobs, the man knew his business. He knew how to get the best out of his employees and knew exactly what his consumers wanted before they knew themselves. And that is the mark of a true business genius. It's no wonder that with every public appearance that revealed him as a sick man, Apple stock would fall. When you read this book, whether you own any Apple products or not, you realize just how much of Steve Jobs went into everything and anything that company has produced. The next time you're in an Apple Store, look down at the floor. If it's blue tile, Steve Jobs picked it out. His hand was in everything, and undoubtedly, he will be sorely missed. Just how much is made clear in this wonderful, fast-paced biography. I highly recommend it.

Carrie Goes Off The Map, by Phillipa Ashley

With a Phillipa Ashley novel, you know just what you're getting before you open the book to the first page. There are fascinating locales, endearing protagonists, quirky secondary characters, an amazing love story and a gloriously happy ending. Carrie Goes Off The Map follows this trail perfectly.

Carrie Brownhill and Huw Brigstocke have been together for ten years. Their lives are thoroughly interwoven at Huw's farm, where Carrie works (when she's not doing amateur theater) and where the two of them live. None of this prevents Huw from breaking off their engagement just two weeks before the scheduled wedding festivities. Carrie is left with a broken heart, no home and no job. When she hears (in a rather atypical way) four months later, that Huw is marrying someone else, she tries to show her indignation up close and personal. She's stopped on the church steps by Dr. Matt Landor, their friend from University who is home on leave from his stint as a charity doctor in Tuman.  Embarrassed by the emotional state she's been driven to, Carrie resolves to get over Huw once and for all and get on with her life. She and her friend Rowena plan a trip to the Continent to see a bit of the world before moving on to the next part of their lives. And Dolly, the so-named VW camper who plays a big and beloved part in the novel, is their vehicle of choice. When a last minute acting job prevents Rowena from going with Carrie, a substitution is made, and Matt takes her place.

The book really comes into its own as Matt and Carrie head, not for the Continent as Carrie had hoped,   but to Cornwall. As the destinations come and go, Matt and Carrie get closer, almost without realizing it. There's this slow dawning of understanding between the two that deepens as the miles pass. For Carrie, there's "something" about Matt. And for Matt, there's that same "something" about Carrie. And when they finally do realize that what they really want is each other, it's Matt, the serial commitment-phobe, who wants something more permanent. And Carrie, scarred from her experience with Huw and desperate not to lose her heart without an impossible guarantee, steps away.  Matt returns to Tuman, their relationship now reduced to email and Facebook posts.

It's at this point that I am so glad that Ms. Ashley doesn't get her inspiration from Nicholas Sparks, because if that were the case, this story would not have that hoped-for happy ending. There are some tense moments when we wonder if Carrie was not too hasty in sending the good doctor away the year before.  But Ms. Ashley doesn't leave us hanging in suspense too long, thankfully, and everything comes right in the end for a girl who had nothing left to her in the beginning.


Carrie Goes Off The Map is published by Sourcebooks, due out December 1, 2011. I'd love to see  this one into a made for TV movie. Any plans  for that, Phillipa?

The Rose Garden, by Susanna Kearsley

I've always used Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series as the yardstick with which to measure any book containing even a whiff of time travel. Up until Susanna Kearsley's novel,  A Winter Sea (reviewed here  in May, 2011) any and all have fallen short. With The Rose Garden, Ms. Kearsley's newest effort, I think even Ms. Gabaldon has met her match. The Rose Garden is a sumptuous love story, one which encompasses three centuries and will warm the coldest of the coming winter nights. I am not being flowery or overdramatic here. I mean it. It is that good. The writing is so descriptive and the characters so real, I could envision every paragraph of every page as if I were a part of the story too. That to me is the mark of a truly great book.

Eva Ellen Ward has recently lost her older sister Katrina, a celebrated movie actress, to an unnamed disease. Katrina's husband entrusts Eva to take his wife's ashes and spread them "where she was happiest." Eva, who worked public relations for her sister, knows just where that place is, and travels from Los Angeles to Cornwall and specifically to Trelowarth, the house and rose farm where the two girls spent many happy summers as guests of their late "Uncle"George and Claire Hallett, friends of their father's. Twenty years after she last stepped foot in the house she's welcomed back by Claire, as well as George's children Mark (Katrina's first love), and Susan, Eva's former playmate. When she starts to experience what she thinks are hallucinogenic episodes, she chalks it up to sleeping pills and grief over losing her sister. When the episodes become frighteningly real, Eva has to accept the fact that she is indeed straddling a time line that takes her in and out of the Trelowarth of 1715. She meets the then owners of the house, brothers Daniel and Jack Butler,  and their loyal friend Fergal. She is also a witness to the sowing of the seeds of the first Jacobite uprising, the plot to bring King James from France to assume his place on the British throne. What she doesn't anticipate are her feelings for Daniel Butler, who knows exactly what she is and not only accepts it, but returns those same feelings, seemingly tenfold. It is at this point in the novel where Ms. Kearsley infuses Daniel with a romanticism not often found in male protagonists, and allows Daniel to sum up their love with these words, "whatever time we have, will be time enough." Prosaic words for a man who falls in love with a time traveler with no control of her appearances and disappearances, except when she's away from Trelowarth itself.

While the notion of time travel can be a hard sell in a story, Ms. Kearsley makes Eva's experience entirely believable.  It fits so well and flows so naturally here, that this reader did not question it as far-fetched fantasy. I actually caught myself thinking that anything is possible, and who's to say that something like this could not in fact, actually happen? I would make a wager that this reaction is not uncommon when reading this novel. And that's certainly a tribute to Ms. Kearsley's story telling abilities.

Without getting into too much more detail because this is a story best read and savored (and believe me,  you don't want me to give this part away), there is one surprise toward the end of the book that will leave you so enthralled, you'll read it over and over, just to help you work out all the brilliant clues left that you may have missed beforehand. These clues are scattered like breadcrumbs on a trail helping you find your way back from whence you came. It's masterfully done and adds an additional dimension to what was already a brilliant story.

It seems I've gotten into the habit of saying this for this author's work; The Rose Garden, by Susanna Kearsley is a must read. And as they say, there's no time like the present....

Highland Storms, by Christina Courtenay

In the follow up to her novel Trade Winds, Christina Courtenay continues the story of the Kinross family, this time moving her characters from Sweden to their native homeland, the Scottish Highlands. Brice Kinross, son of Killian and Jess, the protagonists in Trade Winds, is bequeathed Rosyth House, the Kinross ancestral home, by his father as a consequence of the Jacobite uprising in 1745.  Living in Sweden with his family, Brice is betrayed in love by his brother and his brother's new wife, the girl he himself intended to marry. When his father suspects that things are not all what they seem at Rosyth, he encourages Brice to go to Scotland, take up the reins of his inheritance and put things to rights. With an eye toward a new beginning, he leaves Sweden and heads "home."

Marsaili Buchanan, Brice's deceased uncle's illegitimate daughter (more simply, his second cousin) acts as housekeeper at Rosyth. Instilled there by Brice's aunt and looked after by her half-sisters, Marsaili continuously butts heads with the estate manager, Colin Seton. He wants Marsaili for a wife, but she refuses him repeatedly. Seton is not what he appears to be, and only his son, Iain knows exactly what he's up to. However, Iain's loyalties are tested repeatedly as he loves Marsaili's half sister. When Brice shows up at Rosyth House and declares himself Laird, he begins to slowly win over his tenants by deed as well as character. At the same time, he makes some very powerful enemies. Faced with the ultimate threat to his plan, Seton begins to plot revenge and this revenge is what keeps the book moving through the final few pages.

On a personal level, Brice must overcome his reluctance to trust in love when he finds himself attracted to his beautiful cousin.  For her part, Marsaili has to make sure Brice's intentions are honorable before she reciprocates those feelings,  as she has a fear of becoming like her mother, a wanton who finally settled into marriage only to allow her husband to physically abuse her. But before this can happen, fate intervenes and puts them both into abject danger.

Set against the backdrop of the aftermath of Culloden and the dismantling of the clan system in the Highlands, Highland Storms evokes all the hardship and desolation faced and felt by the once proud inhabitants of that part of Scotland. Ms. Courtenay writes an engaging and fast moving story. The only problem I have with it is that a good deal of the dialogue and some of the action (for example, the characters, including the women, seem to like to punch each other in the arms a good deal to signify good humor) seemed a bit too contemporary for a novel set in the mid 18th century. It was a bit jarring and somewhat difficult to get past in spots, but I tried my best to put that aside, and once I did, it was easy to get lost in Brice and Marsaili's love story.  Just out now from Choc Lit publishers, Highland Storms is a fast moving, engaging, love trumps all tale definitely worth a read.

Holly Lane, by Toni Blake

It was the perfect marriage. They were the couple who had everything for as long as anyone could remember. But the rock solid marriage of Sue Ann and Jeff, a couple we've come to know in the previous Destiny novels, doesn't survive the first few pages of Holly Lane, Toni Blake's new offering in this incredible series.
     Fast forward six months. It's Thanksgiving weekend and Sue Ann, still struggling with Jeff's abandonment, books a cabin in the woods. A weekend away by herself may be just the thing to help her find some peace. But Sue Ann's attempt at tranquil solitude is interrupted by the sudden appearance of Jeff's best friend, her daughter's godfather and all around town "good guy," Adam Becker. However, Adam is anything but feeling good at the moment. His boys are spending the entire holiday season far away with his ex's family and he's grumpy and miserable - not at all his usual self. And now he's just plain annoyed because the plans for his very own solitary, brooding weekend are over. The lodge booked both of them into the same cabin and the unexpected snow storm forces the two to spend the night together. 

     And let's be clear....they spend the spend the night TOGETHER.  Thank you, Ms. Blake for not making us wait this one out. Friends for a long time, they know each other well and whether it's the coziness of a rustic cabin warmed by a roaring fire or the loneliness and frustration each one is feeling, or perhaps a little of both, within a few short pages we are treated to one of the most sizzling love scenes I've read since...well, since the last Destiny novel.
     The snow eventually stops and as Sue Ann and Adam part company, they decide their brief interlude must be just that - brief and over. However, as connoisseurs of the genre know, nothing is ever that simple and the two spend the rest of the novel unsuccessfully denying the inevitable attraction while trying to overcome their individual issues.  

     Ms. Blake takes a very creative approach and evokes Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, comparing Adam with Ebenezer Scrooge. Frankly, this surprised me. After all, Adam is not a bad person. He's just having a crap holiday season and spending it in a perpetual black mood. Overall, Adam's issues are mild compared to the heavy baggage carried around by some of the previous Destiny heroes. Mick Brody, for one, comes to mind. But the comparison really does work, as Adam, it turns out, is far from perfect himself. Eventually, he realizes the error of his ways (reminiscent of Scrooge) and does several things so wonderful, so impossibly heartwarming, all should be forgiven. 
     But Sue Ann can't seem to forgive Adam, nor can she forget him. Here Ms. Blake shines as she makes Sue Ann's confusion very real. After all, Sue Ann's concern for her daughter is first and foremost and she needs to make sense of her new status as single mother and sole provider. A new relationship is just too much to handle. And who can blame her for not trusting Adam, given his behavior in the context of her ex-husband's betrayal. But it's oh so gratifying to see Sue Ann grow from victim into victor - a woman who begins to take charge of her life by rebuilding it one day at a time and, in the process, finding the courage to embrace love again.

     Holly Lane is the kind of wonderful, complex romance we've come to expect from Ms. Blake. The characters are human, their flaws - open and raw - are mended by love. A perfect read for any time of year, may it find its way into your heart this holiday season.

The Very Picture of You, by Isabel Wolff

At first glance, The Very Picture of You, by Isabel Wolff,  is the story of an artist's way of life. In reality, however, it's so much more. Ella Graham, a talented portrait artist, has quite a few commissions to finish. Each sitting to Ella is like a therapy session. In the course of conversation, her subjects slowly reveal themselves to her until who they truly are is what she portrays them to be. But there's more to this story than meets the eye, or canvas, as it were. The secondary characters in this novel, while at first seemingly unrelated, are in fact, woven together to present a common and recurrent element. Mike, a local politician, Iris, a pleasant elderly woman, Celine, a dissatisfied housewife, Grace, the one posthumous commission Ella takes on, Chloe, Ella's half sister, Sue, her mother, Roy, her step-father and lastly, Nate, Chloe's intended, are wrapped around the central themes of marriage, infidelity, abandonment and forgiveness. And it's written in such a way that you are seeing and feeling everything Ella does until you too, have a complete picture of each character, without ever actually seeing their portrait. It's probably about as fine an example of descriptive writing I have come across in a very long time.

Overarching these stories is Ella, herself a two-time victim of clandestine loves that if revealed, would destroy the relationships her family has worked so hard to build over the years. She's also presented with a life changing decision, a road that if taken could destroy her mother yet turn the page on an old hurt that has colored every part of her life since the age of 5. Will she reach out and grab the opportunities presented to her? Or will she decide that the rewards to be gained from love are not worth the price she will have to pay?

Ella is far from perfect, even though she is an extraordinary artist. She makes a few wild (and it turns out wrong) assumptions along the way. I was surprised actually, at her gullibility in certain situations and her tendency to believe the worst in people without giving them the benefit of the doubt. I soon realized, however, that this trait was important because it revealed a distinct inability to see the two sides that might exist to a story. This turns out to be a crucial factor in her relationship with her mother, the most important relationship Ella has in this novel until the very end of the  book, when the seemingly impossible resolutions to her dilemmas (happily for her) become reality.

Utilizing wonderful secondary characters, each with their own story to tell, including a family that, while not dysfunctional could certainly use some lessons in honesty and communication, Isabel Wolff has written a worthy follow-up to A Vintage Affair, also reviewed here at Bookishly Attentive. On sale in hardcover on October 4, The Very Picture of You is a must-read for anyone looking for a moving family story that paints a beautifully vivid picture with words.