February Book Review 5-10

The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir - Patricia Harman
I've read several books about midwives, most often they are full of the love and joy of birth and maybe the occasional sad moment, this is not that kind of midwife book.  Instead while we still get some patient stories most of them are on the sad side.  We see teen mothers, miscarriages, drug abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, we read about IRS payments, shrinking insurance pay outs, increasing OB insurance cost.  This is not a feel good book about babies being born, this is a story of the bind and grind of health care.  It tells the story of how health care work bare the burden of our worries and for their trouble they are rewarded with stress and frustration.  I can't say I liked this book.  It actually stressed me out, here on the edge of our family finishing residency I still realize that heath care has more pitfalls than most occupations.  Things like malpractice insurance, reimbursement rates, outrageously high taxes and IRS liens, and potential law suits, these things are rock filled waters waiting to be maneuvered.  Patricia says at one point that she has to drink a glassful of liquor each night in order to sleep, just dwelling on this book made me feel like I needed a drink :(


Blackmoore (Proper Romances) - Julianne Donaldson
This was my book group choice of the month.  I wanted to read the Song of Izzy, but I was worried the sadness and the sex scene would make my book group scoff...so I choose this book.  It is a romance novel which seemed appropriate for Valentine's Day, but the kind a Mormon girl could read...written in the vein of times when you don't have to worry about sex scenes because for crying out loud people of the opposite sex can't even figure out how to talk to each other.  I really enjoyed this book.  Don't get me wrong, Kate Worthingon is super annoying.  She makes her life so much more difficult because she just doesn't share her problems but I guess I understand what she is thinking and it can't really be her fault that her mother and sisters are insufferable.  But seriously it is like when you are reading a Jane Austen novel and you just want to scream, "for the love just say what you need!"  I'm so glad that I was born in this time and this place....I can barely take the subtleties of flirting, flirting while staying proper, negotiating the rules of class and gender would be unbearable.  Henry Delafield the love interest is pretty delicious.  He is a gentleman but rugged.  There is a scene where he gets out of the ocean naked and then puts on his pants but leaves his shirt off...okay maybe it is a little edgy for a clean novel but he is a great leading boy/man.  Please someone tell me they won't be making a movie out of this one day and use Josh Hutcherson.  Look the guy has grown on me but he is all wrong even for Peta.  Liam Hemsworth on the other hand would make a very nice Henry.   Here is the deal with this book, it is a little contrived but it made me cry, it made me cry a lot and to be honest even if it was contrived it was a nice fun little short read.


The Glass Castle: A Memoir - Jeannette Walls
I feel like this book made the book club rounds almost ten years ago, but somehow I managed to miss it.  Basically you follow the growing up of Jeannette Wells and her three siblings.  Her parents were horrible.  There are worse parents in the world, there really are, but these two think they are doing their kids favors by being so neglectful and it is just insufferable. I just wanted to scream at my book...almost the entire book.  The things is there are just so many moments like this, what's worse the eating the chocolate bar when your children are starving or refusing to sell a ring when they are freezing?  There are just so many moments like this, you want to scream!!!!  In truth the parents are most definitely mentally ill but it just doesn't make it any easier to deal with.  The remarkable thing though is that Jeaneette and her siblings were able to escape and three of them really thrived.  They were amazing, the persevered and they were amazing.


The Passage - Justin Cronin
I found this list of best books of 2014.  This one was one of them.  It started out pretty good for me.  There was a woman down on her luck who turned to prostitution, her young daughter caught in the cross fire, an FBI agent...I was on board.  Then the next thing I know there is a vampire virus, pretty much all the characters I like die and then you move 100 years into the future.  Things still don't make sense and next thing I know all my favorite characters are dying again.  Then I get to the end and it turns out this is just one book in a series.  I'm starting to feel like authors owe me a little line at the beginning of a book..."FYI this book is just one in a long series because I want to milk this for as much money as I can so please know you are going to feel no resolution when you finish".  Then at least I know I'm going to feel down after slogging though your freaking 766 page book where everyone I liked died!  So yeah this is how I felt about The Passage.


Ruin and Rising - Leigh Bardugo
This is the third and final installment in this series....I love, love, loved the first book.  The second book was ok.  This one was kind of dud for me.  I'm glad I finished it because I wanted to know what happened, but I just did not enjoy it.  It is a crying shame because this story was/is great and I think it YA readers would love it, but man it is depressing when a series finishes like this.  Bummer!!!!







The Gospel Truth - Caroline Pignat
1858, Phoebe is a house slave/ladies maid to Master Duncan's daughter.  Everything on the plantation is about to change with a visit from Doctor Bergman who is on the plantation to study birds.  This novel is written in verse and I loved it.  You have multi character's voices, it is super dramatic, written in a historically accurate voice, it follows the underground train, and I'm actually starting to love poetry.