Review: Finding Maslow by Susan Lee Walberg ★★★★
Finding Maslow is a touching literary novel about the lives of people affected by Hurricane Sandy. It centers around Justina, a somewhat-hapless law student and politician’s daughter, who gets trapped in her house with the handyman, Daniel, during the storm. Her home is spared, but the neighborhood is in shambles, and her father doesn’t quite approve of her budding romance with Daniel, who he considers beneath her. It’s a story about overcoming adversity in both the small details of your life and during major life-changing events.
Walberg’s writing is clean and precise, and she shows great empathy for all of […]
B The EXXtinction by Santiago Mantilla is a dystopian science fiction novel proposing the provocative question: what would happen if men go extinct? Despotic ruler Queen Estevez starts a civil war to exterminate the male population. What she didn’t count on is how many males and females are bonded together, and don’t want to join her crusade. Noah and his daughter, Talayeh, find themselves in the middle of the rebellion, and the subtitle of the novel is brought to light: “The Only Hope for Man Is a Woman.”
Thirty Days to Thirty is a fun and emotionally-charged novel about a woman who’s just approaching thirty who loses everything: In the space of a few hours she gets fired from her job and then finds her boyfriend of six years has been cheating on her. Just when she thought her whole life was coming together and she was on the right track, everything falls apart, and instead finds herself living again with her parents. And so she gets innovative: she finds an old list of things she hoped to accomplish before she turned thirty, and with a few friends […]
Living Fulfilled: The Infectious Joy of Serving Others is Lisa Thomas-McMillan’s inspirational memoir about helping the plight of America’s hungry that is equal parts harrowing and uplifting. With a decidedly spiritual message, she tells of her life growing up impoverished in Alabama, settling down in Los Angeles, then traveling back to her hometown to help the plight of the poor. She is also a fierce advocate against the death penalty.
Blue Sky, the second book in the Morrow Girls series, starts off where book one left off: after “Pecan” Marrow has struggled through an abusive marriage while trying to raise four dynamic girls, Blue Sky follows the life of the girls. The girls have broken spirits from their tumultuous upbringing, but they’re still plenty spirited. One by one, we learn the girls stories and how their past and family affected their present life. It’s not just a case of the girls against the world: it’s the girls against each other.
With New Eyes is the moving sequel to Heidi Siefkas’s memoir When All Balls Drop, about Siefkas’s accident: taking out the trash one day in upstate New York, a thousand-pound tree branch fell on her from out of nowhere, breaking her neck. That wasn’t the only thing that broke: her marriage (already difficult) dissolved, and she lost her high-powered job in the travel industry. With New Eyes picks up where the first book left off: Siefkas is healed up, for the most part, but now has eyes on putting her life back together.
Juliet’s Journey by Kathy Gates is a delightful and comforting novella about traveling outside your country and your comfort zone. Juliet is a thirty-year-old graphic designer who decides to volunteer at an art school in the tiny village of Baiardo (a real place, the pictures of Baiardo are astounding). As sometimes can only happen in an exotic locale, Juliet learns to open up and be more comfortable with herself and her past.