Tag: found family

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Have you ever seen a book cover and thought, ‘I could get lost in that world’? Well I thought that when I picked up my latest read, The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer. The shelves of books and purple clouds combined with the shining lighthouse and imposing castle in the background pulled me in, demanding I learn its secrets.

Lucy Hart grew up wishing that her parents loved her. Her childhood was spent alone, the daughter of parents who neglected her to deal with her older medically complex sister. Raised by her grandparents, Lucy spent her childhood finding hope and safety in books. The books that impacted her the most were the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. When Lucy becomes a teacher’s aide, she introduces this series to one of her students, Christopher, when she discovers that he is having a hard time. Lucy and Christopher quickly grow close, leading Lucy to wish that she could adopt Christopher from foster care. She has plans to make their dreams come true, but when life conspires to thwart their plans, she is left at a loss.

At her lowest, Lucy’s life suddenly takes a turn when Jack Masterson announces that he’s written a new book! The twist: he’s only written one copy and is planning a contest on Clock Island for four people to compete to win this only copy. Lucy is beyond excited when she learns that she has been chosen to compete! Winning this contest has the power to drastically change her and Christopher’s lives. As soon as she arrives on Clock Island, Lucy realizes she’s up against more than just the other three contestants. A potential love interest is also on the island, distracting her and intriguing her at the same time. While everyone contends with their own problems, Jack sits in the background, planning twists, games, and clues with almost endless power.

Told from the perspectives of multiple characters, The Wishing Game details characters who are all fighting to find where they fit in in the world. Found family is a major theme in this book, drawing characters towards each other in ways that will change their lives forever. Characters grow throughout this book, showcasing their ability to change combined with their desire to better themselves and their circumstances. I loved the world-building in this book! The fact that Jack actually built Clock Island was so beautiful. The Clock Island series by Jack Masterson sounds like something younger Stephanie would have enjoyed, making me wish that it was real!

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
― Meg Shaffer, The Wishing Game

The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“Why read at all? Why does anyone do it in the first place? Why do I? There is the element of escape, which is real enough—that’s a real-enough comfort. But also we read as a way to come to grips with the randomness of our being alive. To read a book by an observant, sympathetic mind is to see the human landscape in all its odd detail, and the reader says to him or herself, Yes, that’s how it is, only I didn’t know it to describe it. There’s a fraternity achieved, then: we are not alone. Sometimes an author’s voice is familiar to us from the first page, first paragraph, even if the author lived in another country, in another century.” Bob held up his stack of Russians. “How can you account for this familiarity? I do believe that, at our best, there is a link connecting us.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Librarianist

In celebration of National Library Week in April, I was on a hunt for a book about librarians that I had not read yet. Enter The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt, a novel that combines my love of senior citizens with my love of librarians. Bob Comet is a retired librarian. He’s spending his retirement surrounded by books in his mint-colored house in Oregon. Bob has his small comforts and his routines. On his daily walk one morning, Bob stumbles upon a confused elderly woman standing lost in a market. She’s staring into the cold sections with a lost look on her face. Lucky for Bob, and the clerk working behind the counter, the lost woman has a note secured around her neck letting people know where she lives. Bob volunteers to escort this lost woman home to the senior center. Once they arrive, Bob is intrigued by the people he meets. He decides to volunteer at the senior center, a decision that changes his whole life. The more Bob interacts with the people at the senior center, the more parts of his past and character are revealed to the reader.

This book felt like a warm hug from a close friend. The characters were charming, full of quirks and colors. Every person Bob met ended up shaping his life in some way. Even though this book was charming and cheerful, it was also full of melancholy and bittersweet with a bit of darkness under the surface. Bob’s past is colorful and complicated. He has a knack for finding bizarre and full-of-life people that he welcomes into his life. The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt reads like a love story to loners, to the outcasts in life who aren’t sure where they fit, to the introverts who want to be left alone amongst the fast-paced world they live in. People’s pasts are a mystery and this book is a prime example to never judge a person by the calm front they present.

This title is also available in large print or CD audiobook.

Happy Place by Emily Henry

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“I want my life to be like-like making pottery. I want to enjoy it while it’s happening, not just for where it might get me eventually.”
― Emily Henry, Happy Place

Emily Henry is one of those romance authors that never disappoints, for me at least. Her latest book, Happy Place, is a dual timeline, forced proximity, found family, second chance romance that tugs at your heart strings.

What would you do if you started dating someone from your friend group, got engaged, and then broke off your engagement? How would you tell the other people in your friend group? How would you handle figuring out all the relationships with this change after ten years? These questions are what Harriet ‘Harry’ Kilpatrick and Wyndham ‘Wyn’ Connor have to deal with now that they aren’t together anymore.

Harriet and Wyn are the perfect couple, have been since they met in college. Well except for now and they don’t want to talk about it. The issue? They broke up five months ago and haven’t told their best friends. Harriet and Wyn have a plan that might work if it wasn’t for their yearly friend vacation. Their plans come crashing down when both end up at their annual weeklong vacation despite the plan that this year would be Harriet’s turn to vacation by herself.

Well shoot. Harriet and Wyn now have to share a bedroom and pretend they are still together for the sake of their friends. They have been vacationing at this Maine cottage for their friend group’s yearly vacation for the last decade. For this one week, they are all together without the pressures of their daily lives. When they were younger in college, they spent copious amounts of time together, but as they got older, this one week became the only time when they could count on seeing everyone together. It’s tradition. A tradition hanging on delicate strings as it becomes clear that their friends have secrets to tell on this year’s vacation.

Harriet and Wyn only have to keep their secret for one more week, but this proves even more difficult as they are forced together after not seeing each other in person OR talking in over five months. They were in love for years, so faking it for one more week shouldn’t be that hard, right?

What I enjoyed the most in this book is watching the characters grow as individuals and in their relationships. A lot of romance I have read doesn’t necessarily show growth and if it does, it tends to gloss over what led to the changes. In this title, Emily Henry gives her characters room to grow and has them explain their choices both in their heads and out loud to others. The characters are well developed and even the ‘side characters’ don’t feel like side characters. They are key players and all have their own important story arcs. Well done.

This book is also available in large print, CD audiobook, and Playaway audiobook.

“Things change, but we stretch and grow and make room for one another. Our love is a place we can always come back to, and it will be waiting, the same as it ever was. You belong here. ”
― Emily Henry, Happy Place

Online Reading Challenge – January Wrap-Up

- Ann Leave a comment

Hello Challenge Readers!

How did the first Book Flight reading challenge work for you? Did you read the main title or one of the alternates? Or did you find something else that might fit into this month’s theme of belonging, connection and found family?

I read the main title, The Orphan Train by Christina Kline and enjoyed a look into this unique time in our history when children that had been orphaned or abandoned were sent west by train where they would (hopefully) be taken in by foster families. The intention was good – saving children from a grim existence in crowded conditions in the cities to the clean, open air of the country – but the results were not always positive. Many children were seen as free labor to work in the fields or as servants in the house, and were mistreated and abused. Many were separated from siblings and friends, and forced to enter a new, unknown life alone.

The Orphan Train is the story of one of these orphans, Vivian Daly. She has recently immigrated from Ireland with her parents and sister, but her parents have died and her sister is lost after a fire in their tenement. At 10 years old, she is placed on an “orphan train”, leaving New York City for Minnesota and an uncertain future. There she suffers hardships, but also eventually finds her place in the world.

I was struck by Vivian’s courage as she is forced to leave everything she knows at such a young age. Watching her struggle with and overcome horrible situations can be heartbreaking. Vivian’s reaction is to carefully build walls around her heart. Eventually she is able to carve out a happy life, although it may not have been the life she once wished for.

In comparing this title to the others in this month’s Book Flight (Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman), all of the main characters are alone and struggling to find their way, and in each, in one way or another, they find people and reasons to live. If you’ve read any of the books, how did you feel about the main character’s coping mechanism? Did they isolate and protect themselves, or did they reach out – however reluctantly – to others? How did their experiences influence how they treated others? How did they move beyond past traumas, or did those memories haunt them? In The Orphan Train, Vivian calls them “ghosts”. Did the characters use past memories as comfort, or as motivation to move on? In each of these titles, there is a strong theme of reaching out to others and connection, but there is also a common thread of being forced to leave something beloved behind. This letting go can be wrenching – how did the characters cope – or not cope – with these losses?

Be sure to leave any thoughts you have about this month’s reading in the comments!

 

Announcing: the Online Reading Challenge 2022!

- Ann Leave a comment

Welcome to the 2022 Online Reading Challenge!

Get ready for another year (our 7th!) of reading recommendations with our super-casual, low-stress reading club!

Our theme for 2022 is Book Flights! A Book Flight, similar to a wine or beer flight, is a series of books with similar themes. Sometimes the themes are obvious, sometimes they’re a little deeper. I’ve chosen a critically acclaimed titles plus 3-4 complementary books for each month. I’ll briefly describe each book and pick one to read myself. You can choose to read the main book or one of the accompanying titles or even something else completely! At the end of the month I’ll write about what I read and pose some questions about the themes from that month’s books and invite you to comment with your observations.

Of course, as always, you may do as you please – there are no Library Police! So if you wish to skip a month, or read more than one book in that month or read a book from a different month – go for it! No one will drag you off to Library Jail if you choose your own path!

Ok, let’s get started!

The theme for January is belonging, connection and found family and our main title is The Orphan Train by Christina Kline.

Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to ‘aging out’ out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance. Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life–answers that will ultimately free them both. Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.

You can find more information about this book and the author as well as sample discussion questions in our Book Club Lib Guide.

Books that round out January’s Book Flight are:

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano.

One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor. Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

For years, rumors of the ‘Marsh Girl’ have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She’s barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world – until the unthinkable happens.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.

A curmudgeon hides a terrible personal loss beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.

I’ll be reading this month’s main title, The Orphan Train. I’ve read the other three titles in the book flight in the past; they are all excellent and I highly recommend all of them.

Be sure to check back at the end of the month when we’ll open up a discussion!