My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me by Jason Rosenthal

My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me by Jason Rosenthal is a deeply personal account of his life with writer Amy Krouse Rosenthal, her death from ovarian cancer, and his grief experience. The title comes from an essay Amy wrote shortly before her death that gave him public permission to continue living his life.

This memoir is a candid look into the life of the Rosenthals, the home hospice experience with Amy, and how Jason and his children are continuing their lives. The book overflows with his deep love and devotion to his wife and their family.

At some point, a married couple is most likely to lose one of its members. Jason's book could be considered a self-help book as he encourages sharing grief and reaching out to others. He includes an excellent bibliography for additional bibliotherapy.

Jason Rosenthal is an author, Board Chair of the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation, public speaker, and lawyer.

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Marie Benedict seems to be gathering, one by one, some of the strongest women who ever lived to tell their stories. Lady Clementine (rhymes with Josephine) is her latest historical fiction that tells the story of the woman behind the man, in this case, Winston Churchill.

Clemmie was more than just a wife. She was her husband’s partner in all ways. The burden of her job as supportive wife came at a high cost: her nerves were often shattered, and she could not be the mother she wanted to be when having to fulfill the needs of her husband, most especially during two world wars.

She was so ambitious that she might have been the prime minister of England herself had she been born in a different time. Much like American first ladies have their niche while in the White House, Clementine found her own ways to be supportive of her husband’s mission. During WW II, for example, she completely reformed the nasty air raid shelters into something more hygienic and safer for those who needed shelter for as much as 14 hours a day from the bombings.

Marie Benedict’s subjects don’t always interest me, but her writing draws me in each time. While I tire of world war books, I found a different perspective of the war from one who lived through it.



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The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

I’m always a sucker for books about libraries and bookshops, and this one did not disappoint. The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs is about Natalie Harper who lost both her mother and her boyfriend on the same day in a plane crash. Natalie, who is not happy with her inventory specialist job at a winery in the Napa Valley, is suddenly the proprietor of her mother’s San Francisco bookstore, a venture heavily in debt and in much need of repair.

The most immediate repairs are handled by a local contractor Peach Gallagher, who just happens to be a very nice man and the father of one of the store’s best patrons, Dorothy Gail. Besides running the bookstore, Natalie is also assisting her ailing grandfather who grew up in the store’s living quarters and had a typewriter repair shop there before the age of computers.

When little Dorothy realizes the bookshop is in trouble, she writes to a famous children’s author, who takes an interest in the bookshop and its manager. A sold-out event with the author infuses the bookstore with some much-needed cash but it’s not nearly enough to pay off all the debt Natalie’s mother had accumulated. Will The Lost and Found Bookshop be just one more independent bookstore to close?

I haven’t read much of Susan Wiggs but I would classify her as a writer of women’s fiction. Her fans will surely love this tale of the trials and tribulations facing bookstores today.

What You Wish For by Katherine Center

What You Wish For by Katherine Center intrigued me because the description said: “Samantha Casey loves everything about her job as an elementary school librarian…” I was a school librarian myself for 14 years, and it was probably the best, most fun, most demanding job I ever had.

Sam worked in a private school on Galveston Island in Texas. The founder and beloved principal died recently. He was replaced by someone Sam taught with in another school who she knew would be absolutely amazing although she had some trepidation about him coming to her school as she had been secretly in love with him.

But the clever, funny guy she remembered Duncan Carpenter to be had disappeared inside a gray suit wearing, militant type who basically wants to turn the school into a prison with gray walls covering everything, including a butterfly mural. He planned on having students and staff wear gray uniforms. He cancelled all field trips. His goal: make this the safest school ever.

The staff soon was rebelling. The teachers wanted their new principal fired. Before giving up on him, Sam and two of her colleagues came up with a plan to try to redeem this once funny, carefree, playful guy who had turned hard-core radical in the name of school safety. Can they turn this stern-faced principal back into the juggling, dancing, goofy guy who Sam remembered?

My first experience with Katherine Center was earlier this year with her book Things You Save in a Fire. Her writing is lighthearted and uplifting. Based on the two books I’ve read by her now, I would describe her as a new voice in women’s fiction or chick-lit.

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabell Allende

Isabel Allende’s latest, A Long Petal of the Sea, takes its name from a term the poet Pablo Neruda gave to his long and narrow coastal birthplace. In this novel, Chile becomes the place of exile for a young couple with a child who have fled the devastation of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s.

Victor Dalmau served as a medical assistant during the war, and his brother Guillem fought in the war. Roser Bruguera was taking music lessons from their father and eventually came to live with them. She fell in love with Guillem, becoming pregnant by him, and the two planned to marry after the war. Instead, life intervened, and Roser entered a marriage of convenience with Victor and fled the atrocities of Spain with him and her baby Marcel to Chile.

A fictional Pablo Neruda sponsors many Spanish exiles to travel to Chile to start a new life in 1939 just as Europe is ready to break out into World War II.

The Dalmaus make a life for themselves in Chile. Victor finishes his education to become a doctor, and Roser plays piano and eventually becomes a professor of music. Marcel grows up in a loving home. Roser and Victor pose for many years as a married couple but they are strictly platonic friends. Victor is distracted by a young Chilean woman, and Roser has her own affair.

For many years, they thrive in Chile, until a military coup overthrows the government, and for some reason, Victor is treated as an enemy. The couple find themselves repeating their experience in Spain and soon enter exile again.

Isabel Allende, bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author.” An exile from Chile herself, Allende infuses the story of Victor and Roser with realism.

Been There Married That by Gigi Levangie

Sometimes you just need a funny, escapist book, and Been There, Married That by Gigi Levangie is just the one that can deliver although watch out for the raunchy factor. Still mining her former marriage to producer Brian Grazer, screenwriter Levangie (Step Mom) has produced another ode to Hollywood wives and ex-wives. As a non-Hollywood insider, a lot of the one liners and name drops went over my head, but for those Kardashian and Real Housewives fans, there will be much here to savor.

Agnes Murphy Nash is a book author married to Trevor Nash, big shot Hollywood producer and narcissist. He has decided he doesn’t want to do marriage anymore. With lots of dirty tricks -- locking her out, cancelling the credit cards, having her sister locked up, sending her off to rehab for her almond addiction – Trevor wants full custody of their daughter Pep and to win in the divorce proceedings.

When Agnes finally digs in and fights back, Trevor doubles down by bugging the house and gluing her keyboard, but with the support of her father and sister, Agnes intends to prevail.

Gigi Levangie books are for those who enjoy the exploits of the Hollywood crowd. I have enjoyed her earlier books although she continues to tell the same basic story of being the starter wife of a Hollywood mogul. Fans of Lauren Weisberger and Candace Bushnell will enjoy this author’s snarky insight into Tinseltown.

Dead Land by Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky characterizes her newest book Dead Land as the first book she has written without her beloved husband who died in 2018. V.I. Warshawski tackles city hall as she gets involved in a fight about land use on Chicago’s lake front thanks to her goddaughter’s interest in the project.

Before long people are dead and a once-popular singer-songwriter, Lydia Zamir, is missing. Zamir’s boyfriend was killed four years earlier, and she has never recovered. Before he was killed, Hector traveled to South America in search of his roots, stirring up a hornet’s nest.

V.I.’s involvement brings her another dog, Bear, left to her by mystery man Coop, who is involved not only with protesting plans for land use but who is also a self-appointed guardian of the singer-songwriter Lydia Zamir.

V.I.’s search for Zamir and Coop takes her to Kansas where she is shot at not once but twice. Before she can untangle this web, reporter Murray Ryerson will also be injured as someone tries to put him out of commission before he can finish his story about the problems on the waterfront.

I never miss a Sara Paretsky book as she is an amazing writer, and her V.I. Warshawski is one smart cookie. Mystery fans will love the latest from this Chicago-based writer.