The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow

This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.

Club Rating: 3.7

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Alice Howland - Harvard professor, gifted researcher and lecturer, wife, and mother of three grown children - sets out for a run and soon realizes she has no idea how to find her way home. She has taken the route for years, but nothing looks familiar. She is utterly lost. Medical consults reveal early-onset Alzheimer's. Alice's slowly but inevitably loses memory and connection with reality, told from her perspective.

People could relate but also understood that at a certain point, this disease goes so far beyond what we can relate to.   How horrific to understand you have this disease and there is nothing you can do.  This disease is harder for those around you. 

Club Rating: 3.4

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

When college student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating.  The unworldly Ana realizes she wants this man, and Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian’s secrets and explores her own desires.

Some hated it, some enjoyed it.  All agreed that it is a fluffy beach read.  The difference between a quality romance novel  and this book is, this book is "story, sex, story, sex, story, sex", there was no natural progression towards the sex like romance novels.


Club Rating: 3.0

The Solder's Wife by Margaret Leroy

A wife who's husband has gone off to war and is left in their home on Guernsey Island to take care of their two daughters and his mother-in-law while the Germans occupy the Island. So many beautiful descriptions that make you feel the conflicting emotions and what it would have been like to have lived in that time.

Everyone liked it. There were a couple incongruences in the story line that some found frustrating. The mother was weak but, who is to say what we would do in those. An enjoyable read that did a beautiful job of capturing the flowers, chocolate and other sensations. Made for a good discussion 

Club rating:4.3

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

This is a slow, magical fairy tale type of book. Everything from the wonderful  character development to the author's ability to capture the haunting dramatic breathtaking wilderness and lifestyle of Alaska. Everyone in the club really enjoyed this book

Club Rating: 4.6

Unsaid by Neil Abrahamson

Helena, a vet, has died and she finds that it is not so easy to move on. She is terrified that her 37 years of life were meaningless, error-ridden, and forgettable. So Helena haunts-- and is haunted by-- the life she left behind. Meanwhile, her attorney husband David, struggles with grief and the demands of caring for her houseful of damaged and beloved animals. But it is her absence from her last project, Cindy-- a chimpanzee who may unlock the mystery of communication and consciousness-- that will have the greatest impact on all of them.

Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk

It's the story of Norman Paperman, a New York City press agent who, facing the onset of middle age, runs away to a Caribbean island to reinvent himself as a hotel keeper. (Hilarity and disaster -- of a sort peculiar to the tropics -- ensue.)

Wouk draws on his own experience (Wouk and his family lived for seven years on an island in the sun) to tell this story.

Club Rating: 4.0

When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe

A historical fiction that is a mix of the horrid atrocities of the Japanese on the Filipino people in WWII, and the wonderful magical tales of the Philippines -

Club Rating: 3.8

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

Vera's spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she's kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.

So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?

Club Rating: 3.6

Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen

This story revolves around three young girls. Letty, Cordelia and Astrid in the 1929 glittering metropolis of Manhatten. All Letty wants is to see her name in lights, but she quickly discovers Manhattan is filled with pretty girls who will do anything to be a star… Cordelia is searching for the father she's never known, a man as infamous for his wild parties as he is for his shadowy schemes.Astrid is a flapper who seems to have it all: money, looks, and the love of Cordelia's brother, Charlie. But Astrid's perfect veneer hides a score of family secrets. 

Club Rating: 3.3

The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah

Set in the 1940's, nine-year-old Raj is unaware of the war devastating the rest of the world. He lives in Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, where survival is a daily struggle for his family. When a brutal beating lands Raj in the hospital of the prison camp where his father is a guard, he meets a mysterious boy his own age. 

David is a refugee, one of a group of Jewish exiles whose harrowing journey took them from Nazioccupied Europe to Palestine, where they were refused entry and sent on to indefinite detainment in Mauritius.  This novel sheds light on a fascinating and unexplored corner of World War II history.

Rating: 4.5

American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin

In the Victorian-era, Cora Cash is traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage. 

Club Rating: 3.6