Today I am reviewing Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel for TLC Book Tours. As always, I am provided with a free copy of the book for my honest review.

About the book:

Set against a vivid and lush South Florida background during the years of Miami’s coming-of-age, Stiltsville offers a gripping, bittersweet portrait of a marriage—and romance—that deepens over the course of three decades.
One sunny morning in 1969, near the end of her first trip to Miami, twenty-six-year-old Frances Ellerby finds herself in a place called Stiltsville, a community of houses built on pilings in the middle of Biscayne Bay. On the dock of a stilt house, with the dazzling skyline in the distance and the unknowable ocean beneath her, she meets the house’s owner, Dennis DuVal—and a new future reveals itself.

Turning away from her life, Frances moves to Miami to be with Dennis. Over time, she earns the confidence of his wild-at-heart sister and the approval of his oldest friend. Frances and Dennis marry and have a child—but rather than growing complacent about their good fortune, they continue to face the challenges of intimacy, and of the complicated city they call home.

Stiltsville was called “an exquisite debut” by Publishers Weekly, and “a perfect balance of wit, weakness and tenderness . . . wonderfully buoyant” by BookPage.  Susanna Daniel interweaves the beauty, chaos, and humanity of Miami with an enduring story of a marriage’s beginning, maturity, and heartbreaking demise.

My review:  One of the perks of reviewing a book I might not otherwise encounter occurs when I get to discover a terrific new writer and a novel that is simply wonderful.  And this book is. Susanna Daniel is a marvelous writer. She draws on her own experience living in Stiltsville with her family as a young girl. Her descriptions of Miami and the Biscayne Bay are so vivid that I felt I was there. She clearly knows the city of her growing-up years intimately.

Even more powerful, though, is her loving portrait of a marriage. We first meet Frances and Dennis when they are young and travel with them as they navigate marriage, parenthood, job loss and other challenges. These two characters are so finely drawn, so fully realized that the reader feels like a friend who is there as everything happens. It is an honest, beautifully written portrait of a marriage. Family, extended family, and long-time friends are also very much a part of this novel. When faced with the ultimate challenge, will the marriage stay strong? You’ll have to read this beautiful novel to see. I recommend this book highly.

About the author:

Susanna Daniel was born and raised in Miami, Florida, where she spent much of her childhood at her family’s stilt house in Biscayne Bay. She is a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Susanna lives with her husband and son in Madison, Wisconsin, where during the long winter she dreams of the sun and the sea, and of jumping off the stilt house porch at high tide. She is at work on a second novel.

Today I am reviewing Home Again by Mariah Stewart for TLC Book Tours. While they have provided me with a free copy of the book, I am always encouraged to give an honest review.

From the publisher:

Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 27, 2010)

Dallas MacGregor is living the Hollywood dream. At thirtysomething, she’s an award-winning actress beloved by the public and bound for even bigger success. But when her soon-to-be-ex-husband, producer Emilio Baird, is caught in a sex scandal, Dallas’s charmed life turns tabloid nightmare. Determined to shield her young son, Cody, from the ugly uproar, Dallas seeks refuge in sleepy St. Dennis, Maryland—the Chesapeake Bay town where her happiest childhood days were spent. Reunited with her boisterous great-aunt, Dallas wants nothing more than to leave her Hollywood days behind. And when she crosses paths with local veterinarian Grant Wyler, her high school summer love, she finds he’s everything she remembers, and more—and that the spark is still there. But Dallas’s promising new life takes a troubling turn when the unimaginable happens and she finds herself living a mother’s worst nightmare—and Emilio storms into St. Dennis to save the day, along with his damaged career. Trapped in the unwanted glare of the limelight once again, Dallas discovers that it’s coolheaded Grant who is willing to risk everything to protect her and her son, and to secure the future they were always meant to share.

My review: This is one in a series of books about the fictional town of St. Dennis, Maryland. Ms. Stewart paints a lovely portrait of the town and of life on the Chesapeake Bay. For those of us unfamiliar with this area, Home Again provides us with a thoroughly delightful tour.

The story centers around the characters of Dallas, her son Cody, her great aunt who is also a former actress, and the two men in her life, Emilio and Grant. The characters are likeable, except for the obvious bad-guy character of Emilio, and each of them are looking for love and peace. The story follows them on their journey. This is definitely a contemporary romance that deals with the media, with YouTube, and life in the public eye. Mariah Stewart has many contemporary romances to her credit and she knows how to tell a story well.

I had one complaint: the occasional diary entry by the editor of the town newspaper turns up throughout the book and, though I didn’t read it, throughout the previous St. Dennis novel, Coming Home. They don’t really move the plot along and I found myself skipping them as the novel went on.

Home Again is deftly written with a well-plotted story line that should keep all you romance lovers engaged from beginning to end.

About the author:

Mariah Stewart is the award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-seven novels of  contemporary romance and romantic suspense. A native of Hightstown, New Jersey, she lives in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, their daughter and their dogs.

Today I am reviewing HotHouse Flower through TLC Book Tours. (I am provided with a copy of the book but am not compensated in any way for my honest review.)

About the book (from the publisher): HotHouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire is one woman’s journey from the modeling and advertising world of New York City to the rain forests of the Yucatan Peninsula. From the hot and steamy plant dealers in the Union Square Green Market, to the curanderos, herbalists and shamans of Southern Mexico.

Lila Nova is a 32-year-old adverting copywriter who lives alone in a plain white box of an apartment. Recovering from a heartbreaking divorce, Lila has a simple mantra: no pets, no plants, no people, no problems. But when she meets David Exley, a ruggedly handsome plant dealer, a country-sexual, as she calls him, her lonely life turns into something far more colorful. From the harsh streets of Manhattan to the verdant jungles of the Yucatan, Hothouse Flower is the story of a woman who travels beyond sense and comfort to find out what she really wants.

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My review: Lila, the protagonist, is a newly divorced woman living in Manhattan and working in the world of advertising, where she is increasingly disillusioned with what she sees. She discovers exotic plants through a plant dealer selling in Union Square and eventually meets Armand, the owner of a lush, tropical forest of a laundromat. Through these two meetings, she sets off on a journey of discovery that takes her from Manhattan to the rain forests of the Yucatan Peninsula.

There is a strong element of myth and magic in this novel. The author creates a myth centering around the powers of the 9 Plants of Desire. Obtaining these rare plants turns out to be the obsession of many and each chapter heading features a plant and its description. Characters like Armand and the people who reside in and around the jungle live in a world where the improbable becomes probable, the imagination soars and everyday life is full of magical thinking.

Lila herself is very interesting. Though sometimes I get impatient with her seeming naivete and the mistakes she makes in judgment, I also realize that she is indeed like all of us: flawed and vulnerable and searching for that elusive something that makes her whole. Her carefully created and somewhat narrow world is due for a shake-up and she has some growing up to do.

The descriptions of the plants and the jungles of the Yucatan are rich and filled with wonderful detail. I felt as if I was there, trudging through overgrown paths, the chattering sound of monkeys all around, sweating from the sweltering humidity.

This is a novel that requires a leap of imagination. If you read it with more than a smidgen of doubt or skepticism, you’ll have a hard time with the plot. I suggest you just go along for the ride and leave your ‘practical thinking’ behind. You just might be transported. Margot Berwin is to be commended for creating this magical world in her debut novel.

The publishers have graciously offered a free copy of this novel for one lucky commenter on this post. Just leave a comment! I will contact the winner and pass along his/her address to the publisher. You must be a resident of the United States or Canada. I will pick a winner on September 2nd.
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About Margot Berwin: MARGOT BERWIN won a merit scholarship for creative writing from the New School and earned her MFA in 2005. Her stories have appeared on Nerve.com, essaysandfictions.com, The New York Press, and in the Anthology The Future of Misbehavior. She lives in New York City.

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In a totally different vein: Congratulations to Jim Parsons, a student of mine in the MFA Acting Program at USD/The Old Globe as well as a good friend, for winning the Emmy for his work as Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory!!!! I am so proud, I can’t stand it!