It’s You by Jane Porter

It’s You
by Jane Porter

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Just released: June 2, 2015
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Historical, Women's Fiction
Paperback: 336 pages
Rating: 4

First sentence(s):
For over a year following Andrew's death I showed up and performed and executed perfectly.

I handled that horrible year and the next few months so well that I'd begun to think the worst was behind me.

And then I got the note.

In the wake of a tragedy that tore her life down to the foundations, Dr. Alison McAdams has lost her way. So when she’s summoned to Napa to care for her ailing father, she’s not sure she has anything to offer him—or anyone else.

What Ali finds in Northern California wine country is a gift—an opportunity to rest, and distance from her painful memories. Most unexpectedly, she finds people who aren’t afraid of her grief or desperate for her to hurry up and move on.

As Ali becomes part of her father’s community, makes new friends of her own, and hears the stories of a generation who survived the Second World War, she begins to find hope again. In a quest to discover the truth about another woman’s lost love, she sets off on a journey across oceans and deep into history. And in making sense of that long-ago tragedy, Ali is able to put together the broken pieces of her heart and make new choices that are right for her.

My two-bits:

Along with a light romance, grief and elderly issues are part of this story. Each is handled and resolved with bits from the past. Historical aspects in this story include WWII memories of an American embassy translator and on the German resistance.

I liked how learning about the past propelled the main character to move forward in her life and to travel.

Added to my must-go places for foodies:

Fassbender & Rausch (chocolate) - Berlin, Germany

About the author:

Born in Visalia, California, I'm a small town girl at heart. I love central California's golden foothills, oak trees, and the miles of farmland. In my mind, there's nothing sweeter in the world than the heady fragrance of orange blossoms on a sultry summer night.

As a little girl I spent hours on my bed, staring out the window, dreaming of far off places, fearless knights, and happy-ever-after endings. In my imagination I was never the geeky bookworm with the thick coke-bottle glasses, but a princess, a magical fairy, a Joan-of-Arc crusader.

My parents fed my imagination by taking our family to Europe for a year when I was thirteen. The year away changed me (I wasn't a geek for once!) and overseas I discovered a huge and wonderful world with different cultures and customs. I loved everything about Europe, but felt especially passionate about Italy and those gorgeous Italian men (no wonder my first very Presents hero was Italian).

I confess, after that incredible year in Europe, the travel bug bit, and bit hard. I spent much of my high school and college years abroad, studying in South Africa, Japan and Ireland. South Africa remains a country of my heart, the people, the land and politics complex and heart-wrenching.

After my years of traveling and studying I had to settle down and earn a living. With my Bachelors degree from UCLA in American Studies, a program that combines American literature and American history, I've worked in sales and marketing, as well as a director of a non-profit foundation. Later I earned my Masters in Writing from the University of San Francisco and taught jr. high and high school English.

I now live in Seattle and Hawaii with my three sons. I never mind a rainy day, either, because that's when I sit at my desk and write stories about far-away places, fascinating people, and most importantly of all, love. I like a story with a happy ending. We all do.

~*~
* added to my COYER challenge/scavenger hunt (details)

* part of my Armchair Summer Travel (details) - check it out to enter Armchair Summer Travel Book Box Giveaway

* review copy courtesy of BookSparks Summer Reading Challenge 2015 (details). @booksparks #SRC2015
Destination: Travel up the west coast of California

Places mentioned include:
Scottsdale, AZ
Napa, CA
Berlin, Germany

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr

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Published: 2014
Publisher: Scribner
Genre: France, Germany, historical, WWII
Hardback: 544 pages
Rating: 5

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

PeekAbook:



My two-bits:

Such a beautiful story although not in regards to the main subject matter - WWII. So, I will borrow a phrase I picked up in the book to best describe this tale - beautiful ugly.

It is one of those stories where certain characters have passions that are so engrossing to them that it makes you interested in it as well. And, these passions are such driving forces in their lives that directs the path and pattern of their lives.

What I found fascinating was to see how in this story things came together and cross paths and shift back and forth yet all made some kind of sense in the end.

~*~
* added this to my Bookish Bingo challenge - square: Blue Cover