The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

IThis is the second installment in Jennifer Donnelly's Tea Rose trilogy.  The first was mostly about Fiona Finnegan and she still plays a part in this one, but the focus of the book is on India Selwyn-Jones.  India is fresh out of medical school (a rarity for a woman in 1900).  She works with a male doctor who is very set in his old-fashioned ways.  India dreams of opening her own clinic to help the impoverished women and children of London.  India's parents are well off and would prefer she marry her ambitious fiance, Freddie Lytton and forget about the clinic.  He also feels that her career as a doctor would be a detriment to his career as an MP.  Freddie is ambitious and conniving and will stop at nothing to get what he wants - including murder and framing others for it.

Freddie's main opposition in Parliament is Joe Bristow - Fiona's husband.  Joe represents the working class area where he and Fiona grew up.  Fiona has two brothers Seamus and Charlie (aka Sid Malone). Seamus is adventurous and is always looking for new expeditions to join - traveling to Antarctica, or climbing mountains.

Sid Malone is a gangster who runs a large syndicate in Joe's district.  India meets Sid when tending to her patients and he helps her get some of the things she needs to help her patients.  While both try to fight their feelings they eventually become secret lovers.  

Fiona worries greatly about her brothers sometimes to the detriment of her relationship with her husband.  As with any good epic novel, there are many other story lines and characters and I definitely enjoyed this.  I even preferred to the Tea Rose and I don't think you have to read the first to enjoy this one.  I look forward to reading the third (and I think final) installment but am taking a break to try some other authors.

Dork Diaries - Tales of a Not-So-Popular Popstar

My daughters LOVE these books.  When the new one was recently released they begged me to buy it on the release day - lucky for them Costco had it.  Since they love them so much I figured I should I should read one and see what all the excitement was about. Also, technically my daughters are on the young side to read these books (9 and 7 years old) and I when I heard them talking about the main characters crush I figured I should see how far things went with this crush.  I asked them which one was their favorite and they agreed on this one.

Anyway, very quick read since it is written as a diary and includes lots of pictures.  Overall it was a lot of fun.  The main character - self proclaimed dork is Nikki.  She attends a private middle school in Westchester New York.  Her family is not well off, she attends the school because she got a scholarship - her Dad is the exterminator for the school.  She is terrified that anyone at the school will find out her secret including her two BFFs - Chloe and Zoey.  The main mean girl is Mackenzie who does anything and everything she can to humiliate Nikki.  To her credit Nikki does stand up for herself sometimes and fires some zingers right back at Mackenzie.  

There is a talent show happening at the school and the main prize is a scholarship to the school.  Nikki believes that she lost her scholarship due to a letter she got from the school canceling her Dad's contract and revoking her scholarship. She's terrified to tell her parents so is determined to win the scholarship instead.  After a few setbacks due to Mackenzie she gets a band together and they come up with a song that they are proud of.  

I can see why my daughters like these books. Aside from my kids using a few too many OMGs in their regular vocabulary, there was nothing inappropriate for them to read.  Also while Nikki is a self-proclaimed dork it's not something she's ashamed of.  She is who she is.  She knows she'll never be one of the CCPs (cute and cool people) but doesn't really seem to mind, which is a nice change.  So many other books for this age focus on wanting to/needing to be popular (or at least they did when I was in middle school - when I was admittedly a dorky bookworm who wished I was more popular)

Tall Pine Polka by Lorna Landvik

I read Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons ages ago and enjoyed it so when I saw this one at our library book fair I figured I'd give it a try.  Like the previous one it is set in Minnesota and includes a whole bunch of characters.  The main ones are Lee O'Leary - the owner of Cup O'Delight - the town coffeeshop and main hangout for the group of friends, Slim Knutson - a Vietnam war vet who works for Lee and suffers from PTSD, Fenny Ness - who works in one of the stores in town and seems content to stay in Tall Pine forever and Big Bill - who is half Hawaiian, half Native American and after being raised in Hawaii comes to Minnesota.

The main plot line is that a movie is going to be filmed in their small town of Tall Pine and when the writer, Christian Freed, is in town scouting locations he sees Fenny and ask her to do a screen test to be the leading lady.  After much debate she flys to LA for the test, and gets the job.  Because the movie is being made in such a small town, everyone ends up getting involved in some way or another, and they usually end up back at the Cup O'Delight to talk about it all.  

Along with the foursome mentioned above the regulars at the Cup O'Delight include an older lesbian couple - Miss Penk and Frau Katte (Miss Penk is the town's only black citizen and Frau Katte is from Switzerland), Mary Gore (who fancies herself a poet but doesn't have any talent and the rest of the bunch all make fun of her) Pete (the local shoemaker (who has a couple of sweet secrets).

Then there are the "Hollywood" characters - Harry Freed (the producer who spends most of the time in LA but is still an important part of the story), Christian Freed (the writer is trying very hard to make it big in Hollywood), Boyd Burch (the lead actor in the movie) Malcolm Edgely (the tyrannical director) and Grace Aisles (a supporting actress who becomes close friends with Fenny

It's a fun book with lots of great characters who are all very well developed.  No one really feels like a minor character cause you get to know them so well. 

While maybe not a traditional summer read (since it takes place mostly in the fall and winter of Minnesota) I would recommend it. As the author says in the interview in the back of my copy, "i prefer character-driven novels, especially when they take you on big, full rides" and she definitely delilvered that with this book