Summer Beach Read Pick: Luckiest Girl Alive

Luckiest Girl Alive
by Jessica Knoll
Simon & Schuster
2015
352 pages
ISBN: 9781476789637

Deeply engaging and complex, Luckiest Girl Alive is often compared to Gone Girl in the press. I'm not sure why this happens. Is it because both books have a woman who is good at manipulating situations, partners and even herself? Maybe. That being said, Luckiest Girl Alive is not Gone Girl; however, it is the perfect book for your lazy day at the beach under a colorful umbrella. It is reading for entertainment, not for enlightenment. If you expect to seek deep philosophical truths in these pages, you will be disappointed.

Ani is the "typical" single white female in New York. She has clawed her way to the top, starving herself to fit into near perfect model size clothes. She has learned to cover up her modest upbringing and fit in with high society. Ani is an artful manipulator; she has to be. If she's not, her walls come crashing down and she will lose everything: the "perfect" fiancé, the high paying, fancy job, the beautiful apartment, the "friends," the entire façade of her perfectly fake life. If these people really knew her past, they would be horrified.

Ani is a difficult character to love; she is flawed but also mean. Her snarky nastiness comes off as not just a mean girl. She is evil girl, but readers will love that she is the perfect chameleon in a concrete jungle where survival is based on façade.  As the story progresses, I liked Ani more. Human beings are strange individuals and Ani proves that her past DOES indeed have everything to do with her present and her future. Buried secrets are not likely to stay buried forever no matter how much control the person with the secret has.

Ani's fiancé seemed nearly an afterthought. He has little to do with the story other than being a foil. Ani uses people for her own gains and it's difficult not to admire that in a creepily fascinating way. Everyone loves a great villain and Ani has the demeanor of Maleficent and  the chess master scheming of J.R. Ewing.

If you want to get lost in a book, Luckiest Girl Alive is your pick. I couldn't put it down and read it at breakneck pace and handed it over to my best friend. She, in turn, gave it to another friend.
This is a book that once you've read it, you will recommend it to anyone who likes an interesting and entertaining book.

NOT recommended for readers under 17.

Highly, highly recommended for adult readers and book clubs. I have a feeling this book will make the rounds at book clubs around the country.

FCC Required Disclaimer: I received the ARC from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.

This review has been posted in compliance with the FTC requirements set forth in the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (available at ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf)

Reveal: Beware the Sheep

Beware the Sheep
by M. Lewis-Lerman

BEWARE THE SHEEP

Enter the world of Eaux: it's a land of flying Arks and Jarred Flummox, of underground societies and evil underlings. Individuality wins over conformity here, originality over sameness. 

But when illness strikes and a maniacal underground ruler threatens to destroy all that is ‘different,’ 16 year old Livi Dixon must lead a group of unlikely allies -- not because of her bravery or abilities -- but out of necessity and fear. 

With the hope of a cure, Livi makes a reckless gamble that just may save her best friend's life -- but at what cost? 

With her new friends (a strange and sundry group of outsiders including a handsome escaped prisoner and a kind but secretive old man), Livi sets off on a race against time, looking deep within herself in order to defeat a faceless enemy and (just maybe) manage to save her best friend in the process. 

Livi's strength is tested, her character revealed, as an attempt to save one life turns into a quest to protect thousands. But is she enough to stop the shapeless evil sinking its teeth into the ones she loves? And in the end, will it even matter?

 

 

 

Guest post: For Young Adult Books-What We're Reading Now by M. Lewis Lerman

 

 

 

Why a female protagonist?

 

As a woman, writing from the female perspective comes very naturally for me.  While I’m intrigued by the prospect of taking on the male voice in future projects,

I used Livi Dixon and Beware the Sheep as a platform to highlight the many elements that make up strong girls and women. 

 

 

How did you come up with the idea of the world Livi lives in?

 

My ideas come from absolutely everywhere, but in world-building especially, it was critical to use the world around me for inspiration.  There are endless things that go into a culture – just look at our own.  And that’s exactly how I started:

 

Art, religion, education, government – how does it function here in America?  What is most important – what stands out?  When I was able to answer these and other questions about my own world, it became a lot easier to craft another world.

 

The best way for me to see how things in a story fit together is to draw it all out, like a web.  This is especially true during world-building.  As I built up Livi’s world, every time I added a new element I had to stop and think about how that fit into the world-at-large:

 

What is the culture like in Eaux like?  What about the politics?  What is the geography like in Eaux? And what natural resources are available? 

 

I have notebook after notebook filled with seemingly nonsensical doodles, arrows, and line drawings – all of which allowed me to take my smaller ideas about the way Livi’s world functioned, and map them out, creating something bigger.  Eventually, I was left with the world of Eaux, all mapped out and ready for my characters to inhabit and explore!

 

M. Lewis Lerman is the author of the new YA book “Beware the Sheep,” making its debut on March 11, 2015.

 

 

 

M. LEWIS LERMAN – AUTHOR BIO
A farm girl born and raised, M. Lewis-Lerman loves books (the dusty ones), land (the wild kind), and anything on four legs.

Before she wrote, she read, learning on Dick and Jane, going over the Big Hill with Betsy and Tacy, and growing up alongside Scarlet O'hara & the March sisters.

M. Lewis-Lerman attended Fordham University where she studied psychology.  She lives in Upstate New York with her three dogs and her many teetering bookshelves.

YA Pick: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
by Leslye Walton
Candlewick Press
2014
301 pages
ISBN: 9780763665661

View the book trailer

Breathtaking, mesmerizing and stunning, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender is a brilliant debut! The prose dazzles off the pages and reads like a lyrical musical score. It's as if Leslye Walton was able to sprinkle fairy dust throughout the pages. This book makes my top four books of all times joining literary tour de force novels: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Shadow of the Wind and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.

Twins Ava and Henry Lavender are born into a family of strong women who sadly make terrible and often tragic mistakes in love. Maman, the matriarch of the family line, comes from France to make her home and fortune in a new land. Arriving in Manhattan, she is disappointed to find crowded and dirty tenements. This is certainly not her American dream. She finally is able to move the family to the Northwest. Maman loses her husband and sisters, but they continue to follow her dogged steps as ghosts.  Her daughter Emilienne gives birth to baby Viviane and loses her husband shortly after. Because the town's people think she is a witch, she is unable to make a living at the bakery her husband cherished. Until a Native American woman named Wilhelmina shows up, that is. Wilhelmina sees herself in Emilienne. She says, "Death just seems to follow some of us, doesn't it?...It's easy to spot your own kind. That kind of sorrow you can't just wash away; it sticks to you." She shows Emilienne how to perform a cleansing ceremony at  the bakery and promises that business will explode. The next day, the bakery sells out.

Baby Viviane  grows up and becomes friends with Jack, her first and only love. It is Jack who moves the plot along throughout Viviane's life. She is heartbroken when he leaves for college and returns married to another woman. Viviane births  twins Ava and Henry. Both children are fiercely loved by their mother and Wilhelmina. They are sheltered at home and rarely leave the property. Henry develops late and is a strange child, avoiding people and speech. Ava has an even stranger trait that will prove her undoing.

Viviane is blessed with certain gifts. Her sense of smell is amazing. She can tell when a woman was pregnant or how a person was feeling just by her scent. "Happiness had a pungent scent, like the sourest lime or lemon. Broken hearts smelled surprisingly sweet. Sadness filled the air with a salty, sea-like redolence; death smelled like sadness." She also knows when rain is on the way or when one of her children is in danger.

The bakery is perhaps the most important place in the book. It is where Emilienne is able to work and feed her family. It is where Viviane grows up. It is where the town people go for sustenance. Emilienne's pastries are magical. The wedding cake of Ignatius Lux and Estelle Margolis was so delectable that, "After this wedding unmarried women woke in the night with tears in their eyes, not because they were alone, but because there wasn't any cake left."


Sorrow follows each generation of the Roux family. The females seem destined or cursed to choose the wrong man and the wrong man always shows up. My favorite quote of the entire book comes from wise Wilhelmina, "Just because love don't look the way you think it should don't mean you don't have it." In other words, love comes from your work, your friends, your world, and does not have to involve a couple. Love can be found in other things.

This is one book I absolutely will read more than once, just to savor its flavor. In one sitting, you simply cannot take in everything: the story, the sadness, the fantasy, the painted masterpiece of magic which soars off the page. The story builds to a cacophonous crescendo that you won't easily forget. This is the stuff dreams are made of.

I will not forget Ava Lavender and her strange and beautiful sorrows any time soon. It's a story that I continue to think about.

This novel gets the HIGHEST recommendation I could ever give a book. I simply LOVE it. Do yourself a favor, get this book today.

Suitable grade 9-up. Some mature content. Pre-marital sex.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.

This review has been posted in compliance with the FTC requirements set forth in the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (available at ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf)