Weekly Recap #75: Week of 10/21 -10/27
/28 Comments/by Suzanne
It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.
So, I’m back home from my trip to New York City and what a great trip it was! I had decided not to try to keep up with the blog at all while vacationing and I think it was the right choice because I truly had no downtime whatsoever to devote to it. I won’t bore you to death with all of the details of the trip, but I’ll share a few highlights. We got there Sunday evening and started our adventure with dinner followed by a show at the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village. If you love stand-up, I highly recommend this place. I’ve been there twice now and thought it was absolutely hilarious both times. Plus, you can stroll around the Village before or after the show, which is always cool.
Those who know me well know that I have an obsession with food tours. I like to pick up a little knowledge about where I’ve traveling to, but I’m really all about tasting all of the delicious food choices that are unique to the area. I’ve done several tours in NY through Foods of New York and I highly recommend them, especially their Original Greenwich Village tour, which is incredible. This time, however, we went with a different company, Urban Adventures, but still had an equally fantastic experience. The tour we picked was the Lower East Side Food and Culture Tour and it took us through Little Italy, Nolita, SoHo, Chinatown, and more. The food was delicious, and I had never really done much exploring in that part of the city so it was great to finally get to do that. I think the highlight of the tour for everyone in my group was going to Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery and trying our first ever knish. OMG, so good!
We of course took in a couple of Broadway shows while we were there as well. For those who have been following my misadventures in trying to score Hamilton and Springsteen tickets, you know this was a huge deal for me. Now don’t get me wrong, you can still get tickets to either show, if you’re willing to pay through the nose to buy them from a third-party reseller. I was not willing to do that. It was either straight from the venue at the normal ticket price or I wasn’t going. So after more than a year of impatiently waiting for my turn, using the Ticketmaster Verified Fan program, I was finally able to score tickets to both shows for this past week. I have cursed that whole process for months now, but I have to tell you, after seeing both shows this week, it was totally worth the whole pain-in-the-ass process. Both shows were everything I hoped they would be and more. Hamilton is truly brilliant. It’s now my favorite Broadway musical and I think Lin-Manuel Miranda is nothing short of a musical genius. 46 songs, mostly rap and hip hop, minimal dialogue outside of the songs, and everything about the show just blew me away. I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat ever since we got on the train to head back home. And Springsteen is a master storyteller. I’m not sure any other pop/rock artist could pull off the kind of show he puts on on Broadway. It’s quintessential Springsteen, both in song choice and in showmanship. Man, I just love that guy…
I could keep babbling about my trip, but I won’t. Apologies in advance if this post is filled with typos or just rambles incoherently. I’m still so tired because I don’t sleep well when I travel and I have a case of the post-vacation blues that I really need to get over, lol.
Oh, before I forget, I did go back and visit The Strand Bookstore and it was just as awesome as I remembered. I didn’t buy any books, but I did pick up a ton of cool bookish merchandise – totes, pins, etc. If you ever make it to NYC, I definitely recommend going there and then heading across the street to Max Brenner’s Chocolate Bar for a delicious gourmet Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate. Yum!
Oh well, that’s it for me. I’ll be back to blog hopping and regular posting this week so I’ll see you around the blogosphere. Have a great week!
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Review: THE GIRL FROM BERLIN
/20 Comments/by SuzanneSeries: Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart #5
Published by St. Martin's Press on October 9, 2018
Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 352
Source: Netgalley
Amazon
Goodreads
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
REVIEW:
Ronald H. Balson’s The Girl from Berlin is the fifth installment in his Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart series. I actually didn’t even realize this book was part of a series when I requested it from Netgalley; I just saw that it was a dual timeline WWII historical fiction that focused on the rise of the Nazis and knew that I had to read it. Thankfully, even without four novels of background on main characters Catherine and Liam, I was still easily able to follow along and enjoy the compelling story of The Girl from Berlin.
Catherine Lockhart and Liam Taggart are a very likable duo. Catherine is a very successful attorney in the United States, and her partner Liam, is a private investigator. I enjoyed the way they worked together, like yin and yang, to get the job done, as well as their easy banter. It made me want to go back and read the prior four books to watch them work together more.
Aside from having a likeable team leading the way, I also found both timelines and their stories equally compelling. The modern day timeline features Catherine and Liam being approached by an old friend who has an elderly aunt in Tuscany who is in desperate need of legal assistance. A powerful corporation is claiming that they actually own the property that the aunt has lived on all her life, and they have served her with an eviction notice. The aunt has a deed to her property, but somehow the corporation also has a deed so the question is whose deed is valid? Catherine and Liam don’t know if they can help but are willing to give it their best shot. Prior to taking off for Tuscany, the aunt sends Catherine a bound handwritten manuscript. She will not discuss the manuscript but indicates that all the answers anyone needs regarding the ownership of the property are in this manuscript, which leads us the second timeline. I found the aunt to be a very sympathetic character as well. I mean, how can you not love a scrappy old lady trying to keep a greedy corporation from kicking her off her land?
The second timeline takes place within the pages of this manuscript as Catherine reads it on her flight. It is a journal of sorts kept by a woman named Ada Baumgarten, a Jewish girl who was born in Berlin at the end of WWI. The manuscript details Ada’s life as a violin prodigy and her growing friendship with a boy named Kurt. It goes on to detail how life was in Germany in the space between WWI and WWII, especially the way Hitler and the Nazis began to slowly consolidate their power in the lead up to WWII. The manuscript reminded me a lot of Anne Frank’s diary as she chronicled how life became more and more restrictive for Jews and how persecution of them just grew and grew the more powerful Hitler got. Ada’s story is a powerful one and an emotional one as we see how she, her family, friends, and neighbors are all impacted by the Nazis and the utter hatred that they ushered in with them as they rose to power.
In addition to finding each of the individual timelines so compelling, I was also captivated waiting to see how the author was going to weave them together into a seamless tale. How does Ada and her journey through WWII fit in to the modern-day story of this elderly Italian aunt who is in danger of losing her home? I’m not going to say anymore about this, but just know that he does and that he does so brilliantly.
Overall I found this story a very satisfying read, but I did find the passages that focused on specific details of Ada’s musical performances less interesting than the rest of the novel and found myself skimming through them at times. I think if I was a musician, I probably would have appreciated those details a bit more, but as someone who is non-musically inclined, just knowing Ada was a gifted violinist and that it made some of the Nazis treat her differently was enough information for me.
Ronald H. Balson’s The Girl from Berlin is a powerful tale that is filled with secrets, lies, and corruption. However, it’s also a tale of hope, determination, and resilience. And even though Catherine and Liam are technically the main characters, the real stars are Ada and the Italian aunt and what connects them. For that reason, you can easily read The Girl from Berlin even if this is your first time reading a book in this series. If historical fiction and dual timelines are your thing, don’t hesitate to pick up a copy of the The Girl from Berlin.
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:
In the newest novel from internationally-bestselling author, Liam and Catherine come to the aid of an old friend and are drawn into a property dispute in Tuscany that unearths long-buried secrets.
An old friend calls Catherine Lockhart and Liam Taggart to his famous Italian restaurant to enlist their help. His aunt is being evicted from her home in the Tuscan hills by a powerful corporation claiming they own the deeds, even though she can produce her own set of deeds to her land. Catherine and Liam’s only clue is a bound handwritten manuscript, entirely in German, and hidden in its pages is a story long-forgotten…
Ada Baumgarten was born in Berlin in 1918, at the end of the war. The daughter of an accomplished first-chair violinist in the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic, and herself a violin prodigy, Ada’s life was full of the rich culture of Berlin’s interwar society. She formed a deep attachment to her childhood friend Kurt, but they were torn apart by the growing unrest as her Jewish family came under suspicion. As the tides of history turned, it was her extraordinary talent that would carry her through an unraveling society turned to war, and make her a target even as it saved her, allowing her to move to Bologna―though Italy was not the haven her family had hoped, and further heartache awaited.
What became of Ada? How is she connected to the conflicting land deeds of a small Italian villa? As they dig through the layers of lies, corruption, and human evil, Catherine and Liam uncover an unfinished story of heart, redemption, and hope―the ending of which is yet to be written.
About Ronald H. Balson
When he’s not writing books, Ron is a practicing attorney with the firm of Stone, Pogrund & Korey in Chicago. He has been a civil litigation attorney for forty-three years. He was an adjunct professor of business law at the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business for twenty-five years and was a frequent lecturer in the federal bar certification course and in trial advocacy seminars.
The demands of his legal practice have taken Ron into courts all across the United States and Canada, and for deposition testimony all across Europe and Asia. A few years ago, Ron became involved in a commercial dispute concerning telephone service in Poland. Numerous trips to Warsaw and southern Poland provided the inspiration for his first novel, Once We Were Brothers. Ron’s love of history and his travels to the Middle East provided the motivation for his second novel, Saving Sophie.
During the Once We Were Brothers book tour, Ron was introduced to several survivors of the World War II concentration camps. Of all the stories of courage and determination, one woman’s story was so moving that it formed the basis for Karolina’s Twins, Ron’s third book due out in 2016.
Ron was a finalist for the Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction in 2014 and a finalist for the Premio Bancarella Italian Literature Award in 2014. He was an honoree at the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s Carl Sandburg Literary Award dinner.
Can’t Wait Wednesday – THE HUNTRESS by Kate Quinn
/32 Comments/by Suzanne
“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, which encourages fellow bloggers to spotlight upcoming releases that we’re excited about. It is a meme that I have loved participating in for over a year now, but as Jill is no longer actively posting, from now on I’ll just be linking to Can’t Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings, which is a spinoff of the original WoW meme.
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My selection for this week is THE HUNTRESS by Kate Quinn. Quinn’s The Alice Network was one of my favorite reads last year, so I was so excited to hear that she has another book coming out next year. And this one just sounds incredible. Nina, Ian, and Jordan all sound like characters that I’m going to fall in love with, and the idea that they’re hunting Nazis, especially the infamous “Huntress” has me on the edge of my seat waiting to get my hands on a copy of this book!
THE HUNTRESS by Kate Quinn
Publication Date: February 26, 2019
From Goodreads
From the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel, The Alice Network, comes another fascinating historical novel about a battle-haunted English journalist and a Russian female bomber pilot who join forces to track the Huntress, a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America.
In the aftermath of war, the hunter becomes the hunted…
Bold, reckless Nina Markova grows up on the icy edge of Soviet Russia, dreaming of flight and fearing nothing. When the tide of war sweeps over her homeland, she gambles everything to join the infamous Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on Hitler’s eastern front. But when she is downed behind enemy lines and thrown across the path of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, Nina must use all her wits to survive.
British war correspondent Ian Graham has witnessed the horrors of war from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials. He abandons journalism after the war to become a Nazi hunter, yet one target eludes him: the Huntress. Fierce, disciplined Ian must join forces with brazen, cocksure Nina, the only witness to escape the Huntress alive. But a shared secret could derail their mission, unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it.
Seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride grows up in post WWII Boston, determined despite family opposition to become a photographer. At first delighted when her long-widowed father brings home a fiancée, Jordan grows increasingly disquieted by the soft-spoken German widow who seems to be hiding something. Armed only with her camera and her wits, Jordan delves into her new stepmother’s past and slowly realizes there are mysteries buried deep in her family. But Jordan’s search for the truth may threaten all she holds dear.
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I’d love to hear what upcoming book releases you’re waiting on this Wednesday? Leave me your link in the comments below and I’ll stop by and check out your CWW selection for this week. 🙂