Review of Follow Your Heart by Brenda Jackson

 

For my latest review, I am proud to present an upcoming novel from a New York Times bestselling romance author from my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida-Brenda Jackson.  Follow Your Heart is a Catalina Cove novel and follows the ever famous Madaris family, specifically Victoria Madaris.

An up-and-coming television journalist/talk show host, Victoria Madaris lives in picturesque Catalina Cove, even though this means an hour commute each way to her job in New Orleans.  When Victoria finds out that she is next on the matchmaking list of family matriarch Mama Laverne, she is accepting of her fate.   Unlike her brothers and cousins, who left the bachelor life kicking and screaming, Victoria believes that Mama Laverne can't go wrong with whomever she has chosen for her to fall in  love with and marry. But could Mama Laverne possibly be wrong for once?  The man who Victoria believes is her intended, couldn't be less interested in her, while in the meantime, romance finds her in the most unlikely of places-the arms of Senator Roman Malone.  As the attraction between the two becomes undeniable, Victoria is faced with the prospect of having to tell Mama Laverne that she was wrong about her intended.  Added to this, is the antagonist unknown to Victoria who will go to extreme lengths to keep her and Roman apart.  

Brenda Jackson is an award winning romance novelist and native of Jacksonville, Florida. A graduate of Raines High School and Jacksonville University, her first novel Tonight and Forever launched a career that has seen her reach the New York Times Bestseller List and become a nominee for an NAACP Image Award.  More information about her can be found at www.brendajackson.net. 

Follow Your Heart is signature Brenda Jackson-full of captivating details, relatable characters, and passionate love scenes that serve up plenty of romance without crossing the line into full-blown erotica.  Although it is part of the Madaris series, it can be read as a standalone novel, though faithful fans will enjoy meeting up with some of their favorite characters from previous novels.  Victoria's story is relatable to women who have had relationships end badly and are hesitant about opening their hearts again.  Ms. Jackson's descriptions of  Catalina Cove puts the reader right there in the midst of the quaint, beautiful town.  And the sizzling chemistry between Victoria and Roman is enough to warm up any reader on a cold winter's night!

*disclaimer-I received an advanced review copy of the novel.  No payment of any form was received for this blog post*

 

Contemporary Novelist Eric Jerome Dickey Passes Away at Age 59

 

The family and publicist for Eric Jerome Dickey, New York Times bestselling author, confirmed that he passed away on January 3 after a prolonged battle with cancer.  Dickey kept his struggle with cancer very private, with only a few close loved ones privy to his battle, not unlike actor Chadwick Boseman.  

His death comes as a shock to his millions of adoring fans who eagerly consumed such novels as Friends and Lovers, Blackbirds, and Finding Destiny. I reviewed Blackbirds on this blog and as a long time fan, it truly did not disappoint.  He was known for living in the locales that he set his stories in, a habit that was apparent from the stunning details that were a hallmark of his work.  I traveled the world vicariously through Gideon, an assassin who was the subject of several of his novels, and I got a small thrill whenever I recognized a character from one of his novels making an appearance in another.  

The literary world has lost a great one with his passing but it is my personal hope that perhaps his loved ones can take some comfort in the fact that he was as greatly celebrated in life as he is in death.  

Review of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

I found The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray while browsing in my local library.  Lost in the stacks, searching for a few gems to devour while on vacation from work, it’s title and colorful, flowery cover caught my eye.   The first line, “You do a lot of thinking in jail,” captured my attention.  As I read on, Gray’s eloquent, poetry-like prose captured my heart.

            The story of a family’s unravelling when a mother and father-Althea and Proctor Cochran, are both sent to jail for fraud, Gray paints a portrait of what sociologists have been telling us for years-that when a person is incarcerated, their family members do the time with them.  This is especially true in this story because the Cochrans’ stole from the local community in the name of charity.  As the saying goes about the sins of fathers, so  the Cochran twins-Kim and Baby Vi, suffer through the brunt of taunting and ostracism from a town angry at their parents’ betrayal.  The twins respond in opposing ways.  Baby Vi, small and quiet, folds into herself and keeps her head down, seemingly trying to disappear.  Kim, large and defiant, lashes out, getting into trouble at school, missing curfew, and just generally making as many waves as possible.  Ironically, Kim is the one who made the phone call to police that started the fraud investigation and the reason that she called is slowly revealed throughout the novel.   Althea’s narrative is told in first person as she navigates life in confinement and confronts uncomfortable truths about herself.  The point of view switches between Althea and her sisters, Lillian and Viola, and the letters that Proctor to sends to Althea.   As the story progresses more is revealed about broken family dynamics and painful family secrets. 

    Anissa Gray is an award winning journalist, having won both Emmy and duPont awards for her work with CNN.  A graduate of Western Michigan University and New York University with a Master's degree in English, she currently lives in Atlanta with her wife.  She can be found at www.anissagray.com.

    As a reader, it is easy to assume that the girls referred to in the title are the twins, Kim and Baby Vi.  While they are obviously in need of care, having essentially been orphaned by the criminal justice system, you come to realize that all of the women in the novel are in need of care and feeding of some kind.  Althea, who was thrust into the role of matriarch when her mother passed when she was only twelve, resents the fact that she has always had to be the strong one.  Her resentment is so strong that it blinds her to how she treats her family, especially Kim.  "It had to be tough love with her, which is what Proctor doesn't understand.  I was tough because life is tough.....But Proctor wanted to be a buddy, a friend, and , obviously, their favorite....I'm the one who always had to do what needed to be done."  It takes a near tragedy for her to finally be able to completely face down the reflection in the mirror and begin to heal.  Viola relapses into a cycle of binging and purging (the book should probably have a trigger warning because of graphic depictions of her bulimia)  while trying to maintain a steadily crumbling facade of having it all together.  Lillian does everything she can to mute the pain of past abuse, and in the process, has muted herself and her voice.  As a black woman, this novel spoke to me on a deeply personal level as I identified with the characters.  While we may not all share the same trials, we share what so many black women do, and that is the struggle to make a place for ourselves and have our voices heard in a world that tries to silence and minimize our existence.  We are all in need of care and feeding of one kind or another, despite the strength that we show the world.  As Althea's mother explained to her, " 'boys and men are earth and stone....but you girls, us women, we're water.  We can wear away earth and stone, if it comes to it.' "  Even the mightiest river can dry up, if not continuously nourished at the source however.  We need care and feeding of our souls, in order to find the inner strength necessary to sustain our source and flow through a harsh world, leaving our marks like water carving out canyons, inch by inch.  

 

Review of Only Child by Rhiannon Navin

 

For better or worse, guns are as much a part of American culture as the Fourth of July and apple pie.  The debate over gun regulation is one of the most heated in the history of this country.  One of the unfortunate offspring off American gun culture has been mass school shootings, shattering the innocence of young lives and ripping families apart in the most heartbreaking ways.

Only Child by Rhiannon Navin explores a Sandy Hook-like school shooting and its aftermath from the unique perspective of one of the six year old survivors.  From the opening pages, when Zach Taylor hides in a closet with his teacher and the rest of his first-grade classmates, the author draws us in with his simple yet profoundly insightful perspective on the events taking place.  As the adults around him fall apart, Zach retreats into another closet- in his brother's room, where he processes his emotions through painting and reading a popular children's book series.  The author tells an unfortunately all too familiar tale through the eyes of a sensitive, soulful little boy, who readers quickly realize is wise beyond his young years.   

Originally from Bremen, Germany, Rhiannon Navin came to New York City and pursued a career in advertising.  Now a wife and mom living outside of New York, Only Child is her first novel.

Only Child is an exciting debut from a first-time novelist.  Navin took an extremely difficult topic and handled it with great care and compassion, avoiding the potential landmines of over-emphasis on actual violence or political debates.  Her focus on Zach's family as a microcosm of the community around them, provided an intimate portrait into the lives of victims and survivors of gun violence and the use of a six year old narrator provided a refreshingly beautiful perspective.  There were times when Zach thought and said things that were so profound that it took my breath away.  When Zach's dad explains what the word sympathy means to him, he responds by saying, "I only noticed how Andy acted bad all the time.   That he was being mean to me.  A lot of times I didn't like him because of that, and I didn't try to feel the sympathy with him.  Maybe Andy wouldn't have acted bad a lot of times if he could have noticed that we were feeling the sympathy with him.  I don't know."  Many adults couldn't figure out the things that Zach did, especially the adults in his family.  But what made him so unique, is that the author still managed to remind us that he was actually a child with all the accompanying behaviors, including tantrums, bedwetting, and clinging to a favorite stuffed animal.  Ironically, that is what made Zach's voice so compelling.  While we as adults can't sit down and agree on how to keep first-graders from getting massacred at school, a six-year old figured out how to heal his family, and spread that healing to his community.  If we could all only see the world through the beauty and innocence of a child's eyes.

My First Teacher

 I stopped posting to this blog at the end of 2016.  You see, 2016 was very 2020ish for me.  Towards the end of that year, I lost several dear friends of mine to various illnesses-sickle cell anemia and leukemia among them.  The biggest, most shattering loss that I suffered that year came four days before Christmas, when my sister and I each held one of our mother's hands and watched her take her last breaths after we removed her from life support.  Three days earlier, she had suffered a massive heart attack which had stopped her heart several times, leaving her with irreparable brain damage.  My mother had suffered from various chronic illnesses since the time that I was five years old.  I was 38 when she died.  I had made it my mission in life to heal her, to find the next great natural remedy that would ease her pain and prolong her life.  But instead, I found myself sitting in front a doctor staring blankly as he told my sister and I that there was basically nothing else that could be done for her.  My mother had emphasized repeatedly that if anything happened to her, she didn't want to be kept alive on machines.  However, it's one thing to hear that from a living, breathing person who has literally been there since birth, and quite another to be faced with the harsh reality of saying, "ok, just give up, let her go".  

But let her go we did.  I think part of my heart stopped beating with hers.  In a dazed stupor, I made a simple post to my Facebook page:  "I just lost my first teacher.  Sleep well Mama, no more pain".  My mother was my first teacher.  She taught me to read before I ever set foot into a classroom, and she instilled the love of reading in me that inspired this blog.  She even bought one of the books that I reviewed after she read about it here, her quiet way of telling me that she liked my writing.  Like many adult women and their mothers, we didn't always have an easy relationship.  At times, I felt like she dismissed my writing as just a trivial pursuit.  So for her to hold that book up and say "remember this?  I read it on your blog"......well, you might as well have handed me a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur grant in the same day.  The teacher finally approved of the student.  

So in this year of change, of pandemic, of lockdown, of protest, I think it's time that I come out of hibernation and start writing seriously again.  It's time for the student to begin her assignments again.  It's time for my heart to beat again.  

Review of Written in the Ashes by K. Hollan Van Zandt

For my latest book review, I'm proud to present Written in the Ashes by K. Hollan Van Zandt.  Once again, I'm thrilled to be a part of the Virtual Author Book Tour.  Written in the Ashes is a historical fiction novel that provides such intensive historical detail that it is simply amazing.

The story is set in ancient Egypt during the period of time when Christianity was gaining a foothold in the empire and the struggle between the new religion and the traditional pagan beliefs was quickly erupting into violence and bloodshed.  At the center of the story is 20 year old Hannah, a beautiful shepherdess with the voice of an angel.  She is brutally kidnapped from her home in Sinai, where she lived with father, and brought to Alexandria, where half-dead, she is bought by Tarek.  Tarek brings her back to his father's house, the alchemist Alizar.  He treats her kindly and eventually allows her to study under the famed female philospher Hypatia at the Great Library.  This puts Hannah on a life-altering course and squarely in the middle of the conflict between Bishop Cyril and Hypatia.  Cyril wants to convert he populace to Christianity and resorts to ever worsening tactics in order to achieve his goal.

For this review, I'm switching things up a little.  Click below to watch a video interview of the author and check the Author Interviews page of this blog for an exclusive excerpt from the novel.

Written in the Ashes is so unique because it chooses to follow the story of a woman in a world and culture that was entirely male dominated.  The novel is so vividly detailed that readers are nearly transported to the world of ancient Egypt .  Even though the story is set centuries in the past, Hannah and Hypatia's struggle to carve a niche for themselves in a male dominated world will resonate with modern women readers.  There is a beautiful balance between action and romance, leaving something for readers of all genders and preferences.  I found myself reading late into the night on several occasions.  I could really see with my  mind's eye, the buildings, architecture, food, clothing, and people of ancient Egypt . When the novel finally concluded, I was pleased with the ending, but I find myself wanting a sequel!!!  As always, there are no plot spoilers on my blog, I can only tell you to buy this book and read it!  You won't be disappointed.                                                                              

Acclaimed Author Gloria Naylor Passes Away at 66

2016 has dealt us all some tough losses, and the literary world has not been immune to this.  Gloria Naylor, most famous for her critically acclaimed novel The Women of Brewster Place, passed away at the age of 66 near her home in Christiansted, St. Croix, U.S.V.I.  According to her niece, the cause of death was heart failure.

Her 1983 novel, The Women of Brewster Place, went on to win a National Book Award and became a widely hailed tv miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey and Lynn Whitfield.  Subsequent novels including Linden Hills, Bailey's Cafe, and The Men of Brewster Place, which examined the lives of the men in the original novel, earned her a firm place as a leading African American author.

Naylor earned a B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and a master's degree from Yale.  She taught at several prestigious institutions, including The University of Pennsylvania and New York University.  Her other awards included the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  She leaves behind a sister, Bernice Harrison, a niece, and a nephew.

Hats off to another literary giant who has passed on.  Ms. Naylor may have left the physical world, but she lives on through her writing.