Lazy September Book Reviews

I read 5 books in September.  I'm "lazy" this month in that three of the books I read, I'm taking the summary of what the books are about directly from Goodreads.  If I tried to sum up the three story lines, I don't think I would do fair justice to them.  Those are the first three books and then after Goodreads summary is my thoughts and ratings about the books:

Jell-O Girls: 

From Goodreads:  A memoir that braids the evolution of one of America's most iconic branding campaigns with the stirring tales of the women who lived behind its façade - told by the inheritor of their stories.

In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege - but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments.

More than 100 years after that deal was struck, Allie's mother Mary was diagnosed with the same incurable cancer, a disease that had also claimed her own mother's life. Determined to combat what she had come to consider the "Jell-O curse" and her looming mortality, Mary began obsessively researching her family's past, determined to understand the origins of her illness and the impact on her life of Jell-O and the traditional American values the company championed. Before she died in 2015, Mary began to send Allie boxes of her research and notes, in the hope that her daughter might write what she could not. JELL-O GIRLS is the liberation of that story.

A gripping examination of the dark side of an iconic American product and a moving portrait of the women who lived in the shadow of its fractured fortune, JELL-O GIRLS is a family history, a feminist history, and a story of motherhood, love and loss. In crystalline prose Rowbottom considers the roots of trauma not only in her own family, but in the American psyche as well, ultimately weaving a story that is deeply personal, as well as deeply connected to the collective female experience.

My thoughts: Jenny mentioned she was reading this, so I thought I would give it a try.  By the way, if you aren't following her blog, you should, lol.  She makes entertainment look so easy and her family is always having wonderful gatherings always associated with fantastic looking delicious food.  The book was an interesting memoir.  I learned a lot about the history of Jell-O that I didn't know about.  I had trouble making a connection with the "main characters" in the family story so it was hard to get into the book.  I'll give it 3 stars. 

Commonwealth: 

From Goodreads: One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly—thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.

When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.

Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.

 

My thoughts:  This was another book that was all over the place in the story line.  We were in the past with the kids' childhood, then adults, etc.  Hard to keep track at times.  It was an interesting story line and the writing was really good.  I'll give it 4 stars.  Just keep track of things, lol. 

Under the Banner of Heaven:  

From Goodreads:  A Story of Violent Faith.  A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

My thoughts:  The book was absolutely fascinating to read the story of the Mormon faith.  It is gruesome with the murders described but the author did a good job in detailing how they came to happen and the mindset of the murderers.  It is not an easy read but a very informative one.  I give it 5 stars only if you "enjoy" reading nonfiction about religion.

Hotel Nantucket:  

My Summary:  I've read a lot of Elin Hilderbrand's books in the past and have enjoyed them and this one was just as enjoyable as the others I've read.  The story is of a hotel on Nantucket that has been empty for several years.  It is bought by a billionaire with the chief purpose of getting a 5 key rating by an elusive Instagram influencer who checks out hotels, motels, and the like basically undercover and then writes a review a month about the hotel, motel or the like.  She has never given a 5 key rating in the past and Xavier Darling, the billionaire who bought the hotel, wants to get the first 5 key rating.  He remodels the hotel, gets a staff hired under the general manager Lizbet, and the hotel opens.  There is a ghost in the hotel but it is a cute story about the ghost and enjoyable to read (not like the book The  House Across the Lake that I read last month with demon possession).  At the end of the book, Ms. Hilderbrand does a travel guide basically of places to visit in Nantucket, how to get there by ferry or plane, restaurants, hotels to stay in, stores to shop in, etc.  I skimmed through that part of the book as I doubt I'll ever get to Nantucket.  All in all, a great story.  I'll give it 5 stars.

What Happened to the Bennetts:  

My summary:  The Bennetts end up in a witness protection program because they saw a murder committed between a mafia type gang member who killed the mafia king's son, also killing the Bennetts teenage daughter. The Bennetts think that is why they were put in witness protection but the story, of course, is more complicated than that with the usual twists and turns associated with a suspense mystery type story like this is.  The family (father, mother, brother) are grieving the loss of the daughter as well as trying to keep themselves alive in witness protection and the father is trying to figure out why they were targeted in the first place.  The story does all wrap up in the end quite nicely.  An easy read.  I give it 4 stars.

So, I'm up to 54 books for the year.  My goal was 52 books so I made that! 

As always, let me know what you are reading :)