Review: Girl Before Mirror by Liza Palmer

In Girl Before Mirror by Liza Palmer, Anna Wyatt is fighting to make her mark in the world of advertising. Relegated to smaller accounts with a target audience of women only, Anna is frustrated as she bumps up against the glass ceiling. She is also facing challenges in her personal life - at forty with a failed marriage behind her, Anna has been on a "time out" from romance and dating but she is starting to realize that, as with her professional life, she is going to have to go after what she wants to get a different outcome. When she is introduced to a self-help book, "Be The Heroine, Find Your Hero", it plays a role in bringing her professional success -but not in the way you expect. As she buys into the Be The Heroine philosophy, she realizes it translates into her own personal life and she begins to combat her long held beliefs about her worth and whether she can risk much to win in love. 

Anna Wyatt grew up with a demanding father and a mother who virtually ignored her children. Anna took care of her younger brother, Ferdie, and tried to provide him with the love she never received from her parents. This upbringing left her with some well-established guards which limit her in her relationships. Following her divorce from a husband to whom she never opened up, Anna has placed herself on a dating sabbatical and essentially opted out altogether. When she looks around the table at her birthday dinner, however, she realizes she wants more than she is getting out of this opt-out approach and the germ of change is planted.

Professionally, Anna is also frustrated by being limited in the ad agency to only small accounts with products focused on women. She sets her sights on Quincy Pharmaceuticals and sees an in road via a neglected body wash that has not been actively promoted by the company. She drafts a proposal that ties into the "Be The Heroine, Find Your Hero" theme and gets an audience with the team that manages the product at Quincy. Her proposal resonates and Anna finds herself at the Romance Writers Conference working the connections with her proposed ad campaign. By focusing on a theme that resonated with her and articulated what many women feel, Anna has landed on professional success.  She also finds a love interest at the conference in Lincoln Mallory, a Brit visiting the hotel for business. Lincoln challenges all of Anna's well-established guards and she struggles to take the chance that she knows will bring her success in her personal life.

My Thoughts
I am a fan of Liza Palmer's books - Conversations with the Fat Girl and Seeing Me Naked are two of my favorites. I remember underlining passages in both books because I felt they perfectly expressed my own thoughts and reflections.  I found myself doing the same with this book - Anna's struggles with self-confidence and living safely rather than pursuing what she really wants are so well captured by the author and I suspect will resonate for many women. There were times, however, that I felt this book covered too much ground - there was the story line about Anna's campaign for Quincy, story line about her relationship with Lincoln and then the story line about Ferdie. Each was rich but I felt the book could have been better with a focus on only two out of the three. This was not my favorite book by the author but does have her dialogue laced with humor and wry observations.

Review: On the Rocks by Erin Duffy

On the Rocks by Erin Duffy: Abby is engaged to her college boyfriend and trying on dresses at Vera Wang in Boston's Back Bay when she learns, via a Facebook update no less, that her fiance Ben has announced that their relationship is over. Abby is reeling and slides into a depression during which she isolates herself and develops an unhealthy relationship with Ben and Jerry's. Her close friend Grace, who has her own problems in the relationship department with her boyfriend who is married and also her boss, wants to pull her friend out of the depths of despair and suggests they join a summer share in Newport. Reluctant but hopeless, Abby agrees and, with the help of the Newport sun and shore, begins to pull herself out of the hole. Will she be able to bounce back completely or will modern dating and social media continue to haunt her?

Abby and Grace are joined in Newport by their neighbors Bobby, an unemployed attorney and Wolf, a German recently arrived in the US whose forays into understanding American idioms provides welcome comic relief. Bobby takes on almost an older brother role for Abby - he tells it like it is and generally frustrates her but also looks out for her and senses she was badly hurt and needs a little help. He is determined to push Abby back into the world of dating with all its pitfalls and tries to educate her on how guys operate especially in a dating world filled with tweets, texts and Facebook status updates. Humiliated by her fiance via Facebook, Abby is understandably reluctant to engage in dating and resents how much social media has infiltrated modern dating - she yearns for a more old-fashioned courtship.

My Thoughts
This book was the perfect antidote to the winter blues (which have been particularly long this year!) - even the cover is beachy and summons memories of my own summer beach house shares. Abby is a likable character and it was heartening to watch her find her footing and get her confidence back as the book progresses. The story was told with funny, witty dialogue and you felt as if you were sitting on the couch  in Newport with Abby, Grace, Wolf and Bobby knocking back margaritas and snacking on chips.  I highly recommend this book for your beach bag this summer!

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Review: All The Summer Girls by Meg Donohue

In All The Summer Girls, Meg Donohue tells a story of three childhood girlfriends who return to the summer house at which they created enduring memories but also suffered a great loss. Now adults, each at a crossroads in their lives, they return to Avalon, NJ for a girls weekend in an effort to repair their friendship but also to heal themselves in order to move past their individual crises.

As students in Philadelphia Friends School, Kate, Dani and Vanessa were best friends. The three girls were very different from each other  - straight-laced Kate thrives on lists and order, Dani is a free-spirit with disregard for rules and convention and Vanessa is confident and rapidly growing into her striking good looks. Despite their differences, a close friendship is formed among the girls and they spend each summer at the shore in Avalon, NJ. Kate's twin brother, Colin, is also part of their group is much loved by each of the girls. When Colin drowns in the ocean the summer before their senior year in college, it devastates each of the girls, taints the Avalon shore for them and silently drives wedges between their friendship.

As adults, the women are still quite different from each other and more mature versions of their adolescent selves. Kate is a successful attorney in a Philadelphia law firm and still thrives on order in her personal and professional life. Dani has been wandering since college - she lives in San Francisco attempting to write her first novel while she runs through a string of jobs. Vanessa is now married and living in NYC and recently chose to quit her job and stay home with her young daughter, Lucy. Each woman is facing a crisis in their personal lives as they decide to reunite at the shore for a girls weekend. They are tentative with each other and Colin's death still remains as an unhealed wound for each woman.

My Thoughts
Meg Donohue has struck an interesting balance with this book - part beach read, part serious exploration of women's friendships. For about 10 years, I took part in a summer share on the Jersey Shore so when I saw the cover and read the synopsis, I expected (and looked forward to) a lighthearted romp of boozy weekends in the summer sun. This book was less about weekends at the shore and more about the role the shore played in cementing these women's friendships and whether it can bring them back together and heal them as adults. I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed getting to know the women and the peeks offered of the shore. A perfect read  in the waning days of summer.

Review: The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines by Shoreh Aghdashloo

The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines by Shoreh Aghdashloo: Shoreh Aghdashloo is a Emmy award-winning Iranian actress and the first Middle Eastern actress to be nominated for an Academy Award. Like many actresses, her road to success was filled with struggles, doubt and tireless focus on her craft. Shoreh, however, has a whole other set of challenges to face - she fled Iran following the revolution when her ability to speak freely and to continue to pursue acting became threatened. In a daring but necessary move, she left her entire family behind and escaped to Europe and ultimately to Los Angeles.

Shoreh Aghdashloo had a relatively privileged upbringing in Tehran. Despite her parents' more practical plans for her, Shoreh was drawn to modeling and then acting at a young age. Although her father felt putting herself on display was not respectable for a young woman, he saw quickly that she would not be deterred. She married Aydin, a painter, at a young age and he agreed that she could follow her passion for acting. When revolution swept Iran in 1979, however, both women and acting came under attack by the Islamist government. In a bold move and with th e help of her husband, Shoreh escaped across the border to Turkey and ultimately settled in London. Aydin, however, would not leave Iran so they parted and, ultimately, ended their marriage when it became clear that Shoreh could not (or would not) return and Aydin would not leave Iran. Shoreh also lived separated from her parents and fearful for their safety back in Iran. Once in London, she pursued and obtained a university degree but acting was never far away. Shoreh acted in a series of plays, many of which were popular with the expatriate Persian communities in London and throughout Europe. She met her second husband in one of those plays and together they continued to act over the coming years. Once in LA, Shoreh was given the chance to act in The House of Sand of Fog and for that role, she was nominated for an Academy Award. After much hard work and and an unusual amount of sacrifice, Shoreh had achieved commercial success and recognition.

My Thoughts
The author's story has all the elements of a moving, lyrical tale - two loves, escape from oppression and a passion for the arts. Unfortunately, the telling of the tale is not particularly lyrical. The text is choppy and the author moves from event to event rather rapidly. There were a number of non sequiturs and I kept wanting some of them to be developed more but then it would be dropped and we would be on to something else. Some of the most powerful, moving moments in the book got lost in its telling  - it felt as if pivotal events would just be mentioned without any reflection.

Despite its shortcomings, however, the book does deliver in immersing the reader in Persian culture and educated me on the political history of modern Iran and its devastating consequences for its citizens. In addition, the author conveyed two key themes very effectively; first, her desire for a free Iran and her commitment to staying out of the country at great personal cost until that is realized. Second is her passion for acting - I was impressed by how diligently she worked at her craft, often in relative obscurity. She didn't seem to be in it for the attention but for the pure satisfaction of acting and bringing plays to audiences, no matter how small. Shoreh Aghdashloo has a powerful story to tell and overcome almost unbelievable odds to pursue both freedom and her craft.

You can read other reviews of this book by checking out the TLC tour here.

Thank you to TLC for providing a ARC of this book.