,

New Release: The Beautiful Misfits, Susan Reinhardt

Hello and thank you for visiting The Cozy Book Blog! Below please find my review of The Beautiful Misfits (Regal House, March 2023), written by humorist Susan Reinhardt. This novel is the poignant story of a mother’s unrelenting determination to reach her opioid addicted son. I want to thank Jackie Karneth at Books Forward for the ARC and the opportunity to read and review this unforgettable novel.
Best, Diane-Lyn

Synopsis & Musings by Diane-Lyn

Oh, the joy of families. We see it all around us. The social media posts celebrating graduations, weddings, holidays; featuring beautiful pictures of perfect, smiling faces standing in front of marble fireplaces looking. Just. So. Damn. Happy. But remember folks, maybe the grass is always greener because your neighbor’s lawn is fake, right?  Or, as the saying goes, don’t compare your insides to somebody else’s outsides. Isn’t that what they say?

Of course, nobody wants their inner crisis to be broadcast for the whole world to see. But that is exactly what happened to news anchor Josie Nickels when her whole world exploded in a very public way.  A few drinks and a story that hit too close to home fueled an on-air outburst; a massive spillage of her troubled family life resulting from her son’s opioid addiction. And it all happened on live TV. The meltdown cost Josie a career and drove her son, Finley, out of her life. With her whole world in shambles, the disgraced local celebrity takes a job at a cosmetics counter in a department store. Struggling to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and repair her broken family, Josie must adjust to her new reality and find the strength to fight for her son without enabling his addiction.

More Musings & Review by Diane-Lyn:

Susan Reinhardt is an award-winning fiction writer who understands exactly what it means to mother a drug addict. She writes from the heart and yet manages to interweave quirky characters and humor at appropriate times to create a well-balanced, beautifully written novel.

Beautiful Misfits is a fictional account of a mother in the throes of an adult child’s opioid addiction, and a society telling her that she is to blame. She is the ex-wife of an unsupportive, enabling husband – and the daughter of a critical and narcissistic mother. This is the story of a heartbroken mother who stops breathing every time the phone rings because she wonders if it is “the call”.  Beautiful Misfits is an honest, gripping novel about a mother’s determination to save her son as she wrestles her own demons.

What I love about Reinhardt’s writing is her ability to create a real and relatable protagonist. Josie is an authentically flawed, yet remarkably strong woman who refuses to give up on her son.  I loved her! Beautiful Misfits is an education in the drug epidemic and a frank look at faulty, inadequate rehab programs.  It is a journey through family dysfunction, workplace bullying, love, forgiveness and hope. The lovely southern setting and array of eccentric characters (including an angelic elderly babysitter) brings a lightness to an otherwise serious novel. Poignant yet funny, Beautiful Misfits won me over from the first page and had me intrigued until the very end. Highly recommended!

                                   Big Pharma pushed it, doctors prescribed it, and genetics pollinated it. 

– Susan Reinhardt, The Beautiful Misfits

Order your copy now…

To purchase your own copy of The Beautiful Misfits, click here: Amazon. This is an affiliate link, which only means that when you click the link and purchase the book, I receive a tiny commission at no additional cost to you. Happy reading!

 

,

Finding Ashley, Danielle Steel

Finding Ashley – Synopsis by Diane-Lyn:

Finding Ashley is a story of love, loss and hope.

At sixteen and pregnant, Melissa was sent away to a convent and forced to give up her baby girl for adoption. In the years that followed, she never stopped wondering what happened to her daughter.

Years later, Melissa is an accomplished author, happily married, and the mother of a little boy. But when her young son, Robbie, is diagnosed with cancer and dies two years later, Melissa’s world shatters once again. Unable to cope with losing two children, she shuts down. Her once strong marriage crumbles, she stops writing and relocates to a remote New England town in order to isolate from the world. Her sister, Hattie, longs to give Melissa some peace and goes on a mission to find her long lost daughter; a mission that would change all of their lives forever.

Review by Diane-Lyn:

I have mixed feelings about this one. Finding Ashley was my first Danielle Steel novel and honestly, I’m disappointed. I expected so much more, but this just fell flat for me. I’ll start with the positives. There are certainly elements of Finding Ashley that were intriguing and moving. As a mother, I was gripped by Melissa’s losses and found her response to them equally heart-wrenching, yet understandable.  I also loved Steel’s candid portrayal of the Catholic Church’s adoption “baby mills” in the 1980’s, and her tackling of other real life issues in our world today; alcoholism, toxic families, rape, child death, deception, the #MeToo movement. These issues were intertwined smoothly and the story line flowed well.

All in all, this novel had so much potential; much of which was lost in a highly predictable chain of events leading to unrealistic outcomes. The book offered no big surprises, no shockers, no “punch”.  I lost interest after the first few chapters when I figured out the ending (and I was right). Then everything fell into place a little too quickly, and much too smoothly. To me, the characters were unrelatable and it felt like watching an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous instead of reading a novel about motherhood and loss. Huge Victorian houses, Chanel sweaters, flawless faces and perfect figures were all just a bit much. I liked Michaela’s character, but she, too, was too perfect and unscathed. Her character was so central to the plot, but very underdeveloped. I wanted to see her portrayed deeply and meaningfully; but it never got beneath the surface. The only character who felt somewhat “real” to me was Hattie. I did enjoy watching her develop and come to terms with her own past, but it wasn’t enough, Overall, the novel felt superficial, the characters lacked depth, and the outcomes seemed contrived. Danielle Steel is a highly successful writer and I wanted to love her, but Finding Ashley just didn’t grab me as I had hoped.

***If you want to give Finding Ashley a try, click this link (Amazon) to order your copy (or download for Kindle). This is an affiliate link, which only means that when you click the link and purchase the book, I receive a tiny commission at no additional cost to you. Happy reading!

 

,

Shapeshifting, Michelle Ross — Review by Diane-Lyn

Hello, and welcome to The Cozy Book Blog by Diane-Lyn. I am thrilled to be today’s stop in the book tour for Shapeshifting by Michelle Ross. Many thanks to Lisa Munley at TLC Book Tours for the invite. I was provided with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Enjoy! Best, Diane-Lyn

                             

Synopsis:

Shapeshifting: The fourteen spellbinding stories in Michelle Ross’s second collection invite readers into the shadows of social-media perfectionism and the relentless cult of motherhood. A recovering alcoholic navigates the social landscape of a toddler playdate; a mother of two camps out in a van to secure her son’s spot at a prestigious kindergarten; a young girl forces her friends to play an elaborate, unwinnable game. With unflinching honesty and vivid, lyric prose, Ross explores the familial ties that bind us together-or, sometimes, tear us apart.

Review by Diane-Lyn:

The enormity of motherhood. The complexities of families. The dynamics, social pressures, and harsh judgements; all coming head to head with painful histories, ongoing inner battles, and our own flaws. The constant effort to get it right, followed by those never-ending reminders of how we have, once again, come up short. And oh, that mother down the street; the one who has seemingly perfected this monumental undertaking called motherhood. You know, that one who is always composed and smiling with the perfect figure, the perfect house, the perfect children. The living, breathing evidence of what parenting “should” look like.

Shapeshifting brings these unspoken struggles to the table, And the truth is, every mother has them. The Sand and Sea illustrates the effects of having a negligent mother, and the lasting impact of toxic motherhood through generations. “I wonder”, the narrator reflects, “if I could travel back in time and mother my mother, would everything have turned out different?” 

Likewise, in Lifecycle of an Ungrateful Daughter, the product of an alcoholic, abusive mother struggles to navigate her way through marriage and motherhood, trying to avoid having history repeat itself. However, she has difficulty connecting with her own daughter and battles depression which, like any mental illness, is ever present and colors all areas of her life. Eventually, her husband leaves her for another woman. During the holiday season that year, she offers to fly her three children, now adults, out to her new place to celebrate Christmas together. Her daughter accepts the invitation, but the other two decline and she is devastated. When her daughter arrives for the holiday, her mother is so depressed that she spends the entire four day visit in bed, leaving her daughter to fend for herself. The two have very little contact in the years that follow.

In After Pangaea, a young mother is willing to camp out in a borrowed van for five nights with her breastfeeding newborn in order to ensure a slot for her older son in the “right” kindergarten. This chapter’s theme of intense social pressures in parenting and the competitive nature of raising children was relatable! When did this begin? I was a child of the 1970’s, a time when parents weren’t so stressed out about kindergarten. Years later, however, when it was time to enroll our daughter in preschool, my husband and I made sure it was one with prestige and academic rigor. Times have changed and somewhere along the line, priorities shifted. We are left to wonder if our children are really that much better off now, or have we as a society have just forgotten what truly matters?

Three Week Checkup explores the challenges of new motherhood. The protagonist of this chapter, Deena, finds herself feeling “undone by her exhaustion”, and receives minimal support from her husband. Breastfeeding is painful and difficult. She is feeling constantly watched and scrutinized. As Deena is grilled with questions at the pediatrician’s office, she struggles to provide “correct” answers and wonders if she is inadequate. Yes, babies are a blessing – but the struggles of new motherhood are real and often difficult to admit. There is so much shame and fear of being judged, which sometimes leads to an isolating experience.

Shapeshifting is a poignant collection of short stories that are authentic, powerful, and relatable. Each chapter stands on its own and tells its own story – addressing issues of bullies, pregnancy resulting from rape, parenting with an addiction or mental illness, spousal control and isolation, and legal issues around women and reproduction. Ross also explores the enormous weight of maternal guilt, and how easily we connect our child’s struggles to something we did or failed to do. Shapeshifting illustrates that all families struggle in some way, and all mothers are flawed. Parenting is not neat and tidy because people are messy and complicated. Ross takes us through the blood, sweat and tears of parenting; experiencing the most intense kind of love, but also anxiety and sleepless nights filled with raw emotion. Ross demonstrates how parenthood brings to the surface everything about ourselves that we might have preferred to keep buried. We work so hard to shield our children from our most shameful parts, but these problems still manage to fall right into their laps anyway. Well-written, intriguing, and emotional, Shapeshifting is a book that I highly recommend to all mothers. Bravo!

We were all going to be perfect mothers. That is, until we had kids.

“Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare:” – Ed Asner

To purchase your own copy of Shapeshifting, click here: Amazon. This is an affiliate link, which only means that when you click the link and purchase the book, I receive a tiny commission at no additional cost to you. Happy reading!

About the Author:

Michelle Ross is the author of three story collections, There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, winner of the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and Finalist for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Short Stories, Shapeshifting, winner of the Stillhouse Press Short Story Award (forthcoming in 2021), and They Kept Running, winner of the 2021 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (forthcoming in Spring 2022). Her fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, The Common, Epiphany, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, TriQuarterly, Witness, and other venues. Her fiction has been selected for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and the Wigleaf Top 50, among other anthologies. She is fiction editor of Atticus Review and was a consulting editor for the 2018 Best Small Fictions anthology. A native of Texas, she received her B.A. from Emory University and her M.F.A and M.A. from Indiana University. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband and son. michellenross.com

/9 Comments