Kayla is a young woman with a bright future. She is in love with Geno and life is good. However, the moniker that her close friends refer to her as “Drama Queen” starts to ring true. One major incident sets off a crazy chain of events. She decides to move her life forward in a different direction and meets Craig. After meeting Craig, she gets more than she bargained for when she becomes pregnant with his baby.
This was an entertaining and quick read. The story was packed with interesting characters and drama filled situations that just spilled over to more chaos. There were some serious moments in the story, but overall, it was a light and funny read. It was a welcomed reprieve from weightier books.
After a long and exhausting time reading, I need to read something light and funny. I just finished reading a book that took way too long for me to read. I could have abandoned it, but wanted to soldier on and finish. I finally did after well, two months. It just fell flat. (I’ll review it later.) I was easily distracted and kept doing other things. Almost any and everything except reading the book. I’m just glad I’m finished with the book. I thought I would be more engrossed in this book than I was. I had the intention of reading a specific book after this (with an assumed heavy subject matter), but I’m opting for something a little lighter. Yes, I’m coupling it with also reading a memoir, which is not exactly light, but the engagement level is a breath of fresh air, which I really need in a book right now.
Jay Gatsby, an alluring young man with promise, was shot to death at his West Egg, NY home. For all intents and purposes, this is a clear cut case of murder-suicide between local mechanic George Wilson and Jay Gatsby.
Not everyone believes this solid and neatly crafted conclusion to this unfortunate ordeal. Enter Detective Frank Charles, who is called in to find out what really happened. Detective Charles is relentless and is determined to do just that once he finds a diamond hairpin near the murder scene.
During his investigation, three women become persons of interest. Daisy Buchanan, a woman from Gatsby’s past who is currently married to Tom Buchanan, a philandering millionaire. Jordan Baker, an excellent golf player who plays on the national circuit, is Daisy”s best friend and knows Gatsby from earlier years as well. Catherine McCoy, a suffragette, passionate about women rights, whose sister Myrtle Wilson, is in an abusive marriage, is also a familiar acquaintance of Gatsby.
All three women are entangled in an intricate web of deception and obsession, carefully orchestrated by Gatsby himself. Will Detective Charles uncover the truth of who really led Gatsby to his demise?
A brilliant remix on the classic, The Great Gatsby, Beautiful Little Fools, offers a strongly crafted possibility of what happened to J. Gatsby. It is told from the perspectives of the women in Gatsby’s world.
I absolutely loved the reworking of The Great Gatsby. In Beautiful Little Fools, Cantor with much care and respect for the original story, beautifully offered a nuanced retelling of the timeless classic. It brought into focus the women of the Great Gatsby in an interesting way. I thoroughly enjoyed every drop.
Sara King, an expectant mother, appears in Memphis under the cloak of hidden truths to start life anew. She arrives at a boarding house ran by a fiesty but warm matriarch named Mama Sugar. Shortly after Sara arrives, she gives birth to a son she names Lebanon.
They’re embraced as family by Mama Sugar, her husband Mr. Vanellys, their grandson William, the boarders and some of the people in community. Sara’s hard exterior starts to soften. It all but vanishes when she starts a romance with William’s teacher, Jonas.
Sara’s embraces her newfound joy. But when the past collides with the present, it brings with it the possibility of forever altering the future for Sara and the people in her life both now and in the future.
There were so many profound moments in this story. The writing was impeccable and poignant. This story will stay with me always. Some of the quotes that both moved me and gave me pause were as follows:
“Well, what’s done is done but I found out when people go through hard places, they don’t need tough’ an they don’t need coddling. They need mercy.” ~Mr. Vanellys
“Friendships are strange evolving collections of laughter and fights and secrets, this rarified brew of humanity you choose to share with another person. And I want that again. To feel close to someone. To share with someone.” ~Sara
“So if you struggle or see someone struggling, seek understanding. You don’t know the wars people fight on the inside. No one save the Lord knows about those inside battles.” ~ Sara’s mother.
“No one likes to own the harm they did to others, it makes them hurt in a forever kind of way.” ~ Sara
“Everything we go through reshapes us, makes us new.”~ Cora
This is a great collection of stories covering the nuances and idiosyncrasies of womanhood. It explores their emotions, loves, memories, and reasons of why some women choose some things that govern their lives. Below are some of the stories that I liked most.
We Moons: I loved the sheer honesty of womanhood. It was beautifully written. It reached deeply into intricate parts of being a woman.
Pink Bubblegum and Flowers: Is about the awareness of the harshness of life’s circumstances layered right beneath the innocence of youth. The sweet smell of bubblegum and flowers provided a calming balm for the less than ideal situation at hand. It cemented the mutual love in the midst of chaos.
Knock Out The Heart So We Can Glow: This story represented the deep longing of a woman wanting love in her very specific way.
Some lines that were poignant were: “She was drawn to the dusty items no one else seemed to love.”
“She asked her husband if he remembered when she was eating pineapple and started to cry because she was alive and some people weren’t. Reminded him of that morning after church when her hair was baptism-wet. How she sat at the kitchen table, born again, drowning in the sunlight.”
“Her husband was a good man and she loved him, but he didn’t know how to be special, how to glow. She said it was pretty simple and she’d teach him. There was no big secret. You just had to let the things in your heart get real dark first.”
Two Cherries Under A Lavender Moon: This was about the sweetness of fantasy love and the heady, fast, and swelling feeling of which that love provides.
Boy Smoke: This story was about a wife discovering her husband’s affair and kicking him out of the house, while his students were driving pass their home. Some memorable lines from this story were: “Her face looks like a country song: smudged black eyeliner, red wine teeth.” “He’s Max and I’m Nina,” Coach’s wife says, snapping to normal in the way that only women can when they’re holding up the Earth. Nina says thanks to us and smokes at the front of the car, standing there like a crownless queen in streetlamp light.”
Dandelion Light: This is a sweet account of acquaintances slow dancing towards reconnection.
I absolutely loved the lyrical and poetic flow of how these stories were written. It captured the essence of each subject of each story. It was a beautiful collection of stories. This is the second body of work I read from this author and it was another great reading experience.
Ruby and Layla’s lives are woven intricately together by destiny. The fabric of their friendship begins to tatter when Ruby’s mother Alice is murdered in her own home. The murder sets off a chain of events where fierce loyalty intersects with underestimation between two friends. Layla goes into protector mode to save Ruby from what she believes is the beginning of a downward spiral. Ruby is internally fighting to stay alive. Mired in the destiny of generational strongholds, will they walk on the path of the past? Or will a newness spring forth and change the course that they are on? Will a freedom unknown abound?
What impressed me most about this book is the beautiful and artful way West grafted subtext into the story. I identified with both Layla and Ruby at times. In a moment of weakness, Layla comes to Ruby’s rescue. As a result of that, Layla holds Ruby so tight that she underestimates Ruby’s ability to make sound decisions for her own life. Layla’s tenacity and Ruby’s struggle to be understood was the driving force behind the story. But this story has a depth that offers so much more.
Outside of Ruby and Layla, the other characters were fleshed out really well. I could feel and see the characters’ hearts. I felt sympathy for Jackson who was simply existing while holding his breath for what seemed like his entire life. When Jackson declares ” I can’t fake normal anymore”, that statement alone brings a lot of things into focus. Lebanon was complex and layered. His friendship with Jackson mirrored that of Ruby and Layla at times but with a unique twist. Sara had a unique perspective on how she operated in the world with the cards life dealt her.
This is a dynamic debut novel written with painstaking intensity. It is peppered with just the right amount of nuance that captures the human spirit in all of its splendor.
FOREVER BOOK FEVER 