Audiobook Review: Class Mom by Laurie Gelman

Jen Dixon isn’t your typical kindergarten-class mom. She already has two daughters in college from her days wandering the globe as a music groupie and a son who is entering his first year of kindergarten with her (relatively) new husband. Despite her protests, Jen’s best friend talks her into being a class mom for her son’s class — and hijinks ensue.

In her attempts to inject a bit of humor and personality into the class parent’s emails, Jen opens herself up to all types of criticism and judgment from her fellow parents. Never mind that she’s trying to get the job done and figure out the quirks of her son’s teacher (for example, she doesn’t believe in “Hallmark holiday” parties, making planning for said events problematic). She also can’t help that one set of parents uses a parental cocktail party to have a friend pedal her jewelry — and the assumption this was Jen’s idea.

Laurie Gelman’s Class Mom is equal parts hilarious and eye-opening. Seeing Jen navigate the class parent waters is entertaining — even if some of the situations she finds herself in are seemingly over the top. Gelman’s performance of her book is spot and helps you feel for Jen and her self-created issues, including the innocent flirting with her former high school crush that slowly gets out of hand and threatens her marriage.

Jen feels entirely authentic, even as some events spiral out of control. The delight she and other class parents find in trying to delve into their children’s teacher is one of the highlights of the novel.

Audiobook Review: Doctor Who: The Romans by Donald Cotton

As Doctor Who celebrates its sixtieth anniversary later this year, the Target audiobooks line looks to complete the range that began a decade and a half ago. For the first seven months of the year, the range is releasing one story from each classic series Doctor that hasn’t seen the audio light of day until now.

And honestly, the range may not get a better classic Who release than the first novel of the year, “The Romans.”

After a recent diet of novels did little more than translate the shooting script to the printed page, “The Romans” is a delightful breath of fresh air. Told in epistolatory style, the varying first-person viewpoints are well-done and delightful. Whether it’s the Doctor believing that the slave he keeps seeing looks an awful lot like Barbara to Ian wondering if an alternate timeline through his actions and writings to Nero’s uncertainty as to whether he rules Britain or not, the shifting perspectives keep you on your toes — and laughing all the way.

This may be one of the wittiest and laugh-filled entries from the Target line, with Cotton clearly not giving two figs and going for the gusto. This may not please the strictest of fans who want the novel to mimic the story we got on-screen. However, this one falls into that canon of later Target books that enhanced and deepened the enjoyment of the TV stories. (I can’t wait to get to this serial in my current rewatch of the classic series if only to recall the various thought processes and reflections Cotton gives us here).

The audiobook only enhances the enjoyment of this novel, featuring a wide range of talented narrators bringing each person’s section delightful to life. The cover gives away which actors appear, though the version I purchased didn’t detail who narrated which part (or at least if it did, I didn’t look), thus ensuring some smiles and pleasant surprise over the all-too-brief running time of the audiobook.

My only disappointment comes that the audio range couldn’t lure William Russell out of retirement to read the portions of the story told from Ian’s point of view. But that is just nitpicking what is one of the more enjoyable and delightful entries in this range.

Listening to “The Romans,” I now feel I have to listen to Cotton’s other two books for the range, though I may take a bit of a gap between them. Right now, most other Target books are going to pale in comparison to this one.

A superb beginning to celebrating sixty years of Doctor Who.

Holiday Audiobook Reviews: The Twelve Dates of Christmas and The Upside Down Christmas

The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayliss

With the title The Twelve Dates of Christmas, I expected Jenny Bayliss to do more with each of the holiday-themed blind dates than this novel ended up doing. Instead, it’s a friends-to-lovers romance between a local coffee shop owner and the girl who moved back to town to take care of her father.

Bayliss earns all the tension and undercurrent of attraction between coffee-shop owner Matt and newly returned to town Kate. She even throws in a few speed bumps for the two — they slept together once in their teens but never talked about it, Matt has a girlfriend, Kate is meeting twelve potential suitors that could steal her heart away. My big issue with the book is that the speed bumps are easily removed with little or not subtlety of foreshadowing. The biggest is when Kate goes on a date with Matt’s girlfriend’s ex and he admits he still loves his ex. So, we can all see where that is heading.

And yet despite being somewhat predictable, I still kept listening. Odds are that was due to the English accent of the narrator Elizabeth Knoweledon (the irony that her name sounds like Noel and this is a holiday romance isn’t lost on me).

Overall, a predictable romance that doesn’t quite live up the promise or premise of the title.

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The Upside Down Christmas by Kate Forster

Following the death of her mother and her father remarrying, Marlo moved from England to Australia to start her life again.

Five years later, she’s living with flatmate Alex, working as a legal secretary, and dating a nice enough guy. Well, until the guy leaves a Halloween party with someone else, and Marlo is suddenly left questioning all her life choices.

Oh, and she’s also seeing a growing romantic interest in her flatmate, Alex, rearings it’s head.

The Upside Down Christmas is light and frothy enough –and that may be the biggest issue I have with the story. Marlo feels like she’s just sitting back, waiting for things to happen in life, rather than having any kind of motivation to make strides herself. Even when she decides to go back to school and pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer, it feels like good things just fall into her lap because she’s a nice person.

And while the roommates to more storyline is solid enough, it just’s a hair too predictable for its own good.

All in all, this is one that should have taken a queue from the title and maybe made Marlo’s life a little more upside down before giving her (inevitable) happy ending.

Audiobook Review: Resting Scrooge Face by Megan Quinn

Nola and Caleb were quite the item in their small town years ago but broke up when Nola wanted to pursue her dreams in New York City and Caleb wanted to stay in town.

As the Christmas season approaches, Nola is back in town following a break-up and trying to avoid Caleb, the boy who broke her heart. In a town full of the Christmas spirit, neither is really feeling it and starts putting down those feelings on paper in the form of anonymous letters that get passed back and forth by the town mailman.

Meghan Quinn’s Resting Scrooge Face (the name Caleb assumes for his letters to Ho Ho No) is a perfect holiday confection — sweet and a bit sugary. Quinn allows us just enough time to invest in the characters (I understand Nola features as a supporting character in other stories) but wisely doesn’t make us spend too much time doing the “will they or won’t they” rom-com dance. A diverting audiobook.

Review: Tell Me Lies by Carola Lovering

Meet Lucy, an aspiring writer who has chosen a west coast college because it offers an elite writing workshop and distance from her estranged mother. Meet Stephen, an upperclassman, with narcissistic tendencies. Together they equal one of the most dysfunctional romantic couples you will ever encounter in the pages of fiction. And yet, the two just can’t quit each other for the seven long years chronicled in Tell Me Lies.

Carola Lovering alternates chapters between Lucy and Stephen’s narration, giving the reader an interesting perspective into each character’s thoughts and justifications for their actions – and creating the feeling of wanting to shout “What is wrong with you?!?” early and often.

Each one is hiding secrets from themselves, others, and the readers, though most of them will be revealed before we get to the final page.

Lucy harbors the secret of the “Unforgivable Thing” that destroyed her relationship with her mother. Thankfully, Lovering reveals the trauma within the novel’s first quarter and doesn’t string readers along too much. The reveal is one of the first moments in which alarm bells start to ring about how maybe these two aren’t right for each other in every possible way.

As Lucy decides she can trust Stephen to be the first person who knows what happened the fateful afternoon of the “Unforgivable Thing,” Stephen is focused on her bra strap and imaging what it would be like to seduce Lucy. He even offers just enough of a response to convince that a)he was listening and b)cares to eventually seduce her and entangle the two for years to come.

But wait, there’s more. Turns out Stephen is harboring his own big secret – and it’s one that ties into Lucy’s past as well. (The two hail from the same region of the United States). I put together the pieces of what Stephen is hiding earlier than the story confirms them – and I have to say it doesn’t put Stephen in a good light. It isn’t necessarily helped by the attitude we see Stephen take toward people in his life – a lot of times, they’re just stepping stones or obstacles to his ambitions and his actions reflect as much. As the story proceeds, Stephen’s failure to understand that his actions have consequences and the time he spends raging/sulking about it becomes more and more infuriating.

Audiobook Review: X-Rated by Maitland Ward

Early in her memoir Rated X, Maitland Ward relates a story about how her first boyfriend discovered a cache of Penthouse Letters and then read them to her over the phone. As the story of Ward’s life and career unfolds, I couldn’t help but think that this was her own take on a letter to the adult magazine.

Ward is either best known for her role in ABC’s Boy Meets World or her racy photos that she’s “reinvented” herself on social media.

A lot of the run time of Rated X is Ward patting herself on the back for being who she is and what she’s become today. She is unashamed of the career path she’s taken, nor is she necessarily worried about the bridges she has burned within the professional community. A common theme of later chapters, after Ward overhears an agent saying her career is pretty much over, is that she and her family are all proud of who and what she’s become and that Hollywood can just get over it.

I don’t mind that Ward feels empowered by her chosen path. I don’t mind that she feels like she has to be her own champion and throws her success back in the face of everyone who ever doubted her. However, as the chapters slowly blur together the closer to the present we get, I kept waiting for something more substantial to emerge than Ward’s observation of “Hey, look at me. I do porn and I’m fine.”

It’s similar to how I feel about DVD commentaries on recent shows or movies — the participants haven’t necessarily had the time and distance to really get a perspective on what they’ve done and its impact. I feel like Ward is so caught up in the justification of her current career and choices, that we don’t have much deeper consideration of what those choices can and will mean to her.

In many ways, it felt like this was a “strike while the iron is hot” kiss-and-tell memoir, designed to keep Ward’s name and face in front of the media. Indeed, upon its publication, I did see multiple articles that referenced some of the more salacious details and observances from Ward.

But, in the end, I couldn’t help coming away from this one feeling like it was more of a bag of chips instead of a substantial meal in terms of reading/listening. Ward telling her own stories on the audio was both intriguing and disconcerting. In the end, it feels like the last few chapters are more designed to draw attention to Ward now and justify her choices, rather than being truly interesting or offering any new or interesting observations.

Read this one at your own risk. It’s not for the easily offended.

Audiobook Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

At multiple points, while listening to Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, I keep asking myself if she’s a Star Trek fan. I ask this because allusions to Star Trek: Voyager were prominent in Staton Eleven and some of the themes and broad strokes of Sea of Tranquility echo the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “All Good Things.”

Or maybe it’s just that I’m such a Trek fan that I’m finding connections where none were necessarily intended.

Whatever it may be, those thoughts didn’t in any way diminish my enjoyment of Sea of Tranquility.. If anything, it enhanced it a bit.

Like Station Eleven, Tranquility is a literary science-fiction slow burn as Mandel introduces multiple characters across multiple time periods and slyly slips in details that will pay dividends as layers of this literary onion are slowly peeled away. Mandel gives us a time-travel story less interested in the mechanics of traveling through time but instead looking at the character impacts that time travel and paradoxes create upon various characters. A dense crowd of characters including the time traveler, a musician, and an author on a book tour inhabit these pages, each of them given a moment to shine. I won’t give away too many of the details here because that might ruin some of the well-earned surprises that Mandel sets up over the course of the story. Just know that if things start slow, there’s a reason and that your patience will be rewarded.

Mandel’s story of hope and optimism in the wake of dark days or overwhelming real-world circumstances is the kind of a breath of fresh air that I need literarily. The sense of human connection that develops over the course of this story was utterly compelling and delightful. I know that Station Eleven was adapted for the screen by HBO — and I couldn’t help but wonder if this one might also be developed for the screen as well. Given the nature of the story and its time-travel implications, I’m not sure it could or would work as effectively.

Give this one a chance and just let it wash over you. I found it compelling, entertaining, and enthralling.

Christmas Listening

This week, I passed 1400 miles running for 2021. That’s a lot of hours out pounding the pavement in every type of weather condition from the heat of summer to the cold of winter. I tend to draw the line at thunderstorms and heavy rains to prevent a running workout (I find drivers seem to have a hard enough time seeing/acknowledging me in good conditions.

My running time provides me with the opportunity to catch up on podcasts, create a rocking playlist, or listen to an audiobook.

During the Christmas season, I find that I like to listen to festive things — whether it’s a playlist of various Christmas favorites and covers — or a holiday-themed audiobook. This year, I threw in a couple of old favorites from old-time radio as well and I had some thoughts.

Burns and Allen: Christmas in Santa’s Workshop

I find my preference for OTR shows leans more toward comedy — and Burns and Allen is one of my favorite shows. I just can’t say this particular episode is a favorite or necessarily a great example of what makes me such a fan of the show.

It comes from a season with George Burns and Gracie Allen adopting a duck. The duck has a voice a bit like Donald and reacts pretty much like you’d expect. The episode takes place on Christmas Eve and finds the duck and Gracie falling asleep while waiting for Santa. In a dream, they’re whisked off to the North Pole to battle the evil witch who has stolen all of Santa’s toys. Various regulars appear in other roles during the journey, including George as a prince.

I’d heard this one years ago when I checked it out on cassette from my local library and didn’t enjoy it much then. Time hasn’t improved my opinion of it. Part of it is that it lacks the George/Gracie dynamic that generally makes the show work so well. And part of it is that it feels overly silly at times. Again, the whole partially talking duck thing probably took me out of it. But I link it above in case you feel like it’s something you might want to hear.

Jack Benny: Christmas 1938, Christmas Shopping 1943

On the other hand, these Jack Benny episodes were right up my alley. It’s easy to forget that in the days of OTR, there weren’t repeats, so the writers could use variations on the same routine each year. In this case, it’s the various adventures of Jack shopping and/or buying gifts for his fellow cast members. Neither of these necessarily dig too deeply into the “Jack is cheap” laughs, but instead give Jack and his cast new ways to shine. Benny is fascinating to me because he invented the situation comedy with the recurring characteristics being mined for laughs. These two are solid examples of why Jack Benny was so good.

The Great Gildersleeve: Christmas Program (1942)

The Great Gildersleeve may be my all-time favorite OTR show and it’s one that keeps surprising me. This Christmas episode from 1942 is chock full of what I love about the show. Gildy is behind on his Christmas shopping due to the annual water report and is trying to catch up. Meanwhile, his rival Judge Hooker has proposed to Leila Ransom and Gildy is trying to get her to turn down his proposal before she heads to Savannah for the holidays.

Gildersleeve feels like one of the first shows to have a continuity of sorts (that wasn’t a serial like Superman or the Lone Ranger, mind you) in the forms of Gildy’s various romances. At this point, Leila is clearly the romantic foil of choice, though this time around I was struck by how manipulative she is to Gildy and the Judge. She plays the two off each other to get a ride to the airport, then proceeds to flirt with the pilot while in front of a man who has proposed to her and another suitor.

That said, this one hits the right spirit for the season and may be the favorite of the OTR I sampled during Christmas. And it’s amusing to hear a show come from a war time and discuss how war bonds are a better gift than a model airplane.

There’s Something about Merry by Codi Hall

Since the birth of his son Jace, Clark Griffin has been the most devoted of single dads. Working hard to earn his degree, he’s been nose to the grindstone at work to provide the security and loving home that he and his brother, Sam, grew up without. So, when he sees an ad to be the foreman at the Winters’ Christmas tree farm, Clark is quick to apply and move back to his hometown.

Merry Winters returned to town a year ago, smarting from the latest in a string of failed romances. She’s slowly getting herself back on track, though she wants to take a greater part in running the family business. When she’s roped into overseeing the local holiday event, Merry finds demands on her time are increasing — she’s also a devoted knitter, making stuffed creatures that look like male genitalia as voodoo dolls for scorned friends.

While Merry and Clark had a moment when they could have connected romantically in high school, Clark sees her as off-limits because she’s the daughter of his bosses and Merry sees Clark as off-limits because she sees him as competition to run the family business someday. So, when the two download a dating app and find a connection in the small town, they have little to no idea that they could be kindling a new holiday romance.

I spent time in the appropriately named Mistletoe last year, so a return visit this year with Codi Hall’s There’s Something About Merry was a pleasant holiday treat. As she did with her previous couple of Nick and Noel, Hall creates reasonable, believable obstacles to the budding romance of Merry and Clark. Clark has issues with trust — from his parents to the mother of his child abandoning them hours after their son was born — while Merry is stubborn, independent, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

The romance has its steps forward and backward, finally culminating in the pair getting together in a sweet, steamy way. I will admit there was a point about a third of the way in that it felt like Clark had truly blown his shot, but it’s nice to see that he could recover a bit and find his footing. Hall also wisely brings in Clark’s status as a single dad and the connection he’s building with the Winters family as potential consideration to the relationship.

Even when I had guessed that a certain someone from the past would show up to throw a monkey wrench in things, Hall was able to surprise me a bit with how this particular plot thread was utilized.

I know I’m probably not the target audience for romance novels. But they make for a nice, fun distraction while pounding the pavement and I’ve got to admit that Hall has kind of got me hooked on spending a bit of my holiday season in Mistletoe each year. She’s found romance for two of the three Winter siblings, so I can only hope that the seeds she’s sewing for the other sister might pay off in her next book.

An entirely satisfying holiday romance that is the right balance of sweet, sassy, and steamy.

Audiobook Review: Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner

It’s been close to two decades since Star Trek: The Next Generation left the airwaves, so I’ve started to expect the “behind the scenes” confessional books from the cast to start hitting the shelves.

The closest we’ve got so far is Fan Fiction by the guy who brought Data to life, Brent Spiner. Billed as a story inspired by true events, I have to admit I spent more time trying to figure out which bits were taken from reality and which bits were taken from Spiner’s imagination than I did paying attention to the story.

Set at the height of Next Generation‘s popularity, Fan Fiction finds Spiner getting increasingly disturbing letters and mailings from an obsessive fan who only identities herself as Lal, the created daughter of his character on the show who expired at the end of her episode. Justifiably freaked out by these mailings and the missives of another female fan who is convinced she’s carrying on a steamy phone affair with the actor, Spiner turns to first to the L.A. PD’s department of obsessives and then the FBI for help.

It’s at the FBI that he meets agent Cindy Jones and her twin sister bodyguard Candy Jones. Spiner is immediately attracted to both and begins a romantic entanglement with Candy while pining for Cindy. It’s at this point, that I began to question just how much of this tale was from Spiner’s imagination and how much was from reality. I feel certain he got some interesting fan letters along the way as he played Data. But whether or not he met twin sisters who were both attracted to him — seems a bit far-fetched to this reader.

For a good bit of the story, I felt like Spiner was trying to do something clever with the twin sisters who never appear in the same room together — and I will give him credit that he does try a bit. It just never quite goes anywhere satisfying.

Indeed, the entire novel feels as if it wants to be more than it is. The noir aspect of the fem-Fatale and the threat to our hero feels well done and certain Spiner shares a love of older, lesser-known films over the course of the novel. But the ending doesn’t quite bring all the threads together in the most satisfying way possible and left me feeling a bit empty.

Listening to this one as an audiobook may add an extra layer of enjoyment for you if you’re a fan of TNG. Spiner gathers together his castmates to voice themselves in the novel. I do wonder how much of Spiner’s portrayal of his cast members is real and how much is tongue-in-cheek, but it certainly feels like everyone is having a good time here.

I wanted this one to be a bit more satisfying than it was. I wouldn’t say I regret reading it, but this one didn’t quite come together in the end.

A Few YA Reviews

Every once in a while, you hit a string of books that you really enjoyed reading.  And then, you hit a string of books you really didn’t like or just didn’t connect with you.   The latter is the case with a couple of recent reads that I really didn’t enjoy.

There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

Exiled to Nebraska, senior Mikani Young is enduring life with her strict grandmother and at a new high school. The only ray of hope is her summer hook-ups with fellow local outcast Ollie and her two friends.

But when a series of brutal murders begin taking place around town, Mikani realizes she can’t escape her troubled past. And worst of all — her friends suspect that mysterious Ollie may be the prime candidate behind the murders.

Stephanie Perkins’ There’s Someone Inside Your House suffers from an identity crisis, never quite able to decide if it’s a slasher/thriller or a young-adult romance. The transitions from one focus to the other are jarring and took me completely out of this novel. Add to it that I kept wanting to shake Mikani and tell her it was time to grow up and stop acting like a spoiled brat and it all adds up to one of the least enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time.

The serial killer aspect of things becomes tedious quickly and the final reveal of who it was had me going, “Come on, really?!?” I know all books aren’t for me, so I’ll just chalk this one up as another young adult books that just didn’t quite connect and move on.

Panic by Lauren Oliver

Could we please let the young adult trope that all the teenagers are smarter and more together than adults go the way of the dodo?

That thought kept hitting me as I listened to Lauren Oliver’s Panic. And it’s probably why I decided to give up on it about halfway through.

Add in that the novel feels derivative of multiple other (better) young adult-targeted novels (especially The Hunger Games) and this was just another in a string of recent novels that didn’t connect with me.

I had picked this one up with thoughts of trying out the Amazon series based on it. But given the sheer volume of other streaming shows I haven’t started or finished yet, I may not be sampling this one any time soon.