Micro by Michael Crichton (audiobook)
How Hard Can it Be? By Allison Pearson (ARC)
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (audiobook)
When to Jump by Mike Lewis
City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (audiobook)
Chemistry Lessons by Meredith Goldstein (ARC)
City of Glass by Cassandra Clare (audiobook)
Revival by Stephen King
Creating the Opportunity to Learn by A Wade Boykin and Pedro Noguera
Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov
I received an Advance Readers’ Edition of How Hard Can It Be? By Allison Pearson from the publisher (St. Martin’s Press) in exchange for an honest review. How Hard Can It Be? is scheduled for release on June 5, 2018.I didn’t realize this book was a sequel until it got to me. I haven’t read the first book, so I was worried that I wouldn’t understand what was happening, or wouldn’t know the characters. I considered getting and reading the first book, but I am not drowning in free time right now, so I just dove in.
This novel is the tale of an almost-fifty year old woman. She formerly had a career in finance, and was very successful. She left that career to raise her children. This novel starts with her husband deciding that he is leaving his job to follow his dream. His dream involves classes, therapy, and riding his bicycle. His dream does not involve bringing in money to support his family. So Kate is headed back to work.
Kate worries about balancing work with continuing to raise her children, repairing a strained relationship with her husband, and renovating the well-worn house they are living in. She is also worried about finding and holding a job at her age, fearing that she will be pushed aside and undervalued because she is “old.”
But Kate has no choice but to push forward. She will have to set aside her wants to support the wants of her husband and children. She knows that it will be difficult, bu is not fully prepared for what the world has in store for her. She is even less prepared to find her way to her own wants and unrealized dreams.
Allison Pearson has created a rich cast of characters in this novel. While Kate is the focus of the story, and we get to know her very well, she is not the only well-drawn character here. She is surrounded by family, friends, coworkers, and mostly-strangers that shine on their own.
The plot of the novel is complicated, but believable. Kate faces all the obstacles you would expect a woman to face as she returns to the work-force after taking “time off.” There were, however, a few spots where the story jumped forward in a way that pulled me out of the story. I would turn to a new chapter and find Kate in the midst of dealing with a decision she had made, or an action she had taken. I missed the moment where she made the decision, decided to act. I only got to see her deal with what she had done.
Overall, How Hard Can It Be? is a very good novel that I enjoyed. Though it is a sequel, you do not need to read the previous novel (I Don’t Know How She Does It) to understand the story and love the characters.
I also received a copy of Chemistry Lessons by Meredith Goldstein from the publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) in exchange for an honest review. Chemistry Lessons is scheduled for release on June 19, 2018.Maya is ready. Ready to be a freshman at MIT. Ready for the next step in her relationship with her boyfriend, Whit. Ready to move forward with her life.
Then Whit breaks up with her. Suddenly Maya is lost, adrift. She finds solace in the boxes of research her mom left her in her will. She also finds what she needs to get Whit back. Maybe. Maya will have to conduct an experiment.
With the help of her mom’s graduate student, Maya plans to test her mom’s pheromone formula on Whit. But first, she needs a couple of control subjects. A close friend, and a relative stranger.
As often happens in science, the results are not quite what Maya expects.
What I loved most about this novel was the focus on women in science. There are men in the lab where Maya works, but the researchers that drive the story forward are all female. The female characters throughout are relatively well drawn. Maya’s challenges are realistic, given her specific history. The women around her aren’t quite as fleshed out as Maya, but they all have their own stories.
I did struggle a bit with the male characters in the story. Overall, they are less developed, in particular Maya’s dad. I had a difficult time getting a sense of him in relationship to Maya and the story as a whole.
I also appreciated that the story wasn’t based on a vague, improbable love potion. Instead, the magic formula is rooted in actual science, though it may not work quite the way it does in this novel.
While the story did end pretty much the way I expected, I was not disappointed. I enjoyed the journey Maya took to realize there was a new worthwhile path waiting for her. I also loved the “whiff walks.” You’ll have to read the story to find out what that means!
