The Book Club: ‘How to End a Love Story’ is a Reese’s Book Club pick
Editor s note The opinions of the smart well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables So we urged them and all Denver Post readers to share their mini-reviews with you Have any to offer Email bellis denverpost com Barbara Ellis The Correspondent by Virginia Evans Crown The Correspondent by Virginia Evans Crown Sybil is a lifelong letter writer not a journalist the other meaning of correspondent Her life and relationships are explained through the letters by and to her which comprise this entire novel Sybil is much more confident and in her own mind more effective with the written word And she uses it to great effect throughout her professional legal career for reaching out to admired authors to maintain her relationships and in explaining herself sometimes to her very own self That last purpose is often the hardest to fulfill yet Sybil perseveres to find her own truth through her faith in words stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang Avon Helen Zhang a best-selling author now on assignment to help with a screenplay reconnects as an adult with her high school classmate Grant Shepherd a screenwriter Neither is relaxed following up on their struggling feelings of attraction because Grant was the source of her younger sister s death years before Helen s parents certainly are upset by the thought of the two partnering in any way Although the title emphasizes ending a love story this novel capitalizes on multiple of your favorite tropes in contemporary romances enemies to lovers office romances forced proximity to move the story forward The characters are charming and you can honestly cheer for their romance even if the plot holds limited surprises A Reese s Book Club pick in stars out of Bonnie McCune Denver bonniemccune com Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey by Kathleen Rooney Penguin An odd but wonderful novel based on true World War I events Chapter narrators alternate between a homing pigeon and a soldier whose futures intersect in the bulk terrible of war offensives in France Sounds weird but withhold judgment it works beautifully The writing is excellent the lessons of war unglamorized and poignant From the Chicago Review of Books Rooney brings history to life without becoming beholden to its flawed narratives This is a war novel filled with tenderness a love story marked by mankind s brutality And it digs deeper and soars higher than anything else you ll read all year A worthy read stars out of Jo Calhoun Denver I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger Grove Press I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger Grove Press This novel of a post-literate dystopian world is set in a village on the shores of Lake Superior Our unassuming hero finds himself inexplicably privileged by a satisfying life with his beloved wife when a sequence of unexpected events spirals his life literally into uncharted waters This book overflows with literary references and sailing knowledge Enger also offers a realistically disoriented depiction of grief along with several magical thinking a dogged will to survive and resilient hope for a accomplishable future stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver The Still Point by Amy Sackville Kensington Edward Mackley ventures to be first to reach the North Pole in - while his bride Emily lives as a guest in her brother-in-law s home in England She is a th-century Penelope steadfastly loving her Ulysses waiting waiting A hundred years later Emily and Edward s story is romanticized by Edward s great-grand-niece Julia who with her husband Simon now inhabits the Mackley family home Julia and Simon negotiate crevasses of their own traversing the rifts in their marriage as Edward traversed the Arctic ice all of them searching for their own still point around which to revolve Sackville s prize-winning debut evokes both locations and time settings beautifully The Still Point tells two or is it three very different love stories in language rich as Edward s favorite meal asparagus soup sole quail veal and cherry clafoutis stars out of Neva Gronert Parker
