Paris in Love: A Memoir, by Eloise James (2012)

Genre: Nonfiction
Interest Level: Adult
Selling the house, taking a leave from work, packing up your stuff and moving the whole family to Paris for a year. Who hasn’t had this dream, or a version of it? Eloisa James, a romance author and professor of Shakespeare, does exactly that after surviving breast cancer, the same disease that took her mother’s life. It’s time to live every moment, and so Eloisa and her Italian husband Alessandro (also a professor) and their two children opt for a year in a fourth-floor apartment in the city of love. While on sabbatical, Eloisa intends to write several novels, journal articles, do a couple of presentations and finish an academic tome as well. How did she have time to write this? Well, she didn’t.

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To, by D. C. Pierson (2010)

Genre: Science Fiction
Interest Level: 15-21
What a delightful foray into speculative fiction for young adults. In fact, the science fiction doesn’t reveal itself for quite a while – perhaps two-thirds of the way through. But when it does – whammo! Darren is a 15-year-old boy with all the typical travails of adolescence – he loves to draw, he struggles at school, he’s mortally terrified of girls, and isn’t much better at making friends with boys. Perhaps less commonly, his family consists of a borderline insane and bullying older brother, and a single dad whose conversations are almost solely by cellphone. His drawing attracts the attention of a classmate named Eric, and an unlikely friendship develops.

Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter (2012)

Genre: Contemporary/Historical
Interest Level: Adult
I’m out of sync with the rest of the world on this one – I eventually loved it, but it took time to warm up to these characters and this author’s writing. Once I did, though, it was an absolute pleasure. The genre is difficult to pin down – it spans 50 years, though the bulk of the story develops at either end of the range. It opens in 1962 in a remote cliffside town in Italy, and then switches to modern-day Hollywood, where Claire is the development assistant for a legendary producer who abuses Botox. Over the course of the novel, we follow the lives of a minor American actor and a movie star, an Italian innkeeper, a messed-up 40-something musician, an overconfident wannabe scriptwriter and of course, the Hollywood types.

Fragile, by Lisa Unger (2010)

Genre: Mystery
Interest Level: Adult
Parts of this book are very good. And parts of it are not, making it a bit of a slog at times. This is my first book by Lisa Unger, and honestly, I won’t be looking her up any further. In Fragile, we meet Maggie Cooper, a psychologist in a small town where everyone knows each other, and each other’s history. Maggie couldn’t wait to leave, but returns when her father falls ill. She falls for Jones Cooper, the town detective, and settles in to raise a family. She and Jones have one son, Rick, who is nearly 18 and applying for college. When Rick’s musician girlfriend Charlene disappears (apparently a runaway), Jones suspects his son may have had something to do with it.