The Lovers by Vendela Vida

I just read an earlier book by this author - "Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name " and found that to be quite interesting and captivating.  This book was also enjoyable and interesting, but I took a bit longer to get into it than her other book. In the end, however, I think it was even more powerful.

I don't think I quite understood the title however. The novel tells a story of a woman, Yvonne, who has recently lost her husband in a tragic hit and run accident. She is traveling to Turkey to revisit the place that she and her husband, Peter, had visited on their honeymoon.  At the end of the trip she is to meet up with her twins, Matthew and Aurelia, and Matthew's finance, for a cruise in the Aegean.

She rents a house and has interesting encounters with the owner and his wife, and also befriends a young boy who plays a pivotal role in the novel.

The author describes in detail Yvonne's feelings of being alone in a strange country; she can't sleep, she makes mistakes, gets lost a number of times and wanders, seeking answers to questions and issues that have plagued her.

In the end, Yvonne deals with her grief and finds peace, especially with her daughter. It's a good read. Recommended.

LIttle Bee by Chris Cleave

This was a captivating read....not an easy read, but a very compelling story.  The lives of two women, very different, are intertwined in a tragic way, and their common experience brings them close together and makes their lives interdepedent.

Little Bee (not her real name) is a Nigerian woman who lost her whole family to acts of terror in her home country.  Sarah is a journalist with a young son, Charlie, and a strained marriage.  She and Andrew, her husband, travel to Nigeria to save their marriage.  Little do they know that what they experience their will change their lives forever.

So much happens in this book; so much that is sad, tragic, and scary.  The women are strong and positive characters, while the men are weak and flawed.  Even her son, Charlie, is maladjusted and difficult.

I don't want to spoil the end, but I was not quite sure exactly what happened at the end. I am not sure if the author intended to be cryptic, or if I just rushed through the end without fully grasping the meaning. I want to discuss with my friends who have read the book.

Have you read it? Do you have an opinion about the ending?

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

Not sure where I heard about/read about this book, but I know I did. It was fast-paced, exciting, intriguing and compelling. It tells the story of a young woman who was abducted, tortured, raped, abused, and impregnated by a psychotic man over the period of more than a year. It reminded me of John Fowles' "The Collector," at first and makes me want to read that again.
I could not put this book down. One thing that is comforting in this horrific story, is that you know that Annie, the main character, survives, because the book is told in the present tense and is told as if she is relating her experience to her shrink. So it's comforting, in a way, to know that Annie does not die at the hands of her abductor.
But what she does experience, at the hand of her abductor, and when you find out how this all came about, is so disturbing.

Bridge of Sand by Janet Burroway

I had never read anything by this author and am a bit embarrassed to say that I had not heard of her before. Apparently, she is the author of one of the top selling and  most respected books on the craft of writing, and has written a novel nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She writes poems, plays, children's books and fiction, Quite prolific. She wrote for Mademoiselle Magazine as a Guest Editor in the 1970's a position also held by Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion.
So, I learned all of this after having read Bridge of Sand because I was curious about this wonderfully talented author. The novel opens on 9/11 as Dana, the heroine, is driving to her husband's funeral in Western Pennsylvania only to see a huge cloud of smoke, which turns out to be the plane that was hijacked and crashed in W. PA. 
Dana was ready to leave her husband when he became ill with cancer but she stays with him and takes care of him until his death. At this point she grapples with her life and what to do with it. Her husband was a congressman, but she seeks out her working class roots and goes down to find one of the only places she could ever called home, her grandmother's house in Georgia, only to find it gone. She looks up an old friend, Cassius, a black man who she used to work with in the local supermarket. A romance ensues, but much more than that as well. As a matter of fact, for most of the novel Dana and Cassius are not even together.
She settles in Western Florida after meeting up with Solly, the owner of a local grocery store in a town that she learned about from Cassius. She ends up meeting all kinds of interesting and rich characters and becomes embroiled in a life so different from what she had as the wife of a Congressman.
I will not reveal any more about the book, other than to say it's powerful, entertaining and beautifully crafted. Read it! I am going after her other novels soon.