Suzanne Kelman

So many times I wish I could give things half stars. This is about a 2.5 for me. I wanted to like this book so badly. It seemed right up my alley. Librarian in a small town joins a group of women and eventually makes friends. It sounded so great, but it ended up just feeling tedious and a jumbled mess.

The beginning started out a bit slow and the main character got on my nerves with her inability to stand up to a woman who just seemed to be steamrolling her. Then, the first part of the road trip, it seemed to get better. I enjoyed the first part of the road trip and enjoyed the adventures they had. However, the longer the road trip went on, the more tedious it became. It was like everything you can EVER think of to go wrong during a road trip went wrong on this one. It just became too much. I got to the point where I was thinking, "Really? ANOTHER disaster? Really?" Some people who have reviewed this book found that portion of it to be funny. Unfortunately, I found it to be boring and felt it slowed down the story line. The ending, however, I felt was pretty good. I enjoyed the last chapter and the epilogue.

This book has a lot of potential, I just personally felt that it needed less drama and more interpersonal interactions. We hear a lot about what's happening to the ladies, but we don't see enough interaction between them and the others in the story. What characters we had were not as rounded as I would've liked to see. We get some background and see some growth and vulnerability in them but not as much as one would hope to see in a book this length. Perhaps as the series goes on we'll learn more about them, but unfortunately, I'm not sure I'll be around for it which is disappointing given how much I really wanted to like the book when I went into it.

*** I received a free copy of the e-book from NetGalley in exchange for my fair and honest review. All opinions are my own. ***… (meer)

The book has good plots and it started well when I was reading the sample chapter on my Kindle. I decided to give it a go after reading many good reviews here and on Amazon. Felt I was tricked after 30% and couldn't go on anymore after half the book. The plots are still good but the writing is plain and details increasingly unbelievable. The main character Vivi is unbearable and annoying. Although trained as a spy, she is full of self-doubt and caused harm to others because of her carelessness. She felt guilty afterwards but soon she was impulsive again simply because "what was the harm now?" I guess the harm is that some readers, like me, simply gave up...… (meer)

This is another World War II story about a little known subject - The Night Witches who helped Russia win the air war. Who were these Night Witches? They were the all-women pilots of Russia’s 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. The Night Witches were the first women military pilots in the 20th century to directly engage an enemy in combat. All the members of the 588th were women, including the navigators, ground crews, and support staff.

Sisters Tasha and Nadia lived with their grandmother in a small town in Russia. Nadia is the older sister and is quiet and sensible and plans to marry a Communist party official. Tasha has been in love with Luca since they met as children. She is impetuous and often reckless. When Luca signs up to go in the army to fight the Germans, she's distraught and decides to follow him. When he is less than thrilled that she showed up, she impulsively goes to a meeting about female pilots and how they can help in the war. She signs up for the new program on a whim and is sent away to training camp. When she left home, she left nothing but a note and her sister Nadia decides that she has to find Tasha and bring her home. When she finds out about the female pilot program, she decides to join too. Her husband is in the army and she knows that she can do more to help Russia than just staying at home and being a housewife. When Nadia first shows up at training camp, Tasha is angry. She's been compared to her older sister for all of her life and was looking forward to being a success at something on her own. They eventually reconcile and realize how important they are to each other. On a night fight, Tasha impulsively decides to look for Luca's downed plane behind enemy lines. She ends up crashing her plane and both sisters are taken to a German concentration camp. Life in the camp is brutal and they both believe that they will never see their home again. Will the two sisters be able to survive the brutal treatment in the camp and go home or will one sister have to sacrifice everything to save the other?

Tasha and Nadia were both brave beyond words. Every night, along with the rest of the female pilots, they put their lives on the line to bomb German targets. At first they were made fun of by the male pilots and underestimated by the male officers. By the end of the war, these Night Witches had flown somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 bombing raids, delivering around 23,000 tons of munitions on Nazi targets and became a crucial Soviet asset in winning World War II.

This well researched novel will make you smile and make you cry while you lean about a little known group of brave women who helped the Allies win the war. It's novel about sisterhood - both by blood and the people who mean the most to you - bravery and resilience and it's a story that you won't soon forget.… (meer)

It is the rare book that makes me laugh out loud. Hats off to Ms. Kelman, who achieved that with her remarkably refreshing The Rejected Writers' Book Club. I started and finished the book in one sitting and loved it.

The POV narrator is Janet, mild-mannered librarian in a small-town on an island in Puget Sound, Washington. She is content in her comfortable life with her husband, who is obsessed with defeating the raccoons pillaging their trashcan at night. And then she gets pulled into the orbit of one Doris, the leader and force of nature behind the Rejected Writers' Book Club. Soon, she finds her roadtrip to visit her pregnant daughter in San Francisco co-opted into a madcap journey to confront a publisher who had the affront to actually accept Doris's novel about a time traveling Jane Austen for publication.

This book is quirky. It is wacky. It is full of oddballs and misfits, and--most importantly--a lot of heart. It's a book about accepting and celebrating not only our successes, but our failures, and of living and enjoying life, and laughing. Like a roadtrip, the plot moved in unexpected ways and I had no idea what zany situation the characters would encounter, or what harebrained idea Doris would talk the others into. The unpredictability was lovely and a welcome change to some of the practically boilerplate plots of other books I've read. I loved every minute I spent with these ladies and I'm so very grateful to Kelman for giving them to us.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley.… (meer)