Check out my review here:

http://shannonsbookbag.blogspot.com/2015/01/rainey-royal-landis.html ( )

This was a fun, artfully written book. I enjoyed it and was moved by it in the same way I might enjoy and be moved by a good music video. There was a lot of great rhythm in the language and a beautiful tension set up among the contrasting main characters, though they seemed drawn more to enhance the beat and forward motion of the story than the story drawn to deeply explore the ways in which they change. The retro setting was great. ( )

For all the wildness of the story and the characters, there is a beautiful lightness to things in this book. Seeing pieces from one chapter track through several chapters later (Saint Catherine of Bologna, the cape, the teeth-licking trick, the parrot-boyfriend, and so many others) makes the reader feel like they're dropping in on old friends again and again, catching moments with them as we can - because this is a busy city. Rainey grows up (in her own way) over the ten-or-so years that this book spans, but we don't get to see the entire process. Instead, we experience just these stories, which might not even be the most momentous (although many are, or at least tie into momentous occasions) but are the stories that, if the reader were to go out and grab a drink to catch up with Rainey, she might tell us. Think about the stories you might tell, if you saw a friend maybe every six months or so - and then you'll see just how marvelous a novel this really is.

More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/09/29/rainey-royal/ ( )

For all the wildness of the story and the characters, there is a beautiful lightness to things in this book. Seeing pieces from one chapter track through several chapters later (Saint Catherine of Bologna, the cape, the teeth-licking trick, the parrot-boyfriend, and so many others) makes the reader feel like they're dropping in on old friends again and again, catching moments with them as we can - because this is a busy city. Rainey grows up (in her own way) over the ten-or-so years that this book spans, but we don't get to see the entire process. Instead, we experience just these stories, which might not even be the most momentous (although many are, or at least tie into momentous occasions) but are the stories that, if the reader were to go out and grab a drink to catch up with Rainey, she might tell us. Think about the stories you might tell, if you saw a friend maybe every six months or so - and then you'll see just how marvelous a novel this really is.

More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/09/29/rainey-royal/ ( )

I tried, but I couldn't get into this one.