Book Review: Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

From the back of the book: There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide....

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.

But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets….

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I'll just come right out and say it. This was the best book I've read in a LONG time. I knew almost immediately that it would become my go-to book recommendation this summer, because I think it is very well written, and something that most people I know will really enjoy. In fact, this book was just released at the beginning of June and is already receiving tons of accolades. I can understand why. Despite the synopsis, this book really didn't feel particularly dramatic to me, and I think that's a credit to Laura Dave's talent as an author--to be able to make characters feel real, authentic, and nuanced without feeling trite or over-dramatic.

I think I expected Eight Hundred Grapes to be your standard chick-lit romance set in wine country. You know--the sort that will inevitably be made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. And while I think it's still quite likely that this book will be made into such a movie, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Eight Hundred Grapes was as much about family and wine as it was about romance. Laura Dave described the vineyards and the wine making process with such care that I was totally transported to Sonoma, and instantly wanted to tear out all the grass in our backyard and plant enough wine grapes for a small vineyard. Thankfully, Justin reminded me that we do, in fact, have wine grapes planted in our backyard, and that three plants is probably plenty for us at this moment in time. But, the point is that while Eight Hundred Grapes *is* light enough to be something that I'd read at the beach or next to the pool, it's not completely superficial chick lit either--there is substance and depth there as well, which I really enjoyed. 

Overall, I really enjoyed Eight Hundred Grapes, and recommend it highly. In fact, move it to the top of your "to be read" stack, right now. 

You can also read an excerpt of Eight Hundred Grapes here, and read my review of Laura Dave's book The First Husband here.

Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book for review through Net Galley. I did not receive any further compensation for this review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own. You all should know by now that I couldn't lie about a book even if I wanted to :)

Monday Printable + Hopes for Summer

Today is the first "official" day of summer for us--the first day that Lizzy would have normally gone to school, but isn't. We still have an end-of-the-year BBQ one evening later this week, but for all intents and purposes, we are done. I can't believe that I'll have a kindergartener next year. It just blows my mind.

As we start summer, I've been thinking about a lot of things. I've been feeling the pull to write again, and I think it's supposed to be here. I needed to step back and take a break for a while--I was getting focused on giveaways, and pageviews, and "monetizing" my blog, and was having a hard time getting back to writing in a way that felt meaningful to me. Then, when you add a kiddo who is a terrible sleeper into the mix, I just felt like I had to take some things off of my plate. And I'm glad that I did, but I have also missed writing. I have always felt like I am supposed to write--and I'm not sure exactly in what capacity, but this is enough for now. We still sometimes go back to my Letters to Lizzy to read about what she was doing at a particular age, and I do miss that for Becca.

Anyway, as we're settling into summer, I have some hopes:

-I hope to find a routine for our days that gives a good balance between doing what needs to be done. Cleaning, meal prep, laundry, exercise, tending the garden--those are things that just need to be done, mostly every day. But I don't want to spend *all* day doing them. I want to leave space for reading, playing in the backyard, and even letting my kids be bored. I don't want to be their cruise director, but I also want to be available just to read and play with them in activities that they initiate as well. 

-I hope to continue to build self-care into that routine. I was blessed to be able to share part of my story at my Mom's Group retreat this year, and what it boils down to is that for me there is a list of specific things that I need to be doing on a regular basis in order to keep my anxiety at bay. For me, those things (exercise is one of the major ones, for me) need to be the priority, not the things that I do if I'm not too tired at the end of the day. Because the bottom line is that without that self-care piece, I can't live the life that I'm called to live. Right along with this, is also putting myself "out there" so to speak, and initiating visits and playdates with friends. I am *terrible* about this. Friends text me sometimes and ask if we want to meet at a park, or come over for lunch, and I'm always like, "YEAH! Absolutely!" and we go, and have a great time. But, I'm really bad about ever initiating things like that, because honestly, it almost never occurs to me. I'm just a huge introvert, and it isn't the first thing that comes to my mind when we have a free morning or afternoon. The reality, though, is that I need that time of fellowship with friends, and so do my kiddos, and I hope to be better about initiating it this summer.

-I want to spend a lot of time reading with the girls. I want to get back into the habit of going to library story time. I also hope to spend a lot of time swimming with them--whether it's in our little backyard pool, at our parents' larger pools, or at the river/lake.

-I hope that we can be better about carving out some intentional family time AND date nights for Justin and I. In looking at our calendar, almost every weekend is already booked through mid-July. We've committed to some worthy things, and I'm glad we committed to them, but we also need to carve out some down-time. Justin and I have a weekend planned to go away just the two of us, and it is *much* needed.

-Berry picking. Lots of berry picking.

There's more, but those are some of the major ones. Of course, I'm going to have a lot more imperfect days than perfect ones. And that's where this week's printable comes in:


I've seen this paraphrase of John 1:16 before, and I just really love it. I need the reminder this summer--there is grace, upon grace, upon grace both for me and for my kiddos. Every single day.

Here are the details:
-This is an 8x10 image. Click on the image above to go to Flickr, where you can download the above image and print it out as you wish. This is for personal use only, not for commercial use or sale.
-The flower graphic is a free graphic from We Lived Happily Ever After.
-Happy Monday!

Book Review: Housebreaking by Dan Pope

From the back of the book: In this gripping, gorgeous literary drama, two suburban families are hopelessly entangled during an explosive Thanksgiving weekend that changes their lives forever.

When Benjamin’s wife kicks him out of their house, he returns to his childhood home in Connecticut to live with his widowed father. Lost, lonely, and doubting everything he felt he knew about marriage and love—even as his eighty-year-old father begins to date again—Benjamin is trying to put his life back together when he recognizes someone down the street: his high school crush, the untouchable Audrey Martin. Audrey has just moved to the neighborhood with her high-powered lawyer husband and their rebellious teenager, Emily. As it turns out, Audrey isn’t so untouchable anymore, and she and Benjamin begin to discover, in each other’s company, answers to many of their own deepest longings. Meanwhile, as the neighborhood is wracked by a mysterious series of robberies, Audrey seems to be hiding a tragic secret, and her husband, Andrew, becomes involved in a dangerous professional game he can never win. And, by the way, who is paying attention to Emily?

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It's been a couple of months now since I read Housebreaking, and when I sat down to collect my thoughts, I spent a good deal of time trying to remember which major issue/conflict was the base of the story. Was it the one with the blackmail? Or maybe the tragedy? Was it the one with the lies and deception? Or the one with the troubled teenage daughter? Turns out, it was all of the above. You see, in the world Dan Pope creates in Housebreaking, everyone has a secret. Benjamin has one, and so does Audrey. Audrey's husband has one, and so does her daughter. And in this instance, every single one of the secrets is a big, major, DYSFUNCTION-JUNCTION secret, not just a run-of-the-mill small secret. Pope really walked a line between realistic and outlandish in terms of all the varying issues that his characters faced, but he walked that line well, given the circumstances. 

Overall, Pope is an extraordinary writer, and I enjoyed his prose immensely. He was able to weave characters in and out of the novel in a way that felt nuanced, but natural at the same time. He tackled a TON of issues, with only minor forays into soap-opera territory. I appreciated the way that the story unfolded slowly, from various different characters. It felt like I was getting little pieces of the puzzle from each individual character, which then gave me new insight and understanding as to the story as a whole.

This novel is deep, and fairly dark. It doesn't shy away from hard issues or familial dysfunction at all, but it doesn't leave you feeling depressed and hopeless either. Overall, I enjoyed it very much and recommend it highly!

 Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book for review through Net Galley. I did not receive any further compensation for this review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own. You all should know by now that I couldn't lie about a book even if I wanted to :)

In this gripping, gorgeous literary drama, two suburban families are hopelessly entangled during an explosive Thanksgiving weekend that changes their lives forever.

When Benjamin’s wife kicks him out of their house, he returns to his childhood home in Connecticut to live with his widowed father. Lost, lonely, and doubting everything he felt he knew about marriage and love—even as his eighty-year-old father begins to date again—Benjamin is trying to put his life back together when he recognizes someone down the street: his high school crush, the untouchable Audrey Martin. Audrey has just moved to the neighborhood with her high-powered lawyer husband and their rebellious teenager, Emily. As it turns out, Audrey isn’t so untouchable anymore, and she and Benjamin begin to discover, in each other’s company, answers to many of their own deepest longings. Meanwhile, as the neighborhood is wracked by a mysterious series of robberies, Audrey seems to be hiding a tragic secret, and her husband, Andrew, becomes involved in a dangerous professional game he can never win. And, by the way, who is paying attention to Emily? - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Housebreaking/Dan-Pope/9781476745909#sthash.OaUk84Qq.dpuf

In this gripping, gorgeous literary drama, two suburban families are hopelessly entangled during an explosive Thanksgiving weekend that changes their lives forever.

When Benjamin’s wife kicks him out of their house, he returns to his childhood home in Connecticut to live with his widowed father. Lost, lonely, and doubting everything he felt he knew about marriage and love—even as his eighty-year-old father begins to date again—Benjamin is trying to put his life back together when he recognizes someone down the street: his high school crush, the untouchable Audrey Martin. Audrey has just moved to the neighborhood with her high-powered lawyer husband and their rebellious teenager, Emily. As it turns out, Audrey isn’t so untouchable anymore, and she and Benjamin begin to discover, in each other’s company, answers to many of their own deepest longings. Meanwhile, as the neighborhood is wracked by a mysterious series of robberies, Audrey seems to be hiding a tragic secret, and her husband, Andrew, becomes involved in a dangerous professional game he can never win. And, by the way, who is paying attention to Emily? - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Housebreaking/Dan-Pope/9781476745909#sthash.OaUk84Qq.dpuf

In this gripping, gorgeous literary drama, two suburban families are hopelessly entangled during an explosive Thanksgiving weekend that changes their lives forever.

When Benjamin’s wife kicks him out of their house, he returns to his childhood home in Connecticut to live with his widowed father. Lost, lonely, and doubting everything he felt he knew about marriage and love—even as his eighty-year-old father begins to date again—Benjamin is trying to put his life back together when he recognizes someone down the street: his high school crush, the untouchable Audrey Martin. Audrey has just moved to the neighborhood with her high-powered lawyer husband and their rebellious teenager, Emily. As it turns out, Audrey isn’t so untouchable anymore, and she and Benjamin begin to discover, in each other’s company, answers to many of their own deepest longings. Meanwhile, as the neighborhood is wracked by a mysterious series of robberies, Audrey seems to be hiding a tragic secret, and her husband, Andrew, becomes involved in a dangerous professional game he can never win. And, by the way, who is paying attention to Emily? - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Housebreaking/Dan-Pope/9781476745909#sthash.OaUk84Qq.dpuf