Book Review: Dear Pen Pal (The Mother-Daughter Book Club, #3) by Heather Vogel Frederick

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Dear Pen Pal (The Mother-Daughter Book Club, #3)  by Heather Vogel Frederick  is the third book in a middle grade book series that is being rereleased. Chaos erupts in this third installment as the daughters in the book club get themselves into trouble. Each of the girls have big changes in their lives:  Jess is going to boarding school; Megan's grandmother comes to live with her; Emma starts a campaign against school uniforms; Cassidy has a lot of unexpected change coming to her family. Will the mother daughter book club stay together? I'd like to thank NetGalley, Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, and Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers for an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of Dear Pen Pal  by Heather Vogel Frederick with it's upcoming rerelease to the public. I always love a good book that involves books, even if its target audience is children between the ages of eight and twelve. It wasn't until I reached the end of the book that I realized that it...
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Book Review: The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

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Goodreads ARC Book Review of The Book Seller by Cynthia Swanson
The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson opens in Denver, Colorado in the year 1962. Readers are introduced to friends Kitty Miller and Freida, who own and operate a bookstore in Downtown Denver. Following Kitty's life as a single, working woman in the 1960's, she places a personal ad in the local newspaper to meet "Mr. Right" and gives her cast offs to Freida. Then, the dreams begin ... Katharyn Andersson is married to the perfect man, Lars, and they have three children. To Katharyn, it's the perfect life, the one she longs for. Each time she dreams, the more real it is. As her worlds begin to blur, Kitty doesn't know which one is reality and which one is imagined. Which one will she choose?

Let me begin by being upfront ... I won an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson in Goodreads.com's First Reads Giveaway in exchange for my honest review of the book.

Third time's a charm, right? It took me THREE attempts to finish reading Cynthia Swanson's The Bookseller, but on that third try, something clicked, and I couldn't put the book down. Fair warning, there are some minor spoilers below.

Autism is a minor theme throughout the book. The way the characters handled and reacted to autistic kids took me by surprise and saddened me. No one seemed how to interact with these children. What's even more surprising is the doctor said that autism is caused by mothers who don't show their babies enough love and don't hold them enough. I surely hope this wasn't really the way doctors thought in the 1960's.

book review of the bookseller by cynthia swanson
Another interesting element in The Bookseller is the societal limitations placed on women. Kitty and Freida couldn't get a loan from the bank to open their bookstore without a male helping them. They had to borrow money from Freida's father. Were single women really unable to take out a loan in the sixties? If so, it makes me that more thankful to live in a day and age where this wouldn't be an issue.

Racism is also addressed, particularly within Kitty's dream world as Katharyn where she and Lars employ "colored help", language used intentionally by the author to reflect the time period. These scenes felt reminiscent of The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which disappointed me.

Not so surprising was when the author revealed the sexuality of Freida. The author provided ample foreshadowing making it feel more confirmatory than shocking.

All in all, I enjoyed The Bookseller and would recommend it to other people. It was an entertaining, easy read that I gave a rating of three out of five stars.

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Location: Denver, CO, USA

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