This is How it Always is by Laurie Frankel

Published: December 2018
Genres: Literary Fiction, Woman's Fiction

👑👑👑👑


Description:

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

Review:

This was my Bookclub's pick for September. This one definitely gave me all the feels. If you have not read this one I highly recommend dropping whatever you are doing and getting right on it! I was a bit skeptical about reading a book that encouraged a child at 5years of age to make a HUGE life changing desicion and switch genders. As a mom and daycare provider, I know 3 and 4 year olds have a hard time remembering the difference if they or their friend is a boy or a girl. As a 5 year old I don't find the mental development that much further.

With that said, I feel like there was a lot of the book that came about "to easily". The parents for one. They seemed to always "have the right answers" knew exactly how to navigate this journey without any questioning of themselves or each other. I have no idea what I would do in their shoes but I found their journey through this a little to story book like. As a parent who is trying to figure out how to navigate this new world and teach my children to do the same, it would have been a lot more relatable had the parents' struggle been more believable. I think the author should have stepped back and separated her situation a bit more from how she wants people to react to how they really will react.

Furthermore, regarding the parents, they really just bugged the crap out of me. As a working adult she couldn't get her butt to work on time, no adult is going to get away from that. The dad was supposed to be a writer but let's take 10 years to figure out what we're going to write about. Insert large eye rolling. Claude/Poppy, I did feel for the child. The laughs and tears all came at the right spot. I completely fell in love with this child and wanted to protect him/her.

Overall I did enjoy the book. It was something way outside the circle of things that I have read and really shed the light about how I would react and handle this situation.

November Book Club

Amazon

In a searing novel of love and loyalty, guilt and honor, the acclaimed author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Horse Whisperer gives his millions of readers another hero…

His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his best friend and fellow “smoke jumper,” Ed Tully. Julia loves them both–until a fiery tragedy on Montana’s Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them, and burns a brand on all their hearts.

In the wake of the fire, Connor embarks on a harrowing journey to the edge of human experience, traveling the world’s worst wars and disasters to take photographs that find him fame but never happiness. Reckless of a life he no longer wants, again and again he dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, he must walk through fire once more…

Book Club is Back!!

Last spring I was up at the bar with a girlfriend of mine for her birthday. We were standing around talking about kids and our husbands, lovely conversations as always. Suddenly, she turns to her cousin and they start talking about bookclub... Wait What! I of course got excited and asked the for all the details. They were currently reading Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. What a coincidence, as I was too. So for their next meeting I tagged along. They had it set up were everyone suggests a book and then they vote on it and that is the book we read. 

👑👑👑👑👑

I guess there were some issues as to how that was playing out because come this fall our "president" put out a text message and she drew names and assigned a girl to each month. I guess this works out better s that everyone can have a chance to select a book. I got selected for September so I was kind of nervous, setting the bar for the year and having to choose a book that everyone would love after not reading all some (for some of them). So I chose, It's Always the Husband by Michele Campbell. 

This book was perfect. Every girl in my book club was excited to read it. It was the perfect book to get everyone back into the groove. I feel like this book was the definition of suspense. At one point my suspect list was like nine people long! I love the twist and turns. It always keep you guessing, right when you think you have it figured out Campbell thoughts you for a huge curb ball making you question everything you  were thinking. A lot of times when I read mysteries I feel like by about half way I'm already concluding the end of the book and I really struggle to finish them without skimming. It's Always the Husband held my attention the entire book. I couldn't wait to finish it to see how far away from the right answer I was.