Catering Girl - Laurie Boris

Y'all know by now how much I love Laurie Boris's work -- and I'd say that even if we weren't fellow minions at Indies Unlimited. So nobody should be surprised when I say that I loved this book.

Catering Girl is a prequel to Boris's first novel, The Joke's On Me! The main character in both books is Frankie Goldberg, a nice Jewish girl from the East Coast who has made her way to L.A. to try to make it as an actress, or a comic, or both. Instead, she's working for a catering company on the set of a film starring Oscar-winning starlet Anastasia Cole. Anastasia is a diva with a reputation, but Frankie happens to deliver her cappuchino when she's having an identity crisis -- and before long, Frankie finds herself wheeling and dealing on Anastasia's behalf. But how long will Anastasia continue to need her? And what if, in the process, Frankie loses herself?

I love Frankie. Her snarky attitude just barely covers her major self-esteem issues. And Boris has given her a great foil in Anastasia, the not-quite-brainless beauty who essentially hires Frankie to be her best friend.

I would highly recommend Catering Girl to anyone looking for a quick, fun summer read -- and if you find Frankie as appealing as I do, you'll be glad to know you can segue right into the rest of her story.

A Sudden Gust of Gravity - Laurie Boris

It's Christmas Eve -- give yourself the gift of a terrific new book.

The best thing about e-books is that you don't have to go anywhere to shop for them. So while your pals are out at the mall, elbowing other shoppers out of the way to get to the least ugly sweater in the picked-over bin, you, my friend, can simply go online and buy copies of A Sudden Gust of Gravity for everyone you know. And while you're at it, get yourself a copy, too.

The lady on the cover is Christina Davenport, a waitress who has given up on her dreams of becoming a magician. Then she meets Reynaldo the Magnificent, who offers her a job -- not as a magician's apprentice, but as a magician's assistant. You know, the girl in the flirty skirt who keeps the crowd's eyes occupied while the magician does his tricks. Still, she figures she can pick up some pointers from the guy.

Across town, Devon Park is a surgical resident with his own set of personal problems. Yet he's intrigued by Christina, when he sees Reynaldo's show in a public park -- and concerned about the bruises Christina's trying to hide with makeup. He's interested, she's trying not to be interested, and Reynaldo's jealous -- so you can bet things are going to get very interesting indeed before the story ends.

Boris continues to amaze me with her ability to write about characters from disparate cultures. Devon is Korean-American -- very unlike the Jewish family in her Trager Family Secrets books and, again, unlike any of the characters in Drawing Breath. Boris is the real deal, guys. Why she's not a bigger literary name is a mystery to me. Highly recommended.

Happy holidays, everyone!

(Note: I read an Advance Reader Copy of this novel.)

Playing Charlie Cool - Laurie Boris

Charlie Trager's back, and this time he's playing for keeps.

Playing Charlie Cool is the sequel to Boris's novella The Picture of Cool (her novel Don't Tell Anyone fills in the timeline between the two), and features the same main characters: Charlie, producer of a TV talk show; and Adam Joshua Goldberg, former New York City mayor's aide, who resigns from that job when he announces he's gay. He and his wife subsequently split. But Adam -- or Joshua, as Charlie calls him -- is leery of making his relationship with Charlie public. For one thing, he and his soon-to-be-ex have two kids. For another, Josh comes from a political family, and his father the senator wants him to run for Congress.

Charlie's head-over-heels for Joshua, but he's getting more and more tired of waiting in the wings. How long will it be before Mr. Producer Man loses his celebrated cool?

I loved this book. Boris does such a great job at portraying both Charlie and Josh that you just can't help but hope that they can figure out a way to be together. One of my favorite scenes is the transatlantic phone call during which they hash out Joshua's big speech in Geneva. It shows that their relationship isn't just about the sex -- there's respect there, too, as well as love.

Yes, Playing Charlie Cool features two gay men as its protagonists. But it's a love story for everybody.

The Picture of Cool - Laurie Boris

I admit it -- I'm a big fan of Laurie Boris's. And it's not just because we're both minions at Indies Unlimited, either. The woman can write.

The Picture of Cool is a short story featuring Charlie Trager, the brother of Adam Trager from Don't Tell Anyone. Charlie's latest romance -- you can't even really call it a subplot, it gets so little screen time -- gets a mention in that book. This is the story of how that relationship began.

Charlie works as a producer for a national daytime TV talk show. He meets Adam in the green room, just before Adam is to go on the show. There are sparks between the two men pretty much immediately, but Adam is married and there's a kid involved. The "how gay is he?" question only adds to the story's poignancy.

Charlie is a great guy -- the kind that women shake their heads in disappointment over when they find out which way he swings. You want things to work out between him and Adam. And when this story ended, I didn't want it to be over. To me, that's always a sign of a good tale. And I'm hoping we haven't heard the last of Charlie....

Sliding Past Vertical - Laurie Boris

Laurie Boris is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers -- and I say that not just because we're both on the Indies Unlimited staff, but because she's so terrific at what she does.

Her new novel, Sliding Past Vertical, is the story of Sarah, a young woman who screws up everything she touches, and Emerson, her best friend. Em and Sarah met in college at Syracuse; they dated for awhile, then split up. Sarah moves on with her life: she graduates and moves to Boston, where she works at a print shop and makes spectacularly bad choices in men. Em stays in Syracuse, where he works as an orderly in a hospice, writes porn for men's magazines, and not-so-subtly carries a torch for Sarah. Sarah always turns to him when the latest jerk breaks her heart, and he is always there for her.

When the most recent jerk turns out to be selling drugs and the print shop burns down, Sarah decides to take her long-ago diving coach's advice, and rewind her life to where she began to slide past vertical -- the point right before things went bad. So she moves back to Syracuse, into Emerson's spare room in the rooming house where he's lived since college. Em and Rashid, who also lives in the rooming house, drive to Boston to help her move. Rashid's parents back in India have picked out a wife for him, and he is happy to have the decision taken out of his hands. Until he begins to spend time around Sarah.

And of course, the druggie boyfriend and his "pals" manage to track Sarah down.

I admit I had a lot of empathy for Emerson; I too have been known to invest too much time in hopeless relationships. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but I will say that Sliding Past Vertical ends on a better note than any of my hopeless relationships ever did. It's not necessarily a happy ending, but it's a hopeful -- and hopefully older and wiser -- one.

***
Note: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy.

Don't Tell Anyone - Laurie Boris

I was initially reluctant to read this book.  Not because of the subject matter -- I've read several books in which somebody has cancer, and it didn't put me off of those.  No, what worried me was that Don't Tell Anyone was going to turn into a borscht-belt comedy. Jewish humor has never been my thing.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried.  Laurie Boris wouldn't do that to me.  Not even with a crotchety, cancer-ridden 65-year-old Jewish mother at the center of the action.

Estelle Trager has been keeping her breast cancer a secret from her two sons and her daughter-in-law.  And she's been in denial, using that ol' magical thinking to justify it.  She watched as her mother and grandmother both died from the disease, and believes the treatment is worse than just dying from it already.  Not that she actually plans to die of cancer.  No, she's got a better idea. She wants her daughter-in-law, Liza -- who Estelle once described as "a godless hippie raised by wolves" -- to kill her.

A horrified Liza refuses, of course.  But then she keeps Estelle's request a secret, adding it to the pile of things she hasn't told Adam, her husband.  Among the other things in that pile are Liza's true feelings for Adam's brother, Charlie, with whom she does share Estelle's request.

There's more, of course, but I don't want to spoil it all for you.  Just don't let the subject matter scare you off -- Don't Tell Anyone is a wonderful book.

Drawing Breath - Laurie Boris

Since I named three indie books to the list of my top 6 reads in 2012 for Book Junkies Journal, I guess I know what I'm reviewing for the next couple weeks.  (One of them was a later volume of Ed McNally's Norothian Cycle, which I'll get to eventually.)

For this week, it's Drawing Breath by Laurie Boris.

Disclaimer:  I write primarily fantasy, and up to now, I've been reviewing fantasy novels.  This book is not fantasy.  It's not sci-fi, either. Read it anyway.

The book is told from the point of view of two distinct characters:  Daniel, a thirty-four-year-old art teacher with cystic fibrosis, and Caitlin, a sixteen-year-old girl.  Caitlin's mother has rented their upstairs apartment to Daniel; partly in exchange, Daniel agrees to allow Caitlin into the art class he teaches at the local community center.  When that doesn't work out, he offers to give Caitlin private art lessons.

Caitlin, of course, has a gigantic crush on Daniel.  She fantasizes about a future with him, even as it's clear to everyone else that his health is failing.

I'm a sucker for voice in a novel.  Some of my favorite authors are my favorite authors because of their facility with sustaining a great voice: Patricia McKillip's fairy-tale lyricism and Kent Haruf's plain-spoken storytelling come immediately to mind.  Boris, too, does a wonderful job with the voices of her two main characters.  Caitlin's tumble of teenage emotions rings true, and so does Daniel's adult fatalism.

When things get complicated -- as they must -- Boris steers clear of the kind of morass that could have turned the plot into Jerry Springer fodder.  And the ending is just right.