The Ins and Outs of In and Out Burger

 

The Ins and Outs of In and Out Burger

By: Lynsi Snyder

Genre: Non-Fiction

Summary:

Read the story of how the legendary business was started and grew to the level it currently is. Hear how and why certain traditions came to be. Read stories from former employees. Learn the good and bad of the key players of this business. 

For most West Coast residents, In & Out is a staple- especially in California. You've just landed at the airport, where do you go to eat? Many choose In & Out. My husband always does. To many, nothing says home like eating a burger from their favorite fast food place- In & Out. So, to read how this little business became the legend it is was a story I couldn't pass up. 

I loved learning how In & Out originally started. I loved reading how the founders put quality ahead of everything. They were willing to get up every morning to hit the farmers market for the freshest produce to serve their customers. I loved hearing how many decisions made then were made. Not to mention how they're still in effect today.

And while hearing the founding of this company was enjoyable, hearing the personal struggles along the way brought a dose of reality to the book. Key players became more human when you learned how imperfect they were and the struggles they battled on a daily basis. Each CEO brought their own unique methods that made a successful business even more so, they each also had their own demons to face. Lynsi doesn't shy away from revealing the dark side of addiction, abuse and depression. Each CEO blessed the company, but those blessings came with a cost.

Fans of the beloved burger joint will love reading the successes and achievements. I learned that one of my local In & Outs holds a "first" distinction. They will love the history and pride that was a building block within each restaurant. They will love learning how the arrow and crossed palm trees came to be. They'll love learning how the secret menus items were created. They'll get to read how one little drive thru became a legendary business globally known. One that still holds to the founding traditions today that it opened with on that first day.   

A Beautiful Rival

 

A Beautiful Rival

By: Gill Paul

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary:

Elizabeth Arden has been happily dominating the United States beauty scene. Life is good-- until rival Helena Rubenstein shows up to give her a run for her money. 

The plot of this book intrigued me. It sounded so fun and it was! I have heard of Elizabeth Arden, though I know next to nothing about her. I had not heard of Helena Rubenstein. If you haven't heard of these powerhouses, no need to fear. Put yourself in Gill Paul's hands and let the story introduce you.

Elizabeth doesn't take kindly to the arrival of Helena on her turf. Why couldn't she stay in Europe where she's enjoyed success. Why does she need to expand to the US?! Instantly, Elizabeth does whatever she can to undermine anything Helena sets out to do. It doesn't take long for a full on battle to be declared between these two. Each taking turns playing dirty. They take shots at each other in the press, they undermine each other's successes while trying to outdo the other. As the years go by, the levels they stoop to only increase. 

It was fascinating to read. Elizabeth was a hard character for me to respect and even like. She was incredibly controlling and domineering. She would throw outrageous tantrums when things didn't go the way she wanted them to. She wasn't very likeable for me, overall. However, a lot of that can be chalked up to her poor youth. Her early years definitely shaped her success and her desperation to hold on to it at any, and all, costs.

I really liked Helena. As I read the book, I felt she handled herself with far more dignity and respect. She was admirable in her business dealings. You watched her make level-headed decisions for her company that paid off. She wasn't one to yell or fly off the handle. However, she wasn't above getting her hands dirty when it came to Elizabeth. She just carried herself more reservedly that Elizabeth did.

As the years past, the gloves came off more. The race to own more salons intensified, as did what they would do to succeed over the other. Both dealt their opponent low blows. Both played dirty. Neither came off as innocent in their business dealings. 

I don't know how accurate Gill Paul's portrayals were of these ladies. I got the impression that she was able to put a lot of her own imagination and creativity into the story, which I loved. I felt bad when each hit the other a little too close to home. Their ultimate confrontation was from the creative genius of the author, but I felt it was true to the characters she had written. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to more Gill Paul books. 

The Air Raid Book Club

By: Annie Lyons

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary:

London, 1938: The bookstore just doesn’t feel the same to Gertie Bingham ever since the death of her beloved husband Harry. Bingham Books was a dream they shared together, and without Harry, Gertie wonders if it’s time to take her faithful old lab, Hemingway, and retire to the seaside. But fate has other plans for Gertie.

In Germany, Hitler is on the rise, and Jewish families are making the heart-wrenching decision to send their children away from the growing turmoil. After a nudge from her dear friend Charles, Gertie decides to take in one of these refugees, a headstrong teenage girl named Hedy. Willful and fearless, Hedy reminds Gertie of herself at the same age, and shows her that she can’t give up just yet. With the terrible threat of war on the horizon, the world needs people like Gertie Bingham and her bookshop.

When the Blitz begins and bombs whistle overhead, Gertie and Hedy come up with the idea to start an air raid book club. Together with neighbors and bookstore customers, they hold lively discussions of everything from Winnie the Pooh to Wuthering Heights. After all, a good book can do wonders to bolster people’s spirits, even in the most trying times.

But even the best book can only provide a temporary escape, and as the tragic reality of the war hits home, the book club faces unimaginable losses. They will need all the strength of their stories and the bonds they’ve formed to see them through to brighter days.  ---bn.com

This is my first book from Annie Lyons, but it won't be my last. I didn't know what to expect when I opened the pages, but I'm so glad I did. For being under 400 pages, Annie packs so much into her story. She gives you the good and the bad, the highs and the lows of life during war. 

Gertie is still mourning the loss of her beloved husband, Harry, who she lost 2 years prior. Having met in her father's bookstore, they went on to open their own: Bringham Books. It becomes a local gem and they grow close to their neighbors and customers. Everywhere she looks within it's walls, Gertie feels the loss of him. Just as she's made the decision to sell the store and move elsewhere, World War 2 is declared and life changes. 

When London becomes a target area, Gertie forms a book club to distract from the dropping bombs. A book is assigned each month and discussions are had about it in the bomb shelters. When a neighbor of Gertie's moves next door with her little son, she makes a children's book club for him. Bit by bit, the community becomes more tight knit. 

Gertie's life is forever changed when her good friend, Charlie, asks if she would be interested in taking on a refugee from Germany. Being half Jewish, this child is being sent to London for her safety, with her family planning on joining her as soon as they can. Gertie has no idea what she's in for when she picks up Hedy Fischer, 15, from the train station. After a rough start, they begin to bond and grow close. In time, Hedy becomes the daughter Gertie never had. Gertie becomes Hedy's biggest fighter/supporter. During the course of the war, they fill the void left empty in the other's life. 

I loved watching the community form into a family. The romances that formed, the friendships that grew out of the most unlikely of people. Under the most devastating times, these people helped each other through the nightmare. They held each other when heartbreaking news found it's way to their doors. They celebrated the good moments. Cried tears of loss and joy together. Lives were forever changed as they navigated the war together. 

Annie Lyons wrote an amazingly touching story that hasn't left me once I finished the last page. She didn't gloss over the heartbreak that comes with war- she puts her characters through what really goes on during war. By the time you finish the book, you will have traveled the emotional map. You experience the good, the bad, the highs, the lows, the love and loss each of the characters did in the course of the book. It was well written and told beautifully. 

Songs of Wine and Murder

 

Songs of Wine and Murder

By: Lynn Cahoon

Genre: Mystery, Cozy Mystery

Summary:

A battle of the bands festival has come to South Cove and it not only brings murder with it, but it also uncovers secrets. The Moonstone Beach and Band Blowout Festival becomes the backdrop for things not always being as they appear. Who dies? Who did it? Why? 

Lynn Cahoon doesn't just bring you number 15 in her Tourist Trap Mystery Series, but she also gives you a fitting welcome to summer. Overall, I felt like this book was the perfect opener of a new season. Not only am I welcoming the summer weather where I live, but so is South Cove. So, it was nice to visit some of my favorite characters as summer starts.

Engaged couple Jill and Greg sprinkle in the wedding talk throughout the book, but it all takes a back seat when Axel, the lead singer for one the bands competing is found dead- choked to death with a guitar string. It doesn't take long for talk to start, and with talk comes secrets that get revealed. Was Hans, another member of a competing band responsible? Hans just so happens to be the nephew of the Mayor's wife. Were strings pulled to get his band this far? He doesn't leave the best of impressions with his behavior, but is he the one who killed Axel? Fingers start flying at more than one band member as the investigation unfolds- including some pointing in the direction of Jill's friend, Matt.

Meanwhile, at the bookstore, Jill has hired a new overflow employee.  While she's amazing at her job, she has a connection to longtime employee, Toby. While he remembers her as his first love, and the one who broke his heart, she doesn't remember him at all. Why is that? 

Readers of Songs of Wine and Murder are in for a delightful, lighthearted visit to their beloved beach town. So, pull up your beach/pool chair and catch some rays while you catch up on the latest happenings in South Cove.

The Spectacular

 

The Spectacular

By: Fiona Davis

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary:

New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion Brooks knows she should be happy. Her high school sweetheart is about to propose and sweep her off to the life everyone has always expected they’d have together: a quiet house in the suburbs, Marion staying home to raise their future children. But instead, Marion finds herself feeling trapped. So when she comes across an opportunity to audition for the famous Radio City Rockettes—the glamorous precision-dancing troupe—she jumps at the chance to exchange her predictable future for the dazzling life of a performer. 
 
Meanwhile, the city is reeling from a string of bombings orchestrated by a person the press has nicknamed the “Big Apple Bomber,” who has been terrorizing the citizens of New York for sixteen years by planting bombs in popular, crowded spaces. With the public in an uproar over the lack of any real leads after a yearslong manhunt, the police turn in desperation to Peter Griggs, a young doctor at a local mental hospital who espouses a radical new technique: psychological profiling. 

As both Marion and Peter find themselves unexpectedly pulled in to the police search for the bomber, Marion realizes that as much as she’s been training herself to blend in—performing in perfect unison with all the other identical Rockettes—if she hopes to catch the bomber, she’ll need to stand out and take a terrifying risk. In doing so, she may be forced to sacrifice everything she’s worked for, as well as the people she loves the most. --bn.com

Fiona Davis is one of those authors where I can go into the book blindly and know I won't be disappointed. One of those authors who's book release you anxiously count the days down to. She's the auto buy you clear your calendar for the minute you get your hands on it. In my case, you stay up far too late into the night because you couldn't stop reading. That's how it's been for me with all of her books and her latest, The Spectacular, was no exception. Once again, I was putty in her hands and loved every minute of the story she told.

The Spectacular centers around Marion Brooks. Our main character has come of age in the 1950s. She's always felt like an outsider with her father and sister, Judy. Life after their mother's death was never the same. Judy took after their father, while Marion inherited her mother's love of performing. However, Marion's dream and that of her father's couldn't be more different. He has visions of her getting married to her high school boyfriend, Nathaniel, who will work alongside her dad. Her father envisions them all living under the same roof. Nowhere in her father's vision is Marion a Rockette. And when she dares to live out her dream, he refuses to support her. 

On top of the grueling work, Marion finds out just how hard it is to achieve the illusion audiences look forward to seeing. While her father has next to nothing to do with her, she makes friends with some of the dancers. Life for everyone is brought to a screeching halt when the Big Apple Bomber sits next to Marion's sister for a performance. From the stage, Marion watches the devastation unleashed when a bomb her planted in a seat goes off. Marion's dream has now become a nightmare she blames herself for.

When the police don't seem to make any head way, Marion enlists the help of Peter, a doctor one of the city's mental hospitals. He's created something called a psychological profile- the first of it's kind. Based on information he's given, he's able to give the police a better understanding of who they've been trying to apprehend for 16 years. When they get a less than welcoming reaction from the authorities, Peter and Marion look for their guy on their own. But can they find him? And can they do it before anyone else gets hurt?

Once I started The Spectacular I was hooked. I loved every minute of the story. I loved seeing Marion choose to live the life she wants verses the life her father things she should have. I loved watching her come into her own as she navigated the unrelenting pressure that comes with being a Rockette. I especially loved all the behind the scenes history Fiona wove into the story. Watching Peter shape who the bomber would be was incredible. Watching he and Marion hunt their guy down was engrossing. Mostly, I loved seeing how seamlessly Fiona Davis has, yet again, woven fact with fiction.

If you love historical fiction, Fiona Davis is an author you want to read. 

A Shadow in Moscow

 

A Shadow in Moscow

By: Katherine Reay

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary:

Vienna, 1954

After losing everyone she loves in the final days of World War II, Ingrid Bauer agrees to a hasty marriage with a gentle Soviet embassy worker and follows him home to Moscow. But nothing deep within the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime is what it seems, including her new husband, whom Ingrid suspects works for the KGB. Upon her daughter’s birth, Ingrid risks everything and reaches out in hope to the one country she understands and trusts—Britain, the country of her mother’s birth—and starts passing along intelligence to MI6, navigating a world of secrets and lies, light and shadow.

Washington, DC, 1980

Part of the Foreign Studies Initiative, Anya Kadinova finishes her degree at Georgetown University and boards her flight home to Moscow, leaving behind the man she loves and a country she’s grown to respect. Though raised by dedicated and loyal Soviet parents, Anya soon questions an increasingly oppressive and paranoid Soviet regime at the height of the Cold War. When the KGB murders her best friend, Anya picks sides and contacts the CIA. Working in a military research lab, Anya passes along Soviet military plans and schematics in an effort to end the 1980s arms race. --bn.com

*** I was very fortunate to receive a complimentary copy of this book and all opinions in this review are completely my own. ***

The only way to start my review is to say, "WOW!" For so much of this book, I felt right there in the scenes. Katherine does a phenomenal job of describing the scene and giving you details that make you feel you're right there- in the middle of everything with the characters. The details she included with the undercover work and spy maneuvers just made the story leap off the pages!! I felt the suspense the characters felt and the tension, too. This story was incredible. Her research was impeccable and brought the story she created to life.

Ingrid is a dynamic character. Her story engrossed me from the very beginning. Her storyline started off with secrets and pretty much stayed that way throughout the whole book. In fact, she doesn't understand for years why her father is dragged from their family home and beaten. She learns later her mother was pushed down stairs and died in the same attack. She had no idea the truth of what her parents were doing, nor who they were. Once the truth is revealed to her, her life is forever changed. 

Her parents' legacy comes into play once Ingrid is married and about to have her daughter. A hasty marriage doesn't live out as she thought it would and she decides she wants better for her daughter. This involves secrets, spying, sharing political information against the Soviet Union. The very government her husband is devoted to. Years of dinner parties and being the perfect hostess give her access to conversations she would later relay to the British. Over the years, she becomes legendary. So much so, in fact, that only people know who she is.

Anya is given the rare opportunity to leave Moscow and study in the U.S. for a few years. There, she's exposed to an entirely different way of life. One that has hope, options, freedom. She can't unknow what she now knows once she comes back to Moscow. Suddenly, the differences between the U.S. and Russia are all she sees. Anya makes a firm choice of where her loyalty lies when she's informed the Dmitri is dead. While everyone says he was mugged and killed, Anya fears something is off.  Shortly after, she notifies a man she met through a college professor in the U.S. and begins to spy for them. 

This story was so action packed. No chapter was without a purpose in driving the story along. My only complaint was that it felt the first half of the book unfolded in a slow pace. Lots was happening, but it felt like it was taking awhile to get it going. For example, Ingrid doesn't even get married until 80+ pages in. Based on the book summary, that was what catapults her into spying, so I expected it to happen sooner than it did. Dmitri's death (the catapult for Anya's spying) doesn't happen until pages 139. I wasn't expecting these key events to happen so late in the story. 

However, once the ball got rolling you were rolling. You were glued. You wanted to see how each operation would go. Would Anya get caught? Would Ingrid? Seeing everything come to a head and unfold from there was intense and I couldn't wait to see how the book would end.

Thank you, Katherine Reay, for another amazing book. You captivated me with the story you wrote. I was torn between wanting to know what would happen next to not wanting the story to end.

The Audrey Hepburn Estate

 

The Audrey Hepburn Estate

By: Brenda Janowitz

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary:

Emma Jansen grew up on the Rolling Hill Estate. Rumored to be the inspiration for a beloved movie, the walls hold more than Emma bargained with when she comes back hoping to prevent it from being demolished. Emma revisits the house- which holds life altering secrets. She also revisits her two best friends and the complicated dynamic the three shared. There's a lot Emma didn't know- and she's about to find it all out. 

Brenda Janowitz has done it again!! Once again, she's crafted a story you get lost it. She's created characters and storylines with them that you can't put down. The Audrey Hepburn Estate is a prime example of what I love about historical fiction. Brenda takes a subject you think you're pretty knowledgeable in and introduces you to things you never knew about it. She's so gifted at telling a story from an angle you wouldn't normally think about. She's so talented at writing a plot that you don't want to put down. And just when you think you have a lock on what's going on, she throws a plot twist to throw everything you thought out the window. I stayed up WAY past my bedtime because I didn't want to stop reading her words. I was hooked! I was torn between wanting to see what happened next and not wanting the book to end. I loved every bit of this book! 

Emma grew up on the grounds of Rolling Hills. While she may have been the maid's daughter, she was best friends with the estate owner's grandson. She and Henry later add Leo to the mix when his father becomes Felix's (Henry's Grandfather/estate owner) driver. As you can imagine, the dynamic evolves over the years- in different ways. While hearts are falling in love and getting broken, secrets are being suspected. Is Felix who they think he is? How did the beloved chef really die? Why is Mila, Emma's mother, spending so much time with Felix? Assumptions are made, but it'll be decades before the truth behind them is uncovered.

Now adults, Leo is the owner of a company who has bought the Rolling Hill estate- in all it's disrepair. Emma comes back hoping to stop him from tearing it down. The course of this mission gets the three of them back together- and some dynamics die hard. Will there be a happier ending this time? 

However, the past collides with the present when secrets are uncovered as the house is torn down. A subbasement holds far more than the shock of it's existence. What is found within these hidden walls changes the lives of these three forever. The truth is nothing like what Emma had once thought it was. It's far worse. Her life is never the same once the truth comes out.

If you love historical fiction, I cannot recommend The Audrey Hepburn Estate enough. Little Audrey Hepburn references are planted throughout the book, but the story itself was nothing short of amazing. I loved it. I couldn't put it down. I devoured it. I loved how Brenda crafted a story that taught me history I never knew prior to her book. Those are my favorite historical fiction books to read! It's what I love most about the genre. The direction she took is one I don't read very often- if ever. It's so deserving of a story to be told and she brings it to you out of nowhere!!