An American Immigrant by Johanna Rojas Vann

 

I loved the story. I actually had to read this in three days because I had already renewed it twice from the library and it was due on a Monday. This was my weekend task. 

 Melanie Carvajal is at a crossroads in her life.  She has a big story to write for the newspaper she works for, but it may hurt people she love in her family and her culture. 

Growing up as a young girl with a mother who migrated from another country has always bothered Melanie.  She felt embarrassed especially when she was made fun of in school for having lunches that smelled different nor did she like the older car they owned. Having to help with school paperwork because her mothers’ English was limited didn’t make her feel proud to be from Columbia.  When she finds her mothers' journals and reads about her struggles, she begins to see her mother from a different perspective.   

She has a ten-year plan for her life but it’s not going the way she planned.  She is not realizing sometimes life is not so cut and dry.  We have to see beyond ourselves and when she has to make a “work” trip to Columbia, her perspective changes.

The back cover states this story was “inspired by real-life events”.

 

 

 

The Burnout by Sophie Kinsella

 

Sasha Worth is thirty-three and burned out already.  Her job is overloaded, she is overwhelmed and she considers joining a convent thinking life would be simpler.

She feels she cannot cope with life.  I will say that she doesn’t know how to tell people what she wants and doesn’t want. Not saying she is a pushover but from what I’ve seen, she kinda goes with the flow sometimes and then has all these ideas about what other people are thinking where she is totally off base.

So the story is going along rather smoothly.  A little too smoothly and there has to be a curveball somewhere here but there really isn’t.  I like Kinsellas’ writing.  I can usually breeze through her novels in a day or two – if I decide to do nothing else 😊.  Her characters have a quirkiness about them that we can sometimes see in ourselves.

I have read every single one of her novels, including the novels she writes in her own name, Margaret Wickham.