Tag: novels

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

by Karen, posted in author, book reviews, books, love and marriage

I loved this book The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty.
It’s about husbands and wives and mothers and daughters and sisters and any practically any other relationships you can think of, including one’s relationship with oneself. Boom.

Real, messy, honest relationships.

One note: Pay attention at the beginning of the book because you will be introduced to several characters and you don’t want to be distracted or multitasking and get confused.

Like I did. 

No problem, though. I just referred to the drawing at the beginning of the book and it straightened me right out.

The best quote from the book is on page 128, a wife thinking about her husband:

“She’d hated him for a while over that. Really hated him. But then she just got tired of hating him and started loving him again. It was easier.”

This book has a twist at the end that I never saw coming. Totally worth reading. I had a hard time putting it down once I started reading it. I had the characters dancing around in my head at the oddest moments.

And is one of the marks of a truly great book?

Get it here: The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty. I highly recommend this book and any of her other books (I wrote about one of them  in the past, What Alice Forgot.

How I named One Brave Thing

by Karen, posted in author, books, Brave books, friends, writing

I wonder if all authors struggle with figuring out the title of their book. A self published author has total control over the end product, but this can be a double-edged sword. I went back and forth for months about what to name my book.

amazon cover

In its first draft (which many of you who have been following my blog for years well know 🙂 ) the title was Why Buy the Cow. Then a helpful friend asked, ‘Where’s the question mark?’ What? Oh. Right. It is a question. I hadn’t thought of that. Shoot. I dutifully updated the title to Why Buy the Cow? I was immediately unhappy with this, because it made me think this: Why Buy the Book? This wasn’t good for selling my book in general. I figured that if it made me have that thought, it might make others think that too!

That would be bad.

The next title was One True Love. I liked this title. I even did a little mock-up of a cover for it using free clip art. Then the questioning set in again. Was free clip art really free? Would someone object that it was their original design and I didn’t ask first if I could use it?

(Aside: Who would I ask? Mr Outlook?)

Self doubt: the killer of creativity.

So I went back to square one. What should I call my book?
And then I realized that the phrase ‘one brave thing‘ had been repeating in my head off and on for weeks, and I didn’t know why. And then, suddenly, I did.
My book was trying to tell me its name.

I finally listened.