Women’s Fiction Book Reviews

Readers who enjoyed Diane Dunning’s charming collection of very short fiction, One Short Year, will probably remember Greta Smart. Greta appeared in the story “Wine Notes” as a college student desperately trying to pursue her “dreams of becoming a sophisticate” by taking a wine-tasting class. Now, in this novel, we find Greta having graduated college and living and working in New York City. Greta has matured a great deal, but she is still floundering, still trying to develop sophistication and, more urgently, still trying to find Mr. Right.

This is basically the story of Greta fretting over the fact […]

Katerina by Rita D’Orazio is the sequel to her first book, Don’t Look Back; however if you haven’t read the first one, no worries. This can be read as a standalone. The author does a wonderful job of not referring to incidents or characters that only readers of the first novel would understand. In fact, if the reader didn’t know that this was the sequel they might not even have guessed that this work is a continuation of Katerina’s story.

Katerina Balducci has lived a full life and she’s only fifty. The novel opens with Katerina attending a Beach […]

Four Times Blessed is the story of Crusa, a young woman who lives closely with her large extended family, and is engaged to Andrew, a well-respected boy from her New England island, who falls for Lium, a bodyguard who is supposed to be watching her before her wedding. Her flawless life plan is about to go awry.

A sprawling tale focusing on Crusa’s aunt, who she refers to as her “ zizi” and the cooking and household chores as Crusa looks to form her adult life, this work is maybe a try at literary fiction.

However, without real arcs, as […]

“Don’t Look Back”, the debut novel from Rita D’Orazio tells the story of Katerina Balducci, the youngest sibling of three children in an Italian-American Catholic family, and chronicles the ups and downs of family life during her childhood with a moody mother, slighting Katerina for her unplanned birth and throwing abusive diatribes at her which shape her as a person at such a young age, as well as recounting the challenging events that require her to grow up fast.

Culturally intricate with lots of Italian heritage and detail, D’Orazio often gives the reader a feast of words, “Mama makes the […]

If you heard that Saving Grace by Ann Grant was the story of a perfectionist who tanks after a debilitating fall and ends up leaving her husband and kids, you might think you didn’t want to read that story.  You’d be making a big mistake.  With humor, insight into the human spirit and, well, grace, Ann Grant tells a captivating tale of love, frustration, anxiety, and (no spoilers here) an attempt at recovery.

Grace and her husband, Rob, have been married almost ten years and have two sons and a daughter.  She’s a high-earning corporate lawyer and he is a […]