You searched for book_author:"Sara Gruen"
Sara Gruen deserves props for ruining her protagonist's life in a quick and efficient manner. In the same day, Annemarie is fired from her job ("laid off") and her husband leaves her for a juicy 21-year-old. A few weeks later, she learns her daughter has dropped out of school and her father has ALS.
In case that seems over the top to you, that's because it is.
After relocating to New Hampshire with her daughter…
The intriguingly titled Water for Elephants is everything a good book can be: an absolute page-turner; wonderful characters; and a well-researched, well-written plot.
The narrator Jacob Jankowski tells us the story of his time with a circus travelling the States during the Great Depression. Meanwhile, we also see him as a ninety- (or ninety-three-) year-old man in an "assisted living" home, mulling over his mortality. In both cases, I instantly felt sympathy for these Jacobs,…