Luanne Rice

Warning! - Here be spoilers!

When Clare's sister, Anne, marries a mysterious man from Denmark, everything changes. The sister whom she was so close to suddenly cuts her family out of her life. Only gradually does Clare come to realize that her sister is being verbally and physically abused. Many years later, when Anne tries to escape her abuser with her children, her husband attacks her. Fighting to save her sister's life, Clare beats the man with a burning log from the fire. This fateful show more event ends with Clare in prison for assault and Anne still in the clutches of her fiendish husband.

Decades pass and Anne's daughter, Grit, finally wants to meet her aunt. She comes to stay with Clare in New York and over several weeks, the truth comes out. Can anything mend this broken family?

This book isn't poorly written, but the characters are so far-fetched and unsympathetic that I couldn't bring myself to care. Ms. Rice probably thinks she's asking an important question: At what point should one lose sympathy for a battered spouse? I think that's a thorny and complex issue, but Ms. Rice doesn't seem to agree. We the readers, as well as the characters in the book, are asked to extend infinite sympathy. I'm sorry, I can't. While I don't understand why a woman living in this century would choose to stay with a man who constantly beats and insults her, I do understand that there are often deep psychological scars that force her to remain. However, when she sits idly by and lets her sister go to jail for saving her life, I begin to lose patience. When she allows her children to be abused by her husband, I become disgusted. When one of her children kills himself rather than remain in this abusive situation, and she returns meekly to her place, I give her up as forever lost. When she joins her husband in abusing her remaining child, she has become sub-human herself. She should be in jail. She should never see her daughter again. Period.

And then, inexplicably, she "snaps out of it" and decides to leave her husband because her daughter is in the hospital for a flesh wound. I'm sorry... you didn't think you should leave your husband when YOUR SON KILLED HIMSELF BEFORE YOUR EYES but your daughter gets a scratch and suddenly you've come to your senses? It wasn't believable. It was stupid.

Oh and when her husband (surprise, surprise) won't let her leave, she kills him. And acts like it's no big deal. And so does everyone else in her life. Because murdering someone is fine as long as they're bad. Now she's a murder, but the reader is expected to remain sympathetic to her? Sorry, she lost all my sympathy when she beat her daughter with a red hot poker. I don't care if she said "sorry" later. She's a sociopath. show less

I have been a fan of Luanne Rice for two decades and her latest offering did not let me down: it was a page turner. I loved the way the characters took shape as the story unfolded, not in neat chronological fashion, but in bits and pieces, giving them so much dimension. The narrative filaments of this complex plot wove in and out—largely through the device of moving forward and back in time from chapter to chapter—pulling in tighter until the mystery wrapped up tightly. And, as usual, show more Ms. Rice is masterful at capturing a sense of place—the old New England fishing villages on the Long Island Sound. In addition to the riveting story, the treatment of domestic abuse was well-laid out. Two lines will stay with me:

“Abusers are weak. They trap women who have gigantic hearts, who want to help these poor, sad wounded birds.” show less

THE LEMON ORCHARD is a bittersweet love story set in a beautiful Malibu lemon orchard by the Pacific Ocean. It's in this orchard that Julia, an anthropologist, and Roberto, an undocumented immigrant worker, meet and fall in love. Julia's teenage daughter was killed in a tragic accident five years earlier, and she's been living in a fog of grief ever since. A job as house sitter for her aunt and uncle at their lemon orchard seems like the perfect escape. Roberto has been living with his own show more grief too. He lost his daughter Rosa in the Arizona desert after crossing the border from Mexico, and she was never found. Living in the United States illegally makes it almost impossible to find Rosa again, but he won't give up hope.

This book was so much bigger than the unlikely romance between two different individuals. It gave an eye-opening account of the lengths desperate people will go through to support their families. Illegal immigration from Mexico is a hot-button issue in the US, and I think this book brings to light the horror and suffering that individuals and families go through to cross the border. Throughout the book, the author compares the poor treatment of Irish immigrants in the 19th century with what is happening with Mexican immigrants today, which is compelling food for thought.

THE LEMON ORCHARD was an emotional and suspenseful read for me, and I enjoyed it. Luanne Rice has a beautiful, fluid writing-style that completely pulls me in. Her vivid descriptions of the lush orchard and the Santa Monica Mountains were so gorgeous. I so wanted to be there. This book left me with a couple of niggling questions, particularly about Julia's daughter, but that's okay. THE LEMON ORCHARD was heartbreaking and thought-provoking, and well worth a read.

Rating: 4.25 Stars

Source: Review copy from the book tour company show less

It's a creative concept for a storyline: two parents torn apart by the accidental death of their son. The father (Sam) is obsessed with seeing the place where his son (Paul) perished. Driven by that obsession he makes a pilgrimage into the Alaskan wild where his son's plane crashed. The mother (Hadley) artistic and alcoholic, find herself in equal solitude on Monhegan Island, a tiny (586 acre) island off the coast of Maine that really does exist. These parents are as far away from each other show more physically as their marriage is spiritually. Their story consists of letters written on the brink of divorce - volleying blame back and forth. Through these letters, not only does the anguish of losing Paul wring itself out, but histories are revealed. Grief is only a fraction of the bigger picture. show less