Read this: Playing the Hand You're Dealt (psst, I'm giving away a copy!)

Hello new blog readers! My name is Carleen Brice. Like everyone else blogging here, I'm a woman novelist looking to hook up with women readers. My first novel Orange Mint and Honey is a mother-daughter story (and premiered on LMN as "Sins of the Mother," which airs again on September 11). My second novel Children of the Waters is a story about two women, one white and one black, who discover they are sisters. I hope you'll check them both out if you haven't already.

I also can be found blogging at White Readers Meet Black Authors where I try to introduce authors to a wider readership (On Tuesday, I'm running a Q&A with Lori Tharps, author of the new "nanny novel" Substitute Me). In that vein, I thought I'd kick off my first blog post here by telling you all about a book I recently finished that comes out on August 24th. It's called Playing the Hand You're Dealt by Trice Hickman. I have to confess it's not a book I would have picked up on my own (I don't typically lean toward romance), but the publisher sent it to me and I read it. And I really liked it. The characters were fresh, interesting and believable and the story was just an enjoyable, easy read.

It's about two women (see perfect for the Girlfriends Book Club!) who meet in college and have been best friends ever since. The only hitch is that one of the women is in love with the other's father. Here's a snippet:

"Emily's my very best friend in the world. She was right there in the deliver room when CJ was born, holding my hand, reminding me to breathe. But even before he took his first breath, we both knew that motherhood wasn't my thing. I remember thinking that she should've had him, not me. She cradled him with love while I looked on, too scared to hold my own child because I thought I'd do something worng. When CJ was six months old my job transferred me to New York, and that's when we decided that CJ would be better left in her care. So Emily raised my son for the first four years of his life. See, I told you she was a selfless person.

I knew I'd never find anyone who accepted me the way she did. And it was funny because we were as different as caviar and catfish, with one exception--we were born on the exact same day. But here's the rub, she was born in the wee hours of the morning and I was born in the late hours of the night...."

The book opens on the cusp of the women's 30th birthdays and all kind of juicy stuff happens. Kind of romance-y, kind of women's fiction-y, Playing the Hand You're Dealt makes a great end-of-summer escape. As I said, it pubs Tuesday and I hope you'll pick up a copy.

To promote our new blog and to promote books by women, I'm giving away my advance copy of Playing the Hand You're Dealt. Post about Girlfriends Book Club or tweet or Facebook about it and leave me a note here in the comments on this post and I'll enter you to win. I'll randomly pick from the comments on August 31 at 5 pm MST and will announce the winner in the comments thread on this post. Good luck!

Well read

First, let me say that it’s so wonderful to be here! It’s been amazing to be a part of the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit, and I’m so thrilled that we’ve now grown into the Girlfriends Book Club!

By way of introduction, I'm Brenda Janowitz, a former lawyer-turned-writer. I'm the author of Scot on the Rocks and Jack with a Twist. My work has also appeared in the New York Post and Publisher's Weekly.

Nice to meet you! And thank you for coming to read me here. Double thanks if you're coming here from my personal blog (the oh-so-cleverly titled 'Brenda's Blog.' My creativity had clearly run out that day....).

So, I suppose since we’ve renamed ourselves, there’s only one thing to do here: discuss books! This summer, I’ve read some wonderful ones so far.

I started the summer with Emily Giffin’s Heart of the Matter. It’s about two women: single mother Valerie, whose son gets injured in an accident at a sleepover party (thus ensuring that my son will never ever ever be allowed out of the house—ever), and married stay-at-home mom Tessa, whose husband is the doctor called in to help Valerie’s son. Fair warning: there is quite a lot of detail about Valerie’s son’s injury, much of which I found hard to read, but Emily does relationships so well that by the time you get into this novel, you’ll be glad you pushed through all of that.

As is the usual in an Emily Giffin novel, complications ensue and relationships begin to change, challenging what the characters think about their current lots in life; what’s wrong and what’s right.

What I love about Emily’s novels is how they always make you think. After I finished the novel, my cousin and I had a long discussion about Tessa and Valerie’s choices, about what we would have done if we’d been in their shoes, and about the nature of marriage and forgiveness.

Allison Winn Scotch’s latest, The One That I Want, will make you think, but for altogether different reasons.


As with Allison’s last novel, Time of My Life, this novel has a time-travel element to it, which I adore. But you needn’t be a sci-fi lover to pick up this book—it’s women’s fiction at its best. When protagonist Tilly Farmer bumps into an old friend-turned-psychic, she is given the power to see the future. The only problem is that Tilly thought she had the perfect life, and these glimpses into the future are not at all what she expects.

Allison’s books are always total page-turners for me. I can never put them down—I’m always completely absorbed by her characters and the situations they find themselves in. The stories are great, but as with Emily Giffin’s novels, they always leave me thinking. Would I want to see the future? What if I saw something I didn’t like? Does anyone truly have the perfect life?

But it wasn’t all brand new hardcover books on my nightstand this summer. I also picked up Katie Crouch’s Girls in Trucks, which had been on my bookshelf for months.


I loved it. Pure and simple, I thought it was great. I didn’t think it was a novel; it felt more like a collection of short stories that were tied together, a la Melissa Bank’s The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, but that was part of its charm.

In Girls in Trucks, we follow Southern debutante Sarah Walters from her childhood cotillion classes straight through to her life as a thirty-something single woman living in New York City. It was equal parts sad and funny, but always compelling and beautifully written. In fact, if you are a writer yourself, I’d say that this book is a must read.

And as for the books that will be closing out the summer for me? Ayelet Waldman’s Red Hook Road (she’s made us wait for a new book for so long—I can hardly wait to crack this one open!) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. I heard Egan read from this book on Wednesday night, and she was fabulous.

What are you all reading this summer?