The Sunday Salon and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, but sometimes it isn't all fun and games...

Welcome to The Sunday Salon and The Sunday Post! It's that day of the week bloggers from all over the internet get together virtually in a large gathering place called The Sunday Salon and talk books!  And at The Sunday Post, which is a weekly meme hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, in which more bloggers share their bookish news!

It's a beautiful sunny day in Connecticut. It is November, so it's has cooled off a bit, but it's only in the 50's and that's okay with me this time of year. Lot's of things to start getting ready for... Thanksgiving! Christmas!?! and some interesting reads coming out for Fall. Today's roundup of reads highlights some literary girls that don't fit in your typical mold. Merry, who is like a black widow, charming and deadly (kinda), Skylark, who is trying to find herself among the teenagers she's friends with, and Penelope, who survives her hellish surroundings to eventually find love and acceptance. Here they are...

Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen... From Kirkus Reviews: When Lane Coolman's car is bashed from behind on the road to the Florida Keys, what appears to be an ordinary accident is anything but (this is Hiaasen!). Behind the wheel of the other car is Merry Mansfield--the eponymous Razor Girl--and the crash scam is only the beginning of events that spiral crazily out of control while unleashing some of the wildest characters Hiaasen has ever set loose on the page. There's Trebeaux, the owner of Sedimental Journeys--a company that steals sand from one beach to restore erosion on another . . . Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola, a NYC mafia capo with a taste for tropic-wear . . . Buck Nance, a Wisconsin accordionist who has rebranded himself as the star of a redneck reality show called Bayou Brethren . . . a street psycho known as Blister who's more Buck Nance than Buck could ever be . . . Brock Richardson, a Miami product-liability lawyer who's getting dangerously--and deformingly--hooked on the very E.D. product he's litigating against . . . and Andrew Yancy--formerly Detective Yancy, busted down to the Key West roach patrol after accosting his then-lover's husband with a Dust Buster. Yancy believes that if he can singlehandedly solve a high-profile murder, he'll get his detective badge back. That the Razor Girl may be the key to Yancy's future will be as surprising as anything else he encounters along the way--including the giant Gambian rats that are livening up his restaurant inspections.

Carl Hiassen's books are rollicking adventures and Razor Girl should be no different. I picked this up and am looking forward to cracking the spine for a fun time. Lots of great praise for this book.

Girl Defective by Simmone Howell... Skylark Martin lives above her family’s vintage vinyl shop that—like its merchandise—is an endangered species in their re-gentrified, forward-looking Melbourne suburb. In the five years since Mum left to “follow her art” in Japan, Dad’s kept the shop going, drinking homebrew and mourning the past (musical and otherwise). Sky, 15, and Gully, 10, aka Agent Seagull Martin, who wears a pig-snout mask 24/7 and views the world as a crime scene waiting to be investigated, hold down the fort. Sky harbors no illusions about their dreary status quo—Dad’s drinking, Gully’s issues, her own social stasis—but she does have dreams, recently ignited by a new friend, the beautiful, wild and fearless Nancy. Other agents of change include Eve, Dad’s old flame, and Luke, the shop’s attractive, moody new hire. Drawn, mothlike, to Nancy’s flame, Sky’s dreams are haunted by Luke’s sister, whose similarly wild lifestyle led to tragedy. The family business grounds Sky. Its used records and cassettes, like time capsules, store music that evokes the past’s rich emotional complexity for the Martins and their quirky customers, while the eternal present and frantic quest for the next big thing hold no appeal.  Funny, observant, a relentless critic of the world’s (and her own) flaws, Sky is original, thoroughly authentic and great company, decorating her astute, irreverent commentary with vivid Aussie references; chasing these down should provide foreign readers with hours of online fun.

I happened to stumble upon this book this week and read a bit of it. Reminds me of a coming-of-age novel, I enjoyed the writing I sampled and have put this one on my wishlist! It's YA and originally published in 2014. 

Ulysses Dream by Tim White... Through Penelope’s eyes we understand the experience of thousands of girls who are kidnapped and become statistics of human trafficking. With the courageous intervention of a young girl, she escapes and ends up living with other children in the Teguciligapa city dump. Her hero is Ulysses, a Nez Perce boy raised in the rugged Wallowa mountains in Eastern Oregon. He and his six brothers and their Beauceron dog have many adventures and are hunted by a monstrous bear. Ulysses and Penelope fall into a sweet teenage romance. When Ulysees is sent to Southeast Asia in 1968, his quest to win back his true love takes him through the horror of Vietnam, as well as the struggles of professional football and the Olympics. Penelope and her son Telemachus are left alone to work towards the miracle of US citizenships, all the while avoiding the retribution of the international gang to whom she once was a slave.

This book seems to have so much stuffed into one story. How do you combine human trafficking, a love story and the NFL into one book? And the book is only 207 pages? I'm not sure, but the story of a girl escaping her sex traffickers,  surviving and falling in love, and almost losing the happiness she fought so hard for makes me want to read this. It's at a bargain Kindle price of $4.99 if you're interested too.

What Literary Girls have you read about lately?

Enjoy your week! I hope you've found something to pique your reading interests! 

Happy reading... Suzanne