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Alison Hammer

Auteur de Little Pieces of Me

2 oeuvres 164 utilisateurs 33 critiques

Œuvres de Alison Hammer

Little Pieces of Me (2021) 89 exemplaires
You and Me and Us: A Novel (2020) 75 exemplaires

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Partage des connaissances

Sexe
female
Nationalité
USA

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Critiques

Fair warning... keep a box of Kleenex near you when you get toward the end. There's a heart-wrenching scene that is written so well that I felt I was in the room with them experiencing the pain and love.
We know parents like Alexis who could be described as workaholics. She loves her only child, CeCe, but finds herself more comfortable at the job she worked so hard to build from the ground up. And her near-perfect partner, CeCe's dad, Tommy, makes it easy for Alexis to spend more time and energy on her job than on parenting. He's one of those dads's that every child wants: doting, funny, a good listener, and hey, he's CeCe's dad, which is usually the parent a teen girl doesn't clash with (compared to the volatile mother-daughter relationship during those teen years!)
But this story is about more than family dynamics. It tackles cancer, dying, regrets, hopes, friendship, and what we all hope for out of life - whether we are a teen stumbling like CeCe is, or a parent stumbling, as Alexis does.
It is a quick read that will take you to the gorgeous beaches of Destin Florida (love that area!) and into the heart of what is important in life.
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Signalé
JillHannah | 22 autres critiques | Nov 20, 2023 |
I won this through the Goodreads giveaways. I was not obligated to give a review but WOW what a heart-wrenching story of love, loss, and hope that you can sink your heart into. I could not put this book down once I started it, I read this in one day. I HIGHLY recommend this book. I cannot wait to read Alison's next book, thank you very much for the giveaway.
 
Signalé
JKJ94 | 22 autres critiques | Jul 27, 2023 |
I was so pissed off by this novel that I couldn't bring myself to review it until six days after reading it. Everyone starts out their reviews on here by talking about DNA testing for ancestry testing, but that's barely what the book is about. Yeah, yeah, I took the 23andme one when it was still really expensive and was shocked at how white I was. Someone on Twitter cleverly remarked that the biggest effect of ancestral DNA testing is that it shatters the myth so many white people put forth that they have some Native American ancestral history. I appreciated that tweet a lot. One thing a LOT of people seem to miss is just how often DNA testing sites warn users, on the front page every other sentence and often in big, bold font, just how much you need to realize that you might be related to someone you weren't expecting, and you will find out unpleasant things. I noticed it right away. Not Parent Expected is a real-life facebook group that is referred to several times in this novel. It deserved to be examined in a much better novel.

This book starts out with the heroine bragging about how white she is, and I grimly settled in for--oh fuck she's observant Jewish -that makes her remarks so much worse-. A whole paragraph after how she brags about how white she is, was dedicated to how Jewish people can have red hair. No shit. China also has indigenous Jewish populations, off the top of my head. Every country does, is the point I'm trying to make. Just say you have red hair, you (censored). One thing she didn't talk about was her freckles or her relationship to them, so I assumed she dyed her hair. She mentioned offhand that she sunburns easily, but I was not impressed. So she finally shuts up and the book switches to the 1970s, where we meet her mom as a college student, who has what she considers a love triangle and what I consider social issues that seriously affected people, especially today. The POVs flip back and forth for multiple chapters at a time per person, and--those could be chapter transitions. The mom was such a useless character that I hate to say it, but it would have been far more effective if she were dead. Her whole purpose was to be an enormously passive-aggressive clinical narcissist who never could speak up for herself, refused to tell her daughter the truth, yelled at her, and tried to make her daughter's wedding her own. She makes her college buddy explain really sensitive things. Have her dead, please, and the college buddy tell her after the funeral. Not her dad's. Have him and the other guy hate each other, and have the daughter meet the other guy in a different way. The book is packed with nauseating cliches throughout. Homophobia and antisemitism are rampant throughout, and racism pops up, and xenophobia is definitely here. Misogyny too. I kept reading to learn if the book would end on the vomit-worthy cliche I thought it would. It 85% did. Gag.

Why on earth did the author publish this? She clearly wrote it for herself, but why did it go so mainstream? How frustrating. It doesn't respect people who go through this IRL: having a Not Parent Expected, an emotionally abusive parent who won't talk to you, and such. Gimme a book written from -their- perspective because wow, it will be so different.
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Signalé
iszevthere | 9 autres critiques | Jul 11, 2022 |
This is a magical book which is totally engaging. I read this book in a day.

It's easy to figure out the plot. Paige's father passes away. She does a DNA test and one day gets a message that her biological father is someone she doesn't know. Of course, her mother is in denial. She's getting married within a few months and her friends are encouraging her to find her DNA dad.

The words flow smoothly which makes it super fast to read. The characters are well defined and the plot is current with the popular ancestry kits making us wonder about relationships. It makes a discussion for book clubs with proposed questions in the back of the book. Paige said, "I've always been the kind of person who believes things happen for a reason. And there has to be a reason for all of this to come out now."

It's comforting to read a book that is easy to digest and stays with you over time.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Jacsun | 9 autres critiques | Oct 5, 2021 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
2
Membres
164
Popularité
#129,117
Évaluation
4.0
Critiques
33
ISBN
18

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