Customer Reviews

No Place Like Home

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved this book. It's not often a novel makes me cry, with this one I couldn' t stop crying, but laughing too.

Jewel the heroine has such a wry way of looking at the world that we can identify with her easily, yet she is full of love and does her best to cope like everyone else with some horrendous circumstances. Hers is compelling first-person narrative and the talented author gives her a very strong voice, part comedian part earth goddess, all woman.

Every character is a little jewel that sparkles, and the hunky heartthrob Malachi is even to melt your bones. The love secnes are wonderful--only wish there had been more!!

A beautifully written book-I couldn't put it down, raced to the end and then re-read the whole thing to really savor it. I will definitely be reading more by this fabulous author.

Barbara Samuels is probably known solely to romance readers under both that name and her pen name of Ruth Wind. She's had a loyal following for years led by Ellen Michelletti over at All About Romance. Ellen has kept after me for years about this author's ability as a writer and, although I thought Samuels was very good, I never thought she had the star potential Ellen did. Well, I was wrong and Ellen was right and this novel is the proof. (Ellen also proved me wrong on author Carla Kelly so I think I may be done arguing with Ellen over writers.) I think what Samuels does here that catapaults her into worthy consideration for all fiction readers is her adoption of a first person narrative voice. Prior to this, she always used third person. First person lets Samuels impart a heck of an emotional wallop with her work. Her character is Jewel Sabatino, from a Sicilian family in Pueblo, Colorado, who has been estranged from her father for two decades because of her running away with a musician while she was a senior in high school. She returns to Pueblo with her best friend Michael, who is dying of AIDS, her 17 year old son, Sean, by the musician (who died of a drug overdose as predicted by her father) and is joined by Michael's brother, Malachi, who becomes her love interest. The strong lead character throughout is Jewel and the conflicts, thoughts and tensions in her life are rendered perfectly. She also deals with her reflections over her mistakes from the past and the hand she has left to play in life on the other side of forty. That her body is no longer what it was and that she has to jump start a career are real world concerns well handled. The thoughts Jewel has throughout are so universal to contemporary women that you will think Samuels is transcribing your own thoughts. A source of considerable conflict throughout for several key characters including Jewel is what to do about internalized conflicts with parents, how to resolve them and get on with one's life so that one doesn't keep just replaying that early melodrama as one's entire life. Talk about a rich field to mine in writing! I think Samuels has hit upon a huge vein there that resonates with the reading public. Patricia Gaffney is another author who moved into fiction from romance. Gaffney wrote/writes superbly in both. I think Samuels is in a class with Gaffney. I think both of them are a million times better than Barbara Delinksy or Sandra Brown, who broke out of the romance genre years earlier and are now huge bestselling fiction authors. I also prefer Samuels and Gaffney to Nora Roberts, who remains in the romance genre as an enormous bestselling author. One final note: being from an Italian Catholic heritage myself I give Samuels credit for faithfully capturing that American subculture, both the feminine and masculine parts of it. I assume it must be her own heritage for her to have caught it this perfectly.

This is my first book by Barbara Samuels, but I do plan on reading more of her work. The book tells a heart warming tale about love, loss and family that touched my emotions on more than one level. The charactars were brought to life on the pages and the town of Pueblo, with all its traditions, a place you would want to plan to visit and stay awhile. I would highly recommend it!

I loved this book. It's not often a novel makes me cry, with this one I couldn' t stop crying, but laughing too.

Jewel the heroine has such a wry way of looking at the world that we can identify with her easily, yet she is full of love and does her best to cope like everyone else with some horrendous circumstances. Hers is compelling first-person narrative and the talented author gives her a very strong voice, part comedian part earth goddess, all woman.

Every character is a little jewel that sparkles, and the hunky heartthrob Malachi is even to melt your bones. The love secnes are wonderful--only wish there had been more!!

A beautifully written book-I couldn't put it down, raced to the end and then re-read the whole thing to really savor it. I will definitely be reading more by this fabulous author.

Have you ever read a book and then felt regret when you finish it? This is the book that evokes that response in me. I laughed, I cried and I never wanted it to end! Simply....a great book!

Don't we all wish we could go home again and make it work? Beautiful book and one of my all time favorites.

After reading The Survivors Club by Lisa Gardner, I really needed to read a book that was well-written, but soft on emotions. Out of my Amazon pile, I selected No Place Like Home, because of its simple title and a cover that looked like it belonged on a feminine hygiene product. Not surprising, the book is very well-written and believeable, as all Barbara Samuel aka Ruth Wind books are, but it is also very moving and real...and not soft on emotions. This beautiful book tells a story about life, loss and living; it is well-written and filled with characters overflowing in depth and color. This book is not only worth purchasing, but worth finding a nice permanent spot on your shelf.

This is the first book I've read in longer than I can remember that made tears just stream down my cheeks. But mixed with the sadness was so much joy. Barbara Samuels writes about family, food, love, motherhood, and the joys and sorrows of balancing all the roles that come with being a woman with wit, tenderness, and shattering honesty. The genuineness of the writing and the universal truths that this book explores lift it far above your average "women's fiction" novel. I never once felt like my emotions were being manipulated. It's only March, but I'm already placing NO PLACE LIKE HOME at the top of my Favorite Books of the Year list.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book -- reminded me of Luanne Rice, Deborah Smith. My only complaint is that I wished it were longer! I wanted to stay in that town, with those characters for a while.

I did not expect to like this book. I do not read romance novels and this writer is a romance novelist. The book was selected as the feature book for January by my book club and I confess I waited until the last minute before beginning to read.

However.

I was pleasantly surprised and think Barbara Samuels should be writing more and more serious fiction. Her style is fresh if a little superficial: the long descriptions of clothes, make-up, tossing of the head, cascades of curls, dark shadows of beard over strong jaws--perhaps a little much. I did enjoy some of the detailed descriptions of the fluffy female hormone driven protagonist even though I think they were over-done.
Yes, we know what it's like to smell the clean, woodsy smell of a hunky sex god. But I really did get tired of hearing it repeated throughout the long middle of the book.

She is good with sentient words: thrum, buttery and good at descriptions of nature: "By July the sun is starting to suck the green from the landscape..." or "...hundreds of thousands of elm trees - too fragile for the heavy snow or high winds...offer nearly bare branches to the blisteringly clear blue of the sky..." but I wish she had lingered a little longer on the friendship between Jewell and Michael instead of all the sex talk and scenes with Malachi.

We know he's attractive and we know she's full of lust for him; to me the really special relationship is the bond shared by Jewell and Michael. I envied the relationship with Michael far more than the ear nibbling and tongue thrusts with Malachi. That's just me. Sorry. But the love between them is so much more powerful than sex.

Driving south from Denver, I've always hated going through the town of Pueblo, seeing it from a tourist's perspective - dirty, dismal and very dry. I tend to forget the river and the abundance of produce teased from that unforgiving land. I have a new appreciation for it after reading this book.

I say congratulations to Barbara Samuel for a job well done. I would love to read a historical fiction about Pueblo and Southern Colorado sometime. Thanks for a good read.