Customer Reviews

Sweet Ruin

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

`SWEET RUIN,' is a great read that is definitely meant for every woman. In this book exist 'real' women who experience normal feelings, temptations, failings, and successes. But, there are a few shockers thrown in to keep the story passed quickly.

As you read throughout this story you found that our heroine, Elayna, has an interesting past with her Mom, Dad and sister that continues to affect her presently. She finds herself and her daughter greatly enjoying their times of watching her young nephew. Elayna's sister is a real 'space case' herself. Elayna's best friend is feisty, funny and intensely loyal. She is also single, sexual, and loving her life. Then we have thrown in a much too typical overly protective, extremely organized and intensely opinionated day care provider, Pansy. And finally, we add in the cute young man across the street who gets Elayna's juices flowing. Nothing simple or commonplace follows the interactions of all these people.

The story flies along with emotion, humor, fearful moments, and testing trials. The book is amazingly great and innovative for what may seem, at first, like a typical 'chick lit'. It is a must read for women of all ages and stages of life. If nothing else you will fall in love with Elayna and her daughter. There are multiple issues that would be great for book group discussions and story telling amongst friends, especially on how she resolves her relationships with her husband, daughter, father, and deceased son will leave some readers nodding their heads in empathy and feeling empowered and others shaking their heads in skepticism and relieved she's not a real-life friend.

In New York Times best-selling author Cathi Hanauer's latest novel she takes readers into the mind of a thrity-something, wife and stay at home Mom, just coming back from a devastating tragedy. It has been two years since the death of Elayna Leopold-Slade's infant son Oliver, and only now is the fog of deep depression starting to lift. As winter turns to spring Elayna feels herself start to come alive again and is enjoying this newfound sense of freedom. As she begins to take focus on her work as a poetry editor, her 6 year old daughter Hazel is finding more independence and her loving but sometimes distant husband is working long hours, Elayna begins to use her time to refocus on herself. However, she soon finds this new Zen for life taking her down a road she never imagined, when she meets her young, handsome and very intriguing neighbor, Kevin. As she and Kevin form a friendship, she finds herself feeling things she thought died along with Oliver and finds him hard to resist.

'SWEET RUIN' is well written, thought-provoking and gives us great insight into the mind of a wife and mother trying to reconnect with pieces of herself that were pushed aside to take care of her family. As a wife and mother myself, I could completely relate to much of Elayna's thoughts about motherhood and marriage and how one can loose themselves in the chaos of it all. Hanauer has provided a very honest look at life and does not sugar coat the effects Elayna's actions have on her or her family. This book should be on everyone's must read list for this summer!

I was a bit saddened and then a bit defensive. As a suburban SAHM in her 30's with a young daugher and an overworked husband - I got this story. It spoke to me of the frustrations, temptations and feelings often buried so deeply that they are even hard to acknowledge yourself. I thought it was beautifully written and even though she didn't spell out all of Elayna's pain you could see it there under the surface and how she chose more often than not to push it down and plod on rather than wallow in it like her sister.

I'm not meaning to undermine everyone else's opinions because they are all valid - but merely point out a different viewpoint. I didn't find Elayna a spoiled brat of a wife or mother. I found her a very real woman with faults just like everyone else. She did have a wonderful life - a great husband - a wonderful kid - but something was missing. Some 'vitality' that she needed to regain. She chose a path that was destructive to do so - but it only makes her that much more human. Instead of burying herself in selfless acts of motherhood and a martyrdom of a marriage - she allowed herself to 'feel' again. Yes, her selfish choices did almost ruin her marriage and harm her daughter, but they were mistakes that people make. She regretted them and she worked to fix them.

I felt that Cathi Hanauer DOES understand how a woman thinks and feels. It might not be the thoughts and feelings of ALL women - but I think there are a lot of us out there that get where she is coming from and that she is spot on.

This is a wonderful book which gets into the joys and pains of being a mother and wife. I think she brings up struggles any married woman goes through at some point in their marriage. Once I got started reading it, I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend it!

I enjoyed this book a lot. Given the melodramatic title and literary opening, I thought it might be pretentious...but it quickly morphed into a highly readable, almost Judy Blume-esque (think "Wifey") account of a subtly failing marriage and the wife's growing attraction to a neighbor boy. His age is never specified, but he's presumably in his twenties, while Elayna, the discontent wife, is 35.

Elayna is starting to feel that passion is lacking in her life. Her infant son died about a year ago, and she's just starting to come out of her depression. However, her husband, Paul, is still immersed in his round-the-clock work as a death-row lawyer. Elayna's daughter, feisty, orange-haired Hazel, keeps her hands full much of the time, but Elayna can't help noticing the slim, artsy boy who walks his grey Weimaraner in the neighborhood.

I thought the dialogue and characters in this book were great. Even the supporting characters, like Elayna's college roommate, Celeste, are well-drawn. Pansy, the woman who runs Hazel's daycare, is a little cartoonish, but displays greater depth toward the end of the book.

I also thought the book was not mired down in depression. Despite her son's death, Elayna is a vital, passionate woman who finds something missing in her life. Although some of the reviewers here found her unsympathetic, I found her very human. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Judy Blume or good dialogue. And parts of the book are very funny, though others are more serious. It's quite erotic as well.

Elayna's life has had its share of ups and downs.She's married to a workaholic lawyer husband, she has an adorable 6 year old daughter, and she edits a poetry magazine. However, she recently lost her second child and she definitely has leftover issues from her childhood that she's managed to push aside. To say that she is ready for change is an understatement, and unfortunately for her, the change comes in the form of a nice, cute young neighbor with whom she develops a dangerously flirtatious relationship.

Hanauer does an excellent job of giving Elayna justification for what she does, and makes her a sympathetic character overall. The writing is engaging and the story moves along at a good pace, making you want to discover what Elayna will do when she's faced with her most secret desires as well as her worst nightmares. The ending leaves you hanging a bit, but overall this book is well-developed and a good read. Recommended.

complicated, never as black and white as we wish. A great vacation book. Both likeable and entertaining.

I do not think this book was as bad as some of the other reviews made it out to be. I thought that the first 100 pages or so were a little slow and kinda hard to get through. The writer created great charectures that you really cared about and wanted to read on to see what happened. The books peaked just shy of the middle and the ending was a little long. The middle of the book was very good, a real page turner you couldnt put it down. All in all it was a great book, I enjoyed it alot, I enjoyed Elayna and felt like she protrayed a real house wife, a real person, and she was someone we could all relate to. Give the book a try, i dont think you will be disappointed.

Elayna Leopold's story is a typical one in many ways: She's a suburban housewife with a young daughter, a workaholic husband, and an attraction to the adorable (and much younger) boy across the street. What we soon learn about Elayna, though, is that she's suffered two great losses in her life: the first, when she was a child, a loss of innocence after an episode with her parents; the second, much more recently, a loss of innocence of a very different kind: the death of her infant son, Oliver. When we meet Elayna, Oliver has been gone for a year, and she's slowly reaching the acceptance stage of her grief. Helping her through the grieving process are her six-year-old daughter Hazel and best friend and college roommate Celeste. (Her husband, Paul, is a lawyer who's working around the clock on a death row case, and he's rarely home.) But it is Kevin, the artist across the street with the Weimaraner who poops in her yard, who will be both Elayna's salvation and her downfall as she hurtles toward something she can't take back.

Author Cathi Hanauer has a true gift. SWEET RUIN is a beautifully written novel, with particularly stunning descriptions of the seasons (which serve as a larger framework for the novel). Hanauer has a keen eye for detail and a good ear for dialogue. Her observations and insights on suburban life are spot-on and subtly sarcastic, which amused me.

However, I found many of the characters to be lacking, both in substance and believability. Elayna herself comes across as shallow and self-indulgent. I really wanted to have sympathy for her, but Hanauer never really offers us the opportunity to mourn Oliver's loss along with Elayna. Instead, we are treated to Elayna's seemingly endless interior monologue, most of it regarding Kevin. Kevin himself is never really fleshed-out, and I struggled to see Elayna's attraction to him. The character of Pansy, Hazel's daycare teacher, was a little bit too wacky for me; I just didn't "get" her. And the situation with Elayna's father was just creepy and could have been left out of the novel entirely.

What really saved the novel, for me, was Hazel. I saw her as an endearing, bright character in a novel of hollow ones. She lends a sense of innocence to the plot, and Hanauer really succeeds in conveying her expressions, dialogue, and utter child-ness. Hazel is the kind of child I want to have; Hanauer portrays her beautifully.

I really wanted to love this novel; as I mentioned, the writing is beautiful. I plan on picking up Hanauer's first novel from the library; I think she's an author I'll like reading. I just hope, in her next novel, she explores less stereotypical territory.

Great Book!!! Great condition when I received it. I have recomended to many of my friends.