A Day That Changed Everything by Beth Moran

I read an amazingly ready-for-publication Advanced Reader Copy with the title How Not To Be A Loser. The novel opens with the protagonist giving a tongue-in-cheek description of what her life has become, capped by an amusing incident where she can't cast aspersions on her son's fear of spiders when she can't even look outside an open door. The author does an excellent job of giving hints of what has happened in the past - information that trickles out in bits as the story goes on. She does the same with what is to come, and it's not quite certain until the end just how things will turn out. A thoroughly enjoyable read with many light moments, while drawing the reader into the world of someone with agoraphobia.

The Forgotten Girls by Lizzie Page: An excellent book for writers to read.

A delightfully well-written family saga/romance/women's novel with two blended story lines: Nana Elaine's passionate wartime (WWII) romance with a famous photographer and the contemporary life of her granddaughter - a woman whose husband has left her for a younger woman at the outset. While there are definitely romances in both lives, the book is more than that. It is a powerful description of the women who stepped up during the war and were then sent home once it was over, and while her grand romance is key, Elaine's story entails much more. Her granddaughter recognizes parallels between them and must decide what choices to make for her own life.

An excellent book for writers to read:

Historical Fiction: Page doesn't bury the reader in her research. Instead she selects details that are pertinent to her characters' lives. For example, the dichotomy between the general scarcity of food and that available to the wealthy shows up as Elaine goes between scraping together bits at home and eating out with her lover.

Women's Fiction: This book is categorized as family saga because it embraces the generations. That is valid, but I'd also place it firmly in women's fiction because Page's characters are realistic women facing universal situations. While Elaine's romance may be the high point of her life, there is so much more about her journey included in this story. While her granddaughter, Jen, is not privy to all of the details we as readers have, the outline of Elaine's story and her direction hints at decisions she made. Recognizing parallels between them, Jen has to make her own life-determining decisions.

Romance: The core of Elaine's story is her grand romance and Jen is dealing with a philandering husband, a possible romantic interest, and decisions to be made. These are nicely handled. If your goal is to write romance that goes above and beyond, this is an example to read.

Backstory

My review posted at Amazon and Goodreads: "The first two chapters drag with introspective backstory that would be better shown in interactions with the characters. However, at the end of chapter two, the accident is described vividly from the perspective of the second victim and the story starts moving along with lots of nice twists."

Well, I won't post a review at Amazon or Goodreads unless I finish a book and give four or five stars. I had decided to put this book down at the end of the second chapter if it didn't get any better - then it did. The accident description is vivid, as experienced in the moment - excellent writing. For writers, that would be a good portion to read. Also, a good exercise would be to revamp the first two chapters using pointers from Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, Chapter 23: Low Tension part II: Burdensome Backstory.

When my first novel had gone through a good critique group chapter by chapter (the better part of a year), one member who had missed much of the story did a beta read. She returned it with a copy of Maass' workbook, saying it was good enough to publish but could be even better. I printed out the novel, literally cut every piece of backstory out, and assessed each one. If the reader never needed to have that info, it got tossed. Otherwise, I decided how soon they needed that info and taped that piece onto the manuscript in that section. Then I took the snipped and taped paper manuscript and revised the novel accordingly - and the story moved much better. As authors, we need to know all about our characters, but the reader only needs to know the parts that pertain to the story.

The same goes for research. With historical fiction or other writing requiring voluminous research, there's a temptation to include all that knowledge. While it all helped inform your writing, don't bog down the story with so much detail that you lose the reader. Decide what they need to know and find unobtrusive ways to slide it into the story.