Book Club Reporter Book Review - Mother Knows Best by Author Kira Peikoff

09/03/19 • 4 min

Mother Knows Best is an extraordinary psychological thriller! Completely captivated by the story, I was frantically flipping the pages from start to finish.

Talented fertility doctor, Robert Nash, and his attractive and younger, over-achieving scientist/assistant, Jillian, have developed a unique technique to help prospective parents avoid passing down certain genetic mutations to their children. The main concept at play here is a, still mostly hush-hush, procedure of creating a child with three parents.

Kudos to author, *Kira Peikoff, for expertly writing Mother Knows Best with just enough clinical detail for lay people to grasp the medical concepts and the scientific technology. I never felt like the medical/scientific details were over my head or overwhelming.

Claire and Ethan Abrams lost their eight-year old child to a genetic mutation inherited from Claire. While Claire and Ethan are both hopeful that someday they may have another child, they differ on how to make that happen. Ethan prefers to hold out hope that he and Claire have a chance to have a healthy child. He has it in his mind that they will love the child regardless of any health issues.

Claire, on the other hand, is searching for any new techniques that will guarantee her a healthy child who should have every opportunity to live a normal healthy life. Claire and Ethan have been advised that there is a more than likely chance that any child they bring into the world will have the same genetic mutation as their late son, Colton. The death of Colton, deeply affected Claire. Her heart and her now fragile mind hold out no hope of ever having a healthy child. Claire understands the reality of her situation. She knows that she cannot contemplate bringing another child into the world only to watch it slowly deteriorate and die an early death.

I very much enjoyed how each character is a uniquely fascinating personality. With multiple viewpoints battling for what they each believe is right and fair, the tension in Mother Knows Best is nerve-racking. Let’s face it, if the main characters in this story decided to agree to disagree, we wouldn’t have such a tension-filled and emotionally-charged story in Mother Knows Best. Even ten-year old Abby has a mind of her own. She’s like a little Captain Marvel with the physical and emotional energy to plan out her own objectives and successfully carry them out to fruition. But not even Abby can triumph every time.

Mother Knows Best is an extraordinary novel! I was totally invested in this story as evidenced with how fast I was turning the pages! Even the cover grabbed me before I even had a chance to open the book. I was mesmerized by the red-haired braid that is twisted across the book cover—like the twisted strands of DNA.
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*I erred in the spelling of the author's last name in the podcast audio. The correct spelling is Peikoff.-Laura Jay

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Mother Knows Best is an extraordinary psychological thriller! Completely captivated by the story, I was frantically flipping the pages from start to finish.

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Book Club Reporter Book Review - Another You -written by author, Jane Cable

Another You - A Story About Letting Go and Learning to Begin Again - Author Jane Cable

Romance love story-women’s fiction Another You is a haunting love story made up of many “moving parts.” The story is one of historical-fiction, romance, family-drama, and is mostly focused on Marie, the protagonist. Marie lives in a small building that also houses the seaside pub she runs alongside her husband, Stephen, and their teenage son, Jude.

Jude is a budding young artist faced with making the all-important decision whether to follow his dream, or to take what others see as the safer and more sensible route. And Jude is in love with a girl who has not yet told her parents about him. While Marie and Stephen remain married on paper and continue to run the business together, their marriage has gone by the wayside.

The storyline of Another You takes on some serious issues such as mind-numbing migraines, abusive relationships, post-traumatic stress disorder, futile relationships, as well as the emotional stress and anxiety that accompanies the realization of imminent divorce. It seems the greatest factor holding Marie back from living her best life— is a serious amount of fear-based avoidance behavior.

Take heart dear readers, Another You is also a story about friendship, budding new relationships, romance, young love and mature second-time around love. It’s about acceptance—letting go and learning to begin again. The characters are brought to life through courage, anticipation and hope for a better tomorrow.

With so much going on, readers may tend to feel Another You is a great deal like real life...it is! Much like the jigsaw puzzle featured in the story, Jane Cable spreads out the puzzle pieces of the story, then sensitively assembles all the pieces of Another You with loving care. I highly recommend Another You as a moving and complex love story. I would so love to read a sequel to Another You.
Find Another You and more Book Club Reporter Book Reviews at BookClubReporter.com

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Things You Save in a Fire Book Review Podcast

Things You Save In A Fire Book Review Podcast by Book Club Reporter - Laura Jay

About The Author - Katherine Center

In addition to her latest book Things You Save in a Fire, Katherine Center is also the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author of How to Walk Away which is novel reviewed on my website: BookClubReporter.com. And I will create a podcast for How to Walk Away in the near future.

Katherine Center has also written five bittersweet comic novels about love and family, including:

The Bright Side of Disaster
Happiness for Beginners
And, The Lost Husband, which went into production in 2018, as a feature film, unfortunately I was unable to find a release date at this time.

Things You Save in a Fire

A Story About Letting Go and Learning to Begin Again

In this "good for the soul" story, fans of How To Walk Away will fall in love with female firefighter, Cassie Hanwell. Cassie is an intelligent and capable young woman following her dream to be successful at what she loves. And what Cassie loves is firefighting. At fire station eleven in Austin, Texas, Cassie can pretty much do everything the men firefighters can do...and sometimes even better.

While twenty-six-year-old, Cassie is tough, strong and determined, she is also carrying a couple of gigantic emotional scars. Her mother, Diana, left Cassie and her dad on the evening of Cassie’s sixteenth birthday. In addition, it soon becomes clear, Cassie is suffering the memory of an unspeakable occurrence in her past, the nature of which we have yet to learn. Everyone deals with adversity in their own way. Cassie’s coping mechanism seems to be the development of a stoic and tough exterior. She doesn’t believe in love. And when it comes to her mother, Cassie has no forgiveness in her heart.

With Captain Harris, an African-American female, in charge at the progressive Austin fire station, the amount of flack that Cassie might be subjected to from male counterparts, is virtually non-existent. However, that might change as Cassie is faced with moving to Massachusetts, to help out her ailing mother.

As fate would have it, Cassie lands a job with an all-male fire station in Lillian, Massachusetts. To make matters even worse, Cassie learns the Lillian fire station doesn’t want a female firefighter. They are only taking her on because they are desperate. Warned by Captain Harris, back in Austin, Cassie has a good idea of what she can expect from the Lillian fire station male crew.

When Cassie arrives for her first day at the Lillian fire station, she is welcomed with anything but open arms. She quickly realizes she will need to heed the tough advice of Captain Harris. That advice, in a nutshell, is don’t dress or act like a woman, and whatever a man can do, make sure to do it better. Cassie recognized that she was now a part of a fire station where she would be ignored, excluded and resented; and that no amount of hard work on her part would matter. The first thing Cassie learns on her first day on the new job is that being fifteen minutes early, means you’re half an hour late. The second thing she discovers is, Captain Murphy, of the Lillian fire station, proclaims meetings by announcing: “Attention, please. There’s a stripper at the kitchen table.”

As Cassie settles into her new job, she does her best to fit in. She is a pro and an outstanding firefighter. When faced with obstacles, Cassie creates methods and techniques to accomplish the tasks as well as, if not better and faster than the men. Ah, but Cassie is not the only new firefighter in Lillian. A rookie firefighter started work the same day as Cassie. Everyone calls him "The Rookie" and not by his actual name, Owen. Cassie and the fire

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