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Mele’s Musings: The bear who came to dinner

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Inside the web: A weekly look at spider species of NEPA

<p>My ever so stylish cousin, Maddy, has recently begun developing a company called Pinkly Perfect Inc, a fashion and lifestyle brand aimed at beach-loving teenaged girls. The line will launch in the summer of 2016, but in the meantime, she&#8217;s been posting pictures on Instagram and blog entries that capture the essence of her company.</p><p>What exactly does this have to do with books? Well, along with being very fashionable, Maddy also loves to read. I was delighted to find that <a href="http://blog.pinklyperfect.com/" target="_blank">her first blog post </a>(<a href="http://blog.pinklyperfect.com">http://blog.pinklyperfect.com</a>) was focused on recommending some of her favorite beach books. Now I&#8217;m not a beach girl like she is, but I do love lying around reading, so I immediately added all three of her recommendations to my Amazon wishlist and fortunately found one at the library right away.</p><p>&#8220;The Blessings&#8221; is a great summer read. Maddy refers to it in her blog as &#8220;heartwarming, honest, and relatable.&#8221; I couldn&#8217;t agree more. I breezed through it in a couple days, sucked into the story of a large Irish-Catholic family from Philadelphia (where author Elise Juska teaches at the University of the Arts) throughout several years.</p><p>The book has an interesting structure. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the family members at a different time period. The story progresses chronologically, starting around 1992 and ending somewhere after 9/11. There is no major overarching storyline: no mystery to solve or great love to find. It is simply a story of a family and the smaller stories of individual members of that family.</p><p>If the novel had been told from the perspective of only one character, it might not have had the same depth or caught my interest as much. However, we got to experience a moment in time for each character, while also touching in with what other family members are going through throughout the years. That made this a very different reading experience for me. Perhaps it was more similar to a collection of short stories than a novel. I don&#8217;t love short stories but I loved this book.</p><p>&#8220;The Blessing&#8221; family is just like any other family. They have their secrets, nothing overly dramatic, but relatable to most readers: a daughter with an eating disorder, a wife struggling with infertility, a brother fighting cancer. And yet, not every chapter deals entirely with extreme sorrow or pain. One daughter tries to adjust to college, the family matriarch frets over whether she will have enough candy for when her grandchildren visit and a son travels out of the country for the first time. The episodes could be stories from any family&#8217;s life.</p><p>I felt like I was one of the Blessings while reading the novel. I don&#8217;t have a large family myself, but I married into one, and was able to relate to large gatherings and celebrations. The characters themselves are down-to-earth and interesting. I liked that each chapter touched on what other family members were up to since we last saw them. The book starts with Abby, a college freshmen, and ends with her much younger cousin, Elena, almost two decades later. I appreciated the moment in Elena&#8217;s chapter where she visited Abby and we learned a little more about what she is up to during Elena&#8217;s time.</p><p>At its core, &#8220;The Blessings&#8221; is ultimately about family: the people you are tied to by blood and birth, the people you celebrate your victories with and who support you during times of sorrow, the people who will always be there for you no matter what. This is a beautifully complex and thoughtful novel that is perfect for summer reading, whether you&#8217;re on the beach or lying in a hammock.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Dorothy Sasso</p><p>On the Books</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>&#8220;The Blessings&#8221;</p><p>Author: Elise Juska</p><p>Page Count: 288</p><p>Publisher: Grand Central Publishing</p><p>Rating: &#9830;&#9830;&#9830;&#9830; 1/2 of 5</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Dorothy Sasso is a former Soap Opera Digest writer and a private school teacher. She is busy reading books and raising her daughter.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

On the Books: ‘The Blessings’ could be anyone’s story