Deeply, Desperately by Heather Webber

This book is an easy read, and the mystery in it is not bad, if nothing to write home about. I enjoyed the banter between Lucy and Preston, the reporter, but I found the break-up-the-engagement plot overbearing and tedious. Good for a quick read if you're not planning on working too hard.

The Group by Mary McCarthy

While this book follows the coming of age of a group of Vassar graduates mostly in New York City during the end of the Great Depression and into World War Two, it's really in some ways the story of one woman's unfortunate marriage and how that match affects the lives of her college friends. I read Joanna Smith Rakoff's A Fortunate Age a while ago for the Barnes and Noble First Look program, and at the time heard that she had written an homage to The Group--now I can see she straight up lifted the plot and set it forward sixty years. I enjoyed this book, although I think it would have been more striking if I were a contemporary and if I hadn't read the knock-off version first. Despite the large number of characters, I think McCarthy does a nice job of managing them so that the various scenes illuminate and fill in the inevitable gaps in the history far better than a more full chronology might.

Going in Circles by Pamela Ribon

I read this book, belatedly, because of the tomatonation.com read-along. I, like many of the people on the thread, found it a quick and gripping read. Now that I think back on it, though, I'm not sure how much I liked it. While I'm not the world's biggest fan of happy endings (or unmitigated happy endings, I guess), I also like a book to be hopeful, and I found slogging through Charlotte's misery really painful. There's a point in the book when her friend Andy calls her out for being a narcissist, and I think that he nails it--and she hears him and understands him and does nothing to change! The mystery surrounding the deterioration of her marriage was a bit overdone, I think, which ended up baffling me more than anything for most of the book. And when it comes right down to it, although she works through to the point where she's decided to leave her husband, he's the one who does the leaving. I really loved the roller derby parts and I found Francesca, Andy, and Jonathan generally much-needed spots of brightness, but this book didn't click for me.