Guest Review - Karli

I have the pleasure of introducing a most wonderful person. She loves to read, talk about books, and well, we can add writing reviews to her list! Let's give Karli a grand welcome to this most wonderful group blog. *the room is so loud with clapping.* I'm not sure why she agreed to grace us with a good review but I'm so happy that she did.

---Twisted

Without further ado, Karli's Review!

The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry

A ship's reckoning is that account, by which it can be known at any time where the ship is, and on what course or courses she must steer to gain her port."

This is the quote that opens Part 1 ofBrunonia Barry's Map of True Places, which was taken from Nathaniel Bowditch's _The American Practical Navigator.

The difficulty with this as an ideal to aspire to as a human, is that most of us have no idea where our true port lies, and spend our lives trying to find which port is truly ours - which Zee, who we meet in _The Map of True Places_ is trying to learn.

Zee Finch is a practicing psychologist who has recently lost a patientto suicide. She is also the daughter of a woman who suffered from bi-polar disorder before taking her life. This dynamic shapes Zee, and upon visiting her father after the funeral of her patient she realizes he's been hiding the severity of the progression of Parkinson's Disease. Zee makes the decision to take a leave from her practice and become a full-time care giver for her father.

Zee doesn't truly know which port she is leaving, destined for or even which port she wishes to visit, but is instead just trying to do what is right, care for her father and understand the legacy her parents have left her.

Zee Finch is a beautifully written character - layered and flawed and as introspective as you'd expect a young therapist who witnessed her mother's suicide to be. She's also undeniably likable, and I found myself aching for her as she finds her way through her new life as her father's caretaker, while finding a way to heal herself.

It is a story of a woman who wants to save those around her, and who ultimately finds a way to be true to herself while she continues to balance the other roles in her life.

The setting of Salem was woven into the story with legends and architecture that allowed the city to be another character in the book. The storylines interweaved to create a book I'll keep thinking about for some time to come.

The writing in this book is simply fabulous. The syntax, the flow the characters - superb! I loved reading this one! There was a section toward the middle that felt like deja vu. I'd read it all earlier in the text and it really felt like bad editing, which is where it lost my 1/2 a kiss, but I highly recommend this utterly kissable book.

Karli