Friday, May 15, 2020

Review: Chasing Eve by Sharon Heath



Genre: General Fiction/Women’s Fiction

Description:

“Everyone expected big things from Ariel Thompkins. Wasn’t she the girl who’d roped her friends into one madcap adventure after another, who’d met the challenge of losing both parents before turning eighteen, who’d gone on to graduate summa cum laude from UCLA? So how did this livewire end up delivering the day’s mail for the U.S. Postal Service, hunkering down each night with her half-blind cat in front of the TV, ruminating over the width of her thighs? It looked as though it would take a miracle to get her out of her rut.

Who knew that miracle would come in the form of an acutely candid best friend and a motley crew of strangers—a homeless drunk once aptly nicknamed “Nosy,” a lonely old woman seeing catastrophe around every corner, a shy teenager fleeing sexual abuse, a handsome young transplant from the Midwest with a passion for acting and for Ariel herself? Not to mention the fossil remains of a flat-faced crone who just might have been the ancestress of everyone alive today?

Chasing Eve takes us on a funny, sad, hair-raising adventure into the underbelly of the City of Angels, where society’s invisible people make a difference to themselves and to others, and where love sometimes actually saves the day.”

Author:

“Sharon Heath writes fiction and non-fiction exploring the interplay of science and spirit, politics and pop culture.” 

Find out more about Ms Heath at her blog.

Appraisal:

Trying to decide what it was that appealed to me about this book I came to a strange realization. It wasn’t the story. Well, maybe that isn’t fair. There are a few story threads that together make up this book, a couple related to the protagonist Ariel’s struggles with different aspects of life and another about her quest to sneak in and see the fossilized remains of what she imagines as one of the first people on Earth. A novel has to have a story, and this one does, and I liked that story. But what appealed to me the most were the characters. They ranged from rich to poor, from young to old and on to ancient (literally) in the case of Eve, the fossilized remains already mentioned. In spite of a wide variety of characters I found each of them got me thinking, entertained me, and showed me something in the way they viewed the world that I could learn from or at least better understand others from what they had to show me. A great book needs both a good story and good characters. Chasing Eve delivers on both.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

FYI:

A small amount of adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 100-105,000 words

6 comments:

Melinda said...

The character development was wonderful - that's exactly what I loved about it, too. :-)

BooksAndPals said...

Thanks for dropping by, Melinda. It was sure an interesting and entertaining crew.

Sharon Heath said...

Thank you for the lovely review! I fell in love with these characters and how generously they revealed their stories to me.

Unknown said...

I am reading it now, during the dark days of the pandemic. It is real enough to ground me and fictional enough to let me escape. But it isn't bleak (which would be unbearable). I am grateful to Sharon Heath for writing the perfect novel for this moment.

BooksAndPals said...

Thanks for writing the book and dropping in, Sharon.

And thank you, Unknown commenter. :)

Sharon Heath said...

Dear Unknown commenter, you brought tears to my eyes. Thank you, and may you and those you love stay safe and healthy!