This review was originally posted on Melissa's Midnight Musings
on October 10 2012 There's also a guest post located on the original posting on the blog.


This book provides an in depth look at the life of Catherine Elbert, who we met only briefly in A Whisper to A Scream. I have to admit that although I was curious about her in the first book, she's not quite what I thought she would be.

Catherine grows up on a farm in the midwest with one goal in mind. Get the heck out of there. And who can blame her? Her brothers pick on her and blame her for everything, (even as adults) and her mother only tells her what she's doing wrong. I'd want to escape that life too if I were her.

So, she does. She sees a travel show on PBS about Maine, and she decides to move there. She meets some wonderful people and makes some good friends, but she also gets into a bit of trouble, and eventually has to escape that situation too. I won't say what happens so I don't spoil anything but lets just say that it's serious. The only thing that I have a problem with in this section of the story and in another spot too is that she gets a job really quickly and doesn't have to struggle at all. Call me cynical, but that just seems too unrealistic to me.

Catherine does go through a lot though and her growth is nice to watch. She starts to stick up for herself once she is free of her family. And although she doesn't quite fit in with her husband's family she tries her best to make it work.

The juxtaposition between "normal Catherine" and "actress Catherine" has to be hard for her to maintain, so I'm hoping that if we see more of her in the next book, these two parts of her personality will have merged a little bit better.

In my first review I mentioned that the dialogue is a bit stiff. I'm happy to say that the dialogue is much improved in this book. It's still stiff in a few spots but it has a more natural flow to it now, it seemed to me like the author has found her flow and it shows. There's harsher language in this book too. Nothing crazy, just some cussing. But there are also some scenes of violence as well which is a bit of a change from the first book. Not a bad one, because it completely furthers the story, it's just different.

The one thing I wish there were more of is involvement of the actual books in the book club. It's probably just because I love books so much myself but I'd really like to see them apply some of the life lessons in the books they're reading in the club to their own lives as the story goes on.

Overall this was a great book. Other than a few minor issues I really enjoyed it. I am very much looking forward to the next book in the series, Sarah and Annie: A Bibliophiles Christmas which is due out in November 2012.


I want to thank WOW Blog Tours for letting me be a part of the tour and allowing me to review this book*
*I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for this honest review.



*I received a free copy of this book from the author for the purposes of a blog tour review.* ( )

Our heroine, Catherine Ebert, has always been "bigger" than the small Wisconsin farmtown in which she grew up - at least, in her own mind. She landed the part of "Ado Annie" in the local high school production of Oklahoma, but her straitlaced forbid her to take such an "immoral role."

She escapes to Portland, Maine, just because she saw it on TV, and later, to San Diego, but her life is based upon running from and rebelling from her parents; then upon a wealthy husband. How does Catherine sort out who SHE is, amongst all the rebellion?

The Bibliophiles is a series Ms. Berner is writing, based upon different characters who attend a suburban Illinois readers' group. What's here (in the series, so far) is slow, character growth, not a tremendous amount of external conflict or decision-making. No guns are fired (at least, not yet), nothing blows up, but there is a great deal going on under some still waters.

For myself, I enjoyed "Soul" more than "Whisper," but they are both interesting books. ( )

I read this book in two days. It's a story of a young woman who in essence is trying to find herself.

Trapped in a small town where she lives on a farm with an extremely domineering and bitchy mother, Catherine begins the first leg of her journey in finding herself by moving to Maine. This begins a series of trials and tribulations for Catherine which takes her from Maine, to San Diego to the suburbs of Chicago over the period of about 10 years.

The writing was fast paced and the story line interesting. The author did a find job of making Catherine was a likable, complex character.

I have two issues with the story. First, if you didn't read the first Bibliophile novel you can't understand why towards the end of the story two characters (Annie & Sarah) are brought in with a story of their own. I thought at first there was a publishing mistake. Second, I felt Catherine didn't really find herself and wound up conforming to life which really dismayed me because I thought she was a wonderful character full of life and no-nonsense. She grew up a lot in the story but just could not reach her goal. ( )