Book Review - Beautiful Ruins

Another highly successful book club selection for this month. I can't tell you how much I love our monthly book group gatherings, in fact this month we've even expanded beyond book club. Earlier this month I met up with Joanna to go see her husband play at Birdland in the city, which was so cool, and I invited the girls to wine tasting as well, it was so much fun. I feel so lucky that our book club has been so much fun and I've gotten two new friends out of it.

I love to see where our book club brings us every month, the food is half of the fun as well. In addition to reading some great books, we've been to some great restaurants as well. This month we went to Pancho's Burrito's, omg, this place is amazing. Seriously the most delicious burrito I have ever had, I cannot wait to bring Mike back here. It's so much fun to go try all these new restaurants. Our only rule for choosing a restaurant each month is that it cannot be a chain restaurant which is great by me, I think Mom and Pop type places are the best. We've been to so many good places these last 9 months I felt like I had to list them all as they've been as much food as the books, in some cases like in July the food was even better than the book so that made it all worth it!

• January - Sing You Home - Houlihan's - ok so that doesn't really count 
• February - When We Were Strangers - Jersey Boys Grill - Great Italian food! 
• March - The Hunger Games - Woodstone Pizza Bar & Grill - Our dinner & a movie locale! 
• April - The Tiger's Wife - Tick Tock Diner - Featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives! 
• May - The Discovery of Witches - Zinburger Wine & Burger Bar
• June - Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter - Woodstone Pizza Bar & Grill
• July - War & Wine - Le Bateau Ivre - AMAZING French food & wine!!!
• August - Shadow of Night - Poitin Still - Fun little Irish Pub
• September - Beautiful Ruins - Pancho's Burrito's  - The MOST delicious burritos - EVER

Book Title: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters

Book Summary (From Amazon): The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Book Review: Aside from the actual content of the book I just have to say that this book has one of the  most beautiful covers I've ever seen. Although I ended up buying the kindle version anyone I will say the cover alone tempted me to buy the print edition.

Although the beginning of the book I was a bit skeptical of the storyline, once I got into it, I loved it. The story goes back and forth between past and present. In the past we are taken back to a beautiful, but very tiny, coastal town in Italy in the 1960s and present day Hollywood. Once I figured out how everyone fit into the storyline it was amazing. I absolutely loved the parts with Pasquale who is the narrator of the Italy story. I kept wanting to get to his next chapter to see what happened next. The present tense was also good to see what happened. I don't want to give away too much with the ending of the book but I loved the way it played out and even threw me for a slight surprise or two with some of the characters.

I also thought the author had a very creative side, the way he wrote the last chapter it was something I had never seen before. He literally wrapped up every small character and storyline that was mentioned throughout the book which was pretty cool. You never see that. Although at times it felt like a lot of characters and story lines to keep track of in the end they all came together and it all made sense how connected everything was. I thought it was brilliant writing that was very unique with an enjoyable storyline! I loved the ending, that's all I'll say though!