What it’s about (from Goodreads):

If your dreams pull you in one direction and your heart in another, which should you follow? This is the question that haunts Kate Meadows, a world champion athlete whose eight-year-old daughter Sophie is battling a recurrence of childhood leukemia just as Kate is about to compete for her last chance at an Olympic gold medal. 

For years, Kate has sacrificed everything for her family and watched her best friend and closest rival, Zoe Castle, conquer the world stage. Kate has never won gold and will have to go through Zoe—who has everything to lose—to get it. Now her child is facing a life-threatening illness, and the stakes are higher than ever. How can she do what is right for her daughter without abandoning all of her dreams?

Our thoughts:

This was my first Chris Cleave novel and its made me a fan.  While watching the Olympics, I don't usually think about the private lives of the athletes but it's something the book has you consider. 

In Gold, Kate and Jack Meadows are juggling training for positions on the Olympic team while caring for their seriously ill child.  Its a page turner and you get pulled in by the adrenaline of each race and the choices people make to achieve victory. The book deals with a lot of moral issues and portrays a true test of love and friendship.  I loved this book and can't wait to read more of Cleave's books.

We would recommend this to:

Book clubs, fans of contemporary fiction

What it’s about (from Goodreads):

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane on a routine flight slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second daring rescue operation, but the Grumman Duck amphibious plane sent to find the men flew into a severe storm and vanished.

Frozen in Time places us at the center of a group of valiant airmen fighting to stay alive through 148 days of a brutal Arctic winter by sheltering from subzero temperatures and vicious blizzards in the tail section of the broken B-17 until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen attempts to bring them to safety.

In present-day Greenland, Zuckoff joins the U.S. Coast Guard and North South Polar—a company led by the indefatigable dreamer Lou Sapienza, who worked for years to solve the mystery of the Duck’s last flight—on a dangerous expedition to recover the remains of the lost plane’s crew.

Our thoughts:

Our thoughts:

Frozen In Time drew me in immediately. You know going in that the plane will crash and the story’s writing gives clues of the outcome, but I still found it unnerving when it happened and couldn’t wait to find out what was coming next. The story toggles back and forth from the original crash to the present-day hunt for the plane and despite being 70 years apart, I was struck by how similar the challenges were for both.

This was very similar to Zuckoff’s last book, Lost in Shangri-La, which I had also read. Swap the tropical habitat for snow and it’s practically the same story – with the exception of the fact that Zuckoff is a character in the story this time around. He tells the reader early on in the book that he helped fund the 2012 expedition – a fact that I worried would cloud how he presented the rest of the story – but the writing remained true to style. If anything, I think he downplayed the importance his contributions made to the effort.

We would recommend this to:

Fans of Lost in Shangri-La, fans of military history, World War II buffs and anyone who wants a real-life adventure.