Bittersweet Brooklyn

A Novel

By: Thelma Adams

Narrated by: Meredith Starkman

In turn-of-the century New York, a mobster rises - and his favorite sister struggles between loyalty and life itself. How far will she go when he commits murder?

After midnight, Thelma Lorber enters her brother Abie’s hangout under the Williamsburg Bridge, finding Jewish mobster Louis “Pretty” Amberg in a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor. She could flee. Instead, in the dark hours of that October 1935 night before the dawn of Murder, Inc., she remains beside the fierce, funny brother who has nurtured and protected her since childhood. There are many kinds of love a woman can feel for a man, but few compare to that of the baby sister for her older brother. For Thelma, a wild widow tethered to a young son, Abie is the center of her world. But that love is about to undo everything she holds dear....

Flipping the familiar script of The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, and The Godfather, Bittersweet Brooklyn explores the shattering impact of mob violence on the women expected to mop up the mess. Winding its way over decades, this haunting family saga plunges readers into a dangerous past - revealed through the perspective of a forgotten yet vibrant woman.

©2018 Thelma Adams (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Bittersweet Brooklyn

This could have been a five star book for me, but it didn't flow from one scene to the next. It felt choppy to me.

Long and boring

A story that was slow and repetitive. Reader did not make the novel better.


Would not recommend.

Whiney, depressing, dull

This story had no story arc whatsoever. There was no climax, no tension build-up. It started depressing and it just got more depressing. It wallows in its own pointlessness. I picked it up because I enjoy reading stories about strong women who beat the odds and rise above their circumstances to achieve greatness of one kind or another. This book isn’t like that at all. There are paragraphs upon paragraphs of whining, lamenting, brooding, sulking. Life stinks. Life isn’t fair. Life dealt me a bad hand. And that’s it. No silver lining. No climb out of the pit. Just a study of the pit itself. Over and over and over again the heroine analyzes and whines about the same things. I don’t even like the main character. She’s pitiful, yes, but I don’t see a lot of redeeming qualities beyond her blind devotion to her gangster brother. She’s a crappy mom. A slut. A drunk. And we see how she became this way, but it doesn’t make the read anymore enjoyable. If you like depressing novels, this one’s for you. But I personally do not.