The premise of the book is great and the author really delivers. Great read. Highly recommended. .

I really liked this one, although it was less of "bittersweet" story, and more of a 100% dark and bitter.story. Without revealing too much about the plot, I have to say that Thelma's husband's struggles with depression felt real, although I kept hoping that he would have a movie-style recovery. I found myself really hating Thelma's mother and sister -- although they were well-written, and definitely believed that they were in the right, and that Thelma was a troublemaker who didn't deserve anything.

Focusing on Thelma Lorber, a widow with a young son, and her older brother Abie, "Bittersweet Brooklyn" is an emotional, suspenseful novel. Thelma Adams has crafted a well written, intriguing historical fiction novel.

Bittersweet Brooklyn is a dark story but a beautifully, poignant one. Its noir narrative portrays the lifestyle of so many who came to the US full of dreams and hopes only to find that life was as hard in the US as it was in the country they left. Many, however, had no choice except to flee their home country due to pogroms and death camps and war. It’s not too terribly different today, if at all. There are struggles to survive, struggles to fit in, to find one’s place and where there is no “welcome committee,” those holes will be filled with other means generally unsavory ones like the mob or gangs. That is what has happened in Bittersweet Brooklyn. These immigrants, like so many of that time, have familial issues, mental health issues and the mob has come in to “take care of them,” but at a cost. Generally, the men make a mess, and by mess I mean wreak murder and mayhem, and the women are left to sweep up the pieces. It tears at the fabric of their family cloth and at the essence of the women in their lives. This is how life was. For many it is how life still is.

Take a step back into New York during the time of gangs, war, and more! This book will take you on a journey that you will not soon forget!
Thelma, a young widow, is fiercely protective of her brother and her son. But she is about to discover that there is so much more inside her, and she is about to face some tests that she never thought she would have to endure.

Captivating and timeless, this book will leave you emotionally wrought, and wanting more!

Adams has concocted an entertaining novel with fascinating characters and a compelling plot. I’m sad I didn’t get around to reading it until recently, but it was well worth the read. Lovers of strong female characters will certainly love this book, especially those who look for strong female leads in historical novels.

Compelling and gritty, Bittersweet Brooklyn gives readers an intimate look at a broken family caught up in a world of mobsters.

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Carol Boyer's review Jan 14, 2019 · edit
it was amazing

Bittersweet Brooklyn is haunting, compelling, a brilliantly written novel, a dark, gripping saga that had me emotionally captivated. My heart went out to Thelma who endured physical and emotional abuse from her mother and sister, I wept and hoped... the events tore at her heart as she sought time and time again to navigate the uncertainty of her existence only finding true love and support in her brother Abie. Decades go by and now she is a widow with a young son. Many times she overlooked Abie's criminal activities until the day she was caught in the danger of his mobster life facing the murder of gangster "Pretty". Will her own love and life change? This novel is hard to read, the reality is evident, yet this book is fiction. The author's descriptive prose is remarkable. I savored her words, the turn of her phrases.
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Linda's Book Obsession Reviews "Bittersweet Brooklyn" by Thelma Adams , Lake Union Publishing, November, 2019

Thelma Adams , author of "Bittersweet Brooklyn" has written an intense, intriguing, heartbreaking, emotional, and suspenseful novel. The Genres for this story are Fiction and Historical Fiction. The timeline for this story starts at the turn of the century and goes forward to Immigration, the Wars, and the Mob.  Much of the story is told in Brooklyn, where Jewish and Italian immigrants grew up. The author describes her characters as dysfunctional, complex and complicated. 

I appreciate the historical background that Thelma Adam provides us with, and her writing vividly describes the characters, poverty and the landscape in the story. Often with family traditions, poverty, and survival, many of the immigrants struggled.

Thelma Lorber as a young child is protected by her brother Abe from her older sister, who is in charge of taking care of her. Thelma's mother is too depressed after her husband's death to take care of the family. It seems that Abe has become Thelma's protector, and Abe has found a way not to live in poverty anymore. As years progress, Thelma has a young son of her own, and as a widow, still depends on Abe. Only Abe harbors deep secrets, and lives a dangerous life that can destroy Thelma.

I found this dark story thought-provoking and intense. I would recommend this to readers who enjoy reading about the immigrants who came to Brooklyn. I received an ARC from NetGalley for my honest review.

Very well-written and graphic in nature. The novel vividly portrays the life of a woman whose brother is involved with the mob in New York. The time period is the turn of the century, which I found quite interesting. Not the right read if you are looking for warm and fuzzy.

This book was a little bit all over the place for me and I just couldn't get into it.
Lots of readers have liked it, so don't let my opinion sway you.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley.
All opinions are my own.

Bittersweet Brooklyn is, unfortunately, not for me. I disliked the violence and much of the story line. For this reason, I couldn't connect with this story.

Favorite Quotes:

His response to those who disliked or disrespected him was schmuck. It was his favorite Yiddish word in a language that contained more bendy terms for shaming and cursing than the Eskimos had for snow.

There’s nothing wrong with those gams, little sister. You got the magic leg. You step off a curb and shake it, and the Prince of Wales is going to stop his carriage.

It aggravated her that Annie could nurture Julius, Adele, and Eli and, with a swivel of her head, spew dragon fire toward Thelma.

Vulnerability had been a dangerous condition around Annie and Mama as they carped on the physiques of the people strolling past, laughing at this one’s little pecker visible in swim trunks too small, that one’s jiggling fat rolls as she lunged for a rogue rubber ball. Meeskait, they’d pronounce, little ugly one. What a tuchus, they’d say and point at someone with a seat that could fill a subway car. And yet, the pair hadn’t been bathing beauties, either: the walrus and the sea lion. Mama covered in a floral muumuu and Annie squeezed like a sausage into a swimsuit one size too small, revealing back fat that she didn’t notice from the front, impressed by her own cleavage.

My Review:

I marveled at the sublime storytelling and writing quality, even though the story was taut with tension and full of heartbreaking scenes and emotive insights that gutted me as I read, I couldn’t seem to put it down. I passionately despised the useless mother and heinous sister – they were atrocious creatures, yet expertly crafted. Every character was well-nuanced, cunningly detailed, and compellingly complex. The storylines were intriguing, shrewdly paced, and hit all the feels with occasional lashings of clever levity that had me laughing aloud. Thelma Adams’s word voodoo is strong; I was appalled, riveted, mesmerized, and totally engaged. She turned me inside out with this one – yet I regret nothing.

Adams' book is about Thelma in 1910s-1930s Brooklyn. The reader first encounters Thelma as a three year-old; her father is dead, her mother has fallen apart, and her sister is abusively raising her. Thelma's only salvation are her brothers, Abraham and Louis. We follow Thelma's life, her adolescence and young adulthood, as Abie's involvement with the mob looms in the background.

Ultimately, I did not like this book. While the writing was good, the story didn't grab me. This might be due to the fact that I didn't like any of the characters. In addition, the book also seemed like a litany of bad things that happened to Thelma, from getting burned as a baby (by her sister), to her stabbed brother, her mentally ill husband, her stepfather molesting her. The list can go on....

Thank you NetGalley, Lake Union for an advance copy of this book for an honest review.

I tried hard to like this book. Struggled from the beginning, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. It was well written, had some great dialoge, but I just found the story line too rough, the violence too much and the characters pitiful and weak.
But please, don't let my judgement stop you from reading it. I'm mainly a wimp when it comes to monster type lifestyle. I got it in a weak moment and didn't read the synopsis well enough. Giving it a 3.

Bittersweet Brooklyn is the story of the Lorber family from Brooklyn between the 1920s and the 1950s. The book starts with an intense seen where the main character walks in on a mob hit at her brother's house. The story then goes back in time to when she was only a few years old. All of the characters are very strong, well-thought out characters. None of them are good people but they are characters that grow up during a certain time and through some awful things.

If you are a fan of character driven stories this one is for you. Bittersweet Brooklyn is a character piece that would please historical fiction fans.

Set in turn of the century New York, BITTERSWEET BROOKLYN follows the life of Thelma Schwartz from childhood into her thirties as she and her favorite brother Abie navigate the mean streets of Brooklyn in search of a better life.

Author Thelma Adams shows off her storytelling skills as she explores resonant themes about grief, loss and the mementos we keep.

Historical facts, along with captivating characters and quick dialogue, make for an extremely enjoyable novel.

When the father dies, the Jewish family is left to fend for themselves, a Brooklyn family, during WWII that deals with death, poverty, estrangement, lack of love.

The dictionary gives the meaning of dysfunctional as :"behaving or acting outside social norms:" In this novel the family goes way beyond that description. Perhaps this was "normal" for the times, that being 1905. Perhaps this was normal for a family with only a mother taking care of her 4 children, living in poverty, living on charity's doorstep with no husband. We meet with 3 year old Thelma in 1905, the youngest and last child, fatherless, and a mother whose love is only wrapped around Annie, the oldest sibling. Thelma is attached to her oldest brothers, Abie and Louis, the only two who care for her. However, they themselves run wild creating murder and mayhem. It is the older sister, Annie, who takes up the role of mother to her siblings, treating them as if she was a warden in a prison. No kindness, certainly no love, the one thing that little Thelma needed and wanted, acceptance! Yet Annie is filled with resentment, taking it out on the children, but especially on Thelma.

It is a story filled with pathos and angst, with descriptions of a family struggling to stay alive on a day-to-day basis. A family that tears itself apart, it was heartbreaking and realistic. The writing draws you in and you wonder how could this exist, how could a mother not acknowledge her own child, not love this baby. The story takes you during the 1920's and 30's, during the height of the mobster era. You can see the elements that create those times, the families that had no control over their children, too poor to contend with, the softness of a mother's touch, the struggle just to stay afloat.

The book was well written, hauntingly so. As I'm reading, I could hear the characters talking in my head. Highly recommended. My thanks to Netgalley for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The essence of the progression of a life is an individual journey for each person. But the adventure needs to have a voice. And one that evolves within that structure. With “Bittersweet Brooklyn” [Thelma Adams/Lake Union Publishing/352pgs], the author has created a slice in time that is both nostalgic and heartbreaking, modern but yet old fashioned, tragic and yet oddly hopeful in its protagonist. Thelma grows up in Jewish family where she was the daughter that was a miracle but ultimately became a reminder of pain. She never knew her father who died before she was born. As a result her older sister takes control of the family to protect her mother but loathes her sister as if she is the cause of all their problems. The family dynamics especially set against the aspect of the late 1910s where the aspect of war swirls with the industrial revolution. Add the elements of Prohibition and the gangster era in NY with the focus here more on Williamsburg and what the reader gets is a dynamic vista view. That backdrop most of the time doesn’t intrude on Thelma’s world but its feeling is imprinted vividly. Thelma’s psychological perceptions are simple but so rich in many ways especially in her interaction with her brothers Abie and Louis. But the feeling is so much more. Like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, the world feels lived in and as Thelma grows older and through them, one gets a sense of her travails. The different elements of perception are elements that are both internal and external but definitively reflects a time and a thought pattern while also questioning the inherent nature of behavior, even her own. Her life is not wrapped up in a distinct bow but the way she interacts with its from the interstate on with an Italian family and the eventual rebuke of a romance because her family is “not right” to her whirlwind marriage that was doomed from the start but revels in the love it once had. Even in the ending structure, the beauty is in the lyricism of the life lived. Without giving it away, it has that classic element while being smart, romantic, inherently intelligent, ruthless and blindingly human. It is a gem.

A+

By Tim Wassberg