Here's a good tip for some people, don't invite your friends to your "hen night" (bachelorette party) if you haven't invited to the wedding. And if you get invited to a "hen night" for a friend you haven't talked to in 10 years and have not been invited to the wedding, don't go.
Had the above been followed, all the mess in In a Dark, Dark Wood could have been avoided. That being said, the characters go through a big mess, but the book itself is well put together. Leonora Shore (Nora) has been invited to the a hen weekend for her childhood friend, Claire. Nora hasn't talked to Claire in 10 years following some unsaid teenage drama. Urged on by their mutual friend, Nina, Nora agrees to attend, even though she wasn't invited to the wedding (alert, alert).
Upon arriving, the hen weekend party is rather small. Up in the woods of North Umberland, way from cell signals and modern comforts like coffee (British people drink coffee? I had no idea), Nora instantly regrets her agreement to attend. And as the reader, you agree with Nora's sentiments pretty quickly.
The hen weekend attendees include Flo, Claire's college best friend who is painfully awkward and a little unhinged - think Single White Female - with someone who is not actually cool and calculating but bumbling and hyperbolic. When the group does a round of introductions telling a bit about themselves, Flo only talks about Claire without offering any facts about herself. (Alert Alert!).
The party also includes Nora, who lives a hermit-like existence in London as a crime novelist; Nina, a physician who suffers from a bit of PTSD from her time with Doctors without Borders (MSF); Tom, an actor who is friends with Claire from their theater connections; and Melanie, a new mom who spends most of the first half of the book trying to get a cell signal so she can check on her kid - I sympathize, but man is this lady a downer on a hen weekend.
In any event, Nora meets up with Claire who informs Nora that she invited her to the hen weekend so she could tell her to her face that she is marrying Nora's ex-boyfriend, James Cooper. Nora is struck speechless. She's never gotten over James - see re: teenage drama. (alert alert).
So Nora then spends some more time regretting her decision to come. And the story starts to get darker and darker until someone is killed and all the hen weekend participants are suspects.
The story is well done, the characters are well drawn and the suspense is really good. I listened to this on audible so I would be running and then say out loud "NORA DON'T GO IN THERE" and that kind of stuff. It was a quick read too, but thoroughly entertaining. I even picked up The Girl in Cabin 10, Ruth Ware's next book, on audible because I enjoyed it so much.
If you liked Girl on the Train (see that review here) or The Lake House (see that review here), you'll like this one too.
4/5 Stars.
I almost always given the Kinsey Millhone books 3 stars, but this is a 4-Star book. There are several things that Grafton does differently in T is for Trespass that she started playing around with in "S" (read that review here). First, she introduces a narrative perspective that is not Kinsey's. I enjoyed this change in the last book and in this interval, the other narrator is the "bad" guy. Second, Kinsey has not been hired to deal with the "bad" guy or anything related to that part of the story this time around. Third, we already know who the bad guy is from the beginning of the story, we're just waiting for Kinsey to figure it out.All of the above elements leave T is for Trespass feeling really fresh despite being the 20th (!!) installment in the series. It's finally 1988 and Kinsey is still living in her little studio, still working as a PI for attorneys - tracking down missing witnesses, serving court documents and the like. Her neighbor, not Henry, but another Octogenarian, Gus, has taken a fall in his home and his recalcitrant niece doesn't have the time or the inclination to care for Gus. She swoops in from the East Coast, puts out an ad for an in-home caregiver and as soon as one is hired, she leaves, asking Kinsey to perform a preliminary background check. The caregiver we already know is bad news because the book started from her perspective. She was busy stealing the identity of a licensed nurse at a prior job. We know she's going to try to gain entry to the home of an elderly person and take advantage of them. Of course Kinsey isn't able to figure this out in the brief parameters she's given from the niece. But this is Kinsey and she becomes suspicious and starts to pick at the loose thread that is the caregiver, Solana's, story. Once Kinsey is on the hunt, she works tirelessly to rescue Gus from the situation. The story is actually pretty terrifying in the way that Solana is able to set Gus up, abusing him emotionally and physically. In the background of the story is a witness Kinsey is trying to serve on an unrelated matter who has a past as a child abuser. So this book is hitting both ends of the spectrum when it comes to abuse of vulnerable populations. At the end of the book, Kinsey warns us that we can all do something about elder abuse. That we are charged to look out for the members of our communities and take care to make sure they aren't being taken advantage of. It's chilling and horrible. Grafton has created a very vile and evil character in Solana, and it's a real delight as a reader to see how the whole situation plays out. On a sad note, Kinsey has broken up with Cheney Phillips. That girl can just not get her love life in order.
4/5 Stars.
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This is the second book in a row from NetGalley in which I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it (read my review of the other one here).
Despite a rather bland intro, the story really kicks off after the prologue in Chapter 1. The time is October 1962 and the place is Orlando, Florida. It came as a surprise to me that the story would use the Cuban Missile Crisis as it's backdrop. To me, this was the best part. I knew enough about the Cuban Missile Crisis to know that it happened while President Kennedy was in office, so likely 1961 or 1962 and I knew that it didn't last very long and that eventually the Soviets turned their ships around and took the missiles down (thanks Billy Joel).
This story focuses on Wes Avery, his wife Sarah and their daughter Charlotte. Wes owns a local gas station in Orlando, just up the road from McCoy Air Force Base (it closed in 1975). A former Air Force man, Wes starts to notice a lot of firepower gathering at the base and believes something may be up. The presence of 5 U-2s at the base later confirms his suspicions. (The U-2 was a spy plane and is awesome - the pilots wear the space flight suit because it goes so high in the atmosphere).
Wes' best friend Steve, and a Cuban exile, young Emilio also work at the station and have their own backstories to contend with. Emilio's family is stuck in Cuba, his father in prison, his mother hiding out, and his sister, later told in what I considered the most awkwardly written section of the story, raped and murdered for her parentage and privilege. While I thought it was important to show this portion of what was going on in Cuba at the time, the part where Emilio emotionally tells Wes and Steve about his sister's murder was just not as well written as the rest of the story and came out very disjointed from the rest of the prose.
Meanwhile, Sarah is having trouble squaring the life she lives with the life she had planned for herself, a life she set aside when her older sister became pregnant not once, but twice out of wedlock. Sarah's stern parents then relied on Sarah to live a pedestrian life without taking any chances. Her early talents were squandered and she lived a life devoid of personal accomplishments. This ends up being a major problem for Sarah.
I really appreciated the obvious research that went into the Cuban Missile Crisis sections of the story, and how well it fit with Wes' overall story arc. I thought Wes was a great character as well he was well developed and he felt very real. Charlotte, the daughter, was a bit wooden in some scenes, but her purpose was more to push the plot ahead. I don't think the epilogue did a good job setting the future tone of the novel, it came out a bit more sinister like it was setting up a mystery, but otherwise this was a solid story with great research.
4/5 Stars.
I don't even know where to start on this. That this book could have existed for ten years without my having read it, having known about it, seems impossible now. Hyperbole? Maybe, but it's hard for me to really put into words what I thought of this without resorting to statements of grandeur. It's a novel of a vast concept so it requires vast descriptions.The premise of the novel is fairly straightforward, America is a melting pot, and when immigrants arrive here, they bring their gods with them. Gods from all over. And while those religions or those beliefs die out, the gods remain, diminished in power, but here all the same, wandering our country, or taking jobs to make ends meet, until finally they are extinguished, forgotten. So a man named Shadow, a convict, is released from prison and on his way home to his wife,when he learns she has died. Grieving and bereft of an alternative plan, Shadow meets a man named Wednesday who offers him a job. Shadow then travels with Wednesday, meeting gods and learning about the dark world the gods inhabit. A war is brewing, between the old gods and the new. Gods of media and the internet, versus traditional gods of ancient and lost kingdoms. Wednesday is trying to rally his troops as they prepare for battle. Shadow is his cohort, his companion on the journey. But Shadow isn't an ordinary man, in his dreams he straddles the world of the gods and sees into the "shadows" created by their existence. He sees things that others miss. I was immensely fond of Shadow. He's such an interesting character. He's a roll with the punches guy. He's often underestimated, but he's very intelligent. People are drawn to him, intrigued by him. He makes mistakes. He admits them. He's just as confused about the world of the gods as the reader.The audible version I read is the 10th anniversary edition. With an introduction by Neil Gaiman, whose silky voice narrates the "Coming to America" interludes found in the story and the epilogue. The 10th Anniversary is a "author's cut" of the story, longer than the original that was published more than a decade ago. I'm so happy this book was mentioned in passing by a co-worker. I'm so pleased to have read it this year.
5/5 Stars.
I'm not usually one for blog to book memoirs, and I'd never heard of Andie Mitchell prior to getting this book on a kindle deal, but I was pleasantly surprised with the book and Andie's writing. That's not to say it's elevated prose, but the narrative is clear and conversational and I can see how it would work well for a blog. To me, blog writer memoirs come off a little too self-important - this may have something to do with the blog world revolving around self promotion - but in this case, Andie balanced this well with her own personal story. The story fit just on the surface of her feelings; the dark parts never got too dark, and the light parts were all social media ready. I did enjoy Andie's journey to being comfortable with food and her own personal story of weight loss and self-acceptance. The thing I liked was that she was comfortable saying that it was still her, after all the changes. She was still herself, the same person with the same insecurities, but she'd been able to work through them. This was a process that took work and was not an overnight revelation. I'll be checking out her site (click here to visit) to get some new food ideas. I'm hoping her move to Seattle hasn't irrevocably hipster'd her food recommendations (see my review of a previous hipstery food book here) and is still making things you can make at home with two toddlers running around demanding to be picked up or alternatively crying because one has hit the other. The book was just the right length to avoid some measure of self-importance and overall a pleasant read.
3.5/5 stars
I don't think I can be objective about this book. I have such a deep love for the entire world J.K. Rowling created when she made Harry Potter. I love all the books, have read the entire series at least three times through, and I even love the movies (although I recognize some are better than others - Order of the Phoenix is my favorite, btw). So when this became available, while I didn't go out to the midnight sale (although I wish I had), I did pick this up at the start of a date night out with my husband. "Let's stop by Barnes & Noble before dinner" I casually dropped. He agreed. Target acquired. So this book ended up in my hands on Friday night. And then I began reading. And every time I could snatch a spare moment, I read. Until Sunday night came along and through bleary eyes, I finished it around 11 p.m. Way past my bed time, but totally worth it. So much of my liking of this book really has to do with getting to be in the Harry Potter world again. Hanging out with old friends, who are still my age - real life Harry Potter is only three months older than I am (shhhhh.... I know there is no "real life" Harry Potter). I've consigned myself to my Hufflepuff fate, I have recognized I married a Slytherin. Yes, yes, I really am this big of a dork.Harry Potter and the Cursed Child picks up where Deathly Hallows left off - namely Platform 9 3/4 where Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermione are dropping their kids at the Hogwarts express. (I'm hoping the stage director managed to make them not look quite so old as they looked at the end of the last movie - because again, I'm the same age as Harry and I don't think anyone I know my age looks quite that old at 37).
Again, Harry is advising Albus Severus Potter that being a Slytherin is not such a bad thing. And then it happens, Albus meets Scorpius Malfoy on the train, they become best friends, and Albus, wanting to cement the friendship with Scorpius, becomes a Slytherin. Time fast forwards as we see Albus is isolated except for his one friend, he bears the burden of being Harry Potter's son and he can't seem to get out from under the weight of it. Meanwhile, Harry, as Minister of Magical Law Enforcement, realizes he is not connecting with his son and is reading his own childhood into Albus' problems. His friend Hermione, Minister of Magic (of course), cannot seem to help him, nor can his wife Ginny.So Albus becomes increasingly surly and depressed. He gets a horrible idea after his father is visited by an aging Amos Diggory who berates Harry for letting Cedric die all those years ago. Amos wants Harry to use a recently confiscated time-turner to go back in time and save Cedric. Harry knows this is a fools errand. Unfortunately, Albus does not. He believes his father is being selfish, sacrificing others for himself. So he makes a plan with Scorpius to break into the ministry, steal the time-turner and go back in time to save Cedric. However, as can be expected, changing the past can have unintended consequences. And in this case, the present changes in slight ways. When Scorpius and Albus return to the present, Ron and Hermione are no longer married, and therefore their children, Rose and Hugo, have never been born. Scorpius is crestfallen as he's been in love with Rose since the beginning of the play. And Cedric is still dead. So the boys make a plan to return to the past another time to mess up Cedric's second task at the tri-wizard tournament. This second trip has even more-dire results as it allows Voldemort to rise again and thrusts them into a horrible reality where death eaters rule and Delores Umbridge is back as Headmaster of Hogwarts. Scorpius - now alone because Albus was never born, must find a way to fix all of this, so he calls upon Hermione, Ron and Severus Snape (oh Snape, I'm so glad we get a chance to properly love you after despising you wrongly for so many books). Scorpius does manage to fix the mistakes he and Albus made, and if that was the end, it would be enough, but there is someone else who knows of Albus and Scorpius' actions, who decides to use the time-turner to their own ends to bring back Voldemort. There are too many spoilers in the rest of the story to keep going, but you get the drift. So I was so so happy while reading, because I really do love the characters and the Harry Potter world. But there are a couple things I had questions about or wasn't really too keen on:- How old is Amos Diggory? He's in a nursing home, but it's only been 22 years since Cedric died, so even if Amos was in his 40s before then he'd only be in his 60s now, hardly a super old guy.- Only a mention of Neville but no actual Neville parts? Boo.- Ron really is an afterthought in this whole thing. He's a stay-at-home dad while his wife is the Minister of Magic, but this play kind of made him a pitiful bumbling mope. This is not how I saw Ron ending up at all. It's disappointing and doesn't do the character and his growth over the prior books justice. - I forgot how much 13 year old dialogue is lame.- And this is probably the biggest one, the Albus/Harry disconnect wasn't there for me. I began to think perhaps Albus was gay and in love with Scorpius who was not and therefore all these statements about Harry not understanding Albus and why he was upset and not listening to him made sense. But, that's not it. So when it came time for them to "work it out" I wasn't really sure what the issue was. So I think the dramatic tension was kind of a let down. Other than that of course, I loved this book and I'm so glad it's in the world. Now, for it to come to a theater production near me. This really only gets 4/5 Stars because the story feels only derivative of the earlier books. While it plays catch-up on the "where are they now" theme, it misses some of the real beauty and dare I say, Magic? of the originals.
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for writing an honest review. I honestly wasn't expecting too much from this book. I've never read anything of Jonathan Kellerman's before and knew nothing about him as an author. I've since read that he is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Psychology at University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and that totally makes sense.
This story follows Grace Blades, a clinical psychologist whose mother kills her father and then herself while Grace, age 5, looks on. Following this terrifying ordeal, Grace winds up in the foster system and is bandied about for a while until she arrives at the Stage Coach Ranch under the watchful eye of Ramona. Ramona's brother in law, Malcolm Bluestone, a renowned psychologist visits to assess Grace and determines she has above-average intelligence.
These past scenes are scattered throughout as Kellerman builds the mystery portion of the tale, Grace, a grown woman working as a psychologist to "The Haunted," people who have experienced extreme trauma in their lives, prepares to take a two week vacation from her practice to recharge. She meets a man in a bar, a man she intends to engage in a one-night stand with, who then walks into her office the next day as her new patient. Both of them are awkward and the man leaves only to be found murdered the next morning with Grace's business card in his pocket.
And so the mystery of who killed the man unfolds as Grace sleuths out the truth, with a little help from her past. The merger of the two stories, Grace's past and the present-day mystery really work to build Grace into a 360 character, something that is sometimes missing from mass-market fiction. She's a fully developed character, with quirks that feel right, rather than just tacked on to try to give her depth.
I really enjoyed following Grace, a super smart, super confident woman who doesn't question. She's tough, does not need to be saved by a man, but also is human and can be vulnerable. I don't want to say too much more on the plot but all the elements of a good mystery are there. Even up to the 99% mark on my Kindle I was wondering how this was all going to end and couldn't believe it would all be wrapped up in such a short time. (Not that it's quite a whodunit, it's more that you were never quite sure what Grace was intending to do).
Great surprise read.
4/5 Stars.
