How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character - Paul Tough

It's telling that I'm struggling to write the review of this book I finished nine days ago, but I'm not sure what to say. It's good news that your IQ and "book smarts" aren't the only keys to success. In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough chronicles several programs aimed at assisting youth make it out of tough situations, and none of that is just tutoring. A lot of it is instilling certain character traits that will allow kids to rise above their situations and go on to live better lives. But the anecdotal presentation of the evidence left me feeling a little skeptical. 

We've been struggling with this a bit with our own kids. Our third grader continually says he's just "dumb at reading" after having a couple bad grades. But we're pushing him to have a growth mind set. The belief that hard work and determination can improve your situation. For anyone looking to work on this aspect I'd recommend the Big Life Journal.

It was interesting to read about the different programs being tried in Chicago. Obviously there is no easy answer to helping the kids in Chicago Public Schools succeed. Many programs have come and gone and graduation rates, teen pregnancy, and violence against and among students remain. But there are so many people trying to work on the problem. The number of shootings in Chicago may get the headlines, but the people working on the ground, in the neighborhoods never get any press. If it bleeds, it leads. Unfortunately.

So much of parenting is trying, and then failing like you're getting it right. So I was fairly surprised to read in How Children Succeed that I am, in fact, doing some things right. Trying to instill grit into my children will take a balancing act of trying to provide nurturing support, but also letting them fail, and reminding them that character counts along the way. 

3/5 Stars. 

Sword of Kings - Bernard Cornwell

What? A three star rating for a book involving my favorite boyfriend Uhtred? I know, I know. But hear me out. I know what this series is doing, where it's leading. And unfortunately to get from where it started to where it's going, Uhtred has to be like... 70 in this book. And he's fighting in a shield wall? I mean FFS. The man has swagger, but he should very well be dead by decades by now. But in Sword of Kings, here he is, just riding horses and fighting way way younger men.

And there's an odd meandering to this book that the others didn't have. Uhtred doesn't seem to know what he's doing. And that, partly, is likely because no one really knows what happened in the 5-6 weeks during which this book is set. King Edward dies. But then so does Aelfweard. But no one knows how, and eventually Aethelstan is king. But again, those bare bones of dates and events are all that history has left us. So to put Uhtred into the action, he's sailing a ship up and down England, saving women.

And then some side things happen that felt, well just sad and unnecessary. So, yeah. The book is overlong for really only covering a few weeks of time and a lot of back and forth for Uhtred. Listen, the man has swagger, but has outlived the local life expectancy by 100% at this point. I am absolutely going to read the last book in the series and I have high hopes for the events of that one because I'm pretty sure I know what is going to happen, but Uhtred always figures out a way to keep things spicy, just a little bit of a miss in this one.

3/5 Stars. 

Blended - Sharon Draper

This book ended up on my daughter's shelf. She's still a bit too young to get into this (there are no pictures) but in a couple years, she'll likely be able to read this on her own. The prose is fairly simplistic and the themes are complicated but accessible.

There are two major tween drama themes running through Blended. 1) Isabella's parents get divorced. It's traumatic for her. She doesn't feel truly at home in either house, and 2) Isabella's dad is black and her mom is white and being mixed race she gets a lot of comments from strangers that are hurtful. I felt the author dealt with these subjects well. She gets into a bit of nuance as Isabella learns to stand up for herself and her split identities.

The book does, however, spend a ridiculous amount of time on mundane details that don't add a lot to the story. Each chapter has a detailed explanation of what Isabella is having for breakfast. There are plot lines that seem to go nowhere. At one point, Isabella and her black friend are shopping at the mall and visit an upscale formal wear store where they are followed and then told to leave by the private security guard. This episode was well described and later when Isabella returned to the mall with her soon to be stepmother to pick out wedding attire, I thought this might come up again to close the loop but it did not.

And I'd be remiss not to mention that during the final 20 pages of the book there is a very traumatic episode that occurs that is really not explored at all except to be summarily disposed of in an effort to move the book to closure. It's hard not to compare this book with The Hate U Give, which is just a really masterful story told through the lens of Starr Carter. But of course, that book is intended for a more mature audience and this one is geared toward the middle school crowd.

For all its shortcomings, this is probably a very accessible book for a tween reader.

3/5 Stars.

Housegirl - Michael Donkor

I really wanted to like Housegirl more than I did. Perhaps it would have been easier to read rather than an audiobook. The narrator did a great job, but the accented and broken English dialogue made for a listen that required more concentration than I normally give to an audio book.

First, for a little plot. In Housegirl, Belinda is living with Auntie and Uncle in Ghana where she serves as a housemaid and mentor to another young maid in the house, Mary. Belinda is summoned, however, by friends of Aunti and Uncle to live instead in London to befriend a troubled teen, Amma. When she arrives in London, Belinda finds it difficult to adjust to life where her only role is to be a companion to Amma when she's not focused on her own studies.

Over time, Amma and Belinda begin to develop a friendship only to have it slightly implode when Belinda's conservative upbringing clashes with Amma's sexual orientation and results in a pretty terrible scene were Amma begs for kindness and Belinda gives her the opposite. This after Belinda shared with Amma the truth of her upbringing, and Amma had been soft and kind about it.

Then something else terrible happens in Ghana and Belinda has to return to deal with it, leaving the Amma/Belinda development completely unfinished. And Amma is very sweet to her again. Really, there are a lot of unraveled ends in this book that ultimately feel really unsatisfying. It stalls out when it should dig deeper.

In the end, this book could have been more.

3/5 Stars.

The Secrets We Kept - Lara Prescott

 

Sometimes history sets down a series of events that include colorful characters, international espionage, romantic devotion, complicated and flawed heroines and heroes and it all sounds so fantastic, but when putting pen to paper, some of the magic of the real life humans does not get translated to the page. 

In theory, The Secrets We Kept should have been thrilling and heart breaking. And as a historically based novel about a famous author and his even more famous book, this novel should have been right at the top of my likes. But the rotating points of view and full chapters from a plural person narrator left two bland sides of a story that includes so much flavor individually.

So what happened? The Secrets We Kept centers around the publication of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. An epic love story spanning events in Russia from the Russian Revolution through World War II. Given the breadth of time and characters included in Zhivago it's impossible to write a succinct plot summary but suffice it to say, Yuri Zhivago is a physician and a poet, he has hard times, falls in love with Lara, war and famine and etc., and death. This is Russian literature after all. You want weddings and happiness look up Jane Austen (not a dig, I adore her). 

Anyway, because Russia at the time Pasternak wrote Doctor Zhivago was the USSR and Stalin was in charge, this novel was never going to see the light of day. The book included descriptions of Salinism, Collectivization, the Great Purge, and Gulags, and apparently that was a little too on the nose for the Soviet government so they were absolutely not going to let this get published. Then along came an Italian publisher who obtained a copy and published it in Italy and then quickly licensed the book into 18 other languages. This should have made Pasternak richer than Dan Brown after the DaVinci code, but he wasn't about to be able to accept foreign money for a book he was not allowed to publish in the first place.

So powerful was the USSR's dislike of the book that the CIA obtained a copy, had a thousand printed and then handed them out at the 1958 Brussels world's fair. They also made sure a copy made it into the hands of the Nobel committee. All of this was unknown until the CIA declassified some documents in 2014. 

Pasternak was awarded the Nobel, much to his dismay, the USSR's embarrassment, and the CIA's enjoyment. He was forced under threat to turn the award down. Then Premier Krushchev banned the book (although he later read it and liked it, duh) and Pasternak was made to scrape by until he died of lung cancer in 1960. His mistress and inspiration for Lara was arrested and imprisoned for four years for crimes related to the publication of the book.

Yikes. Look at all this drama! What good breeding ground for a novel. Except, when dealing with known facts, trying to create intrigue is just not intriguing. When someone can easily google the outcome of a story, it makes it hard to build tension. I'm talking more about the outcome of the CIA operation here, which was a large portion of the book but lacked a lot of the emotional weight that the Russian portion contained with telling the story from Olga Ivinskaya's point of view. Tales of human woe always contain tension if done right, and I really did feel a lot of that in the Olga parts. 

But the novel as a whole missed the emotional impact it was going for. There are chapters that are really well written, but then they are broken up by points of view from others that create for an uneven and unsatisfactory narrative. 

3/5 Stars. 

The Unhoneymooners - Christina Lauren

Man, another enemies to lovers book. When I read Red White and Royal Blue, I thought, wow I guess I like these. Then a bookish friend casually mentioned I was a huge dope since my favorite book is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Um, total enemies to lovers action.

In The Unhoneymooners, Olive and Ethan are sworn enemies. On the day of her sister, Amy's wedding to Ethan's brother, Dane, Olive has a laundry list of tasks to perform as the maid of honor. One of those is to make sure she and Ethan have a separate meal not part of the extravagant seafood buffet, to which Olive has an allergy and Ethan a philosophical aversion. Both escape a vomitorium reminiscent of that scene in Stand By Me when everyone is barfing up blueberry pie that results from contamination of the seafood.

The story could have ended there but Amy is a notorious sweepstakes winner. So much so that almost everything at the wedding was the spoilers of her contest entering, including electric lime bridesmaids dresses. So when she's too ill to attend the all inclusive honeymoon to Maui, she offers her spot to Olive. As identical twins, Olive can take her spot. Since Olive is recently unemployed she's available for this week long pampering. Since she lives in Minnesota and it's January, she has the desire to go to Maui. The only wrinkle? Dane has offered his spot to Ethan.

What follows is fairly predictable but entertaining nonetheless as Ethan and Olive explore the island, their mutual attraction, and a budding...well you get it. I've already said it's an enemies to lovers book. So the situation is complicated by some unexpected run-ins in Maui and their families' belief that they hate each other.

Ethan and Olive are asked to figure out some core principles of their relationship and the foundation upon which that relationship is built. It's a rough go. I was pleased with the way it turned out. Again, fairly predictable but with some steam and laughs.

3/5 Stars. 

The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life - Brad Stulberg, Steve Magness

A decent book about channeling passion and energy in a positive direction. I appreciated the author's discussion about how passion, when focused on outcomes or external factors, can corrupt someone's motivation and lead to burn out, or more seriously, cheating and destruction of someone's character.

Passion Paradox discusses both sides of pursuing your passion and gives concrete tips on how to maybe not let it overtake and ruin you. And it does away with the notion that Passion leaves room for balance. It may actually do away with the notion of balance at all which was actually quite refreshing in a COVID environment when it seems everything needs to be done RIGHT NOW and I'm personally pulled in five different directions at any given moment.

Each chapter contains summary boxes with the most salient points and the distillation of all the words is helpful in trying to formulate a plan or an understanding for a path forward. The book is ultimately accessible without a lot of jargon and some real life examples of people who got it right, or got it wrong. 

3/5 Stars.  

Girls Like Us - Christina Alger

I like a quick police procedural and Girls Like Us did not dissapoint on that level. In brevity it cut a few corners that required suspension of disbelief, but otherwise didn't impact the overall pace or enjoyment of the story.

Nell Flynn has returned to Long Island, NY to bury her father, a homicide detective who has died in a motorcycle accident. Marty Flynn's detective buddies accompany her to the Long Island Sound to scatter his ashes. Nell has avoided returning for ten years, ever since a falling out with her father. Their relationship was strained by her mother's murder during her childhood and her father's continual drinking.

Nell, on medical sabbatical from the FBI, is asked by a young detective she knew from high school, to assist in a murder investigation that hints of a serial killer. A young woman has been killed, dismembered, wrapped in burlap, and buried in a state park, mimicking a murder one year earlier.

The details of Long Island and Suffolk County are well done. The books does a great job drawing distinctions between the Haves who populate the Hamptons, and the Have-Nots, who scrape out a blue collar life in the smaller areas of the island. 

Nell begins to uncover a trafficking ring and corruption that implicates her own father. In investigating the case, Nell learns more about who her father truly was. The ending snowballs pretty quickly and involves some rather dramatic sequences that don't really fit the overall tenor of the crimes but don't alter the overall enjoyment of the read.

3/5 Stars

Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered - Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark

I enjoy podcasts although I prefer audiobooks so I don't stay up to date on many. I'm familiar with the My Favorite Murder podcast mostly through other readers I follow on the bookish side of Instagram - what those of us with book accounts like to call "Bookstagram" - although I'm not an avid listener myself. I find it hard to listen with any regularity to podcasts in general unless I'm commuting to work and I'm really in the mood. Part of it must be that there are just so many different pods to listen to. And if they update their content regularly, which is good for their avid listeners I guess? I just get overwhelmed by anything I've missed.

But when it comes to the who and why behind murder, especially serial murder, I'm intrigued. What makes people so depraved? Why do people do these things to others? Back when my husband and I were both still travelling for work (what I wouldn't give for a king size Hilton bed about now) and I had the time, I torched my way through Mindhunters and various other Netflix murderer shows.

I don't know what I was expecting from Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered. But a joint memoir about the podcast creators was not it. Not to say I didn't enjoy hearing about Karen and Georgia and their upbringings. They were very honest about their lives and their addictions - where they had succeeded and where they had gone wrong. Sometimes reading a memoir is interesting because you find out that people who have had some success also have some of the same underlying issues and insecurities as you. And that's helpful. I really liked reading the chapter on Fucking Politeness, because I definitely have had some trouble with that of my own and I want to make sure I don't pass down to my own daughter a bad and dangerous people pleasing habit.

So this was a decent book but I definitely was expecting more murder.

3/5 Stars. 

The Language of Spells - Garret Weyr

The Language of Spells starts out a bit slow for its target demographic. While I really liked the description of dragons and why Grisha is special, or not, it took a while to build to the actual premise of the book - namely, Grisha's meeting a young girl named Maggie, who is about to change both their lives. Maggie doesn't show up for several more chapters and her absence is felt by a dragging plot line that involves Grisha being turned into a teapot for almost a century.

Once Maggie and Grisha meet up, the story turns into one of friendship and trust, with a slight sinister undercurrent of something rotten in the city of Vienna when it comes to the control and handling of dragons. I also liked the descriptions of magic and the "rules" for either seeing the dragons or not seeing them depending on one's openness to magic.

This book belongs to my 8 year old and I knew he was struggling to get through the first couple slow chapters so I asked him to borrow it and returned it to him with a note thanking him for letting me borrow his book. I got a very sweet note in return and a promise to talk about the book with me when he was finished. It's the simplest way I know to encourage reading. Both my kids love being read to and reading stories together is a really important part of our evening, but getting them to also be independent readers is important to me because one day, I want them to choose to pick up a book.

A book like this one with complex themes of love and sacrifice, choices made by a child protagonist is just the ticket to getting some of those discussions started, I just have to get him over the initial hump of a couple slow chapters.

3/5 Stars.

The Last Romantics - Tara Conklin

I really enjoyed portions of The Last Romantics. In the end, it felt a little bit too long, but I really did enjoy this story of four siblings making their way through a world in which their father dies young and their mother, unable to handle the strain of living as a widow responsible for the lives of four children, who shuts down and puts a "pause" on their mothering. I love sibling stories. Sibling relationships contain so many multitudes of depth and understanding.

I only have one sister. And our relationship has lasted through rivalry, separation, and now a close bond of friendship, mutual admiration and respect, and shared lifestyles. It's sometimes hard for me to imagine having similar experiences with two additional people.

Renee, Caroline, Joe, and Fiona are each individually shaped by their experiences during "the pause" and it carries them into adulthood in varied ways. Never able to fully unload their baggage, they go through periods of self denial. Joe perhaps the worst, because he has been coddled and protected from his choices until he also dies an early death, which leaves each of the sisters grieving in their own destructive ways.

The story is told in flashbacks with Fiona giving an author talk at some point over the age of 100. I didn't quite understand the need for this narrative voice as I found it a distraction that teetered on the edge of unbelievability. Will modern medicine improve our lives and outcomes, extending out life spans to well past 100? Perhaps, but the contemplation of this question added nothing to the story except a hint at the secret hiding in the middle.

On the whole, this was a well crafted novel about the complicated relationships between siblings, needlessly complicated by a contemplated future in which we experience extended lifespans and unnamed security crises.

3/5 Stars. 

Kindred - Octavia Butler

I like a good time travel novel. Outlander and Time Traveler's Wife are two of my favorites. So for Black History Month, what better than Octavia Butler's famous time travel entry, Kindred. I listened to this one on audio and the narration was... not great. The narration made weakness in some of the dialogue obvious. And the narrator used the same voice for Rufus from when he was a inquisitive six year old through when he was a ruthless 25 year old man.

Had the narration not been off, I may have lent my own imaginative gravitas to some of the dialogue where it was lacking. The premise of the book is that Dana, an black women living in 1970s Los Angeles gets sucked back in time to 1810 to help her generations ago relative and white Maryland plantation owner who keeps almost dying, requiring her help.

Dana is married to a white man, Kevin, and when she pops back into her own time after being confronted with the barrel of a gun by Rufus' father, they both seem alarmed but also very casual about the fact that Dana just traveled back in time. It's a moment that is shockingly devoid of feeling. Perhaps we just don't know Dana well enough yet. She proves over the course of the book to be alarmingly practical even in the face of startling cruelty.

I understand the premise of the book is how easy it is to slip into they rhythms and requirements of slavery, even for someone who is so outside the experience, but Dana's tone and approach to the whole thing came off a little mechanical and more geared toward furthering the point rather than developing her own character.

As the relationship between Dana and Rufus changes over time as Rufus grows into his expected role and Dana continues to insist on her own independence, things become increasingly tense and the stakes for Dana become increasingly high.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and premise but it wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

3/5 Stars.

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life - Henry Cloud and John Townsend

I struggle with boundaries. There I said it. I'm not sure why except to say that I don't like rocking the boat, and therefore not maintaining boundaries seems like the better option. As I've gotten older I have realized this is not the case. And now that I have kids of my own, the consequences of not setting boundaries is a constant and very annoying reminder.

In Boundaries, Cloud and Townsend, reiterate the importance of boundaries and the far reaching effects of not setting them. While I wholeheartedly agree, I found the book repetitive in parts and long on rhetoric but short on practical application, which is what I was really after in the first place. I didn't need to be sold on the benefits, I needed strategies to implement.

I did really appreciate a couple of beneficial nuggets, including not making my children responsible for my emotional reactions and that we are not meant to overcome problems by our will alone, that's why we have Christ. But I also noted that the biblical references seemed to be shoe-horned in without much thought to nuance and context.

So I had a bit of mixed reaction to reading the book, but overall I thought I benefited from reading it.

3/5 Stars. 

Sharpe's Rifles - Bernard Cornwell

Ah okay, I get it. I kind of messed this up. When I was browsing a used book store in Riverside, California for a return flight read (that was my first mistake, travelling cross country with ONE book), I picked up a copy of Sharpe's Rifles that helpfully had a #1 pasted to the spine and the inside sheet placed it as the first book in the Sharpe series.

Listen, I have a love affair with Uhtred in Cornwell's Saxon Stories series. So I was fairly confident he could get me through a return flight. And I'm trying to set up my exit strategy for when I run out of Uhtred books to read. So I felt like I knew what I was doing starting with Sharpe's Rifles. But I could tell something was a little off when I started reading the book.

First, I didn't really like Sharpe. He was boorish and not very perceptive. Listen, I get he's supposed to be an amazing soldier. Having served in the Air Force, I know the kinds of attitudes that STILL exist regarding prior enlisted officers, but even so, I mean, they guy showed zero leadership abilities and then could not imagine why he didn't inspire loyalty?

Second, some of the secondary characters seemed a little bland. I understand now that Harper is to become a beloved figure in the series, but things do not start out well with the taciturn Irish man who definitely DOES NOT want to be a sergeant.

Finally, there is a badly jammed in love triangle that does basically nothing to inspire the plot other than to make Sharpe appear a little more foolish than he already does. How is the guy who can figure NOTHING else out inspire so little confidence and somehow become a beloved literary figure? I wasn't buying it.

Thank goodness I found out this book is not the foundation for the series but a prequel. So, question, should I read these in publishing date order, or chronological order?

3/5 Stars. 

For Better and Worse - Margot Hunt

I'm not sure why people still think they can plan and complete the perfect murder. Listen, I realize the murder clearance rate in our country hovers just under 60%. Wait, that's pretty bad (that's actually really bad, but is a story for another book). But usually, the people who are committing and getting away with murder are somehow involved in the criminal enterprise. But this whole, let's commit the perfect murder thing goes all the way back to Leopold and Loeb and look where it got them.

You know who doesn't get away with murder? White collar suburban intellectuals who think they can PLAN the perfect murder. Because if you don't have the background to either not care about getting caught, or live in an environment where people who could help you get caught don't care about communicating their knowledge to authorities, you're likely going to get caught.

So this is one reason why I had very little doubt that Natalie Clark, a criminal defense attorney, was going to get caught. She thought she was smarter than everyone else, and as I saw her plan out the various aspects of "the perfect murder" she casually looked over all the loose ends she was leaving and believed no one would weaver them together.

The broader aspects of what could drive a suburban mother committed to defending those accused of misdeeds to take another person's life are lost in the shuffle of the plot here and the book would have been better served to delve into these aspects a bit. Otherwise it reads like a thriller which is quick on page turning, but left me feeling like I'd consumed a lot of empty book calories.

I initially didn't like the way this one ended because (so what this lady is just like a serial killer now?) but then I got over myself and allowed myself to just enjoy the ridiculousness of this final note.

3/5 Stars. 

The Friend Zone - Abby Jimenez

It took me about two days to read this book, mostly because I stayed up until 2 a.m. one night (this was not a smart decision but I have no regrets). But one thing The Friend Zone does really well is pacing. The book moves very fast and each chapter leaves the reader wanting to follow the action.

I feel like I'm the last person on Bookstagram to read this one, so perhaps a synopsis is not needed, but essentially Kristen is a woman struggling with uterine fibroids when she meets the best man for her friend's future wedding, Josh. He's a hot fireman who's relocated to California after a bad break up with a woman who did not want children.

Their chemistry is undeniable after a small fender bender meet cute. As their feelings for each other grow, Kristen remains resolute to confine Josh to the Friend Zone. She's aware he wants a large family, and he's not aware she can't have children. So as she continues to push him away, he's very confused. As with any good love struggle, I kept thinking if they just had an honest conversation things would resolve themselves.

Jimenez deals well in this debut novel with making the characters more than just an empty collection of attributes, although I wasn't sure this was going to be the case after hearing Josh refer to Kristen as "a unicorn" and "the cool girl." These types of descriptions kind of make my eyes roll because it sets up unrealistic standards for women. Necessarily, Kristen is "cool" because "she's not like other women." And it's not just enough that she's "cool" because she is also very very attractive apparently without trying. But then Josh is kind of slapped with a hot fireman label as well. And really the characters are likeable because they don't necessarily stick to those roles so the repeated call back to those tropes is unnecessary. Their dialogue is hilarious and again their chemistry is undeniable so I stuck with them when normally, this would have been a no-go.

Jimenez does a wonderful job of building the will-they, won't-they suspense in the book and takes the story out of traditional rom-com with a side story about Kristen and Josh's best friends Sloan and Brandon that well, that sets up the author's next book. As much as I enjoyed this book as sort of a guilty pleasure read, there are some things that keep it from getting four stars. For a first novel it shows a lot of promise and I think Jimenez has a strong career ahead of her as she learns to shed even more of the tropes that detracted from the strong writing in this book.

3/5 Stars. 

Committed - Elizabeth Gilbert

I must be the one person who has not read Eat, Pray, Love, but I follow Elizabeth Gilbert on social media and I have found her thoughtful and compassionate. And I really felt her pain when her partner Rayya passed away last year. So when I received Committed I was first confused about the topic of the book being her hesitancy to marry her second husband and her doubts about the institution of marriage.

I have to say, knowing that the marriage she was so hopeful for does not work out was a bit of a downer but Gilbert has such a great narrative voice that I couldn't help but get caught up in her story. And also, the background she provides about marriage and the ways it has evolved throughout history and cultures was very fascinating.

Each marriage is unique and Gilbert readily admits she is no expert. This is essentially a self reflection on whether she should enter an institution she does not trust and has believed herself to be bad at. The level of honesty with which she approaches her analysis shows a lot of maturity that I honestly don't think I could muster - or at least I would not be brave enough to put it out into the world.

I know a lot of people just don't relate to Liz Gilbert. But a memoir can't speak to everyone and she's not trying to be something she's not, which is painfully obvious in this book. While this wasn't my favorite book of 2019, I appreciate Gilbert's writing style and her honesty.

3/5 Stars.

Black and Blue - Anna Quindlen

October is apparently Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I was unaware, but I'm glad I did read this book and the light it shines on issues of domestic violence. I think Anna Quindlen used a soft hand in presenting Fran Benedetto and the issue of domestic violence in that she never appears to judge Fran or her reasons for staying. She details Fran's decision to stay with her abusive husband in numerous ways letting the conclusions fall where they may. And it presents a pretty bleak picture of the options for women in that situation.

When I was younger and thought myself much smarter, I would have been one to ask why a woman would stay with an abusive husband. Now that I'm older and have children of my own, I can see what would leave a woman feeling she had no options. And I appreciate Quindlen's slow evolution of those facts over the life of the novel.

Once Fran and her son, Robert are safely aware from Bobby and living in Florida under assumed names, the narrative started to drag a little but there was always a sinister undercurrent of when would Bobby catch up with them, because I never had any doubt this would occur. But what made the novel fall a little flat for me was the ending and how it seemed to all happen due to some decisions made by Fran which she felt were empowering, but really led to placing herself and her son in danger. Would Bobby ever hurt Robert - no I don't think so. But would Bobby's influence over Robert be equally destructive? Yes.

Additionally, I know I'm not supposed to feel sympathy for the abuser, and I do not, but he's painted as a clear psychopath in the book despite a supposed evolution into violence over time.

A chilling read that really delves into the nuances of domestic violence and its aftermath, Black and Blue was a well written, if somewhat flat story.

3/5 Stars. 

The Lying Game - Ruth Ware

There are five rules in the Lying Game:

1: Tell a Lie - looks like there is a big lie lurking at the center of this book. Like every Ware novel, this secret is teased out over the course of backflashes as we learn how the four main characters, Isa, Thea, Kate and Fatima get to know each other at an English boarding school in the town of Salten where they make up this silly game which makes everyone hate them.

2: Stick to Your Story - they're pretty good at this one since it's 17 years later and only a dog and the unstoppable reach of water has uncovered the secret they thought they buried in the marsh.

3: Don't Get Caught - Pretty clear someone is going to get caught here so when Kate sends a text simply saying "I need You", the other three drop everything to be at their side. Their cover story of attending a reunion at a school that Fatima and Isa attended for less than a year and never graduated from is just weird, but I chalked this up to never having attended boarding school myself.

4: Never Lie to Each Other - whoops, well what do you expect for rules set down by 15 year olds who haven't spoken to each other in years but somehow remain the best of friends. This rule gets broken a lot, and mostly within the first few chapters.

5: Know When to Stop Lying - this rule had me yelling at my dashboard listening to the audio. A lot of things could have been cleared up if the characters had stopped lying to each other (see Rule 4), partway through the book.

Other points:
- Ware knows how to draw up a spooky scene. Kate is still living in the ramshackle tide mill her father owned during their school years. It's falling apart and slowly sinking into the sea. But Kate, who has become an artist like her father, has refused to leave and has lived a life near the poverty line as a result.

ruthware.com Setting for the Lying Game

- The men in this book take a backseat to the female characters, but they are the biggest proponents of plot. Kate's father Ambrose draws pictures of the girls. Kate's brother Luc is the subject of Isa's teenage crush and when he shows up partway through the book, yells at Isa, who is holding a baby and seems sinister until, poof, off goes his shirt and all is forgiven. (Yeah I REALLY didn't understand what was happening here). And then there is Owen, Isa's partner who seems like a pretty decent guy, until Isa starts yelling at him and lying to him about... whatever, it's not important and she easily could have smoothed things over with him at any point in the book.
- All this baby does is breastfeed and nap. And Isa is obsessed with the baby until, whoops, (view spoiler)
- And (view spoiler)

So this book ended up a little uneven for me. But it was MUCH better than Woman in Cabin 10. Isa is a stronger character and is a good narrator even if she is a little slow-witted sometimes. And the big reveal of the secret is perplexing because the choices were sort of idiotic. But not a bad read and I liked the narration by Imogene Church.

3/5 Stars. 

November Road - Lou Berney

November Road started out a little uneven for me. The opening chapter introduces us to Frank Guidry, who runs some of mob boss Carlos Marcello's small time business in New Orleans. We encounter Frank in one of his Bourbon Street bars making deals and turning on a friend. We learn that Seraphine is looking for Mackey and Frank is quick to sell him out after Mackey begs Frank for protection. The first chapters with Frank come out uneven as characters are introduced and discarded without knowing just who will be an important player and who is part of the disposable set up of Frank's character arc. 

Then comes a chapter with Charlotte, a woman dissatisfied with not quite meeting her potential in her marriage to her alcoholic husband Dooley and her misogynistic boss, Mr. Hotchkiss. Charlotte has two daughters, the precocious Rosemary, and the almost silent Joan. After a particularly awkward dinner with Dooley's parents, Dooley runs out to get a drink and Charlotte packs the girls into the car and hits the road.

In the meantime, John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Frank realizes he had been in Dallas setting up a get away car for the assassin. And it turns out that all of the pawns in Carlos' scheme to assassinate the president are turning up dead (most at the hands of Paul Barone - Carlos' heartless and indiscriminate killing machine). So Frank realizes he's likely next and starts to run.

Well you can't have two story lines involving Frank and Charlotte and not expect them to get intertwined, so they do when Frank realizes hiding as part of a family may make more sense than continuing to run on his own. So he gently ingratiates himself to Charlotte and they begin travelling together. 

Now the whole thing might be an annoying story deeply cliched in the story of redemptive love (because Frank needs redeeming) except that there is something ultimately likable about Charlotte. She grows in her own strength and confidence and is smarter than 99% of the other characters give her credit for. And for that, Charlotte brings this up to a 3-star read for me. 

We never really get what made Frank into the person he was at the beginning of the book, although it's hinted at. The stakes never feel very high for any of the likeable characters and the ending felt forced and predictable, but not very realistic. And the epilogue seemed overly contrived. So it was a fine quick read, but not necessarily memorable.

3/5