Every Man a Menace - Patrick Hoffman

I have to admit I wasn't into this one. Every Man a Menace benefits from short declarative and perfunctory sentence structure. It's pace is quick and it moves well. Based in five parts from five different points of view, the book works backward in time, with the first part introducing the character of Raymond Gaspar, a recently released prisoner who has a simple job to perform for his protector on the inside. He needs to figure out which of two people involved in the drug trade have lost their edge. It becomes obvious early on that Raymond is being played by both the distributor, Gloria, and the dealer, Shadrack who are not too keen on letting Raymond in on their well run enterprise. We are told a lot that Raymond is frightened or scared. And then he's dead. 

Part two steps back in time to before Raymond's death to tell us about the two Miami club owners who are the importers of the ecstasy eventually distributed and sold in San Francisco by Gloria and Shadrack. Isaac and Semion are old friends from the Israeli army who have landed in Miami and have cut a nice niche for themselves in the ecstasy game. We are told when their Belgian supplier falls through, they start to wholesale out of Thailand. Determined to remain small, Semion is at odds with Isaac who has grander plans. So we know that's not going to work out well for Semion who is eventually set up and played by a "crazy" Brazilian woman who he knows is lying to him, but doesn't seem to care.

Step back in time to their contact in Thailand, a man who's name I cannot now recall has also been set up by the police as a shake down for a bribe after his grindr date ends up being a plant (by the police). He calls in a favor from the manufacturer of all this ecstasy and the favor ends up being called in right away in the form of forcing the contact to get Semion and Isaac to agree to a bigger order. 

So the last part of the book then fast forwards through all this back to Raymond and Gloria and Shadrack to make some kind of sense of who is cutting out who in this cut throat industry of the drug trade. The book is gritty without texture and full of interesting characters that are a complete blank. 

I'm good with non linear timelines. I'm good with morally bankrupt characters. I like diversity among characters. Check, check, check. But here, it felt like EMaM was merely checking off boxes as I have done here on a list, without taking the necessary steps to weave anything together. The extra piece is missing here to turn this from a page turning crime drama into something in which to become invested.

2/5 Stars. 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

I'm such an a-hole. The only thing I can think to say at the beginning of this review is that as much as The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a widely acclaimed literary think piece I just didn't "get it." And that's not really true. I did get it. I got it in about the first 50 pages and then after I got it I thought, okay why is the author making me try to re-get it over and over and over again.

Have I become accustomed to smooth plot lines and robust character development? Maybe. Or do I just enjoy using the character and story to draw my own ideas of themes and lessons from the literature? Yes probably that too.

Listen ULB has no true structure. The character and the plot serve as devices for Kundera to wax philosophical on the lessons he has learned from his own life. And I really appreciate his point of view and what he has to say, but it's almost like getting stuck talking to someone at a dinner party where by the time you get to dessert, you've heard about their complete philosophy on life and you are just hungry for a new topic. 

The book only has four characters, Thomas and Theresa, Sabina, and Franz. The plot jumps between and among them and back and forth in time to visit and re-visit points in their lives which tell us more about the author's own philosophies. This is a freshman literature student's dream, all the lessons the author wants you to get from the book are spelled out again and again. You don't have to interpret or internalize anything. It's all write there. That term paper practically writes itself. 

Listen, I did get it but I just got bored. I feel like I've let my pseudo-intellectual self down but this one was just not for me.

2/5 Stars. 

The Last Mrs. Parrish - Liv Constantine

There are very few book that get put on my DNF pile. But if it hadn't been for a work road trip and hours of windshield time, The Last Mrs. Parrish would have found itself discarded on the pile. 

Let's begin at the beginning and then we'll get into spoiler territory. 

TLMP starts in the mind of Amber Patterson, a woman with a clear agenda to get close to Daphne Parrish, a wealthy socialite in the town of Bishops Harbor, CT. Amber ingratiates herself to Daphne by pretending to have a sister who died of the same terrible disease as Daphne's character. And so the first 60% of the book is Amber moving closer and closer into Daphne's circle, somehow fooling everyone as to who she is and what her motives are. But as the reader, we know that Amber is a con artist intent on only one thing - getting Mr. Parrish in bed and becoming his wife. 

So now just hold up here because this is part of the most irritating part of the book. Amber is deceptive and wiley, but she's not entirely all that smart or brilliant. Her plan does seem to be working because Daphne seems especially vulnerable to taking this dull homely girl under her wing. And that's all fine, but the premise that all that would be enough to turn the head of her supposedly faithful and adoring husband was just all a little too much to swallow. It was all a little too perfect a narrative. And the steps that were taken to get to those points were just a little too far outside of plausible. 

And so after listening for about 8 hours of story, I was ready to bag Amber and TLMP. And so of course this is where the story turned. And Daphne becomes the narrator. Telling us all about the terrible marriage she has to Mr. Jackson Parrish. You see, he's a sadistic sociopath who is horrible to his wife and children. Through mental and physical abuse, he controls Daphne - who she talks to, where she goes. He threatens her through her children. He even had her committed to a mental institution after the birth of their first daughter so she would know just what the consequences would be if she ever tried to expose him or leave him. Apparently the only thing Daphne couldn't give him was a son. So when the Daphne section started with their meeting and dating I thought, oh no I don't have the stomach for ten years of marriage about this. 

And thankfully the authors seemed to be aware. But then it became apparent that Daphne started orchestrating Amber's affair with Jackson and oh, the revenge, I was so here for it because I hated Amber so much. But in the end, I'm a little deflated that the "revenge" I was so hyped for ended up being the domestic abuse and serial rape of Amber by the husband she was so keen for. Not to mention their poor child who has two morally depraved parents. I was kind of thinking it would end in a murder/suicide in which Daphne, as the closest relative would get custody of Amber's son and then everyone innocent will be saved, but no. Or that Amber and Daphne would team up against Jackson, but also no. And the revenge kept coming. In spiral after spiral of take-down by Daphne. It ended up being a little too wrapped up, a little too perfect
So this was a big miss for me. The revenge portion left me feeling icky and the entirely too long front portion of the book wasn't worth the pay off.

2/5 Stars. 

Since We Fell - Dennis Lehane

Since We Fell was such an uneven book it has to come out at 2 Stars. I'm not sure where to start on this, and maybe Lehane was not either. The first 40% of the book is the backstory of Rachel Childs, daughter of an overbearing mother who was a psychologist and a famous author. Having never married she wrote a best-selling marriage advice book. Okay sure Lehane, I'll suspend reality for a while here. Rachel spends 80% of that early section of the book lamenting over her inability to know the identity of her father, a man her mother hid for some reason that is explained, but I don't recall. She even hires a private detective named Brian Delacroix (I listened to this one, I never know how to spell names). She is an investigative reporting and becomes a TV news reporter. She goes to Haiti and witnesses unspeakable horror. She has a panic attack and nervous breakdown, gets divorced, and becomes a shut-in. 

So I'm thinking, okay this book is what, a think piece on the semi-annoying character Rachel. Then Rachel reconnects with Brian, gets married to him and remains a shut in based on her anxiety, except when she goes out with Brian or whatever. It's all really unclear. They are married for about four years when one day she sees him on the street in Boston when he's supposed to be in London. She confronts him, kind of, and is satisfied he was really in London, except when she's not. So all these things start happening that make her suspicious he's living a double life. Despite her anxiety she rents a car and follows him to a small Rhode Island town and sees him with a pregnant woman. Then the story takes this wide turn and becomes a thriller with contract killers and some kind of scam and oh yeah you have to suspend your belief in basically everything to go on with the rest of this book. 

Possibly the most irritating parts is when Rachel is following Brian around trying to determine if he's been lying to her. You get to hear pages and pages and pages of internal monologue about all Rachel's thoughts and feelings, with misplaced flashbacks and frustrating self-doubt. I just didn't need this much Rachel. This book just was way too long.

Some people I know and like rated this book much higher than me. Perhaps the narrator missed the mark here. Every male character sounded the same. It was annoying. 

2 Stars. 

Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

Ah revenge suicide. I'll kill myself and then everyone will be sorry. That's pretty much my biggest beef with Thirteen Reasons Why. It's every middle/high schoolers revenge suicide fantasy. But it's playing out in a way that works for the person who kills themselves. Hannah lives on posthumously through cassette tapes and haunts those she blames for her death. It's wickedly unfair to several people on the tapes, notably the other narrator Clay Jensen. Who's biggest crime was that he didn't "save" Hannah. 

And as annoying as Clay's sometimes overly descriptive narrative is, he's the only person who really makes counterpoints to the revenge suicide - if you're bothering to listen to him. Eg. - telling Hannah she didn't have a funeral, which I believe would be a big upset for someone looking to have people hand wringing and heart rending at their funeral after their suicide plays out. He also is the only one who consistently fights back against Hannah's assertion that people had a chance to save her and didn't take it. 

I don't want to victim blame here, because Hannah was an unlikeable character, but it wasn't due to any kind of woe is me mentality. A lot of crappy things happen to her in high school. Things that would be handled in a multitude of different ways by different people. So I'm not down on Hannah for ultimately deciding killing herself was the only option. But blaming other people and going out in a raging audio-taped glory was just a bit much. Since one of the people she blamed was a friend who believed a rumor and thus ended the friendship is then horribly raped while Hannah bears silent witness in a closet, yet somehow Hannah can't get over herself enough to think about other people. So the entire time Hannah is so mad that people aren't seeing the "real" Hannah, but she completely fails to offer the same thing to anyone else in the book. Except Clay. The nice guy narrator of the story. His sterling reputation is deserved. Yet Hannah still makes him listen to about (I'm unclear just how long these audiotapes of Hannah's are supposed to be) 8 hours of blaming others just to tell him that actually she doesn't blame him at all. But he's part of her "story". 

Overall the premise of the book is so problematic and poorly executed that I had to give it two stars. It's a book intended for the same demographic which currently can't stop eating Tide Pods. It doesn't come with enough nuance or depth to actually get to the heart of the matter or to give young adults the tools they need to digest it.

So what did I like about it? (see that's Hannah voice there). Well, the split narrative works pretty well (discounting the sections where Clay's repetitive interjections are awkward). And the timeline works to unravel the story.

2/5 Stars. 

The Book of Harlan - Bernice McFadden

It's February and for Black History Month, I wanted to read something from an African American author and also something about Black History. The Book of Harlan is written by Bernice McFadden, an award winning African American author of nine critically acclaimed novels. The average Goodreads score on this book was 4.1 which is pretty fantastic. 

So let's start with what's working in this book. McFadden's prose is well done and the first 1/4 of the book detailing Harlan's parents, Sam and Emma Elliott, who meet in Macon, Georgia and then after becoming pregnant with Harlan (much to the displeasure of Emma's preacher father), move around the country looking for the right fit, while the grandparents bring up Harlan. Finally, in Harlan's fourth year, Sam and Emma return to Macon for Harlan, having found their niche in 1920s Harlem. The pacing and the writing in this section of the book was the best part about the entire book. Even the parts that followed about Harlan's childhood and early adulthood in Harlem, playing in jazz bands and travelling the country was well done. And then, well then stuff started to get weird.

So about the midpoint of the book, when, in 1940, Harlan goes to Paris to play the jazz clubs there, unkowningly having fathered twin sons in Brooklyn, the suspense of the book started to ratchet up. When Harlan and his bandmate Lizard are picked up after curfew during the Nazi occupation of Paris, they are swept off to Buchenwald. Here I thought the book was going to settle in, and really delve into what it meant to be a black American in a German concentration camp. So I was completely surprised when this only took up a little more than two chapters. Much of this section of the book was Lizard's back story, which came a little too late as we'd already been introduced to Lizard for several chapters and well, then like many characters in this book, we never see him again. And although what happens to Lizard is terrible, he's in a concentration camp, you can probably figure it out, and it's supposed to be incredibly damaging to Harlan, there's something that is missing in the elements to give it a great emotional weight. 

When Harlan returns to his parent's home, he's completely broken and suffering from PTSD for several years, until he isn't and all of a sudden is out womanizing again. He moves to New Jersey with his parents, plays in some clubs, then all of a sudden his parents are killed in a car accident and he's once again devastated. He takes a job in Brooklyn as a superintendant of a building. Great, I thought, he's going to end up meeting his children finally, since the book spent a significant portion of time on the mother of his children and her family, but no. Instead of his children, Harlan finds Ilse Koch, the notorious wife of a Nazi administrator of Buchenwald who took sadistic pleasure in torturing prisoners in her husband's camp. Ilse Koch has taken refuge in the United States, disguised as recluse Andrew Mailer. (Except Ilse Koch in reality was tried twice for war crimes in Germany and committed suicide in prison in 1967 at the age of 60). 

Harlan, upon finding Ilse, strangles her to death and then turns himself into the police. Conveniently, the police detective who takes his statement has a wife who was also a prisoner at Buchenwald so he takes Harlan out the back door and sets him free, giving him all the money in his wallet and telling Harlan to make a new life somewhere. Harland decides to go to Macon, and then the book ends. YES! It ends there! 

So about what kind of fell flat for me: the book takes on too much. There are too many characters who show up to ground the story into factual time and place, but their factual stories get distorted by the narrative into untrue endings (Ilse Koch). 

There are also too many characters who are included, described in detail, only to be never seen again. The fact that we never know what happens to Harlan's twin sons was kind of a big gaping hole in the narrative. Yes, okay Harlan never met them, so if you take the story from only Harlan's perspective, then he didn't know what happened to them either, BUT in that vein, he never knew they existed in the first place, and he certainly didn't know anything about the family of the woman he slept with to make those children in the first place, but we had loads of details about those individuals in the story. It's almost as if they ceased to exist after the interesting portions of their own narratives were used up. 

The dialogue at times worked against the story. McFadden can get into a good rhythm of prose wherein the story flows well and the plot is driven forward. When dialogue is used for this purpose it has less effect and comes out awkwardly. 

Lastly, the scope of time taken on in this book was too great. Less time was spent on really interesting or complicated issues than were probably warranted given their weight and importance in the life of the characters. 

Basically I thought the first half of the book was pretty good and the book would have rated higher if the second half would have included mostly Buchenwald with a bit of the later life wrapped up at the end. The murder of Ilse Koch in the final chapters seemed an effort to create a dazzling ending where one wasn't really needed. This is a man who survived four years in a concentration camp, that struggle, and the changes it made in him, and how it redefines how we look at victims of the Holocaust should have been enough. That it wasn't is somehow telling on how this book fell short.

2/5 Stars.

Be Frank With Me - Julia Claiborne Johnson

There were a lot of things that just didn't work for me in Be Frank With Me. While the overall premise has promise, the pieces of the story didn't come together to make a pleasing narrative. 

Alice Whitley, an assistant at a publishing company, is sent to live in LA with eccentric novelist Mimi Gillespie. Mimi, writing under the pen name of M.M. Banning, wrote one critically acclaimed novel, married a movie star, divorced a movie star, had a son - Frank, and became a recluse in Los Angeles, talking to few people and never publishing another word. Sort of like a, if J.D. Salinger had only ever written Catcher in the Rye, and was a woman kind of vibe. 

Alice is called upon to help Mimi while she completes another book. Turns out that Mimi is now broke and needs the money so has promised to write another book for her publisher. Alice is sent to help with the transcription of the novel into type and to provide Mimi with whatever other assistance she needs in order to write the novel. 

This assistance is being a playmate to Mimi's ten year old son - Frank. Frank is eccentric. We know this because we are told over and over that he is eccentric, by the characters, by Alice. What we are shown is that Frank talks in a flat monotone, favors old movies, has a good memory for facts from old movies, and dresses in the fashion of said old movies. He is endlessly bullied at school by both the kids, and eventually by an overbearing principal. 

All the while, Mimi is presented as basically a horrible person. She loves Frank at least, but she's horrible to Alice. I can deal with an unlikeable character if it does something for the story, but here it doesn't. Mimi herself never talks much with Alice, and the only other two characters who know her, Xander, the handyman, and Mr. Vargus, the publisher, don't give much information about why they remain friends with Mimi aside from the fact that it appears Xander kind of feels sorry for her, and he has his own heap of issues as well.

Alice flits naively from person to person in the story, and I didn't mind her that much until she becomes romantically involved with Xander, a vaguely described and poorly executed romance wherein both the characters' dialogue is eye-roll inducing. 

In the end, the story had no punch, and Frank, who while interesting and ultimately loveable, wasn't enough to carry the story over the rough patches.

2/5 Stars. 

V is for Vengeance - Sue Grafton

Back in April of 2012, I read the first of Sue Grafton's Alphabet series in about six days. The books have become a bit more sophisticated since then, and longer, so this one took a bit longer to read. Every year for the past four years, I've thought that maybe I'd get to the end of the series or at least catch up to Grafton, who continues to write these books as if the 80s never died. This actually may be the year. X came out last year and it's patiently waiting in my kindle to be read. So there is only W standing between me and the current end of the series. 

V finds us hopping around in narrative view point between Kinsey, a quasi gangster named Lorenzo Dante, and a bored socialite, Nora Vogelsang and it all begins with Kinsey shopping for underwear. While at the store, Kinsey spots Audrey Vance slip a couple pairs of very expensive pajamas into a bag. Because she has an overly developed sense of justice, Kinsey turns the woman into the store clerk and an eventual arrest is made. When Audrey Vance turns up dead after taking a spill off a local bridge and into a ravine, Kinsey is hired by the woman's former fiancee to unravel what happened. 

This leads Kinsey into a very organized retail theft ring headed by Lorenzo Dante. Because we have Lorenzo's point of view, we know early on that Audrey was helped in her trip over the bridge by Lorenzo's bumbling but violent brother Cappi. Most of Dante's portions of the book are meant to humanize him. He's a gangster with heart. He never orders any of the violence Cappi performs, he's sorry for those things. He had a close relationship with his mother, who left the family when Dante was young. His father was violent and beat Dante as a child, and now Dante has fallen in love with Nora. The sections from Nora's point of view, in hindsight, seem the most irrelevant and unnecessary in the book, but because the book is set up like a mystery novel, you're not sure of this until the very end. The thing that didn't work for me, was that as judgmental as Kinsey was about the harm that retail theft does, she seemed awful quick to want to forgive Dante for his hand in the entire thing, which was to actually be the head of it all. 

Thrown in is a side drama involving Pinky Ford, who gave Kinsey her set of key picks which come up about once a book, and his wife Dodie. Why Kinsey feels so inclined to stick her neck out for Pinky in this book is a mystery in and of itself and seemed more like a stretch to make a plot point work. 

This was definitely not my favorite of the alphabet mysteries. Most of them get a solid 3 stars, but since this one had so many off elements, it's only getting two.

2/5 stars.

Deliver Us From Evil - David Baldacci

Someone left this at my house. I never say no to free books but maybe I should start. I've heard that Baldacci is a good writer. He sure does sell a lot of books, but for the life of me, after reading this one, I can't at all figure out why. Perhaps his earlier books are better. This one had the feel of a real mass-produced churn factory.

Let's start with the premise. A. Shaw, a secret agent who works for an unnamed US agency, I think, decides to take down Evan Waller, a Canadian who leads a sex-trafficking business and has decided to sell nuclear materials to a terrorist organization. At the same time, Reggie Campion, a beautiful British woman who works for a secret vigilante organization also decides to take out Waller, on the premise that his real identity is that of a former KGB heavy by the name of Fedir Kuchin. 

Both agencies work at cross purposes to get Waller until the nuclear deal falls through and Shaw's agency decides Waller is no longer a worthy target. However, by this point, Shaw has fallen a bit for Reggie, who is masquerading as a wealthy American orphan and has piqued the interest of the sadistic Mr. Waller. Thinking Reggie doesn't know what she's getting into, Shaw wants to stay to protect her. In the meantime, he's regretting ending a relationship with journalist Katie James, and his boss, Frank, constantly reminds him that he's not worthy of the woman. 

So on the face of it, if I had just read the above, I'd be like, hmmmm sounds interesting. But man the writing and the characters will really let a girl down. This reads more like a bare bones screen play that no one picked up so Baldacci decided to turn it into a novel. Although the dialogue and low-brow descriptions make it a fast read, the only thing positive I can say is that at least I didn't spend too much time on it. My purpose was to read it lake-side at our family cottage over vacation and I mostly succeeded because the 3-4 page chapters were perfect for the constant interruption of my two toddlers.

So here's what went wrong. The characters all kind of suck. Their motivations are uneven, their backstories provided as a matter of rote. Their interactions with each other don't really make sense. People pop in and out of the plot without seeming to really know what they are doing there. When Frank tells us that Shaw doesn't deserve Katie James, we're not really sure why? Because he's emotionally unavailable? He's a secret agent, I'm not sure how available he's supposed to be. Meanwhile Shaw is getting all googly over Reggie while at the same time telling us that he's not too interested. It's all very awkward in the writing. 

The book also just flat out tells us things about the people without letting the reader learn them organically to the story. Evan Waller, the evil man in the story is completely evil. The only off detail is a fondness for his own mother and a leaning towards being religious. This, I suppose, is supposed to give him some depth, but it just doesn't work. 

In the end, Waller is played out like an evil genius who is one step ahead of our heroes and he is, until seemingly he's not and the reasons why don't really feel all that realistic. 

While reading this book, I was increasingly feeling like perhaps this was at least the second book in a series and that perhaps I was missing something. When I got home from my internet free vacation, I looked it up and indeed it IS the second book in a series about A. Shaw (yeah he has no first name, get over it). So I thought, I should go ahead and read that maybe to get some context, but according to goodreads, I read it 5 years ago (you can find the description of The Whole Truth and my original Goodreads review here). And even reading my review I have NO idea what it was about and I can't actually remember reading it at all. Memorable huh? 

This book is a major skip unless you are on the beach and want an easy read. Some poor guy on our airplane back was reading a different Baldacci book and I gave him this one as he said he'd not read it and I finally finished it 20 minutes into the flight. That poor guy has no idea what I just did to him, but if he was reading another, he maybe won't be surprised. I think I'll let another 5 years pass before I read another of Baldacci's novels.

2/5 Stars.

He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson - Edited by Christopher Conlon

Beware of found books. 

I found this book in our office kitchen area. Was it discarded - was someone hoping to rid themselves of a unwanted burden? Or was it someone, like me, who likes to leave reading material around when I'm finished in case someone else finds themselves in need? 

So this book sat in the drawer of my desk until I was abruptly called to a doctor's appointment and this went along as some last minute waiting room material. I've heard of Richard Matheson in the way that I was vaguely aware that I am Legend, the movie with Will Smith, was based on a book. I had no idea he was a well-known (by others) horror genre writer. 

Reading some of the stories in this book made me more familiar with his writing. This anthology is a collection of short stories inspired by his other works. The collection includes sequels, prequels and some others just along the same concepts as previous stories. 

The first story in the collection, Throttle, written by Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, is about a biker gang that becomes the target of revenge. It is inspired by a Matheson story. 

Each short story is introduced by a short paragraph which details which Matheson story was the inspiration. These blurbs made me want to check out some of Matheson's original work.

As a collection, the anthology feels uneven. Some stories are superbly written and wickedly frightening, like Return to Hell House, which doesn't spare on graphic details but actually haunting scenes that was a bad choice to read right before bed. This and Throttle, really made the book. Others, including a take on the "Somewhere in Time" time travelling theme in which a man goes back in time to prevent his wife's suicide, were interesting and thought-provoking, if not exceptionally well written. 

Others, like the last story, Cloud Riders, were poorly written and seemed more like poor fan fiction than the worthy efforts of the authors who worked on the stories. 

I'll definitely be picking up some of Matheson's original work in the future, but for an already established Matheson fan, only a few of the stories included will probably do the man justice.

2/5 Stars.

The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

I really really wanted to like this book. The premise is interesting, a slowing has started in the earth's rotation, having all kinds of effects on gravity, plant growth, magnetic fields. This is all very interesting. And the writing is very good. The actual words on paper and the prose are well done.

But.... It's boring. The narrator is 11 years old at the beginning of the book, so events just kind of happen around her and she comments on them. An 11 year old is a bit young to have a lot of agency in a novel. She can't really make anything happen, so she takes to commenting on things as she sees them. Things other people are doing. It makes for very very slow progress. The book is also written from Julia's perspective looking back. She's around 20 years old as the narrator, talking about things that happened when she was 11. So there is a lot of "that was the last time I ever saw (insert minor character name) again."

The drama of the events don't quite match up with the reactions recorded by Julia. All the world's food is grown in greenhouses using artificial lights? Hmmm.... pretty sure this wouldn't quite cut it. Perhaps after reading the really really well researched, The Martian (read my review here), it's too much to expect a young adult novel to have plausible scientific calculations, but I wanted the cause and effect to at least make sense. Even those things that Julie should be able to convey or have some kind of dominion over are not taken as opportunities. She ends up eating alone in the library at lunch time.

The slow plodding of the plot, coupled with the complete impotence of the main character made for a very very slow and unexciting read.

2/5 Stars.

A Stolen Life - Jaycee Dugard

I don't want anything in this review to diminish the horrifying ordeal that Jaycee Dugard survived. I believe she showed strength and courage in writing this book and should be commended on raising what seem to be two well-adjusted daughters and for keeping her own sanity during 18 years of captivity and maltreatment. That being said, it's really too bad that she didn't have an editor to work with her on writing this memoir. It would have given it some structure to fall back on. At first she starts with writing about the past and then has sections called "reflection" where she discusses how that portion of the story has evolved in her thinking. This drops off midway through the book and becomes jumbled with the "in time" narrative. If you're not familiar, Jaycee was kidnapped as a teenager and held for ten years by a man and his wife. She was repeatedly raped and bore two of her rapists children while in isolation. She was eventually rescued and is trying to now live her life after the trauma. Again, I think she's a champion for surviving, and hopefully she can find a fulfilling career and life beyond her ordeal. She and I are very nearly the same age (within months) and I can't imagine going through what she has been through. Also being pregnant now, I can't imagine how scary it must have been to give birth without modern comforts with two people who are intent on using and abusing you for their own sick pleasure. I hope the paparazzi leave Jaycee and her daughters alone to grow and adjust to life on the outside. It's tough out there enough for regular people. 2/5 Stars.

Third Degree - Greg Iles

Meh. I didn't like any of the characters and that was a big detriment to this book. Even the ones you are supposed to like aren't likeable for a number of reason. Danny is the hero but comes off as too perfect and there were little things that bothered me about his storyline. He has two kids with his wife, but he's only ever talking about one of them and is only concerned with custody of one. 

His Air Force backstory is a little faulty. From reading the notes this makes sense w- Iles consulted with an Army warrant officer. The Air Force doesn't have warrant officers (any more) so that portion was just weird. I'm not sure why they didn't just make the guy have an Army backstory. In the end, the only purpose this serves is so he can fly a helicopter. 



I don't want to sound prudish, but it's a bit hard to drum up some sympathy for these adulteress characters who spend so much time just thinking of themselves.


 
The story happens in one 24 hour period and it just gets too black or white at points. The dialogue is not really that believable either, which I think happens a lot when people write using kids as characters. Towards the end it felt like Iles backed himself into a narrative corner so the story just kept going on and on until Warren did himself and the reader a favor and killed himself. That was really the only logical ending.

2/5 Stars.

Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson

Hmmm... Okay. I read this book knowing that I would read Jon Krakauer's "Three Cups of Deceit" afterwards, so knowing that the allegations were out there that much of this book is fabricated or untrue most likely has changed how I viewed this book while reading it.

Without knowing the specifics on the allegations regarding this book, there were a few things that bothered me about it, that I think I would have picked up on anyway.

First, the author here is listed as Greg Mortenson, but Greg is not the author of this book, it's written by David Relin based on interviews and visits Relin made with Mortenson. Right away that makes me wary. If the book was properly researched and written, Relin wouldn't need Mortenson as an additional author. So I'm not sure what is going on there. If anything it seemed like an excuse to write about Mortenson without Mortenson singing his own praises.

Second, there are far too many "quotes" of things people said and they are presented as direct quotations, even where the events occurred four or five years before Relin even met Mortenson. So there is no way that anyone remembered the exact words used by anyone else that far back, and to present them as quotations rings false.

Third, some of the quotes seem to canned. Even the broken English of translated quotes was too canned and saccharin to be believed.

I didn't have any problems with the events that occurred in the book, aside from the fact that I know they may not have happened the way they are presented, but the above issues with the storytelling really bothered me throughout the book and cast a shadow of doubt around the events described.

That being said, the actual premise of the book, that building schools and investing in education is a better way to fight fundamentalism than bombs and war is totally believable and laudable. It's unfortunate that the message is presented in this format, and now that it's been discredited that the premise may be forgotten or discarded because the messenger was flawed.

2/5 Stars.