All posts filed under: Reviews

Uncommon Read

Published by

This book surprised me more than most. I know Commonwealth has been talked up for the past year (or so) since it’s release, but I wasn’t expecting too much. From all the descriptions I predicted it would be a relatively uneventful story about a complicated family and their 300+ page journey to right the wrongs of their past. Seemed like a story I’d already read before, and not much more. It was all of those things, but also more. Not to say those qualities by themselves aren’t enough for a good book, it’s just not what I was in the mood for. Current events leave me wanting for something more escapist, and Commonwealth throws you right into the beast of the realities of family, regret, and mortality. But in the best way… This is the first Ann Patchett novel I’ve ever read so I wasn’t sure what to expect from her writing. I thought it’d fall somewhere between Judy Blume and Sylvia Plath. And all things considered I think I was pretty spot on with …

Bum Bum!

Published by

Ok so I totally agree with Katie – this is like an SVU episode. Which I love. Except that there is no Stabler. This book has no Stabler. So you can stop reading here. Just kidding – this book is not going rewire your whole literary life but it is fun, it is creepy, and it is a great autumn evening read. Brian Freeman hits the ground running from the first scene.  Probably the thing that he does, that I love the most, is that he keeps the story moving. There is very little dead time with the mystery and he manages to do that without making the scenario super convoluted. I mean its a crazy pants story but it isn’t muddled with characters or asides or distractors. Part of the downfall of the pace of the story is that not too many characters are well flushed out. Frankie – I thought she had to be a secret crazy psycho because she had so little of anything going on with her.  She had a weird …

SVU: The Night Bird

Published by

I’m all about the right read for the right time, and October begs a good, spooky, mystery. The Night Bird was just that. It read like a double episode of Law & Order SVU: the brooding investigator with a haunted past and a strong female professional being victimized by a series of targeted killings of young, innocent women. The premise is that the “Night Bird” killer is kidnapping, hypnotizing, and conditioning women into reliving their forgotten phobias when they hear Joni Mitchell’s “The Night Bird.” And he’s doing this to women who at some point have been patients of Dr. Francesca Stein; a psychiatrist who specializes in hypno-therapies to rid people of debilitating phobias. It was pretty easy to see some of the connections early on (phobias, hypnosis, the Joni Mitchell song), and SPOILER I also saw it coming that Frankie’s husband was cheating on her with her sister and that the death of Frankie’s father was less than innocent. But this made me think the larger mystery would also be easy to solve, and then …

A Perfect October Read

Published by

There’s something about fall that makes you want to read a book that gives you a bit of a chill, isn’t there? A good thriller or crime drama, something with a bit of suspense. Of course, that’s why our October theme is what it is, and why we chose The Night Bird. I absolutely FLEW through this book – finished it almost as soon as we announced it as our October read. It was engaging, entertaining, and I was completely engrossed in the story. I know others have mentioned that the character development was perhaps a bit lacking, but I didn’t need it in this case (unusual, because that is usually the number one thing that makes or breaks a book for me). I enjoyed the story, and I enjoyed the way it unfolded. I loved that it kept me guessing, and that all these little clues sprinkled throughout the book gave you a chance to make some educated guesses. On that note, I have something that is maybe a bit embarrassing to admit: I didn’t guess …

Detective Easton vs. Memory

Published by

The Night Bird grabbed me from the first scene. A girl who’s perfectly fine one second, and then crawling out of her skin the next, and discovering she’s not the only one this is happening to? I was hooked. Psychological thrillers — heck, thrillers of any kind — can be hard for me to definitively rate. While they’re one of my favorite genres when I’m looking for a quick read, they either have me flying through the pages looking for answers, or they don’t. (Stephen King might be the exception, because man, he can WRITE. But I digress.) The two things this book has going for it are the plot and characterization. I immediately liked Frost Easton. His character seemed warm, kind, sympathetic, and just quirky enough. (Shack might have been my favorite character of them all!) He made me feel that if anyone could solve this case, it was him. Through numerous plot twists and some gruesome scenes (reader beware), I was never bored. In fact, I barely put it down, finishing it in …

The Perfect Diary

Published by

I read Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in three sittings and probably three hours. It is a FAST read. Fast enough that when I reached the end I thought I couldn’t possibly be finished. Not that the ending wasn’t satisfying, because it was. But there was something that felt incomplete to me. I liked how it ended, but I wanted more. In fact, I felt that way about the book overall. I wanted a little something more than what I got. I frequently felt like I was missing something. Sometimes it was details that seemed to be eluding me. Sometimes it felt like I was making huge leaps in time without anything in between. At the end of the book I was pleased, but also felt like so many areas were left open. All the plot points weren’t tied up in a neat little bow. And then…. And then I thought about the title again. The Absolutely True DIARY of a Part-Time Indian. And then I thought about who was writing this diary …

The Underdog

Published by

I really didn’t know what to expect with this book. As someone who judges books by their covers, I’ll say that the cover art set my expectations fairly low. But I was intrigued by the mixture of novel and illustrations. At exactly 230 pages I FLEW through this book. Between the pacing, illustrations, quick-read story, and short chapters, I think I read it in under 48 hours. I loved Junior, the main character. He was the epitome of underdog. And his outlook on things, beautiful. Despite all the shit, he ended up hopeful. The luxury that it might be, it was nice to read a book for a change that left you feeling hopeful. Sometimes I feel like a lot of the fiction out there is the dark and scary type. And with the state of the world as it is I don’t feel like I need to spend all of my reading time further depressed. I can’t say I’d recommend this book to my peers (30 somethings) as a must read…  it’s not tremendously …

Real and Raw

Published by

Brit Bennett can certainly craft a story. I was sucked in to Oceanside almost immediately and then spent the next few days reading while tears pricked the back of my eyes. It wasn’t that the book was sad, per se, though elements of it were heartbreaking for sure. It was more that each person’s story felt so real and so raw. I felt for Nadia, Aubrey, Robert, and Luke… even when they were making decisions that were frustrating or awful. I think the narrative voice Bennett used had a great deal to do with it. As a reader, I knew enough about the characters to understand their motivation, even when their literary counterparts couldn’t. {SPOILER ALERT} Even during Nadia and Luke’s affair, an act I generally have absolutely no sympathy for, I could see how it happened. While I wasn’t rooting for them, I wasn’t as angry with them either. I also thought that having an abortion be the driving force of the story was an interesting choice. Mostly because as much as the book …

Undecided Mothers

Published by

I read The Mothers on a beach vacation in Michigan. There was plenty of deck time overlooking the lake, very relaxing! And it was a good beach read… I think. I guess I’m still not sure of my final thoughts. I definitely looked forward to picking it back up each day, I was eager to see where the story went, and I was invested in the characters. Bennett wrote very full characters and immersed you in their lives (Nadia, Luke and Aubrey). Sure, at times it was a little predictable, but I guess going into it you expect there to be a love triangle with some predictable conflict. And although not too much happens to these characters, Bennett’s writing style turns what seem like simple events into significant and meaningful turning points. I enjoyed her writing style, but I guess I didn’t like the story? Maybe that’s where I struggle. The story circles around Nadia’s abortion at age 17 and the ripple effects. And I guess my question is; can you really write about the …

A Voice

Published by

I struggled with this book. Not because the content scared me or made me uncomfortable. Not because it drew into question something I do not see or fail to acknowledge. But because what Coates tries to scratch the surface of is an extraordinarily complex network of invasive roots that both has strangled our collective culture and has consistently unearthed itself in a knotted fashion in places seemingly distanced from our country’s base. In a less metaphorical way, race is nearly always at the forefront of or a driving force of our societal (insert any word) – history, music, fashion, culture, vernacular. What is even more confusing is that we have created a narrative about race that in reality has so many dimensions and layers and colors but we have distilled it down into a simple dichotomy. What is black and what is white.   Coates is an astounding writer. He brings an eloquence, a voice, a personal experience that combined creates a feat of literature.  To improve our future, we must understand our past. That …