One Kick by Chelsea Cain

August 30, 2016August 30, 20166 Comments

One Kick. Finished 8-29-16, 4/5 stars, thriller series, pub. 2014

Unabridged audio read by Heather Lind.

Kick Lannigan series #1

Kick Lannigan, 21, is a survivor. Abducted at age six in broad daylight, the police, the public, perhaps even her family assumed the worst had occurred. And then Kathleen Lannigan was found, alive, six years later. In the early months following her freedom, as Kick struggled with PTSD, her parents put her through a litany of therapies, but nothing helped until the detective who rescued her suggested Kick learn to fight. Before she was thirteen, Kick learned marksmanship, martial arts, boxing, archery, and knife throwing. She excelled at every one, vowing she would never be victimized again. But when two children in the Portland area go missing in the same month, Kick goes into a tailspin. Then an enigmatic man Bishop approaches her with a proposition: he is convinced Kick’s experiences and expertise can be used to help rescue the abductees. Little does Kick know the case will lead directly into her terrifying past… from Goodreads

I loved Cain’s first book, Heartsick, but didn’t care for the next in the popular series so I didn’t continue. With One Kick she has won me back. This book is not for the faint of heart. It’s set in the world of child abduction and pornography, of safehouses and pedophiles, of locked boxes and bombs. Kick Lanagan is a survivor but an eternal victim and she is damaged in a way that, thankfully, most of us don’t understand firsthand. She is a compelling character that I’m curious to know more about as the series continues.

Kick is known as Beth to the thousands of men who have downloaded her child pornography. Between the ages of six and twelve, Beth lives with Mel and his wife and they are part of a pedophile ring and Kick, even seeing freedom in sight, shields them and countless others in a moment she will regret. Enter Bishop ten years later who offers her a chance to redeem herself by helping him locate a missing boy.

This is a solid start to a new series. Kick is profoundly damaged, as is everyone around her, nary a decent person in sight, but she is also looking to make things right when she can. Given that she is a victim of sexual abuse I know that it will always be part of the story, but I hope that the next book offers some light and hope and joy. Kick deserves it.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

July 20, 2016July 19, 201611 Comments

Before the Fall. Finished 7-5-16, rating 4/5, thriller, 390 pages, pub. 2016

On a foggy summer night, eleven people—ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter—depart Martha’s Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs—the painter—and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul’s family.

With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members—including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot—the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers’ intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage. from Goodreads

I hate to fly, I do it when I have to because I know it will get me somewhere beautiful, but I still hate it. This book started with a bang, or a blast, or a fire, or whatever might have brought the plane down and led is into cold Atlantic waters with a swimmer and a boy trying to survive. Even knowing from the description that they will be safe didn’t make those pages any less tense or nail biting. I was hooked. What happens when the two hit land is where the story and the condemnation of 24 hour cable news, especially the ones touting a specific point of view, begins.

But journalism was something else, wasn’t it? It was meant to be objective reporting of facts, no matter how contradictory. You didn’t make the news fit the story. You simply reported the facts as they were. When had that stopped being true? (page 274)

This book has been called the book to read this summer from just about every corner of the blogging and print world so I was curious. I loved the first half of the book very much. The victims of the crash all had their say and it was compelling, even though they were dead. The mystery of the crash remained and Scott was a character I wanted to figure out. It is a very smart book. I did think it was a little anticlimactic by the end, but I’d still recommend it.

I want to thank She Reads and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to read. She Reads is an excellent group and if you aren’t reading their blog then you are missing out!

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

July 12, 2016July 12, 201614 Comments

The Girl on the Train. Finished 6-3-16, rating 4/5, thriller. pub. 2015

Unabridged audio read by Clare Corbett, Louise Brealey, India Fisher. 11 hours

EVERY DAY THE SAME
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

UNTIL TODAY
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good? from Goodreads

I’m a little late on this one and that’s okay. There was so much hype it scared me away for a while. I’d seen the comparisons to Gone Girl and I had a love/hate relationship with that book. I do remember the end made me so mad that I wanted to throw it across the room (actually, that might have happened). So, I went into this one with dark, twisty expectations and it delivered. As with Gone Girl, the multiple points of view and the hot mess of unlikable characters, were somehow elevated by terrific storytelling.

I don’t even really want to say more. I think the less you know the better. I’ll just say that someone dies and there are quite a few people who could have done it. And Rachel, the first narrator, isn’t even the biggest hot mess of them all. Quite a story. It may make you feel like going to your happy place afterward since none of those people have seen a happy place in just about forever.

Perfect for thriller lovers who like dark, twisty novels.

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

June 23, 20166 Comments

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax. Finished 6-12-16, rating 4/5, mystery, 172 pages, pub. 1970

When Emily Pollifax answers the phone that Sunday morning, she quickly forgets all about her Garden Club tea that afternoon. For the voice on the other end belonged to a man she had never seen, a man from the CIA who asked her if she could leave immediately on a mission that would take her halfway across the world! What could Mrs. Pollifax say but yes? from Goodreads

Mrs. Pollifax is a widower in her 60’s and instead of settling down to garden club meetings she has become an improbable asset to the CIA. This is her second case and she heads to Turkey to try to make contact with a double agent being sought by a seemingly endless list of countries. As Emily Pollifax makes friends in the most unlikely of places, the authorities and bad guys close in.

I read a few of the Mrs. Pollifax series way before I became obsessed with reading series’ in order and I have to say that it’s okay. Emily is just as delightful in any order 🙂 I like learning about the exotic locales that Emily is sent to and really liked learning about the gypsies in this one.

I recommend this series to cozy mystery fans and fans of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.

Already Home by Susan Mallery

June 21, 20169 Comments

Already Home. Finished 3-29-16, rating 4.25/5, women’s fiction, pub. 2011

Unabridged audio read by Teri Clark Linden. 10 hours 33 minutes.

After nearly a decade as a sous-chef in a trendy eatery, and fresh off a divorce from the owner, Jenna Stevens is desperate for a change. So when she spots a for-lease sign in her hometown, she impulsively decides to open her very own cooking store. Her crash course in business is aided by a streetwise store manager and Jenna’s adoptive mother. But as soon as she gains a foothold in her new life, in walk her birth parents—aging hippies on a quest to reconnect.

Now Jenna must figure out how to reconcile the free-spirited Serenity and Tom with the parents who raised her and decide whether to open her heart to a man who just might be the best thing to happen to her in years. All without sacrificing her newly found dreams. In the end, Jenna will find that there is no perfect family, only the people we love.… from Goodreads

I went in expecting a romance, and while this did have the feel of romance, it was so much more than that. Jenna (I’ve always loved that name) has been left by a jerk of a husband and decides to go home and on a whim buys retail space for a cooking store, with no retail experience or plan at all. Her first order of business was hiring the most interesting character in the book, Violet, and the two of them form a successful business and friendship.

Jenna enjoyed a close and loving relationship with her parents and had no interest in finding her real parents, even after they showed up in her store. The story of two families coming together was sweet and heartwarming. I didn’t always love Jenna, she seemed clueless much of the time, but the cast of characters (especially her half-brother Dragon) made this a fun and touching novel.

If you love reading about family dynamics, especially those with likeable aging hippies, then you should give this one a look.

The Duchess by Jude Deveraux

May 13, 20167 Comments

The Duchess. Finished 5-1-16, rating 4.25/5, 362 pages, pub. 1991

Claire Willoughby risked losing her millions in her inheritance if, as decreed by her grandfather, she did not wed an “acceptable” man. Harry Montgomery, the eleventh Duke of MacArran, seemed perfect. He owned a historical castle, he looked manly in a kilt, and he was as much a titled Scotsman as Bonnie Prince Charlie himself.

Their engagement announced, Claire’s future as a duchess was assured — and she set off with her family to meet the Montgomery clan in Scotland. Bramley Castle was a damp, chill place, overflowing with eccentric relatives. But there was also Trevelyan, a secretive, brooding man who lived in Bramley’s ancient halls. Whoever he was, he wasn’t at all like Harry: Trevelyan was the most exasperating, arrogant, know-it-all of a man Claire had ever met. And the most fascinating …

from Goodreads

The older Jude Deveraux historical romances, especially ones that have Montgomery men in hem, are comfort reads. I used to read romances almost exclusively when I was in my teens and she and Judith McNaught were/are favorites. I’ve read a few of Devereux’s newer books but they just don’t hold the same appeal. This one did not disappoint.

Claire, a once-wealthy American, heads to Scotland to spend time with Harry Montgomery, laird of his clan. It was 1883 and per her grandfather’s will, she must marry a man her parents approve of in order to collect her inheritance, an inheritance her lazy parents have already been spending. Harry proposes and it looks like a happy ending is assured, until she meets Trevelyan, the sickly man who lives in the hidden part of the castle. She is drawn to him as she becomes disillusioned with life in the castle. Trevelyan appreciates her curiosity and intelligence and Harry would be happy for her to silently watch him hunt all day.

There are evil mothers, mysteries to be solved, exotic people to meet and maybe more than one happy ending. It’s also full of stereotypical tropes, but they are used well and easily forgiven. Claire’s younger sister used language that was clearly not of the times, but meant to convey her young attitude. If you like your romances to be politically correct then this is not for you, but as a lover of the genre I consider it a treat for my brain. I devoured it in two days.

This was from my personal library.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

May 9, 20162 Comments

The Weird Sisters. Finished 4-20-16, rating 4.25/5 , fiction, pub. 2011

Unabridged audio read by Kirsten Potter. 10 hours, 26 minutes.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there.

See, we love each other. We just don’t happen to like each other very much.

But the sisters soon discover that everything they’ve been running from — one another, their small hometown, and themselves — might offer more than they ever expected.

from Goodreads

Let me start by mentioning that I went and heard Curtis Settenfeld speak tonight about her latest book, Eligible, inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (more on that later). She talked a little about how Austen had many unlikeable, unredeemable characters and how that it was different in today’s fiction. As I sit here to write this review for a book I finished weeks ago, I have to say that in these three weird sisters, Brown has created some unlikeable characters, the biggest difference being that they all (more or less) achieved some redemption by the end. The sisters were so distinct and, yet, so flawed that it made the story recognizable.

Two Andreas sisters were called back to Barnwell, a small, fictional Ohio college town, because their mother had been diagnosed with cancer, the third was still living there. Rosiland, the responsible oldest, was afraid to leave. Bianca, the middle sister, was a mess in more ways than one, thinking nothing of stealing thousands from her boss or sleeping with the husband of a woman she respects. And, poor baby Cordelia, arrived on the doorstep preggers and unwilling to name a father. I have always wanted a sibling or two, most only kids do at some point, because when push comes to shove, whether you like them or not, there is always a bond. Stories about sibling dynamics always fascinate me and I really enjoyed this messed up family that quoted Shakespeare and would rather read books than do pretty much anything else.

The story is told from what feels like a fourth ghost sister. When I looked around, I saw it called a ‘plural collective’, ‘community voice’, and the probably most correct ‘first person plural’. At first I was a little confused about which sister was narrating the story, but (not as quickly as I should have) realized that it was really all of them. It was inventive and felt like a fresh way to tell a time-old story about sisters. I really liked this one.

I read and listened to this one and would recommend either.

At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen

April 26, 201614 Comments

At the Water’s Edge. Finished 4-7-16, rating 4.25/5, historical fiction, pub. 2015

Unabridged audio read by Justine Eyre. 10 hours.

After embarrassing themselves at the social event of the year in high society Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve of 1942, Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut off financially by Ellis’s father, a former army Colonel who is already embarrassed by his son’s inability to serve in WWII due to his being colorblind.

To Maddie’s horror, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed in a venture his father attempted and very publicly failed at: he will hunt the famous Loch Ness monster and when he finds it he will restore his father’s name and return to his father’s good graces (and pocketbook). Joined by their friend Hank, a wealthy socialite, the three make their way to Scotland in the midst of war.

Each day the two men go off to hunt the monster, while another monster, Hitler, is devastating Europe. And Maddie, now alone in a foreign country, must begin to figure out who she is and what she wants. from Goodreads

This was a slow but rich story about a young woman coming into her own during World War II. At first, the drunken, entitled trio of Maddie, her husband Ellis, and friend Hank, were so unlikeable that I’m sure some people stopped reading. The self-absorption was just too much. Maddie and Ellis turned out of their wealthy Philadelphia home, headed to Scotland with Hank and his money. They were going to find and record the Loch Ness monster, something that had brought shame to Ellis’s father. As they crossed the ocean headed toward the war zone instead of away from it, Maddie started to see more than just herself and her own needs. To see her eyes opened to class, to war, to her husband, makes a very fulfilling journey.

We read this for book group and everyone liked it, most even more than Gruen’s Like Water for Elephants. The discussion centered around Maddie’s growth, the World War II backdrop, Ellis and Hank’s relationship, and, yes, whether the Loch Ness monster is real. As a counterpoint, Jason tried to listen to it and made it through two cds before giving up. There wasn’t enough going on for him.

Orphan Number 8 by Kin van Alkemade

April 5, 201610 Comments

Orphan #8. Finished 3-17-16, rating 4/5, historical fiction, pub. 2015

In 1919, Rachel Rabinowitz is a vivacious four-year-old living with her family in a crowded tenement on New York City’s Lower Eastside. When tragedy strikes, Rachel is separated from her brother Sam and sent to a Jewish orphanage where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment from the other orphans. But when she turns fifteen, she runs away to Colorado hoping to find the brother she lost and discovers a family she never knew she had.

Though Rachel believes she’s shut out her painful childhood memories, years later she is confronted with her dark past when she becomes a nurse at Manhattan’s Old Hebrews Home and her patient is none other than the elderly, cancer-stricken Dr. Solomon. Rachel becomes obsessed with making Dr. Solomon acknowledge, and pay for, her wrongdoing. But each passing hour Rachel spends with the old doctor reveal to Rachel the complexities of her own nature. She realizes that a person’s fate—to be one who inflicts harm or one who heals—is not always set in stone. from Goodreads

The synopsis that you just read makes it seem like this showdown with Dr. Solomon is going to be the focal point of the book and it really isn’t. This book spent just as much or more time on Rachel being a lesbian and what that meant at the time. Aside from a fairly contrived scene with her getting a little naked and making out with a stranger early on, I liked the way this part of the story was addressed. I was heartbroken for Rachel who continually thought herself unnatural because that’s how society saw her. I liked the stories, both past and present, but the Dr. Solomon dilemma was just a small part of a very full story.

Rachel was a character who was hard to feel a close connection with, but she did elicit a lot of sympathy. Watching your mother murdered is not something that most of us can imagine, nor can we really appreciate what it meant to be sent to a Jewish orphanage, housing a thousand kids. Barium force-fed so that Dr. Solomon could do experiments, children up to 5 kept in their cribs all day long, babies kept in isolation for no reason, this story was full of horrifying scenes. Rachel’s baldness caused by the radiation from all of the x-rays she was subjected to, just made her life that much more difficult and lonely.

The book was based on true events. The story of Rachel running away from the orphanage at 15 was compelling and hard to put down, but for me, the fact that this story was based on the author’s own family history made the story so much better. I liked the story (well, it could have used another page or two at the end) but the author’s notes at the end explaining how this book came to life added a richness to the story after it was told. I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

I read this one for a new book group and everyone liked it. It led to some great discussion. I would recommend it and if you interested in the real story behind the fiction you can can visit the author’s site here.

What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross

February 4, 2016February 4, 201611 Comments

What Was Mine. Finished 1-31-16, 4,25/5 stars, fiction, 336 pages, pub.2016

Lucy Wakefield is a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: she takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. It’s a secret she manages to keep for over two decades—from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends.

When Lucy’s now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. She reaches out to her birth mother for a tearful reunion, and Lucy is forced to flee to China to avoid prosecution. What follows is a ripple effect that alters the lives of many and challenges our understanding of the very meaning of motherhood. from Goodreads

Having your baby kidnapped is right up there with the top parent nightmares. Any parent can tell you the first moment that they lost sight of their child for a few moments and the panic that crawled through their body. For new mother Marilyn that moment changed her life and the life of her four month old daughter, Natalie. While Lucy didn’t go out that morning looking to kidnap a baby, she was unhinged enough in her overwhelming desire for a baby that the opportunity was too much for her to resist. As she kept telling herself that it was just for a few minutes, or a ride, or the night, she had to know that she was never giving baby Mia back.

The book was told in alternating chapters mainly by the three main characters, Lucy, Marilyn and Mia, but it was the shorter chapters told by the bit players and supporting cast that really rounded out the story and moved it forward. The current and ex-husbands, Aunt Cheryl, Nanny Wendy, the security guard at IKEA, etc. were expertly woven into the fabric of the story. You know from the beginning that eventually Mia will find out the truth about her mother(s), but it was told in such an easy to read way that it was a riveting page-turner that had me promising myself “just one more chapter” more than once!

I think the addicting short chapters that made this hard to put down also led to some parts that felt glossed over or not addressed. There were several parts where I wanted more story, no place more than the end, which felt incomplete to me. But that being said, I loved the book and think it would make a FANTASTIC book club selection.