Category: 4 Star Books

Blue Smoke, by Nora Roberts

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Cover ImageFinished 4-26-09, rating 4/5, romantic thriller, pub. 2005

“Something else I need to talk to you about.”  He set down hos fork, looked into her eyes.  “Pastorelli’s out.”

“He–”  She drew herself in, glanced around to see if any of her family could overhear.  “When?”

“Last week. I just got word.”

Chapter 5

Reena was only 11 years old when she watched her family restaurant burn to the ground.  She had been attacked by a boy in her class and their two fathers had come to blows, causing the other father to take a match to their family livelihood.  Years go by as Reena studies to become a member of the arson unit and she returns home to the Little Italy area of Baltimore.  She is welcomed with open arms by her large Italian family and life settles into family, fires, and the occasional boyfriend.  She is a strong woman who has a hard time finding a man who admires her determination and when she does the relationships end in death or abuse. 

I really liked this book.  I liked Reena, although I didn’t love her.  The secondary characters were fun and lovable and well developed.  I’d love to read another story involving the Hale clan.  I think it is the large family with so much love and loyalty that made this book feel so cozy.  The hero, Bo Goodnight, was a dream and easy to fall for.  Who doesn’t want a well-built, handsome carpenter who fell in love with you at first sight and has spent years trying to find you?

I’m not sure I would classify this as a thriller.  It is more of a family/romantic drama?  There was a mystery, but it really wasn’t that hard to figure out.  Actually, my biggest complaint is that for a smart woman, Reena was a little slow in seeing the obvious.

I’m not a Nora Roberts fan, but I really enjoyed this book and recommend it for a fun, fast-paced read.

April Morning, by Howard Fast

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Cover ImageFinished 4-23-09, rating 4/5, ya historical fiction, pub. 1961

For myself, I had the feeling that I was looking at my father for the very first time, not seeing him as I had always seen him in the vague wholeness of age and distance, but looking at the face of a surprisingly young man, his wide, brown face serious and intent upon me, his dark eyes shadowed in their inquiry, his broad full-lipped mouth tight and thoughtful.  How was it, I wondered, that I had never noticed before what a strikingly handsome man he was?  How was it that I had seen in him only the strength of overbearance and not the thewed strength of those massive brown arms spread on the desk with the white shirt sleeves rolled high and carelessly?  It was no wonder that men listened to him and heeded his words.

Chapter – The Night

It’s 1775 and the Battle of Lexington is about to take place in Adam’s backyard, but he doesn’t know it.  He is still hung up on feeling anger toward his father, unappreciated by his mother, and maligned by his younger brother.  He is a typical 15 year old, caught between wanting to grow up and needing to hold on to his childhood angst.  When their small community is warned that the British are headed their way, the men arm themselves, but hope that diplomacy may rule the day.  Adam is in the second line of defense when the British come through, guns firing and the blood flowing.  Adam started that April morning as a boy, but by the end of the day he had grown up witnessing murder, feeling despair, vowing revenge, and realizing that family is the most important thing. 

I loved this book.  I thought Adam’s adolescent relationship with his overbearing father was so real that it is really the heart of the book.  The battle and the rag tag way the men fought back that day at Lexington was a wonderful view into the ways of war over 200 years ago and it is interesting to contrast it with what we do to each other during war today.  This slim novel takes place over that one April day when Adam was forced into adulthood too soon, as was the case with many boys in 1775.

This book is told with such poignant honesty that it will touch your heart.  Although it is about life in the 1700’s, I think teens will recognize the feelings in this book and it may help them put their own feelings into perspective.  I’m glad I was able to watch Adam on his journey to manhood.

The Inn at Eagle Point, Sherryl Woods

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The Inn at Eagle Point (Chesapeake Shores Series) by Woods Woods: Book CoverFinished 4-20-09, rating 4/5, romance, pub. 2009

“Come on, Trace, be reasonable,” Abby pleaded.  “I need to get back to New York.  I have a job.  Jess knows what has to be done.  I trust her.”

“You’re her sister.  I’m her banker,” he said.  “Unless you agree to my terms, we’ll proceed with the foreclosure.”

He looked from Abby to Jess, then back again.  “Well, what’s it going to be?  Will I see you tomorrow?”

Chapter 4

Book 1 in the Chesapeake Shores Trilogy

Abby O’Brien is a successful portfolio manager on Wall Street and the oldest of 5 siblings.  When their mother left them it was up to Abby to take care of the family.  The Dad, Mick, lost himself in travel for work and Gram moved in to help care for the kids.  Now Abby must return home to Chesapeake Shores to help her baby sister, Jess.  She has her twin daughters in tow and a torch for her lost love, Trace Riley.  Trace is back in Chesapeake Shores due to a summons by his father, but finds he wants to stay when Abby shows up.  He just has to find a way to keep her there.  Abby and Trace are wonderful characters full of strength and love.

Although this is the central story, there is so much more going on.  The O’Brien’s are a dysfunctional, but loving family and the town of Chesapeake Shores sounds like a great place to live or, at least, visit for a few weeks.  We get to know the feisty Jess and melancholy Mick as well as the mother who left them all those years ago. 

This was Abby and Trace’s story, but I am looking forward to the next installment about the O’Brien clan, Flowers on Main.  I took this to Mexico and it was the perfect beach read.  Now if I could only get back to the beach when the next one comes out next month…

Come back tomorrow for my interview with the author, Sherryl Woods.

Long Lost, by Harlan Coben

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Cover ImageFinished 4-5-09, rating 4/5, thriller, pub. 2009

Two days before I learned the secret she’d kept buried for a decade – the seemingly personal secret that would not only devastate the two of us but change the world forever – Terese Collins called me at five AM, pushing me from one quasi-erotic dream into another.  She simply said, “Come to Paris.”

 Chapter 1

This is the 9th Myron Bolitar novel.

Myron, Win, and Esperanza are back in a mystery that takes Myron to Paris, Britain, and an unknown location before returning home to New Jersey and New York lucky to be alive.  Myron is called by an ex-lover, Terese, and she asks him to drop everything because she needs him in Paris.  Myron, coming to the end of a relationship, meets her there and is almost immediately taken into custody under the suspicion of murder of Therese’s ex-husband.   

Therese comes clean to Myron about the death of her daughter and the ex-husband Myron did not know about and Myron confesses that the French police have evidence that her dead daughter may have been at the murder of her ex.    So, the two must enlist the help of badass, best friend Win to help them not only stay one step ahead of police custody, but to learn the truth about her daughter’s death.

I have read all of the Myron books and love the witty repartee and humor.  The mysteries have gotten better over the years and this is the case with this one.  The mystery involves digging up graves, Mosad, secret torture locations, and terrorists sleeper cells in America.  It had much of the sarcasm I’ve always loved with the hard edge of today’s terrorism fears.  The resolution of the book was creepy and on the surface, thought-provoking. 

I loved the back drop of Paris (maybe a nod to the country who made Coben’s book, Tell No One, into an award winning movie?) and Britain and the long lost love of Therese.  Myron is such a romantic that it is always interesting to see how Coben manages to keep him single.  And no one does dialogue better than Coben.

You do not have to read the Myron books in order to enjoy them but I have to think it would make them better if you did.  The first Myron book is Deal Breaker.

One more thing, if you are on Facebook you should add Harlan Coben as a friend.  He updates daily and always has something fun to say.

An Invisible Sign of My Own, by Aimee Bender

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Cover ImageFinished 3-20-09, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2000

The clock said noon so I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator but the food inside looked too complicated and I peered into the cupboards but I didn’t want turkey soup, or garbanzo beans, or tuna, and I wandered into the bathroom, and without even really thinking about it, unwrapped the spare package of soap that I kept in the cabinet beneath the sink.

I bought the same brand my mother did.  A bright white bar, rocking on its back, friendly.  I brought it to the living room couch, and held it for awhile, smelling it, and there was a knife sitting on the side table from the previous day’s apple, which seemed convenient, and after a few minutes of just holding and smelling, I picked up the knife, sawed off a portion of the oval, set it sailing inside my mouth, and bit down.

Chapter 1

Mona Gray is a mess.  She is confused and confusing and bizarre and bizarrely lovable.  She has just turned twenty and decides to buy herself an ax for her birthday, which she takes into her elementary class and hangs it up on the wall.  Not surprisingly, this will lead to a few problems down the road.  She feels separate from the world, almost invisible, and this propels her to destructive and absurd behavior.

All of this, as becomes apparent, is due to her father giving up on life when she was young and pulling her mother into his ever insolar world.  The only person who ever really saw her, flaws and all, was her math teacher, but he fails to see enough and she resents him for it.

But now Mona has a chance of normalcy (the normalcy is relative) with a new job, students who challenge her, and a man who appreciates her unique appeal. 

The book is charming in a twisted way.  It was a fun, quick read.  I think my favorite part was the first chapter which is a fairy tale her father told her when she was ten.  It was wonderful.  The only problem with the book was that all of the central players were so far removed from anyone that I know that it was difficult to really relate to Mona’s troubles.  I was happy to read her story, but not as personally involved as I might have been. 

Aimee Bender has a unique voice and I look forward to reading more from her.

 

Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell

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Cover ImageFinished 3-13-09, rating 4/5, historical fiction, pub. 2008

If we are timid or rebellious or both, then travel – by itself and by ourselves – forces us to leave our old lives behind.  Travel can overcome habitual resistance and the soul in motion along magnetic lines of attraction.  On foreign soil, desires – denied, policed, constrained at home – can be unbound.  What hides beneath the skin-thin surface of the domesticated self is sensual, sexual, adult.

Why then, truly, had I come to Egypt?  To flee everything that was conventional and predictable and respectable.  I wanted to lock up my mother’s house in Cedar Glen and walk away from my own dull mediocrity.  I wanted to escape anyone and everything that had ever told me No.

page 138, hardcover

The dead narrator, Agnes Shanklin, is a forty year-old spinster who loses her entire family, and almost her own life to the 1918 influenza outbreak.  A school teacher in Cleveland, Ohio, she  decides to use some of her inheritance to travel to Egypt, where her sister spent many years as a missionary.  She travels with her little dachshund, Rosie, who causes more than a few problems in Cairo.

In 1921 the fate of the current Middle East was squarely in the hands of the power players at the Cairo Peace Conference.  T.E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, and Gertrude Bell were a few of the people that Agnes came in contact with.  Lawrence had been friends with her sister before he became Lawrence of Arabia and through him Agnes was shown into the inner circle where she often shared her hardly esteemed American views.  Her unexpected contact with these power brokers, placed her squarely in the path of the German spy, Karl Weilbacher.

I was enchanted by Agnes .  The running dialog in her head from her mother and a few others imortant to her was a wonderful way to show how she gained strength and confidence and finally become her own woman.  The fact that she was dead when she was narrating this book was unexpected and enjoyable.  Her attachment to her dog Rosie, was a hit with me and I’m sure any other dog lover.  This is as much of her coming of age story as it is an historical one.

Russell did extensive research on the main players.  I was excited to learn that Churchill’s bodyguard was based on the real man who had written a book about that time.  Agnes’s detailed tour through Palestine, Jerusalem and Nile made you feel as though you were right there, although they were the only parts of the book I founds myself sometimes skimming.

I love the nod to Russell’s Cleveland roots by featuring the famous department store Halle’s (inspiration for Halle Berry’s name) and the clerk who was dating Les Hope, who was thinking of changing his name to Bob 🙂

This book is so relevant today that I must recommend it for anyone interested in what is going on in the Middle East and our foreign policy.  Russell became interested in this topic when Osama bin Laden claimed this Peace Conference in Cairo was the reason for the 9-11 attacks.  It could not be any more timely.

Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown

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Cover ImageFinished 2-24-09, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2000

“…Faith is universal.  Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary.  Some of us pray to Jesus, some go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles.  In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than oursselves.”

Langdon wished his students could expreess themselves so clearly.  Hell, he wished he could express himself so clearly.  “And God?” he asked. “Do you believe in God?”

Vittoria was silent for a long time.  “Science tells me God must exist.  My mind tells me I will never understand God.  And my heart tells me I am not meant to.”

Chapter 31

This is the book where we meet respected Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon for the first time.  (You may have also heard of him in a little book called The DaVinci Code)  Langdon is called to Switzerland to investigate the brutal murder of a physicist that appears to be the work of the mysterious and defunct group, the Illuminati.  Here he finds out about a new energy source that is being used for the first time as a weapon.  Langdon and the dead physicist’s daughter, Vittoria, head to Rome where they have very little time to find the hidden anti-matter that could take out all of Vatican City.

Vatican City is preparing for the enclave to elect a new Pope.  The camerlingo, head of the Catholic Church until the new Pope is elected, welcomes Langdon and Vittoria and opens the tunnels and secret documents of the Vatican to them so that they can save the city and the Cardinals kidnapped by the Illuminati.

This book is essentially a treasure hunt, with clues and hints, that leads the reader through Vatican City and Rome.  At its core it is a book trying to bring together the two opposing forces of science and religion.  But most importantly it is a page-turner.  A 700+ page edge-of-your-seat thrill ride.  

I liked it.  I finished it it one day (obviously I did very little else!) and think it is going to make a fun movie.  Maybe a better movie than the DaVinci Code because it has a more revered and known setting.  But, it did have a problem.  It was a good 100 pages too long.  It’s like Brown tried to cram as many twists and turns into the book as possible when it really wasn’t necessary.  There was a point in those last hundred pages when it just went too far in trying to shock and everything after that was a little tainted to me. 

I do recommend it.  It’s fun and fast and interesting.  My husband liked it better than the DaVinci Code.  Except for the backdrop of Italy I didn’t, but it was still worth it.

Noble’s Book of Writing Blunders, by William Noble

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Noble's Book of Writing Blunders: And How to Avoid ThemFinished 2-10-09, rating 4, writing reference, pub. 2006

But if your confidence is bursting and you are sure your new approach will work, then go for it.  Never, ever, assume that you must march to the same beat as everyone else.

Think bravely!

Act honestly!

Write imaginatively!

And make your own rules.

Last lines of the book

When you read interviews with published authors the advice that is most often given is to write.  So, I have always viewed writing instruction books with a skeptical eye.  But, Writer’s Digest has all of these writing books on clearance and I decided to pick some up cheap.  This is the second one I’ve read and it was a good read. 

Each of the 29 blunders was covered in a chapter of 4-7 pages, which was long enough to address the issue and not too long as to make me close the book and not pick it back up.  These blunders were basic, but the way he wrote about each one took it one step further.  He didn’t only address point of view, slang, cliques, but also how each was perceived  by the reader.  Many of the blunders in this book he blames on laziness by the writer, but I also think a beginning writer faces the challenges he lays out.  Some of the chapters overlapped in content, but, for the most part, it was good. 

This book is written for the fiction writer.  He differentiates between the fiction narrative and journalism and how the rules for one are not the same as for the other.  These blunders are all about building tension in your story and keeping the reader invested in your book.

There are so many blunders that it is somewhat overwhelming.  If I was trying to remember everything in this book I wouldn’t be able to write a word!  That is why I quoted what I did at the top, because it was a great way to end the book.  I think my writing will be better off for having read this book.

A Gentle Rain, by Deborah Smith

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Cover ImageFinished on 1-20-09, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2007

Shakey pointed a fake finger at me.  “You and that scar-faced mare?  You’re racin’ for all of us who are missin’ a part or two.  You probably won’t win, but at least you’ll get in the game.  You’re proof that God needs even the angels who are missin’ a wing.”

Chapter 20

Kara was raised as one of the elite.  Worth millions, with powerful friends in all the right places, she always felt inferior to her very successful relatives.  When her parents die she discovers she had been adopted and decides to find her bith parents.  Mac and Lily are still together and living on the Thocco Ranch.  Kara changes her name and heads to Florida where she ingratiates herself into the lives of everyone at the ranch. 

Ben Thocco has come up the hard way.  Born dirt poor he lost his parents at a young age and had to escape to Mexico with his younger brother so the courts would not separate them.  Now, in his late 30’s, he is a successful Florida ranch owner still caring for his younger brother who suffers from Down’s Syndrome and a serious heart condition.  His ranch hands are special needs adult who contribute to the ranch and form a makeshift family of society’s outcasts. 

This story of mentally challenged adults and a love between two people who need each other really touched me.  The theme of being different and being loved and accepted anyway is one that we should all be reminded of from time to time.  The book drew me in because of the people, but there was also so much story to tell.  Ben is fighting to save his ranch and his brother’s life and Kara is trying to come to terms with her wealth and what is best for her birth parents. 

I thought the last section of the book had more story than it really needed and I wish I could say more, but it might spoil it.  The end was too tidy and that is the only reason this didn’t rate higher for me. 

This book will appeal to many people.  Jane Austen fans will love the quotes sprinkled throughout the book.  Floridians, ranchers, and horse racing fans will enjoy the story.  Anyone interested in the emotional impact of finding out you’re adopted will not be disappointed.  And, of course, anyone who has someone in their life that is different will appreciate the story of the Thocco Ranch.

The Angel, by Carla Neggers

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Cover ImageFinished 1-18-09, rating 4/5, romantic suspense, pub. 2008

This is not a sequel, but it is book 2 of the Boston PD-FBI series.

She joined him at the table, her cheeks flushed as she buttered a small piece of bread.  “Once upon a time,” she said, laying on her Irish accent, “there were three brothers who lived on the southwest coast of Ireland–a farmer, a hermit monk and a ne’er-do-well, who was, of course, everybody’s favorite…

Prologue

 And so begins the magical tale of the three brothers and the Stone Angel.  This Irish legend is the basis of Keira’s impending six-week trip to Ireland.  She is a successful folklorist and illustrator who is researching Irish stories for an upcoming conference and the trip to Ireland is both professional and personal.  Her mother, now a religious recluse, had gone to Ireland in her youth and returned home pregnant with Keira.

Keira’s uncle, Boston homicide detective Bob O’Reilly, was concerned about her, even more so when she discovers a man dead the night before she leaves.  When he doesn’t hear from her in Ireland he calls a search-and-rescue expert to find her.  When Simon finds her the sparks fly and Simon stays by her side as they head back to Boston.  Once back in Boston a wide range of characters and mishaps prove that the legend may have some truth and every one who knows about it is at risk.

This book really does have a magical feel to it.  There are angels, fairies, Satan, and evil, all fighting an ageless battle.  I’ve never really been interested in fairy tales or folktales, but I must admit there is something very romantic and mystical about them that I’ve never really appreciated.  Also, I fell in love with Ireland even though most of the action was in Boston.  The mystery and rugged beauty appealed to me and now I might have to put Ireland on my list of hopeful vacation destinations!

This is not a sequel, but I think you will not fully appreciate this story without reading the first, The Widow.  My review is here.  Abigail, Owen, and Abigail’s father all play significant roles and I appreciate that she incorporated them into the story instead of them being relegated to a mere mention here and there. 

Book 3, The Mist, will be released this summer.  I am looking forward to it 🙂