Tag: fiction

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.

Storm Rider, by Cassie Edwards

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Cover ImageFinished 4-22-09, rating 2/5, romance, pub. 2002

Storm Rider was that man!

Soon the Snake’s evil deeds would be a thing of the past.  Then, and only then, could Storm Rider think of other things…most important, having a woman in his blankets to love, to cherish.

And then there would be children!

Chapter 2

Tabitha Daniel became Talking Rain the day her parents were killed and she was taken in by the Chief of the Crow tribe.  She was accepted as a member of the tribe, even though her blonde beauty and independent spirit set her apart.  Then Chief Storm Rider shows up wanted to reach a compromise with the Crows and Talking Rain finds herself drawn to him.    When a stunt goes too far Talking Rain finds herself a captive of Storm Rider and she is at his mercy. 

I found the story melodramatic and the writing tedious.  They were obssessed with one another at the very first look and there were pages and pages filled with alternating lustful and resisting thoughts and feelings without any real action.  And, while  I love a good exclamation point ! there were so many that it was distracting.  (Have you ever watched the Seinfeld episode where Elaine edited a book and used an ! every other sentence?  Then you know what I’m talking about.)

Cassie Edwards is a New York Times Bestselling Author, so I have to think I just read one of her less successful titles.  I don’t think I’d read another by her, but if you have a favorite, leave a comment.

The Man Who Ate the 747, by Ben Sherwood

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The Man Who Ate the 747 by Sherwood Sherwood: Book CoverFinished 4-21-09, rating 4.5/5, fiction, pub. 2000

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, watching your best friend eat an airplane.  Some days you suspected he wasn’t all there in the head.  But then, on other days, he was the smartest. most insightful person you ever knew.

Chapter 3

 J.J. Smith is the Keeper of the Records for The Book of Records (a Guinness-like book).  He is your average man who witnesses greatness, but never acquires it.  His last assignment was to verify the world’s longest kiss, 30:45:00, and the couple misses it by 4 seconds.  He is under pressure from his boss to find the next great record or he could be downsized.  As luck would have it he receives an anonymous tip from someone that a man is eating a Boeing 747.  He catches the first plane to a small town in Nebraska.

Wally Chubb has been in love with Willa Wyatt since his ninth birthday and he figures by eating the 747 that crashed into his field he will finally get her attention.  He has made pretty good progress by the time J.J. shows up and he is excited when television outlets show up to record his feat.  He must find help for the black box, but executives from Boeing show up to help him out.  Unfortunately, Willa seems to take no more notice of him than she did before.

Willa knows why Wally is eating the plane, but figures if she ignores him he will eventually stop.  Then this handsome man shows up asking questions and spouting records that he has witnessed all around the world and she is hooked.  Against her better judgement she finds herself drawn into J.J.’s orbit.

I adore this charming  and original love story.  It is full of small town warmth and spirit and it is sure to inspire you, at least a little.  I wouldn’t want anyone to eat a 747 for me, but I had to admire Wally ingenuity.  It’s amazing to find out what foods you can put ground up metal  into.  It should have included a few recipes in the back 🙂

The quirky characters and plot will bring a smile to your face.  This was not at all what I expected, but I cannot recommend it enough.  At only 250 pages it is a quick, worthwhile read.  It’s my favorite book so far this year.

Pot of Gold, by Judith Michael

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Cover ImageFinished 4-14-09, rating 2.5/5, fiction, pub. 1993

“Claire won the lottery on a Wednesday afternoon in May, the same afternoon that Emma graduated from high school, the dog ran away, and the land lord raised the rent.”

first line of book

Claire Goddard, a woman in her mid 30’s, has a job she likes, a daughter she loves, and a friend as close as a sister.  Then her weekly lottery ticket is a winner.  Sixty Million Dollars!  She quits her job, buys a million dollar home within minutes of seeing it, takes in an old woman claiming to be an aunt (or cousin), and begins spending her winnings at a fast pace.  On a celebratory cruise to Alaska Claire and her daughter, Emma, fall prey to the charms of Quintin and Brix Eiger.  Suddenly Emma wants to skip college and become a model for the Eiger’s cosmetic company and win the heart of Brix.  And Claire finds herself in the inner circle of the wealthy in the arms of Quintin.

Winning $60 million in the lottery could be the ultimate American dream.  And Claire spends it fast and furious like most lottery winners, which is fine except she never really seemed to grasp the absurdity of her decisions.  One her first decisions was letting a homeless woman con her way into her home and life.  And when given the option of going anywhere in the world, money is obviously not an issue, she chooses an Alaskan cruise.  Nothing against Alaska, I’d like to take a cruise there someday myself, but given the extravagance of her monetary spending it was a very odd choice. 

I found it a little boring.  I must confess if I had accidentally left this on the plane with a few hundred pages left I wouldn’t have been upset.  I did not connect with any of the characters.  Claire was nice enough, but lacked wit or a sharp intelligence.  And the point of view changed often with no notice or obvious reason.  I really wanted to like it more, but I didn’t.  But I wouldn’t mind winning $60 million in the lottery.  Even though I’ve never purchased a lottery ticket.

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.

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd

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The Secret Life of Bees by Kidd Monk Kidd: Book CoverFinished 4-2-09, rating 5/5, fiction, pub. 2002

Next to Shakespeare I love Thoreau best.  Mrs. Henry made us read portions of Walden Pond, and afterward I’d had fantasises of going to a private garden where T. Ray would never find me.  I started appreciating Mother Nature, what she’d done with the world.  In my mind she looked like Eleanor Roosevelt.

Chapter 3

It’s 1964 in South Carolina and Lily is a fourteen year old living with her abusive dad and the knowledge that she killed her mother.  All she has of her mother is a photo and a picture of a black Mary with the words Tiburon, South Carolina written on the back.  When she chooses to spring her nanny, Rosaleen, from jail they hitchhike to Tiburon so Lily can find the memory of her mother.  What she finds are three African-American beekeepers that live in a pink house.  The three sisters take  in Lily and Rosaleen.

This novel has been popular for so long, it almost seems silly to to write a review, but I am sometimes silly.  My Mom gave me this book in 2003 and told me I had to read, but I didn’t think it was my type of book.  So, I am silly, a major procrastinator and occasionally wrong.  I absolutely loved this book.

 I thought Lily’s heartbreak over the confusion of her mother’s death and her pain of having T. Ray not love her was touching and real.  I loved her embarrassment over Rosaleen and Rosaleen blossoming in the pink house.  The three sisters were each interesting and August provided Lily with the rock that she needed.  

I didn’t even mind learning about bees and the Black Madonna.  I’m not sure I totally got the ‘religion’ the small group practiced, but it did provide stability for Lily.  And the bees helped her gain confidence.

The book was not only about losing a mother, but racial inequality.  Lily was the only white girl in a house filled with black.  Zach, who worked with the bees, provided Lily with the knowledge that desire is color blind and he was also a friend to lean on.   August, June, and May all accepted her even though it was highly improbable at the time.  I loved Rosaleen’s obsession with registering to vote and the full circle the story provided for her.

This is the best book I’ve read in awhile and I’m happy to have finally read it.  Now I can watch the movie.  Will I be disappointed?

 

Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg

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Cover ImageFinished 3-28-09, rating 3.5/5, fiction, pub. 1993

She couldn’t do a whole sentence; it took too much air.  So she would say pieces like that.  Sometimes, even if you were loving her so much, your fists clenched and your heart feeling like it had a tight peel around it, you would get mad like that.

page 13 of the mass market paperback

Katie is a twelve year old Army brat living in Texas with her abusive father and her older sister.Her mother has recently died and Katie crawls under her bed to have conversations with her and even harbors a hope that it was all merely a misunderstanding and that one day she will walk through the front door.  Her best friend, Cherylanne, lives next door and is two years older, so Katie learns about kissing boys and sex and shaving her legs from her,  Their conversation about sex was pretty funny.

Katie is just  a girl trying to make her way in a world without a mother and a sister already halfway out the door.  She is every girl and it is easy to recognize yourself in her, of course, some things are scarier and more painful than others.  When she starts her period she thinks of it as a gift and is excited that she can now have a baby, something to call her own.  When her father tells them that they will have to move again she resists the idea because she would be moving to a place where her mother had never been.

This is a powerful coming of age story.  I read the second book about Katie, Joy School, first, and liked it better than this one.  I understand her father and her sister now that I’ve read this one, but I did not like the story as much.   I still recommend it,  as I do with anything Elizabeth Berg writes,

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.

 

The Zero Hour, by Joseph Finder

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Cover ImageFinished 3-17-09, rating 3/5, fiction, pub. 1996

“I assume you know who I am.”

Baumann shook his hand and nodded.  “Certainly, Mr. Dyson,” he said.  “I do know a bit about you.

“Glad to hear it.”

“I’ve recently had some spare time to do a little research.”

Dyson chortled, as if to share Baumann’s joke, but Baumann was not smiling.  “Do you know why you’re here?”  Dyson asked.

“No,” Baumann admitted.  “I know that I’m not sitting in Cell Block Ninteen in Pollsmoor Prison.  And I know that you made the arrangements for my jailbreak.  But to be entirely honest, I have no idea why.”

Chapter 8

The Prince of Darkness, aka Baumann, is a terrorist for hire and a fugitive American billionaire has just sprung him from a South African prison .  Mr. Dyson has lost his his family and the use of legs thanks to the U.S. government and he has hired Baumann to plant a bomb that will bring down Wall Street.  Baumann gets to work in making his way from Switzerland to the U.S. and finding all of the pieces to the dangerous and complex mission.

FBI Secial Agent Sarah Cahill finds herself involved in this plot because one of her informants has been murdered and she has asked all the right questions.  She is put in charge of a small task force given the large duty of figuring out not only who, but what is going on.  She also has to relocate to New York City with her eight year old son.

This is a fast-paced thriller and I had a hard time putting it down.  This is a good look at international terrorism and national security before 9-11.  There are many references to the first World Trade Center bombing and what happened in Oklahoma City.  So, the the book isn’t wrong, it’s just that the world, especially the US, has changed.

There are a few negatives.  One of the first chapters in the book is a pretty graphic one with a dominatrix and a submissive.  The excruciating detail was unnecessary, but fed into the very macho point of view of the book.  Sarah’s character was easy to root for, but she did something in the middle of the book that seemed so out of character that it was hard to understand her after that.  I was a little disappointed in the ending.  Baumann is the main character, Sarah is given equal time, but she is not nearly as interesting.  The end fizzles out because all the sudden it turns into Sarah’s story.

It does seem like a lot of complaints, but it was well-written and I was anxious to see how it would end, so it probably evens itself out.  I also think that men would rate this higher than women.