Book Review: Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Fiction. I read this one in March 2015 because it is another one that was selling like mad and was on everybody's hold list. It is a mystery and a thriller set in Australia amongst the mommy culture. It fits well as a good read for an American audience because they can relate to the mommy culture and its judgments: who is the best looking, who is the most devoted mommy, who is in the "it" group of super mommies, who is the outcast single mom who doesn't do all the mommy things properly for suburbia, and so forth. 

The main characters are interesting and the work will keep you guessing, two musts for a decent thriller. I could sympathize with each character and the elements of their lives, even those that are quite different from me (which is pretty much most of them). I always hate reading the bits about domestic violence, so be forewarned, it is in there, but the way the character explains and deals with it was eye opening for me. It was not left as just blank violence but explained from her perspective in an honest manner. I have trouble reviewing thrillers because I do not want to ruin it for anybody else, so I will end with saying it is a good one, well worth your time to read it. There is a reason why this one sold so many copies and is on so many people's library hold list.

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Book Review: Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

Fiction. I read this in February 2015 because it was selling like hotcakes and it seemed to be on everybody's hold list, so why not. It was excellent, one of the best books I have read this year! I learned a ton about elephants (that scary roar from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park is a male elephant), it had fully developed characters, and the mystery was quite good, it kept me guessing throughout. Often I find with mystery or suspense books though that I am sick of waiting to see who did what, and it feels like the rest of the book is just filler: the first page is usually a cliff-hanger (person dying but we don't know who it is), loads of filler, then the last two chapters provide "what really happened" followed by some kind of neat wrap-up of their lives. That formula works and sells a lot of books. Although this one does follow said formula a bit, the middle portion of the book is compelling, you really do want to find out about their lives, the elephants, and what will happen to their sanctuary.

I highly suggest this to mystery lovers, those looking for a compelling little novel, and those who want to know more about elephants (the research was fabulous).

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Book Review: Deeply Odd by Dean Koontz

Fiction.  After a friend of mine's boyfriend told me I should check out Dean Koontz because I love Stephen King's work, I looked up which works people seem to like best by Koontz and this is the series I saw cited the most often.  So, over time, I have been working my way through the Odd Thomas books.  I have a bit of a gap between 5 to 6 and 7 because of waiting for the library to get eBook copies of them and because the last one wasn't published until December 2014.  So, Deeply Odd, is number 6/7 of the Odd Thomas series.

This one is the attempt to rev up the action before the final installment.  As I have said before, this is Stephen King light, the writing off Koontz is nowhere near as good, I think they are compared simply because both have elements of the supernatural in their works, but that is where the comparison ends.  I like the character of Odd, I like the little adventures, I like the ideas of the supernatural and good versus evil in the works, but the constant repetition gets tiresome, and you kind of read while thinking "just get on with it already!"  I did absolutely love the woman he drove around, Mrs. Edie Fischer, she was one of the most fun and refreshing characters to come around in the series in some time.

If you are like me and are determined to finish the series go for it, it does have some playing with other dimensions, Annamaria is still here and still pregnant, Mrs. Fischer is cool, but be warned, the evil guys have evil plans for the children, and that is disturbing to anybody.  Quite creepy and evil.

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Book Review: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

Fiction.  This is the 7th Flavia de Luce mystery novel, and I was waiting desperately for it to come out.  I waited a bit of time for my library to get it in eBook format and then had a marathon of reading it.  It is the first of the Flavia books that does not take place in her home town, the little English village of Bishop's Lacey.  This time she is away at the same boarding school her mother attended, Miss Bodycote's Female Academy, which is across the pond in Toronto.  It follows suit with most of the Flavia works, where after a little bit of time there, we are suddenly presented with a corpse out of nowhere, and Flavia is the girl to solve it all.

Since it is not in Bishop's Lacey we have a different cast of people to deal with, but it still has the same charm of her running around where she is not supposed to go, people who you are not sure if they are on the side of good or are perhaps involved in some larger conspiracy, and of course it includes Flavia's usual obsession with chemistry and her rapier wit.  We also get to learn a bit more about her legendary mother and a secret group in the process.  While I was a bit sad to see her leave the little English village, there are only so many people who can die mysteriously in such a small town.  I am happy with the broader story line opening up since it leaves us the possibility of having more novels about Flavia and more tidbits about her mother's mysterious life.

If you are a fan of the Flavia de Luce mysteries you will enjoy it, and if you are not, you should get reading, she is a pint-sized Sherlock with a lot more wit, humor, fun, and a lot more knowledge of chemistry, she is a total hoot!

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Book Review: Delicious! by Ruth Reichl

Fiction.  This was a wonderful little novel and a definite must for anybody who is a "foodie" of any kind!  I loved the characters, the settings, the author's way with words, and the plot was fantastically interesting too.  The main character is Billie Breslin, who takes a job as an assistant to the editor in NYC at the preeminent food magazine Delicious! (think Gourmet where the author used to work).  The novel follows Billie through the streets of New York as she learns even more about food: she has a perfect palate and can taste almost any ingredient immediately, which helps her land her second job at Fontanellis, a fun and traditional cheese shop, where she is the first non-family member to ever work there (of course they treat her like family though).  The offices of the Delicious! magazine are in a 19th-century mansion, filled with quirky co-workers, beautiful architectural features, and eventually a mystery for Billie to solve.

After the magazine is closed by the owner who wants to focus on their more lucrative magazines put out by Pickwick Publishing, Billie finds herself the only one left behind to answer phone calls, emails, and bizarre letters from people who have utterly destroyed the recipes in the magazine.  Since its inception, the magazine had what is called the "Delicious! Guarantee": try the recipe, if you do not like it we will refund your money for the items you purchased to make it.  A particularly peculiar customer, who calls every single day, does the most disastrous things that you can think of, such as substituting canned oysters for scallops, powdered milk instead of heavy cream, and other comically tragic concoctions.  

As the story continues, Billie and another former employee, Sammy, end up becoming fast friends.  He is at the empty old mansion because Sammy has yet to empty out his office (he was traveling in Marrakesh) and thus he hangs around attempting to help her solve some of the bizarre inquiries from the readers (e.g. requests for recipes dating all the way back to the 1950s).  The two of them end up exploring the library as a result of trying to search for some obscure information, but the library had been locked up for decades, and nobody knew what exactly was inside.  They find themselves trying to solve a mystery related to the correspondence during WWII between a young girl named Lulu and the now infamous James Beard, who worked at the magazine.  I do not want to add more lest I give away any spoilers, so I will say that it is a charming novel, filled with friendships, tragic family histories, mystery, some romance, and of course utter devotion to food which will appeal to gastronomes everywhere.  Give it a read, it will make you smile!

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Book Review: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Fiction. I was searching for something good to read that was available immediately from my library's digital consortium (I have enough on my hold list), so I looked up Donna Tartt because I enjoyed The Goldfinch immensely (her most recent work, she won The Pulitzer Prize for it).  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I love the intelligence of her writing, but she most definitely tackles some deep and disturbing parts of the human psyche; so, if you are looking for something light to read, this is certainly not it.  However, if you are up for something a little more challenging than your average top seller, this is a good one because she is an excellent storyteller.

This work never exactly states what year it is, which I found both profoundly annoying and intriguing at the same time.  I was originally guessing the late 60s but then she mentions some styles of clothing that seem more like the 80s, and then a bit later some things that seem like the 90s (music primarily), so I am still not terribly certain of when exactly the events took place, even though I have finished the work.  I am fairly certain she meant for that to be the point: we live like the eras we identify with, small upscale colleges seem to warp you back to the late 60s when learning was valued before the sole focus now of obtaining a piece of paper to "get you a job," and so that we as readers do not obsess about spotting popular culture, but rather that we focus on the timelessness of these kinds of relationships and the people who have them.

The central story revolves around the protagonist Richard Papen, a small town California man, attending an exclusive college in Vermont called Hampden.  He eventually succeeds in his goal of becoming a part of a tiny group of classics majors, six in all, who center their lives around the tutelage of Professor Julian Morrow.  The work is quite like a Greek tragedy itself, slowly unfolding the background of events that lead up to the death of one of the characters, which we are told about from the very beginning of the novel.  You get everything very Greek in here: murder, incest, much imbibing of alcohol, highbrow thinking simultaneously with lowbrow behavior, the ruling classes, exclusivity, friendship, oddities of love, devotion to learning (not merely memorizing items for a test), and of course a dark ending.  If you are up for something that is complicated but a pleasure to read, if you value the effort real learning takes, and if you like the darker side of humanity, then I recommend this work to you.  Donna Tartt is an amazing writer, and I can see why she spends so much time working on each of her novels (about a decade): they are highly evolved microcosms of humanity, not remotely like easy beach readers that people toss to the side.  The ideas will stew around in your brain for quite some time.

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Book Review: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Fiction.  Many of the reviews I read of this one said it was inferior to her other more recent two novels, but I thought it was excellent, Flynn really knows how to write about unstable women quite well.  I am not sure how she has tapped into this skill, but she writes interesting mysteries that always keep you guessing until the very end of the work, and which treat unstable women in a way that is not pitying them nor making them frightening.  They are definitely scary, but more because they are disturbed and we fear becoming disturbed ourselves, it seems that line is easy enough to cross and to understand why one would cross those lines when reading her books.  Flynn has a real gift.  I would again recommend her works to those who like mysteries and who are interested in the dark recesses of the human psyche, especially from people leading seemingly "normal" lives.

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Book Review: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Fiction.  Similar to Gone Girl, it is fairly hard to say something without revealing anything, but like Gone Girl it is completely worth your time, and you will just keep guessing, all the way to the end.  The main character is Libby Day, whose family was massacred when she was seven years-old (her mother and two sisters were murdered).  She is now in her thirties, with her brother is in jail for those murders, and the rest of the story revolves around her hunting down fragments of what actually happened that day, from her father, brother, and other characters.  It is an off-putting crime but an enigmatic book, definitely worth your time.  I completely recommend it!

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Book Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

There is really no way to review this without throwing something into the mix that might ruin reading it.  So, I will simply say read it, there is a reason why so many people have read it!  I am not usually a crime-thriller person for my reading choices, but it was worth it.  I definitely thought I figured things out about a dozen times or so but I and never actually did, she is good.  Flynn is an excellent writer, compels you to read more, and makes it so you never figure everything out and in a way that does not make you feel stupid.  I got a good deal on all three of her works for Nook from B&N as a package ($19 for the three books) so I am marathoning through each of them.  If you are looking for a great fiction read this is it, I completely recommend it and the author!

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Book Review: Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Fiction.  This is a straight-up detective novel, there is not any supernatural or scary business.  It was a good quick read, and pretty short compared to most of his works which I once read are "sold by the pound" in one of his afterwords.  It was a good story, with interesting characters, and it had nice little nods to old movies, current times, and other little tidbits.  I definitely recommend it, but be forewarned that there is a sicko character in it with some serious mommy issues, not remotely intended for the younger readers.

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Book Review: Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

Fiction.  It was like the movie Memento or 50 First Dates...no way to say more without a spoiler...it involves losing her memory every night and her attempts to remember her life.  It was a light mystery sort of read if you are looking for one of those.

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Book Review: The Expats by Chris Pavone

Fiction.  I thought it was a good little read, but all the flipping back and forth was very confusing...if their intention is to make this a movie, they had better give her different haircuts for the different periods of time, because it was really rough to keep track of all the flipping around in time.  With that said, it was an interesting book, and if you like the "your normal wife is really a crazy spy and we live this cool life in Europe but we are now in danger" thriller type thing, this is your book.  I would recommend it but do not read it while you are tired, all the time jumping takes some concentration.

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Book Review: Inferno by Dan Brown

     I read this is three sittings, I thought it was excellent!  If you like the other Dan Brown books with Robert Langdon in them, then you will like this one.  It follows the same M.O. except he starts out with amnesia in this one.  I won't say too much else because it is a mystery book where he solves puzzles; what I will say is that the characters spend quite a bit of time in Florence, and although it does reference Dante's Inferno throughout the book, I do not think it would be necessary to have read Dante's work or the other Langdon books by Dan Brown in order to read this one.  The main character, Robert Langdon, is the sort of India Jones of symbols and art.  Each adventure can stand on its own and does not stem from previous events in the other novels.  The only nod to the other books is when he mentions the Vatican "doesn't like him either" to another character.  Since I am an art historian myself, I did know where they were heading for the various locations by the hints provided; however, I was still very surprised with the twists and turns in the plot and with the characters.  It was an enjoyable leisure read! 

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Book Review: The Beekeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

This was a book club read for my local library before I joined in June of 2010 that I read on my own to catch up later on (orig. they read it for 2/2010). I am normally not a big mystery reader nor have I read everything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but I really enjoyed this book! I would like to read more in the series but there always seems to be so many things to read and so little free time on my hands!

The book is about a young woman named Mary Russell who becomes a sort of apprentice to Sherlock Holmes in his later years after he is retired. There are fun passages with danger and disguises, classic characters like Watson, and of course mysteries to solve. She is a great character because she is not just a bumbling sidekick but an equal to Holmes, so less of an apprentice at times and more of an equal getting some tips. She is not a typical woman of the times the story is set in (1915 England), with her intelligence level, wearing of pants, and her audacious nature.

I would definitely recommend this to lovers of mystery and Sherlock Holmes but also to those who, like me, might not necessarily be hardcore sleuth fans!

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