Jeff Sexton

Doan Does It Again. I titled my review of Doan's LADY SUNSHINE "Cinematic" and my review of her THE SUMMER LIST "The Boys Of Summer", and I can tell you that despite the few years away, Doan has not lost a single step in her storytelling. This tale is just as cinematic and just as evocative as either of those prior books, and does a phenomenal job of showing one particularly extreme lifestyle... and the repercussions it can have as kids raised within it grow up and begin making decisions of their own.

As with much other fiction - and particularly as I write this review on the day that news breaks that, yet again, Augusta, Ga has arrested a parent trying to make a better life for his kids because he placed them in a safe area for a few minutes while going to a nearby spot for a job interview - yes, there are absolutely elements of this story that would not play in the real world of the 2020s. Yet this book also isn't set in the real world of the 2020s, instead being set decades earlier, in a period where I myself lived at least very certain specific elements of this life both in and out of the trailer park. Identifying which elements goes into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that it involves what was truly a common practice among working class families of prior eras - even if it may be criminalized by Karens and bureaucrats today.

Still, even with these elements taken as the fiction they are, the story they work to show is itself quite powerful indeed, and Doan truly does an excellent job of showing how halcyon days may not have been as perfect as were remembered... and perhaps we didn't know all that we thought we did in those days either. Doan just has a way with coming of age stories, clearly, and yet again it truly shines through here in so very many ways.

Come for the beautiful, evocative prose that captures the best of (what I imagine to be, having never actually experienced it) the California summers, both back in the 80s and again in the early 2000s. Stay for the all too relatable story of children confronting what they think they know about their own childhoods and all the family dynamics this brings forth in adult children dealing with their parents.

Very much recommended.

Wild NYC 80s Romp. I really can't say enough great about this book. The fact that I was able to read it at least partially in a not-so-smoke-filled cigar lounge made it even better personally, if only because it made it that much easier to get "in character" as a dude of the era. (Btw, even though I *was* born in the early 80s, my God, to have been able to be a young adult in that era... the 2000s of my own 20s were wild, but I'm pretty sure that era would have been even more fun. :) ) Moving on...

Seriously, this starts out with a bang... nearly literally... and while the action itself doesn't start picking up as much until at least the 1/4 to 1/3 or so mark (and *really* in the back half, when it becomes almost a different book), here really is quite a bit to enjoy here. The ladies are clearly distinguished characters - likely stemming from likely having one author handle each? - and the initial "come together" scenes are done particularly well given the overall setting and specific events that have taken place to this point. From there, it becomes a somewhat classic tale of people who think they know each other - and largely hate what they know - being forced to work together to achieve some common goal... before shifting from that into a more action/ thriller tale that Michael Bay would have loved to shoot.

The entire "New York, 1980s" setting hits particularly well as well, complete with the strippers and the drugs and the largesse of the lowlifes, and... well, what I was going to say there gets a touch too close to spoilers, so let's just say that truly everything about this book simply SCREAMS "1980s NYC", to the level that you begin to suspect that at least some of the authors had to have at least a version of lived experience here. Yes, it is *that* real and *that* visceral, at least in the side of NYC in this period that it chooses to show.

Overall a book that starts slow but picks up steam, one that people who don't like multiple POV stories should check out anyway, as it is truly well done in this particular instance. You'll be glad that its sequel is now ready - I know I was, as I was able to finally start my Advance Review Copy edition of the sequel moments after finishing this book - and yes, you really are going to want to start it right away as well.

Very much recommended.

Solid Examination Of The Topic Told Mostly Via The Stories Of Those Involved. To be a bit more precise, if the topic at hand is "the rise and fall of the death penalty" throughout the United States generally... this book doesn't fare as well. While it does make various attempts to show national issues and trends in capital punishment, the subtitle here really should more accurately be "The Rise And Fall Of The Death Penalty *In Texas*" (emphasis mine)... which is 100% accurate as to what you're getting into with this book.

Chammah does a solid job of using his case studies and biographies to show the different people involved in the various cases and how they came to be in the moments they found themselves, and while the stories *can* get a bit too muddled and choppy at times when a lot is going on at once, it really isn't any different than a multi-POV fiction novel only sporadically popping in with certain characters' perspectives, which is a storytelling strategy I've seen more than once - and thus this really wasn't a problem for me, but could absolutely be an issue for some readers. He does a similarly solid job of showing the various cases and people that played into the rise of capital punishment in Texas and the broader national trends that were occurring at the same time... and the same with the fall, showing the various people and cases that were leading that effort in Texas and how broader national trends also came to bear there as well.

Overall though, this is a reasonably well researched book, clocking in at about 17% documentation, per a Twitter conversation I had with the author, as I read the Audible version of the book and had no easy access to a Kindle or print copy of the text for purposes of this review. (My local library system here in Jacksonville, FL did in fact have print copies available even at the branch barely a mile away from my apartment, but I was working on this review before I could get there and it did *not* have eBook copies available, unfortunately.) Far from the best documented I've ever seen, as I've read a few books approaching or seemingly even over 50% documentation, but also within the more relaxed 15% or so standard I've been trying to adopt these last few years.

For those interested in capital punishment and related issues, this is going to be a book you should absolutely check out. Even for more general audiences, this really is a solid look at this particular topic, and you're going to learn some things from reading it - even I did, and I'm at least somewhat well versed in the topic already due to prior reading and activism.

Very much recommended.

WWII Historical Fiction *Action* Book. *With A Bibliography*! Yes, you read that right. Not only do we get a kick ass action/ adventure tale set during WWII, but this one is so accurate that it actually has a bibliography longer than some nonfiction books I've read recently!

The tale itself, while technically a sequel, has enough in the story here to provide the necessary context to understanding this tale itself... *and* has a summary of book 1 at the back of the book, just before the bibliography, as well, for those that need it laid out a bit more explicitly and don't mind being completely spoiled on Book 1. For those that would rather read Book 1 first... I haven't read it, but if it is anything like this one you're in for an awesome time and apparently you'll be ready for this one pretty well as soon as you finish that one.

And what a tale it is! Yes, if you're looking for *hyper* realism... you're going to be disappointed. There are *several* times where in real life.... yeah, dead or in prison or in prison and then dead. But you don't (shouldn't) read action/ adventure tales for that level of realism, and the level of realism brought more generally, with the various units and locations and tech and such is on par with the best WWII era historical fiction tales I've come across.

With the running problem in booklandia of needing more male readers and with the "understanding" that once a male hits 40 he either becomes intently focused on WWII or on grilling... for those who, like me, went the WWII route (though admittedly I did it long before 40 due to both of my grandfathers serving in it), this book is going to be one those types of guys are truly going to enjoy.

But truly, if you're into action tales and/ or historical fiction tales set in WWII, you too are going to find a lot to enjoy here, and I really do think this one will be something you'll want to read as it brings a style not commonly seen much (if at all) anymore, and one which I believe needs to be celebrated just as much as the more women's fiction oriented tales of the period. (Which are awesome in their own right, to be clear... but they're also not this particular type of tale either, and I believe there is more than enough space on the digital shelves for both types of stories. :) )

Very much recommended.

Negative On Everything. Straight up, this is the most depressing book I've ever read other than The Road by Cormac McCarthy - which is the singular *worst* book I've ever read. Kendzior's all-encompassing and ever present sense of doom drips from every page, and it is truly exhausting to even read a book that is this utterly bleak. I truly can't imagine living life so utterly despairing - even in my own darkest of times. And this was the reason for one of the star deductions. This tale could have been phenomenal, even transcendental, as a more hopeful look at traveling the US to see its various national parks - and it could have been such even with a pessimistic world view and even with the author's rampant cognitively dissonant political views intact. Simply write with a more hopeful tone than what is presented here!

The other star deduction is the dearth of the bibliography, clocking in at just 7% of the overall text, well short of even the 15% or so I would expect to see in even my more relaxed bibliographical standards of these last couple of years.

For those that see the United States as something to "survive, not thrive" as Kendzior so often notes - even during the Obama and Biden years! - and those that see "women treated as second class citizens, no longer having the same rights as men" (a paraphrase, but not too far off from an exact quote)... you're probably going to think Kendzior a savant here, describing exactly how you feel to a T.

For the rest of us that choose to look on every situation, no matter how bleak, with hope - indeed, particularly for those of us who will *NEVER* see our own political preferences win in any ballot box, given the current state of affairs, yet we fight on for a better future for everyone anyway - this book is going to be one you're going to want to defenestrate early and often.

To be quite honest, had I not accepted this as an Advance Review Copy given the strength of Kendzior's prior work A View From Flyover Country, I would have been right there with you. Had I known how utterly depressing this book would be - obvious in even the first few paragraphs, much less the first chapters - I would have returned it in a heartbeat and never looked back.

As an exemplar of how at least some Americans are feeling and have felt for several years, yes, this book will stand as a time capsule of an era.

But it is also *a* time capsule, and one that will earn its place in the annals of history - if it is remembered that long - for how wrong it is. For how utterly depressing it is, even in a time when America and Americans are more prosperous than literally any generation before them. Things that were science fiction even in my own childhood, just a few scant years behind Kendzior's own, are now science fact. Devices and technologies that Kendzior describes *in this text* as using at various points were barely imaginable in my own childhood, certainly to the level that they both now exist and permeate modern life.

Yes, we absolutely face challenges today, as *all* eras have faced. Denying this is denying reality at least as bad as Kendzior does. But for a book so replete with so much historical data about so many different places, Kendzior seems to miss that many of the very eras she discusses had *just* as many problems. Hell, not only this, Kendzior openly discusses the history of "Blood Island", where politicians and others would go to duel... and yet still decries a heated political rally as a "coup", even when no weapons were present other than in the hands of police.

No, this is a book that will play well with a very particular mindset and a very particular political view... and in all honesty, the only use anyone outside of that mindset and worldview would have to read this text is simply to see this mindset and at least attempt to understand it. Hell, maybe you'll have more success on that point than I have after reading this.

Recommended. Only for certain readers.

Gilmore Girls Yet Not Gilmore Girls. He's Luke and he works in a diner. She's Lorelai and she wants to run a bed and breakfast. Stars Hollow? NOPE! Equally fictional and equally charming Elk Lake. But yes, the Gilmore Girls comparisons, at least at a very high level, are simply too blatant to be completely ignored.

This noted, Dineen *does* do her own thing and *does* manage to tell a tale completely different than anything I remember from Gilmore Girls. (Don't hate me, but despite Lauren Graham being hot, it just wasn't a series I could ever really get into. Sorry, ladies!)

Here, the angst is arguably done better than the romance, and indeed it often seems at times that this ostensibly romance book keeps its central couple apart far more than they're together, with the togetherness coming in very tentative and awkward steps at first before "suddenly out of no where" kind of exploding... after a damn near fatal implosion first, of course.

But truly the most relatable part of this for me personally was in fact Luke's story, and even his dad's story. While I know at least *some* of my dad's story (more than Luke does throughout a large part of the tale here), like Luke, there are absolutely things I don't know - and will never know - about my dad's childhood and my grandfather (who in my case died just five weeks after my birth). Like Luke, as an adult I've had to try to come to understand my dad through the bits and pieces of his history I've learned, and how that has shaped him into the man he chose to become... and thus how it shaped how he raised me and shaped me into the man I chose to become. While I never lost years of our lives due to a misunderstanding, that's not to say there haven't been misunderstandings along the way (including one particularly infamous one when I was a teenager that was perhaps the closest we ever got to this level of blowup). So... yeah, Luke's story absolutely hit a touch harder here.

Overall while this seemed to be probably the most angsty book in the series, there really was quite a bit of fun and self discovery along the way as well, and it really was both a solid entrant in the series and a solid setup for a seeming near-direct sequel.

Very much recommended.

Beautiful Setting. Atrocious People. Maybe Someone Will See The Light. This is one of those tales where there aren't really too many "good" people - even the people you ostensibly want to root for are doing some very *bad* things! But the imagery of the beautiful Italian islands is absolutely stunning and well done... and even make it a point to play into the endgame, which is always appreciated.

While the book *does* start rather slow, stick with it. It is no Great Gatsby where the first x amount of it is an utter snooze fest that is more apt to put you to sleep rather than keep you up all night... but it *does* get to the "keep you up all night" level. Eventually. And then it keeps you there until damn near the last word of the tale.

Overall a fun book of its type, one with enough to keep you invested and take you to somewhere not where you are. (Unless you happen to be on said Italian islands. Then... maybe read something else if you want to be transported somewhere else? :D) Actually a rather good beach/ cruise read due to the setting at minimum.

Very much recommended.

Excellent - And Short-ish - Tale Of The Power Of Friendship And Community. In this latest entrant in this saga of four friends living lives in each other's orbits, we get quite a bit packed into such a smallish page count - there's intense action as a snowmobile race gets dicy, there's the drama of unexpected surprises and possible relapses, there's friends coming together in some of the most difficult circumstances as their entire community rallies around them. All told in a very real yet very relatable way, and again, all completed in a tale that serves as a solid read while the kids are running off steam at the playground or on the ball field or maybe while you're waiting to pick them up from school or some such. Or, for the childfree/ those with grown children among us, while sitting poolside with a good drink or even standing in line at a theme park or maybe lounging away one lazy Saturday looking out across whatever scenery brings you serenity.

Truly well done, though you're probably going to want to start earlier in the series and get to this point, rather than jumping into the series here. Which just means you have more to look forward to, in that case. ;)

Very much recommended.

Yet Another Solid Entry In (Loose) Series. This is one of the more standalone entries in this loose series, where all the books share a common starting point - a group of women meeting with a lawyer after boxes are discovered with their family's names on them when a London building is being torn down, then each woman beginning her own path to discover the significance of her box. While some of the previous stories have more of the story of how those boxes came to be in them and are thus more essential to read in order, this one was one of the more complete standalones that could very well be read immediately after the series introduction and still make 100% sense with virtually no spoilers for the rest of the series at all.

So for those considering this series, this could actually serve as a decent starting point, if you don't want to start at the beginning/ if this book happens to be on sale when you come across it.

The story itself is the same solid blend of both sides of Soraya Lane (romance) and Soraya M. Lane (historical fiction) tales, while this one perhaps leans a touch more to the romance side given the lack of war dangers given the setting (and also the similarities even in the historical side to some of Lane's cowboy romances as Soraya Lane in particular). In other words, yet again, if you've never read Lane's work and happen to come into this book completely blind, this really is a solid introduction to her overall style of storytelling in both halves of her writing career.

Ultimately this was likely a much needed break - for both Lane herself and for readers - as I very much suspect that the most difficult, most harrowing book of this series is still to come... the actual origins of Hope's House and the mysteries therein, which have been hinted at in the prior books to more or less degrees, though it is still unclear exactly how many stories Lane has planned before executing on that particular tale, which I expect to be the finale of this series. (But who knows, I could be dead wrong about that. Not claiming any form of knowledge of Lane's plans, to be crystal clear.)

Very much recommended.

Did Carpenter Steal My Life? (No, She Didn't.) Hmmm... a book set in the real-life Bartow County (if in a fictional town within it) along the real-life Etowah River and some real-life roads (and some fictional ones). Featuring a veteran of a war named Major. Where an old Confederate area mine plays a major role. With (fictional) long-time area families being a key component of the story.

And I, a reader who is a native of the real Bartow County, whose great-grandfather was a WWI POW named Major, who went to high school not far off one of the roads in question (which runs through the northern section of Bartow County in real life, fwiw), who knows exactly where the real-life Cooper's Furnace and several area mines (including several similar to the fictional one in the book, which aren't on many current maps) are located, who can readily identify where the scars of the real-life war criminal terrorist bastard William Tecumseh Sherman's troops left scars on the land that are still visible *to this day*, who went to both high school and college near the sites of famous actions during the Atlanta Campaign, whose families (including all relevant branches) have been in the area for over 200 years as I type this (though to be clear, my dad and his siblings were the first to call Bartow their home county), who knows well how well-connected families *continue* to control the real-life Bartow County via its (one of few remaining *nationally*, per my understanding) Sole Commissioner government system...

Yeah... the parallels between my real life and the fictional world Carpenter created here allow me a rare (not *quite* unique, as there *are* at least a few hundred others who have similar life experience and knowledge) view into this particular tale. :)

But to be 100% explicitly clear, while Carpenter and I have interacted via social media off and on for a few years now, and while several of my grandparents and older were from her own area of Georgia in the Roswell area she admits in the Author's Note she actually based much of the tale on, we've never actually met and she had no possible way to know *all* of that about me. Thus, it is 100% coincidental that the story bears so much resemblance to so much that I can readily identify. :)

With all of *that* noted... this truly was a tremendous book. The motivations of pretty well everyone are pretty clear and believable (if a bit twisted, in the case of the antagonists of the tale). The parallels to The Lottery are blatant (as that tale is referenced in-story), but actually work well here with the story as presented. As things begin to go towards the psychological/ horror, it is done in a very believable manner, with open questioning of reality. The emotions are raw and visceral, no matter whether it be the hope of a new move, the horror of... the horrible things that happen (to avoid spoilers ;) ), the disgust of some other things that happen... it all completely works.

And yes, I could absolutely see some parallel reality where the real-life Cassville - the County Seat of what was then called Cass County during the Civil War - actually plays out very similarly to how Juliana plays out here. The tale really is that close to being true to life, at least life as I experienced it as a former trailer park trash kid growing up alongside Bartow's elite.

Finally, as Billie's diner is a big part of this tale, I wanted to end the review in a unique manner for me, since this is a rather unique book for me. I'm going to leave you with a few recommendations for places to eat and things to do in and around Cartersville, should you ever find yourself on I-75 in Georgia north of Atlanta. (Unlike Carpenter noting that her Bartow County was *two* hours outside of Atlanta, in real life it is closer to 45 min from downtown Atlanta without traffic, and with traffic... who knows how long. During a snow storm one year, it literally took my dad over 12 hrs to get from his work on the perimeter of Atlanta (on I-285, basically) to his home in Cartersville.)

Places To Eat:

4-Way Diner. Historic diner near downtown Cartersville, still retains its "black only" entrance from the days of Jim Crow (now for historic purposes only, to be clear).

Jefferson's. Restaurant in downtown Cartersville, inside the same building that houses the world's oldest outdoor Coca-Cola sign on its railroad-track facing side. Likely the closest thing Cartersville currently has to a real-life Billie's, as described in the text.

Moore's Gourmet Market. Small eatery near Roselawn (below) and the Bartow County Library, just outside of downtown Cartersville.

Restaurants Along Felton Rd. There are a lot of places here, none of which have any historic significance - but the road name does. The road is named for Rebecca Latimer Felton, who owned a plantation in this part of the County before and after the Civil War. She was the first female US Senator - and the last formerly slave owning one.

Things to See:

Roselawn: Sam Jones' mansion just outside of downtown Cartersville, one of few antebellum houses still existing in town. Across the street is a historic marker noting the former home of Lottie Moon, prominent Baptist missionary to China of the same era Sam Jones was preaching in and the person the Southern Baptist Convention's Christmas fundraising effort is named for.

Old County Courthouse/ Sam Jones Memorial Methodist Church: Side by side, these buildings represent much of Cartersville's history. I've personally seen KKK rallies at the Courthouse (and went the other way), and a cousin got married at Sam Jones, which was named after a preacher who was essentially the Billy Graham of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

World's Oldest Outdoor Coca-Cola Sign. Along the train tracks at downtown Cartersville.

Etowah Indian Mounds: Mounds made by a pre-Columbus native tribe. The site is now across from a cemetery where several of my family members are buried and from Cartersville's main recreation park, Dellinger Park.

Atco Village: Early 20th century mill village, its mill has now largely been destroyed, but the elements of the town are largely still intact to varying degrees. The mill was actually one of two that locked its doors on my dad when it shut down nearly 25 yrs ago, but the old Methodist Church still stands at the entrance to the village, along with its old post office (next to the railroad tracks) and the Baptist church (where my family attended for decades) still stands at the dead end of the street that you enter the village on. Many of the houses still retain their original looks, despite improvements over the century.

Cooper's Furnace: I mentioned this site above. Just outside of Cartersville and just below the Allatoona Dam on the Etowah River, as you leave US 41 to drive over to this site, if you look into the river you'll see the stone pillars that once held railroad tracks destroyed by Sherman's troops as he moved through the region.

New Echota: Technically in Gordon County just north of Bartow, this is the site of the Capital of the Cherokee Nation at the time of the Trail of Tears. There is a relatively small State Park here with several buildings that were moved to this site to show what life was like at the time.

And enough with the tourism board stuff - I'm not Juliana's Initiative by any stretch of the imagination, just a man proud of his hometown and constantly in awe of just how much history he grew up around, largely unknowingly.

Even as a Bartow County native - maybe *especially* as a Bartow County native - this book is absolutely...

Very much recommended.

Zero Beach Vibes. Solid Mallery Tale. I normally get a bit into the review before explaining star deductions, but in this particular case the reason for the star deduction is the most critical thing you need to know about this book:

It has *ZERO* beach vibes. Yes, it takes place in Malibu - largely across the street from the beach, at best - but the setting here is largely completely irrelevant to literally anything about the story. Mallery could have changed the location names to almost literally "Anywhere" and the overall story would read and feel *exactly* the same.

Now, with that said, this actually *is* a solid tale of its type = in other words, a women's fiction/ romance blend that Mallery is so prolific with and does so well. If you've never read her works, this is a decent one to begin with - not her worst in my own experiences with her books, yet also not her best, but solidly indicative of her overall style of writing and storytelling.

So if you're ready for a drama filled tale of two strangers who happen to become friends and who happen to develop an uncommon cross bond with each others' siblings... this tale will work well for you.

Note that the spice level here is somewhere north of a warm glass of milk yet south of habanero - again, fairly typical of Mallery's overall style. So those that prefer the warm glass of milk or those that prefer ghost peppers... either direction there, you're likely going to be left a touch disappointed. Yet the overall tale, outside the bedroom, is actually quite strong in its own right, and you really should give it a chance anyway - there will most likely be other things about this tale that you truly enjoy, and maybe you can glass over the bedroom stuff.

Overall a solid, well told tale... that simply has absolutely *zero* to do with anything remotely associated with its title.

Very much recommended.

Walker Shows Impressive Range. I've been reading Walker's books for a few years now, and this is a first for him in my experience with him (though he notes in the Author's Note that he had written a few books of this type prior to when I started reading his books). A laid back mystery of a form I call a "Gulf Coast Mystery", almost like a more serious version of D.P. Lyle's Jake Longley books - and set decades prior to those books. (Ok, so Ray Longley (Jake's dad) and Quentin Jones crossing paths could have been interesting - just sayin', Walker and Lyle. ;) )

Walker, who has spent time living in many different places even in the few years I've been following him, among which was this particular region of Florida described in the book, captures the setting well - perhaps added by Shainberg's original text, which Walker notes (again in the Author's Note) was much of the tale up to Chapter 12.

Being set in the 1970s, this book has some things that will offend "modern sensibilities", including quite a bit of cigarette smoking (virtually unheard of in many places in the 2020s) and even one particular situation that even hints of in the 2010s and beyond in particular tends to be vilified to the nth degree, and indeed gets snide comments even now in the 2020s even when everything plays out perfectly legally. I'm not going to indicate how it plays out in the text just because that would be a spoiler, as the tension of this particular situation plays into the overall narrative.

Speaking of which, Walker does a particularly good job of sticking to the old adage of "if you show a blue shoe on page 2, that blue shoe better play into the end game". (Ok, so I absolutely butchered the quote, but the point being to show *exactly* what you want shown and *nothing* else.) Meaning that this is one of those tales where everyone has secrets... and, well... how everything comes together can get quite a bit thrilling...

Seriously, this was perhaps the more interesting aspect of this book is that even as a women's fiction/ mystery blend - the men's fiction side of it tending to be something Walker has excelled at in my reading of his work these last several years - Walker really does manage to do the thriller and even romance sides particularly well, particularly deep into the text.

Overall truly one of Walker's better books from several different angles, both in showing more fully his range and in his ability to work with what another author had begun and finish it out in a way that seems true to that original author's vision - which could provide Walker a path forward, should he ever run out of his own ideas. :)

Very much recommended.

Interesting Expose Of A Particular Community, Suffers From Problems Typical Of Its Form. As an almost anthropological examination of a particular culture that arose over decades in a very specific region of California - the roughly six square mile region known as Richardson's Bay, an offshoot of San Francisco Bay - this text is a pirate's treasure trove. Specifically, as it examines the "unhoused" people who have claimed homes among the derelict and otherwise vessels floating in the bay, the so-called "anchor-outs", it truly does a phenomenal job detailing the history of how the culture arose, a lot of the features of the specific culture, and even a lot of both the key historical figures of it and at least some of its living practitioners.

As a *journalistic* piece... it may fly in today's "lived experience" version of "journalism", where objectivity and distance from subject are defenestrated in favor of being "up close" and "real"... but it still would have been enhanced by being a more old school journalistic type text, at least to my mind.

Instead what we get here is almost an action, thriller, and memoir mashup wherein the author inserts his own views into the text, but the story itself becomes one of a community's fight for its right to survive and the dastardly developers and government officials seeking to eradicate it from history once and for all.

Which for a narrative, works well. For what is supposed to be a nonfiction work... maybe doesn't work as well.

The star deduction comes in from the dearth of bibliography, which is likely due to not much written work existing about this particular group or its history, but still, there is quite a bit here that *could* have been documented more thoroughly, if even detailing newspaper or other media reports about various events over the years.

Very much recommended.

This Book Has So Very Many Problems. Read It Anyway. First, let's dispense with the fact that this is a fairly well documented book, clocking in at about 26% documentation... even if Karakatsanis' sources are pretty clearly slanted one direction... which we'll get into momentarily. No matter what else is said here, everyone considering reading this text should at least appreciate that Karakatsanis clearly shows his work. :)

Because of my own work and experiences within the anti-police-brutality spaces and indeed even the projects I was working with before giving them up in favor of book blogging, I bring a lot to this particular book that not everyone will have... which gives me a fairly unique perspective on it overall.

I can tell you that even as a former Libertarian Party official and activist, and thus someone who knew a lot of people of a *very* wide range of political persuasions... I've known *few* over the years who would be to the left of Karakatsanis. Indeed, your opinion of terms like "pregnant person" and "wage theft" is likely a good barometer of how often you're going to want to defenestrate this particular text. "Wage theft" seemingly a phrase Karakatsanis is particularly fond of.

This noted, *from his perspective*, the narrative here is at least largely coherent, and even from such a far leftist perspective, he brings up a fair amount of solid points that every American *should* read and understand... even if you have to squeeze your nose so hard you'll be afraid it will turn into a diamond as you do.

The problem, and the star deduction, comes from the simple fact that very nearly every single logical problem Karakatsanis decries in others... he also largely *employs* in building his "arguments" against them.

Hell, he even manages to fall into former Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington's "perception of crime" problem - claiming over and over (and over and over and over and over...) that "statistics say" crime is down (which, as he points out, is *always true*... when you're selective with your time ranges ;) ) even as people report seeing ever more crime. As Richard Pryor famously said - "who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?".

Indeed, part of the star deduction also comes from the pervasive "no true Scotsman" problem that runs rampant through this text. No matter how far left the politician, no matter how hard the most progressive activists pushed for a particular policy - especially in California and particularly the Bay Area - Karakatsanis *insists* that the policies were never actually progressive, that it was instead the bureaucrats and the media ("controlled" by the usual leftist scapegoats) - those he deems the "punishment bureaucracy" and that the *actual* leftist policy had never been implemented.

Still, despite the rampant problems and extremist politics, there really is quite a bit here about understanding how police and media collude and conspire to hide essential information from the rest of us, so you really do need to read this book.

Ultimately, I think there is a point Karakatsanis tries to make but utterly fails to, in his attempt to appear authoritative here:

Question. Everything.

Including this book.

And I'll go so far as to say even this very review.

Read the book yourself. Write your own review of it - cuss me up one wall and down the other if you think I deserve it, if you think Karakatsanis is perfectly correct in all things and should never possibly be even looked askance at, much less questioned. Or maybe you'll agree with me to some extent or another. *My* entire point here is to get you to read the book yourself and make up your own mind about it. I guarantee you you're going to learn *something* you didn't previously know along the way.

Recommended.

Unforced Errors Leave Bitter Aftertaste In Otherwise Solid Conclusion. It seems like every book in this trilogy, Griffin seeks to explore almost an entirely separate genre of books... all while telling what is essentially a scifi vampire story.

Here, we get into a near-dystopia, where in the fallout from Book 2, Faith has been unleashing the vampire virus all across America in an attempt to lure Anastasia out.

And yet again, the story absolutely works. We get a lot of excellent vampire action, we get the expected human soldiers, we get human tech trying to give humans an edge on the vampires, truly all of the expected stuff one typically sees in a book like this, done particularly well within this story.

Along the way, we even get some strong character growth from both Faith and Anastasia, which is always awesome to see.

Indeed, as a conclusion to this trilogy, this book was *nearly* perfect. But there are a couple of elements in the last 10% or so that give a bitter aftertaste, and at least one of the two was absolutely unforced - preachy politics that had no real place anywhere in this story.

The other... to avoid spoilers, I have to be a bit circumspect in describing, so allow me to mention that I tell a particular story often, I think I may have mentioned it in a review here or there, that I once read another trilogy specifically because its last book was getting *DESTROYED* in the reviews over the ending. All I can say here is that my thoughts on the ending of that trilogy and this one... well, there are reasons I say this one leaves a bitter aftertaste. As an action sequence, it was actually rather badass. But did it work for that character as portrayed to that point? How about you, oh reader of my review, read this trilogy and tell us in your own review whether you think I'm off base here.

Still, truly, truly excellent work on this entire trilogy and even this book itself. Easily one of the best vampire trilogies I've ever read, right up there with David McAfee's Bachiyr series and *well* above that fucking sparkling "vampire" one. Is it Stoker? No. But is it an awesome, gory thrill ride with some interesting twists on the overall lore? Absolutely.

Very much recommended.

Noir Thriller Blend Legal Thriller Reminiscent of Early Grisham. I think the most recent of John Grisham's books I've read was Bleachers, and that was *far* from a legal thriller of any form. But I read a lot of his earlier works (The Firm, The Chamber, The Runaway Jury, The Pelican Brief, etc) many years ago, and here Bell brings to mind a question of "What if Grisham had taken a more noir tone with those books?" I honestly think the answer to that question is that you'd get something remarkably similar to what Bell has created here.

If you're more a fan of small town / low stress tales... this one isn't for you. If you prefer spice levels akin to a warm glass of milk... you're gonna get the vapors if you read this book, as its spice level is more akin to a jalapeno or so. Spicy enough to feel, without necessarily making your nose run like Niagara Falls.

Indeed, another decent comparison here - without the sheer brutality of that book - is Tom Clancy's Without Remorse, where both romance and thriller elements combine to make the tale as strong as it is, and with both thriller and romance elements being essential to the overall tale.

Except that, to be clear, this is no White Knight hero the way even John Clark is portrayed as. Bell went to great lengths to use a normal guy in a normal (ish) job as his central character here, and he does a great job of sticking to that ideal throughout this. So yes, our main guy is going to make mistakes. Things are going to be confusing and scary and awesome and nearly surreal at times... but that's because *life* is all of those things at times, and Bell is committed to showing at least elements of all of this.

Overall a solid tale within its type that bends and breaks enough conventions or even rules as to be refreshing, while at the same time conforming to enough of them to be comfortable for fans of its types of tale.

Very much recommended.

Pulse Pounding Thrill Ride With Non-Preachy Commentary. This is one of those books that *is* overtly political... *because it is dealing with political assassinations in and around Washington, DC*, among other topics. So while not all books are political and not all reading is political, this book absolutely is - though the act of reading and reviewing it is *not*.

Joyner's background writing for the screen is evident here with his quick cuts to seemingly random groups of characters, which can be a bit hard to follow at first until you manage to get a grip on who everyone is, but at that point the story really does begin to flow quite readily.

And what a story it is. The action is relentless and seemingly non-stop, and yes, the aforementioned quick cuts actually help in this regard. The inventiveness of the reasonings, techniques, and tactics of both our bad guys and our good guys are truly something to behold - Joyner clearly has a lot of ideas here, and for the most part they tend to land exactly as desired.

There is quite a bit of class-based commentary baked into the flow of this story, though it never really becomes preachy and is even at such a level that trying to determine the author's actual views are... not as clear as some would likely want them. For example, commentary on the dark web seems both technology-forward *and* pro-police. Similarly, commentary on class speaks to the lower classes *no matter* their race, and even points out how even some black characters would never face certain things in certain situations. And commentary about immigrants both shows their plight *and* cautions against the rise of illegal immigration. And yet every bit of this commentary is done well in-world and thus seems true to the characters taking each position as they take them, thus avoiding sounding preachy to the readers.

Overall truly an interesting book with a perspective and topic rarely seen in fiction.

Very much recommended.

Contains Most Brutal, Most Sadistic Scene I Have *EVER* Read. Truly Even Better Than Reacher. With this particular entry in the series, LeDuc takes Sinclair O'Malley places that Reacher has gone - and beats him! - *and* gives O'Malley a depth of character that Reacher will never obtain.

And yes, it is via the said most brutal, most sadistic scene I have ever read. I've read some dark, twisted shit over the years, including books with on screen child sexual abuse, rape, and other brutalities. *NEVER* have I encountered one book that had all of that... *in a single scene*. Truly the darkest, sickest, most twisted scene I have ever encountered across reading literally thousands of books across nearly every imaginable genre and niche out there... and yet LeDuc *absolutely* makes it work to further his character and finally more fully explain some of her own more brutal - excuse me, "direct" - methods.

Then there is the one scene in particular where O'Malley takes on one of my absolute *favorite* Reacher scenes in that entire franchise (and yes, I read them all until a book or two into the Andrew Child books)... and LeDuc outdoes Lee in even that type of scene. The scene here is different than the Reacher scene, but to be clear, the scene I'm talking about in Reacher is the sniping competition Reacher has with the militia leader in Die Trying, where Reacher pulls off a particularly impressive feat.

There's a LOT going on in this book, and a LOT - even beyond the scene above - that will be disturbing for some people, including some blatant on screen racism deep in the book (from the bad guys, to be clear), but revealing some of this stuff gets deeper into spoiler territory than I feel is warranted in this review. (I have no problems mentioning the types of stuff in the scene above, mostly because I understand how deeply traumatizing that stuff can be even in one scene, and because it is *only* in the one scene and doesn't really give away much else about the book. I also spoke in generalities that don't even fully give away that particular scene. The other things I'm alluding to here are far more central to the book, and thus even mentioning them would be too much spoiler.)

This may well be the best book in the series to date - and likely absolutely is. But there is also a lot of backstory here that you need to read *at minimum* Book 4, Eastern Drift, to be prepared for, and really you should start at the beginning of this series and work your way to this book, if you haven't yet. Trust me, the reward will absolutely be worth it, *and* this book sets up the future of the series very nicely.

Very much recommended.

Maddock AND Bones. Back Together! And Taking On A Civil War Mystery! This is what I love to see from Wood. Both Dane Maddock and Uriah 'Bones' Bonebrake back together again solving archaeological mysteries and kicking ass when needed.

The mystery - and adventure - here are awesome for this Son of the South who frequently notes how the Civil War is literally still visible in my home region between Atlanta and Chattanooga... and it isn't even hard to find in that particular region. While this mystery starts in Virginia, it does in fact also find itself in a location I've been to a few times - even taken a date or two out there, *many* years ago. Atlanta's Stone Mountain Park, home of the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world... and site of many anti-Confederacy protests over the years.

But even if you're not from the Southern United States and haven't grown up with this history all around you (as only certain regions of even the South have), the mystery here is still top-notch, and the action is even better. If you like say National Treasure, the 2000s era movie where Nic Cage steals the Declaration of Independence... now imagine Nic and his best friend are both former US Navy SEALs, with action - and danger - ramping up to challenge even them.

Ultimately this was the same type of dangerous (for the characters) yet fun (for the reader) action/ adventure tale that makes this series so excellent, and this was yet another truly great entry in this long running series.

Very much recommended.

Interesting Blend Of Real-World Physics And Paranormal Into Top-Notch Action Thriller. Sexton... you're doing it again. You just said this book was a "top notch action thriller", yet it is set in the *midwest*. What are you smoking, and can I get some? Why yes, yes I did say that - and I mean it. The tale opens with an all-consuming fire... in the middle of a torrential rain. As we get the perspectives of about a half dozen or so different characters, we find that one of them somehow has psychic abilities. When the scientist and the psychic meet... things get rather interesting and the tale becomes rather twisty yet also very down to earth and relatable. The ending itself is almost Christopher Nolan-esque in how mind-bending it is, and some of the scenes getting us there are edge of your seat thrill rides. Overall an intriguing series starter, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Mejia takes this. Very much recommended.

Slow Front Builds To Frenetic End. This is one of those stories that starts out with a bang in its prologue before going back in time and achieving the pace of... well, probably a tired slug racing an exhausted turtle. In other words, it is rather S L O W in the beginning.

But hang around, because as things start picking up they also begin spiraling, and soon enough your heart is beating faster as your brain is getting a good workout trying to read at the pace of the plot.

There's a lot going on in these pages, and a lot that a lot of people won't like - particularly so much domestic abuse, among other issues. But there is also a lot to like overall here, and Holten does a solid job of telling exactly the story she seemingly wants to tell at exactly the pace she seemingly wants to tell it at.

Ultimately, this is one that will have you gripping the final pages, desperate to see exactly how it ends... and that is pretty much what most people want of our thrillers, right?

Very much recommended.

Solid Look At Complexities Both Scientific And Ethical Regarding Interstellar Travel. This is exactly what the title says - a solid look at pretty well all aspects of the complexities of interstellar travel from both scientific and ethical directions, with discussions of the sheer distances involved, the various proposed types of habitation possibilities, propulsion technology, and seemingly every other conceivable facet of the topic at hand.

At 300 ish pages with just 11% or so of that being bibliography, the actual discussion is somewhat brief while still being comprehensive. Technical enough in both science and philosophy to underscore the key issues, yet informal enough to be easily followed along with by most readers. Indeed, the only real problem I had with the text was that 11% bibliography - it needed to be 50% ish larger, from what I've seen across my several years of reviewing advance review copies of nonfiction books, as I've done here.

Overall truly a fascinating book and a great primer for anyone even remotely interested in the complexities of actually achieving interstellar travel.

Very much recommended.

Imagine Ted Dekker's Circle Series... Without The Christian Allegory. Now toss in perhaps a dose of Jeremy Robinson or Douglas Adams, and you pretty well know exactly what to expect with this particular book.

You've got the man who goes to sleep in one world... and wakes in another (Circle series). You've got pretty damn insane amounts of balls to the wall action with a lot of inventive scifi aspects all over the place (Robinson). You've got jokes ranging from so subtle you barely pick them up all the way up to slap the stick upside your head slapstick comedy. (Robinson and Adams). You've even got a version of one particular late 90s movie going on to an extent... but revealing *which* movie gets into spoiler territory I'll not go into. Suffice it to say that the parallels here are as obvious as the Dekker ones, and anyone who has seen this movie should easily recognize them.

And yet, Weaver still manages to craft a compelling tale uniquely his own, one full of both action and heart and one that will make you ponder things you may have pondered before, but in newer ways.

Yes, at 600+ pages this is a tome - but it is a fun one that tells a complete story and doesn't really feel repetitive or that any scene/ group of scenes could be left out and still tell the same story with the same depth, so I would thus argue that it is exactly the right length. Even if it *is* my longest read of the year so far, and even if Weaver *did* forget to warn me about its length before I picked it up. And even if the base apparently real science underpinning the entire book does sound like something out of Idiocracy. ;)

Seriously, this is easily one of the more inventive scifi books you're going to read this year, so if you like the scifi genre at all, you really need to pick up this book. If you like action at all, you need to pick up this book. Truly one of the early standouts of 2025.

Very much recommended.

Surprising And Unexpected Yet Powerful. Following Weinstein on social media, I know she was writing this book shortly after the Hamas attacks on Israel in late 2023. As I finished reading this text (that I've had on my Kindle for a couple of months or so even now), Hamas had been parading the caskets of several babies they had murdered earlier in the day. Given that the Surfside Condo collapse in Miami a few years ago now - where Weinstein's family personally knew a few of the victims - clearly contributed quite a bit of emotional heft to the book she was writing at the time, I expected the same to be true here, as Weinstein is quite vocal (yet, to be clear, not preachy) about her Jewish faith and support of the State of Israel. (Haters, go the fuck away. While I've only known Weinstein online to date, she is truly a great person in my own interactions with her, no matter what your own political beliefs may be - and we *do* disagree quite substantially politically.)

So that is the background I approached this story with, my own "baggage" I brought into the Drift, even as I generally approach each and every book with a blank slate - and indeed knew *nothing* about this book beyond its title and that Weinstein had written it when I agreed to read and review it, and even when reading it this remained all that I knew (plus that it releases next week so I needed to hurry up with the reading and reviewing!).

What I actually found here was, as I noted in the title of the review, quite surprising and unexpected - for some reason I expected at least one blatantly Jewish character, if not every single protagonist in the book, to be honest, along with a much more blatantly Jewish plot, along the lines of say Jean Meltzer's books... even though I know from prior reading that this isn't really Weinstein's style. What I *actually* got here was a powerful tale of several flawed duos within families - mostly husbands and wives going trying to work through some level of trauma within their relationship, but also a powerful story (that takes a more prominent role later in the text) between a mother and her daughter.

While there are a total of ten main characters and the story *is* told from multiple perspectives (yes, I know there are readers who don't like that either - if you're at least willing to try it, this is a *really* good one to try with), Weinstein (and, perhaps, her editors) made the smart choice of limiting our number of perspectives to just a few, and never both halves of any of the five duos. This helps both story cohesion and progression, as even with chapter based perspective switches, at least this way we aren't getting first person views of both sides of the dynamic in question.

And the traumas that are happening here... even without being explicitly tied into anything overly "real-world", they're at the same time all too real. I don't want to detail them here due to spoiler potential, but I will note that Weinstein truly shines here in just how real and relatable she manages to make pretty well everything about all of these interweaving secrets and dynamics, and the pacing is done particularly well such that some surprises are tossed in early, others are late and seemingly out of nowhere (yet fit perfectly), and still others are teased well with what becomes for me at least a perfectly satisfactory payoff.

Overall truly a powerful and well written story, exactly what Weinstein is known for, and one that will have the room quite dusty at several different points - you've been warned about that too, now. ;) This is one that will leave you with that beautiful "wow, what did I just read" feeling (in the best possible ways) and will hopefully show you a path through even your own struggles.

Very much recommended.

Perfect Escapism. Even as certain elements of this book are damn near torn from the headlines of the past several weeks - for the record, *long* after Di Maio had completed writing this book, as I've had it myself for nearly four months already - this book really is pure, damn near perfect, escapism. For most people. For those in at least one sadly far too common situation - one my own grandmother experienced during the period detailed in this book - it could potentially be triggering. Yet even in this, Di Maio provides a solid set of escapism, and even in this, there is ultimately purpose in the story beyond "you can survive".

Instead, the vast majority of this tale focuses primarily on one particular lady and the situations she finds herself in during the early 1960s as she attempts a career as a Pan Am stewardess. We see in detail the exacting standards of the position and the more-intense-than-one-may-realize training they underwent. We see the (then) exotic locales that are still wildly different than what most Americans today are accustomed to - and yet those locations have also been increasingly "Americanized" and generally commercialized over the ensuing decades, to the point that this book really hits the nostalgic appeal of the locations in the eras portrayed and, as the text takes place nearly entirely in the early 1960s, largely glosses over all that they have become.

Our other primary narrator from this period is another view of the trials women went through in this period, and here Di Maio does a particularly superb job of showing that looks can indeed be deceiving, and sometimes one must actively seek out the real truth in matters.

Our final perspective - yes, this is technically multi-perspective, but there really are just the three - is a modern day person looking back on the halcyon days portrayed in the rest of the story. It is through her eyes that we see both all that was, story wise, and... even a glimpse of Di Maio herself, as she notes in the Author Note. (No, not even spoiling that here, although that particular tale sounds pretty fucking awesome. :) )

Ultimately this is one of those books that does a truly phenomenal job of providing maximal escapism through exotic travel in a long-gone era... and it is one that is going to tug your heart strings quite a bit at times, both making your heart race from a variety of situations and in making the room quite dusty indeed at points.

For those who may have worried where Di Maio was or if she was coming back at all or if she could come back and stay just as good as she once was, with her last major release being almost exactly three years to the day before the publication date of this book... I'll tell you now: I've now read over half of Di Maio's major releases, first encountering her with 2019's The Beautiful Strangers, and at least of the books I've read from her... this may well be the best one yet.

Very much recommended.