Krista
Don't typically do Sci-fi but Emily St. John Mandel is such a skilled storyteller I acquiesced. Here's the thing: this book is about pandemics. It's about time travel. In the opening she references the Europeans bringing smallpox to North America. So this gets me thinking, doesn't the nature of diseases make the theory of time travel impossible? Because surely people from the future will have developed strains of disease the immune systems of people in the past wouldn't be able to withstand? Effectively ‘ruining' the space time continuum or whatever?
My least favourite of Lucy Foley's books I'm afraid. Very atmospheric and enticing, but perhaps not the best plotted. Predicted the twist at the end in the midpoint of the book. The character motives all so similar... Worth reading, but didn't wow me like her others.
Full disclosure, this is the first time I've read a ‘woman goes on a journey to find herself' trope, so my opinion of this book may be slanted. I really struggled to relate to the characters, especially Katy. Yes she was grieving, and I get that, but while everyone around her is telling her she's a ‘wonderful person' I struggled to find something compelling about her. She came across as someone who'd had very little adversity in life, and significantly lacked fortitude and character. These characteristics in a person make them ‘wonderful' to me, so I struggled to relate... I struggled with how callous she was to her husband, that his feelings could matter so little to her. Their reunion at the end felt hollow. I was practically cheering for Eric to go find someone better for him. I particularly didn't like the Adam character, he felt quite slimy to me, and I really didn't like him and Katy together. I never quite got what he found so attractive about her, and he only seemed interested in getting her into bed—even if she was drunk and obviously emotionally distraught. The love scene between them made me nauseous.
That being said, in the end, I did love to see that the mother wasn't quite so perfect. The time travel element was neat, but come on, who doesn't realize almost immediately that they've slipped back THIRTY years in the past? Significantly had to suspend disbelief. I was tempted many times to DNF, but the scenery of Positano kept me going. The author made Italy come alive in my mind, and I'd very much love to visit the Amalfi coast and see it for myself one day.
I really loved this book. The voice of the main character, the atmospheric writing and the narrative drive hooked me quickly. I loved how empathetically Erin Bartels told this story. I look forward to reading her entire backlist.
I enjoyed the premise of Hook, Line and Sinker. Tessa Bailey is great at beginnings and I was ‘hooked' ;) quickly. Fox's struggle pulled me in right away and Hannah was the perfect compliment to him. It was a unique take on masculine expectation, and I love that Bailey chose to emphasize this.
I'm not sure what happened... maybe Bailey wasn't confident with her premise? Because it seemed like a third of the narrative was an explanation of the character's psychology instead of touching base with where the characters were at every now and then and just letting the scenario play out. About two thirds of the way through when the narrative switched to internal reflection I began to skim until dialogue hit, because it was apparent enough where they were at from the ‘action'. Good book! Glad I read it.
Book Review Time. This week I'm participating in ProWriting Aid's Crime Writer's virtual summit, so I'm in the mood to review a thriller. In The Match by Harlan Coben, the protagonist, Wilde, who was abandoned as a child to fend for himself in the Ramapo Mountains, stumbles upon a murderous plot when he receives a shocking genetic match.
First off, how have I never read a Harlan Coben before? This is the type of fast-paced, morally gray thriller I love. I must have been living under a rock because he's the creator of the #1 Netflix show Stay Close and the Match is endorsed by Lee Child, who is a genius.
I knew I was in for a great read by the first sentence. “At the age of somewhere between forty and forty-two—he didn't know exactly how old he was—Wilde finally found his father.” Whoa! A sentence that sucks you in and makes you ask questions!
The pacing of this book was in my opinion, perfect. I love when a book's pacing resembles a Fibonacci Spiral or a tornado. Circling slowly at the beginning and then next thing you know you're caught in its vortex.
This thriller had depth. Wilde is not just some macho action hero, he's layered and has a substantial emotional arc. Like I say, I love reading the morally gray, and Coben took us deep into the scary realistic world of social media, bots and the dark side of celebrity.
The Match was a deeply satisfying thriller that had me on the edge of my seat until the very last page.
As long as you're willing to suspend some significant disbelief, this is a lovely, heartwarming book.
I picked this up thinking it would be a romance. It isn't, so I was disappointed. The middle gets hijacked by a political message/argument that I didn't think was particularly well argued. If you're in the particular choir Susan Wiggs is preaching too, you'll probably love it. If you're not, you'll probably say—what the heck!
I badly wanted to August Into Winter five stars because it was impeccably written. I loved the thoroughness of characterizations, scene and relationships and the deep themes. But maybe this book was a little too thorough? It's over four hundred pages long and the print is tiny! But ugh, I shouldn't say the book was too thorough, because that was it's beauty. Perhaps this story could've been about fewer things... then I could've savoured it more.
DNF The humour in this book was on the dark side, and while I think I was going with it, when Finlay sets out to dispose of a victim's body, whom she does not know, nor the circumstances of his death, for her own self interest, I lost all empathy for the character.
Few events in literary history are as fascinating as Agatha Christie's unexplained disappearance. De Gramont's imagined solution is creative, satisfying and maybe... true? One will never know ;) But it was that believable. The period and setting really came alive at her hand. The characters were complex, endearing and vivid. I learned about Irish history, reading this book. I felt such sympathy for Nan yet she made me a good frustrated. I whizzed through the first half of the book, but then, it did feel like there wasn't much to be revealed in the remaining pages. The book wasn't paced to my taste, but I felt it was a well-conceived interesting read.
I don't read very much historic fiction, and this is my first time reading Julia Kelly, so after about fifty pages into the book, I wasn't sure I wanted to continue. It seemed like it might be a twittery cutsie story about a flighty girl in a superficial world. But I'm so glad I kept with it because The Last Dance of the Debutante turned out to be one of the best books I've read so far this year. Lily, the heroine, is courageous and grounded. The perspectives in the scenarios are empathetically portrayed, deep with delicious gray areas. The story was impeccably paced and I did NOT see the twists coming. It was plotted very well. This was my first read by Julia Kelly but it will not be my last!
I've read six of Sandra Brown's novels and Blind Tiger has been my least favourite. I found the first half of the book VERY slow. I kept reading, hoping it would get better, but I struggled to connect with the characters and the plot wasn't intriguing enough to make me want to keep turning the pages. Halfway through I put it down for a week. If it were a library book I would've returned it, but I bought the book so I made myself finish it. The moonshining plot was pretty flat, had lots of different tentacles but not much depth. There wasn't a big question that I needed to have answered by the end. Everything seemed to follow an inevitable course and I didn't feel much tension. There were a lot of characters to keep track of, and I didn't connect to them. And Thatcher not telling Laurel where he was going at the end, sorry, but how long does it take to send a telegram...
Yeah, I've loved some of Sandra Brown's books, but not Blind Tiger I'm afraid...
I didn't enjoy Apples Never Fall in the same way I enjoyed Big Little Lies—but I did enjoy it. It took at least ten chapters for me to get into this one. There were A LOT of points of view (a bit too many in my opinion) and it took quite a while to develop a connection to the main characters. The pacing was not to my taste. I felt often like a horse with a bit in it's mouth, wanting to gallop through the story, and Liane kept pulling back on the reins. But I WANTED the story, that was the thing, because Liane Moriarty is a genius of a writer. She keeps an astounding razor's edge balance between humour, sadness, beauty and tremors of deeply disturbing dysfunction in her characters. The way she dramatizes her grasp of human psychology is without parallel. Her plotting is superb. She weaves uncountable threads together, the effect like a magic trick. I connected deeply to her voice, a voice admirably without judgement, just facts. Yes, parts of this book left me wanting, but the rest was so masterful, I have to give Apples Never Fall five stars.
This book! I lost myself in it. I noticed I'd been reading it for a while and looked down, shocked to find myself on page 199! Terrific plotting. Whenever an author can make me desperate to read backstory, I have to tip my hat to them. I loved the ambiguity, the theme, the characterizations. I admire Miranda Cowley Heller's restraint in writing the subtext. Often, she allowed us to put together what was happening though the setting, the physical responses, the tertiary characters. I loved how she gave me the space to dive deep and interpret for myself. The ending was deliciously ambitious and imperfect and I thought, completely fitting with the characterization.
While I enjoyed the pacing of the short scenes, I felt there were two downsides to this approach. Even if you tell me what year it is, I'm not going to do the math to figure out how old Elle was, and her age has a significant impact on the context of the scene. Secondly, nearly every scene begins with grounding the reader in the setting, which yes, is essential, but with so many short scenes, it also got very repetitive. By the end of the book I found myself instinctively skipping the first paragraph, skimming the second, then settling in where the action started. Other than those things, I thought The Paper Palace was the perfect read.
I loved this book while struggling with this book. I quickly fell in love with Jason Mott's style, but struggled with some of the racial sentiments. As a White Canadian woman, I admit, I may not have enough context, education or empathy to ‘get it'. But when I hear Shonda Rhimes describing a post-racial America and the success of Bridgerton, see Barack Obama elected twice, and Oprah Winfrey now a living legend, I wonder—does this book contain ‘truth'. It's hard for me to see all cops grouped together as one.
But then I tilted my truth meter, and asked instead, is this story the characters truth? And I could say yes. So I gave Hell of a Book five stars.
Brimming with intricacy of character, outer conflict, inner conflict, ugliness, goodness, growth and stasis. A masterpiece.
This was my first time reading a book by Talia Hibbert and I had a hard time adapting to her style. The characters are stuck in their internal monologue it feels like 75% of the time. Not much...happens. They think stuff. They feel stuff. They think a lot of stuff and feel a lot of stuff between sparse lines of dialogue and I couldn't keep track of what they were actually saying to one another. There were some funny lines, but her humour didn't really resonate with me. Peppering thoughts with swear words doesn't really make things funny like a witty incisive comment does in my books. I know a lot of people love her stuff, but I felt this one really fell flat. I wanted to read a Talia Hibbert book because I'd heard good things about her inter-racial relationships as well as writing about ‘normal' body types instead of the genre romance archetypes. The cover promised this but very little detail was given about this aspect of their attraction to one another. I supposed that is one way to write about it, that it's a non-issue, but I was kinda disappointed.
There were a lot of great aspects to this book, but what hung me up most were the character arcs. I really wanted to believe in the authenticity of Shane and Eva, and maybe a little more detail might have helped me? Some of the cultural references were so beyond me that at points I didn't know what was going on.
I was intrigued by the premise and then by the structure. While I loved the idea of learning about Astra through the eyes of those in her life, I felt like there was an aspect missing, that kept me from being bewitched by her. Although, maybe that was the point? The people in her life seemed obsessed with Astra, as most of their narrative revolved around her—which makes sense, Astra is the storyline—but I had a hard time believing Astra was worthy of the obsession? Surely she had a singular upbringing, but from the evidence presented by the people she interacts with she seems to live a life typical of what I'd expect from a victim of childhood neglect. An ‘average' response to it? Because we're so distanced from Astra, it's hard to know which of her victories were hard won, which defeats she was accountable for... An interesting book to be sure, but missed the mark a little for my taste. Wanted more of Astra.
The New York Times called Golden Girl Elin Hilderbrand's best novel—and I can't contradict that.
Novelist Vivian Howe is untimely killed in a hit and run, and in her boho-chic viewing room in the sky she is awarded three nudges to help those closest to her while they process her death. This story follows a large cast of characters, all with different connections to Vivi, her children, her ex-lovers, and what really blew me away is that I wanted to know what was going to happen with every single one of them. Many authors struggle to pose two or three pressing story questions in a novel, but in Golden Girl there were... eight? Maybe more? I was completely invested in each storyline, and I didn't see the twists coming. A deeply satisfying read with a theme so beautiful, it had me in tears. Five stars. All the way.
Aspects of this book inspired me and left me in awe. Others made me roll my eyes and left me dissatisfied. First off—the genre. I'm not sure what others would categorize it as, but I found myself very excited to read for the first time what I'd call an upmarket cozy mystery. I found Molly's eccentricities endearing and right away I was rooting for her. The author provided an interesting cast of characters in a fabulous setting for a locked room mystery. The crime in question was perfectly suited to the surroundings. Through the first 50% of the book, I enjoyed every page, with only one niggling doubt—did our heroine have the wherewithal to solve this mystery? And sure enough, she did not. True, fiction revolves around characters with agency, and Molly did make decisions which resulted in personal growth, but I felt the solution to the mystery didn't have the payoff I'm used to. Actually, in my opinion the last 25% of the book kinda crumbled apart. Characters who were once intriguing and autonomous morphed into a pat one-dimensional piece in a puzzle. If I were judging this book on it's last quarter I'd rate it a three, but because the first half was so outstanding, I settled on four stars.
Wish I loved this one, because the writing was interesting and witty, but didn't love the plot structure. I'm a fan of slow burn romance but this was too slow for my taste. Skimmed a lot of the past vacations. They fell into a predictable pattern and could usually just skim to the end of the chapter to the part where their relationship advances. Still, an enjoyable read!
