Category Archives: review

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

By Lu Posted in Books, review Tagged , , , , 3 Replies

flight behaviorThis is one of those posts that just won’t write itself. I keep getting bogged down in the plot summary, when really all I want to do is post my favorite quotes from this novel and let you decide. It’s pretty, and I truly enjoyed reading about the characters, but it is flawed.

It is a novel about global warming and it is not subtle about it. Sometimes the story is sacrificed to get that message across. Lengthy discussions of global warming and what it means and how hopeless it is. Things that aren’t untrue, but perhaps could have been more artistically woven into the story.

But it’s also a novel about a marriage and a mother and a friendship and a mother-in-law. And in those moments, it’s lovely. Now, for the quotes:

They faced each other, a towering, morose man and his small, miserable wife, both near tears. How could two people both lose an argument? (174)

My favorite quotes are ones that express something you’ve seen but never known how to describe.

She could see that his old generosity was still there, but was sometimes being held captive by despair, like a living thing held underwater. (239)

It was hard to feel the remotest sympathy for any of the fools she had been. As opposed to the fool she was probably being now. 394

In one transcendent moment buoyed by two ounces of Riesling she saw the pointlessness of clinging to that life raft, that hooray-we-are-saved conviction of having already come through the stupid parts, to arrive at the current enlightenment. The hard part is letting go, she could see that. There is no life raft; you’re just freaking swimming all the time. (394)

I feel like the quotes I picked aren’t even particularly beautiful. They are just ones that I liked. If blog posts are supposed to recommend a book or not, I’m not sure I could tell you one way or the other. You might be put off by the constant reminder that this is a novel with an issue at its heart instead of a plot. Or maybe you’ll get something out of this book, like I did, even if it’s only a few quotes and a pleasant reading experience.

The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jamie M. Saul

By Lu Posted in Books, review Tagged , , 1 Reply

The First Warm Evening of the YearEvery year, around this time, I’m drawn to books with titles and covers like The First Warm Evening of the Year. I always think that a story set in early summer is just what I need to get me through these last few weeks of winter. Unfortunately, I haven’t quite found the perfect book for this time of year and The First Warm Evening of the Year wasn’t the book I was expecting.

I should start off by saying that I could not finish The First Warm Evening of the Year. I give books, especially ones I’m reading for a tour like this one, a fair chance. I read 100 pages of this book and tried to get into the story and enjoy it, but I just couldn’t. I found the story to be unbelievable and the writing lacking, despite some wonderful descriptions and intrigue.

Geoffrey is a voice over actor who is surprised to find that he has been made the executor of his estranged best friend’s estate. They lost touch after she moved to Paris with her husband, but he graciously accepts the job and while going through Laura’s things he meets her good friend Marian. Marian is still in love with her husband, who died suddenly ten years ago, but has been in a long-term relationship. Geoffrey can’t stop thinking about Marian and the life Laura left behind.

When Geoffrey meets Laura, their conversation is intense, but when he starts talking about being passionately in love with her I was suddenly confused. He loves her? He only talked to her for a few minutes! I guess it was just so abrupt and bizarre. I thought this was going to be a meditative novel on grief, but it suddenly turned into the story of a man who pursues a woman who has expressly stated that she is totally uninterested in him.

I knew that there was a romance portion to the novel, but I wasn’t expecting it to take front and center and so quickly. While I was somewhat interested in seeing how their romance eventually played out, it also made me a little bit uncomfortable. Marian is a woman who is dealing with a lot of grief. After knowing her for approximately a week, Geoffrey goes to her house and tells her that a) he is in love with her, b) her long-term boyfriend is in love with her, but she will never be in love with him and c) they were meant to be together. I’m sorry, but if someone told me that after knowing me for a week? I would run in the other direction.

Apart from the romance being unbelievable, the first person narrative with long chunks of dialogue frustrated me. There are monologues that are two pages long in some cases and conversations that are nothing but sentence after sentence of dialogue for pages. I don’t expect written language to do anything but resemble speech, but I don’t want to be completely taken out of the story every time I read a conversation in the novel because it seems impossible.

There were moments that made me want to keep reading. Marian is a gardener and there is a scene where she describes the early summer garden to Geoffrey. I loved the descriptions and how passionate Marian was about her craft. I’m starved for spring and this was a perfect escape from the cold winter weather outside. I was also intrigued by how the story would play out, but unfortunately, not enough to overcome the negatives.

I wasn’t the reader for The First Warm Evening of the Year, but I know that what might be a deal breaker for me would be a mild annoyance to another reader. If you can suspend your disbelief about the romance, I think you might be very intrigued by the plot of The First Warm Evening of the Year and enjoy some wonderful descriptions of New York at spring time.

I received a copy of The First Warm Evening of the Year for review from TLC Book Tours. You can learn more about this tour, including other tour stops, here. 

GNF 7 – Sailor Twain by Mark Siegal

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , Leave a reply

Sailor Twain cover

Sailor Twain or The Mermaid in the Hudson by Mark Siegel (First Second, 2012)

Sailor Twain was on a lot of ”Best Of” lists the year it was published. It has an average star rating on GoodReads of 3.81. All the people I know who have read it have loved it. So why didn’t I?

I wanted to give up reading Sailor Twain, but I didn’t because I felt like I was missing something and that eventually it would click. This is definitely one of those cases where there are a lot of things to love about Sailor Twain, and you just might like them, but for me, it just didn’t come together.

First, I was a little bit put off by the art style. This is a purely subjective assessment. The art isn’t bad, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I do other styles. Siegel uses charcoal and some of his panels look much more finished than others. There’s also less opportunity for detail. A lack of connection with the art made it even harder to connect with the story, which I felt was too long and a little convoluted. I kept wondering if I was missing something. Is there a legend that I am not familiar with that was making this more confusing for me? Did I just not give the graphic novel the attention it deserved?

I’m pretty convinced that this is just a matter of taste. Sailor Twain isn’t bad, but it wasn’t for me, unfortunately. I’m not unhappy I finished it. There were some beautiful panels and moments when I truly appreciated the art style, even if it didn’t impress me as a whole. I feel the same way about the story. While it ultimately fell flat, there were great moments that made this, at least, a worthwhile read.

GNF 5 – Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary and Bryan Talbot

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , , , , , 5 Replies

Something that has helped me find new comics to read this month has been really paying attention to the publishers and imprints. After reading and loving Friends With Boys, I immediately requested a bunch of new titles from First Second, the Macmillan imprint that publishes the book. If you’re at a loss for what to read next with comics, look at who published your favorite graphic novel or one you’re particularly interested in and look at their backlist. You’re bound to find books either by the same artists or with similar art and storytelling styles. I think the publishing industry has a long way to go before there’s imprint recognition in the general public. I know that I for one never paid much attention to imprints or publishing houses before I started working in publishing. But I think publisher recognition is more prevalent in comics. Think DC vs. Marvel. Starting with this post, I’m going to start including all the imprints/publishers on here, in case you want to keep track, too.

dotter cover

Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse, 2012)

I had no idea what Dotter of her Father’s Eyes was about before I started reading, but for some reason it definitely wasn’t what I expected. Author Mary Talbot tells the story of her childhood with a distracted, angry father, who also happened to be a Joycean scholar. She parallels the story of her life with the life of Lucia Joyce, James Joyce’s daughter who lived a tragic life.

Mary, within the comic, points out that there aren’t many similarities between her life and Lucia’s. Instead, the parallels are more general. Their stories are about what it is like to grow up as a woman. Lucia fought for independence and freedom as a dancer in 1920s Paris. She suffered a hateful mother who didn’t see the worth in anything she was doing, a father who adored her, but wouldn’t stand up for her and her career, and the lost love of Samuel Beckett. Her parents forced her to leave Paris with them right as her career was beginning to take off and she never regained momentum. Eventually the stress from losing her career and the anger she harbored made her lose control. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed. She lived in a mental institution until she died at age 75.

Mary’s father was distant, distracted, and very short-tempered. Mary seemed to always make him mad, even when she wasn’t exactly sure what she had done to deserve it. When Mary becomes unexpectedly pregnant as a young woman, she marries the child’s father, because she doesn’t see any other way.

Mary and Lucia are both constrained by their societies and their families. Their lives are in deep contrast to the lives of their successful fathers, but also in contrast to each other. Lucia has a life that she wants to lead and she has some success at it, but her family never supports her. Mary never feels like she’s given as much freedom as her brothers and she is always painfully scrutinized by her father.

The difference is the end of their stories: Lucia’s story is tragic. Though I imagine the comic simplifies her downfall somewhat, she never recovers from the few months she was forced to leave Paris. Her dance career is ruined, Beckett calls off their relationship, and Lucia feels like she has nothing left. We know, however, that Mary changes her life. She is no longer married to the man she marries at the end of the comic. She has made a name for herself as a writer. Her father eventually respects her and her decisions, though she never sees him as warm or charming, the way some of his colleagues do.

I liked the art and the simple color distinctions between Mary’s story and Lucia’s story. I also loved the little interjections from Mary about her husband’s art. Whenever he got something wrong, she would point it out, but he didn’t redraw the pictures. It showed their collaboration process, but I thought it was also an interesting commentary on the way we tell stories and how other people perceive them. The inconsistencies are small. Mary really only corrects her husband’s art twice, but I think it was effective to leave them in there with only Mary’s commentary.

I liked this comic a lot. It taught me something about Lucia and I think the parallels between Mary and Lucia’s story are there. It makes sense to tell them together, a fact I think surprised the character-Mary in some ways.

GNF 4 – Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

By Lu Posted in comic, review Tagged , , , , , 6 Replies

saga cover

My love for Brain K. Vaughan and his particular brand of storytelling began with Runaways. I just think the concept behind Runaways is so good and the characters are funny and easy to relate to. I’ve been reading graphic novel-style comics for a while now, but Runaways was my first foray into the more traditional realm of serial comics and it was great.

I’ve been hearing buzz about Saga all year, but Vasilly is really the person that made me want to pick it up and read it as soon as possible. It wasn’t soon enough.

I love Saga. There’s really no ifs ands or buts about it. Fiona Staples’s art is a revelation. It’s detailed, beautiful, and Vaughan and Staples’s imaginations put together is a sight to behold. I went into Saga more or less blind about the story and I think that that’s the way to do it. If you haven’t read Saga yet, just trust me on this one, okay? It’s good and it’s worth your time. Now close out of this blog post and don’t read anymore!

If you have read Saga, then you know there are a lot of things to love. There are dozens of different kinds of creatures and that’s what we’ve seen so far. There are government conspiracies, an all-consuming war, star-crossed lovers, a whole universe to explore, and characters that you grow to love in just a few short panels. My favorite characters ended up being secondary ones in this series. Izabel is instantly lovable and comedic relief, plus I actually cared about her character. I hope she’s not actually gone! I was also always excited when The Will showed up with his truth-telling cat.

That’s not to say that I didn’t like the main characters, because I did. I think they will only get more interesting as we learn more about them, and I was particularly excited to see Marko’s parents show up, but I think the introduction to their story made them a little bit less interesting. Once we find out more about their pasts and how they came to give up fighting in the war, I think they will become slightly more interesting and less one dimensional. They are the heroes, but there’s not a whole lot interesting about them yet. In this part of the comic, it felt like all the action was happening around them and they weren’t doing much of anything.

I suppose that’s a little unfair, because they were fighting for their life. But to me, the more interesting characters are ones we don’t necessarily know what to expect from. Is Izabel really helping them? Or is she only looking out for herself? What about The Will and his ability to compartmentalize right and wrong so it suits his own morals? I think Alana and Marko will become a little bit more interesting and a little bit more unexpected as they learn more about each other.

There’s also the fact that the story is narrated by their daughter. I think this is such a good way to frame the story and I love the way it’s represented in the lettering. It made the final little cliffhanger so good. Those last few panels with the shocked look on Marko’s dad’s face? And the stern look on his mother’s? So realistic. I can’t wait to read more about their dynamic.

I can’t believe I have to wait until this summer to read the next collection. I wish I’d started reading this one when it came out in the issues, though it might have been even more torturous to wait each month for a shorter chapter. I wasn’t surprised that I loved Saga, but I was a little surprised how much. I think, for me, it was really the complement of the art by Fiona Staples and the storytelling from Vaughan. They really are a creative match made in heaven.

GNF 3 – Blue by Pat Grant

By Lu Posted in comic, review Tagged , , , 4 Replies

blue by pat grant

Blue by Pat Grant is a story about us vs them. The story takes place in a seaside Australian town and is narrated by an older man who is recalling the “good old days” when there were no blue people in town. The blue people look different from you and me: they have many legs, their skin is blue, they eat weird food. I think you can see where this is going.

Blue as a metaphor isn’t a very complicated one. Pat Grant set out to tell a fairly common story. It’s so common, it’s the plot of a movie I’m sure you’ve all heard about: Stand By Me, based on the Stephen King story “The Body.” Grant actually had something very similar happen to him as a kid and he decided to include it as an important part of this comic as well. Even as I was reading it, it felt more like an homage than a ripoff, especially since the overarching themes are so different in Stand By Me and Blue.

Something else that makes Blue stand apart for me is the fact that the narrator is not sympathetic at all. When he tells his story about being a kid in this town right around the time it started going bad, you can see that he absolutely didn’t learn anything from what he witnessed on the day Blue takes place. He is completely blind to everything around him. We can forgive him for this when he is a child, but when the art reverts back to the present and we see his adult self, no more mature than he was as a teenager, you know that he hasn’t really grown up at all.

The art in Blue might be off-putting for some people, but I was so reminded of the cartoons I grew up watching as a kid, like Rocco’s Modern Life. The shapes of the characters and the buildings, plus the emphasis on the crude and the gross, reminded was reminiscent that style of 90s cartoons that were at once disgusting and interesting to look at. The crudeness suits the characters and it’s in such contrast to the absolutely stunning, surreal backgrounds that Grant includes. The comic is colored entirely in blue and tan, which is visually interesting and also lovely.

There is an essay at the end of the book that is at once interesting and unnecessary. It didn’t complete this comic for me in any way, but I enjoyed reading it and it did shed some light on why Grant wrote Blue. I didn’t need the why, but I appreciated it. There is a moment towards the end of the comic that felt particularly relevant to Blue, though:

Part of life when you live at the arse end of the world is that your story never seems to intersect with the grand narratives. Bigger histories from more populous places quickly morph into mythologies, but the smaller stories on the fringes are often nudged out of the collective consciousness and lost forever.

Blue feels at once wholly specific to a place and universal. There are bigger histories about outsiders and insiders, about immigration, about new communities versus old, but the fictional town in Blue is simply a microcosm of all of that and it becomes a part of the bigger history and the grand narrative.

I didn’t think I had a lot to say about Blue. It’s an unassuming comic that seems simple on the surface, but it’s rich, layered, and interesting. The story is simple and classic, but the characters, the setting, and the art make it into a much deeper exploration of identity, as a person, a town, and a culture, even at the expense of others.

GNF 2 – Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , , , 3 Replies

Friends With Boys Cover

I’ve always wanted brothers. Not just brothers, but older brothers, which was, obviously, impossible from the minute I was born. I have this romantic idea of what it would be like to have an older brother: someone who’s protective and loyal and loving and funny and sometimes obnoxious. In that way Friends With Boys was a little bit of wish fulfillment for me. I loved seeing Maggie’s relationship with her brothers, even if it was a little bit more complex than what I imagine.

The title of Friends With Boys is a little bit misleading, because it’s more about Maggie and her first year in high school, trying to understand the relationships between her brothers and the other boys at school. Maggie, like her brothers before her, was homeschooled until it was time for her to start high school. Unlike her brothers, though, Maggie is facing high school on her own, because her mother has left. Maggie’s father, the local police chief, has been trying to keep things normal around the house, but it can’t stay that way for long, especially since Maggie has also been seeing a ghost. When she makes new friends at school, Lucy and Alistair, her brother Daniel is surprisingly upset about it. Maggie is just trying to understand the world she lives in, which feels too overwhelming and confusing at times. Why are her twin brothers Zander and Lloyd fighting? Why doesn’t Daniel like Alistair? Why does the captain of the volleyball team seem to hate Alistair, too? Why did Maggie’s mom leave? And why is there a ghost following her around?

I loved everything about Friends With Boys. I loved the drawing style. Each face is so expressive and each panel meaningful and so nicely drawn. I’m in love with the way Hicks draws faces and I couldn’t get enough of the characters. I felt like they were real people and I loved them. They are all different shapes and sizes and just feel human.

Friends With Boys is funny and sad and heartwarming and heartbreaking all at the same time. Plus there’s a ghost, so, you know. I feel like it is really easy to compare Friends With Boys and Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgot. They have similar plots, though I connected more with Friends With Boys. It’s a little bit more light-hearted, especially when it comes to the ghost, and, as I might have mentioned, I loved the characters.

Friends With Boys is just so charming, I think you’ll find yourself smiling along. There are no neat endings with this comic, though. Many of the questions above are never truly answered, but that was okay for me. I can see some readers being frustrated with it, but I was perfectly okay with a small glimpse of Maggie’s life. And, because the world is an awesome place, you can read the first 20 pages of Friends With Boys online, just to see if you’ll fall in love with the characters and artwork as much as I did. Check it out at the Friends With Boys website.

GNF 1 – Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , , , 2 Replies

9781770460607I started off Graphic Novels February, also known as Comics February, by reading Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton in January. I had checked out all these great comics in preparation for February and I just couldn’t wait.

I’ve been reading Beaton’s webcomic on and off for a few years now, but not necessarily consistently. It’s always good when I need a laugh combined with a literary or historical reference. I loved that Hark! A Vagrant included explanations for the comics, because they can be a little specific and if you’re not familiar with what the comic is referencing, the joke will be lost on you. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, because that just means that I have new things to explore. I did appreciate it, though, when Beaton gave a little bit of context.

I’ll admit, my favorite comic by Kate Beaton isn’t even one in this book or on her full site. She took a picture of it and uploaded it here, to her Tumblr. It’s one of those things where just thinking about it will send me into a fit of hysterics. I was hoping to find another comic like that in Hark! A Vagrant, and while there were quite a few that made me laugh out loud, there were none that I loved quite as much as Tolstoy’s poop shelf.

Fortunately for me, Beaton’s sense of humor and mine line up pretty well. I find immature and silly jokes to be very funny. I love the low brow combined with the high brow. Beaton delivers in spades and I can’t wait to keep reading her comics.

January 28 – The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

By Lu Posted in Books, review Leave a reply

The Lats Policeman cover

There’s something about a neo-noir novel (or movie, or tv show, or comic) that I can’t pass up, especially one with a great premise. The Last Policeman is about the end of the world: it’s coming and everyone knows the date. Asteroid 2011GV1, or Maia, is heading straight for earth. No question, it will hit. If you and everyone you knew only had a few months to live, what would you do? Hank Palace decides to keep working as a detective, even though most everyone else has given up. When he’s called into investigate an insurance salesman’s suicide, he’s convinced that it’s a murder. Even though no one quite believes him, he finds himself caught up in a story that’s much bigger than one man’s death.

The Last Policeman is a successful crime story, but that’s not really why I loved it. The crime itself and Palace’s attempt to solve it took a backseat to his observations about a world on the brink of destruction. People are committing suicide regularly, drug use is rampant and heavily controlled by whatever police force is left, and society is barely holding itself together.

While I was reading The Last Policeman, I kept wondering what it is about this gritty genre that I like so much. I’m not a big fan of traditional noir, mostly just unfamiliar with it, but there’s something about a noir story with a contemporary setting that I love. It’s partially growing up on crime shows and airport thrillers, combined with a desire for something a little bit deeper. For me, noir embodies this combination of action, plot, melodrama, and introspection that I just find irresistible. The stories seem so far from reality (at least far from my reality), but they still speak to this universal darkness, but also a kind of hopefulness.

I admit to a certain blind spot when it comes to the neo-noir. The Last Policeman occasionally dragged and I honestly wasn’t invested in the actual crime solving so much as the character study of both Hank Palace and our world right before it ends. There is also a sort of necessary blindness that comes from the first person narration: we only see each character as Detective Palace sees them. Unfortunately, he sees everyone as a little bit one-note, but that was consistent with his character and didn’t bother me, especially since the details about society as a whole were so poignant.

Suicide is a major theme in The Last Policeman. We see a character commit suicide, another one is suspected is suspected of it, and another one is revealed late in the book. Though it’s hard to pin down noir as a genre, the cynicism and hardness of the main character is always one of the first things that makes me think of noir. There are a lot of ways the cynicism can play out throughout the film or show or book, whatever it might be, but I like it best when there’s something to give the main characters a glimpse that their cynicism might not be the only answer to the world.

I started to say that I thought Palace is different from a lot of noir antiheroes because in a lot of ways he is very earnest, and moral almost to a fault. But that seems like a common theme in the noir genre as well, because the detectives are flawed, but also determined to find the truth at the expense of everything else. Maybe because it is the one honest thing they trust.

I won my copy of The Last Policeman from Quirk on Twitter.

Thirty Days with My Father by Christal Presley

By Lu Posted in Books, review Tagged , , 2 Replies

Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD is a brave memoir. Christal’s father suffers from PTSD and so, consequently, does Christal. She was diagnosed with it as a young adult and, once she left home for college, couldn’t bear to be around her father, the cause of so many of her traumatic memories. Her mother always insisted that she pray for her father and that her father was a good man, but Vietnam made him this way. That was true, but the psychological effects of having to keep such a terrible secret have repercussions throughout Christal’s life. Thirty Days With My Father is Christal’s attempt to finally get to know her father and understand him and maybe heal a little herself along the way.

I can’t imagine the strength it must have taken to put to paper the horrific memories that Christal and her father share. Both of them share very personal memories, whether it is through Christal’s own journal, which features memories of her childhood, or her father’s memories, which she records through their conversations. While PTSD is a disorder that we are coming to understand, especially for war veterans, I think that it is less known that the children of PTSD victims can eventually show signs of the disorder themselves.

In the years between when Christal left her family and she began the thirty day project, her father did a lot of healing. He found solace in music and playing music for other people. He was more comfortable in social situations. Christal finds, through her conversations, a man that she didn’t know but one that she recognized, because she sees so much of herself in him. Christal shows the evolution of their new relationship so well.

Structurally, this memoir isn’t perfect. The inclusion of the journal entries, memories that Presley recounts during the project, felt disjointed. I would have preferred a more fluid memoir that maybe wasn’t divided by day. But structural concerns aside, I feel like I really got to know Christal and her father and witness their changing relationship.

Thirty Days With My Father is not always easy to read, nor should it be. Both Christal and her father have harrowing memories to come to terms with. It is an important work on PTSD, especially for veterans and their children.

TLC Book Tours kindly provided me with a review copy of Thirty Days With My Father. You can find out more information about this tour, including other stops, here. 

RIP VII Wrap-Up

By Lu Posted in Books, review Tagged , , , , , 5 Replies

You guys keep telling me that RIP is over. That October is over. That I’m almost 24, which is decidedly mid-twenties. Why do you keep telling me these things?

I had more fun with RIP this year than I have in all the years I’ve participated. It really was a blast to read spooky stories all fall and I’m really not ready to give that up. As we speak, I’m reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and I have Sarah Waters’s Affinity coming for me from the library. I’m just not ready for all these chilling stories to end. So your spooky reading may be over, but mine is not.

That being said, I guess RIP VII is really over, so I might as well do a final wrap up post.

Books read:

Iron-Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
Here by Denise Grover Swank
Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay
Amelia Anne is Dead And Gone by Kat Rosenfield
Red Rain by RL Stine

I already talked about most of these books in this post, except for the last three.

Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay – This book was way out of my typical comfort zone. I don’t really read what I call “airport thrillers.” Not for any particular reason, but I just don’t enjoy the tropes and the characters. That being said, I do enjoy reading them occasionally, and Trust Your Eyes was a good one to try it with. I really cared about the characters, so immediately that problem I often have with this type of book was gone.

I liked the concept a lot. Essentially, the main character’s brother has a manageable form of schizophrenia and he is obsessed with a Google Earth-like program called Whirl360. He memorizes the streets for every city in the world, under the impression that he is working for the CIA. While doing that, he comes across a murder that was captured by the Whirl360 cameras. He doesn’t like to leave the house, so he sends his brother to check it out. The murder was done by a hit woman hired by the manager of an NYC political candidate and the brothers get swept up in a major political scandal.

It was a little slow at the beginning, but once the story caught on it was definitely fast-paced and I liked the mystery. There were definitely a few twists, though I can’t say I’m particularly pleased with the final twist of the story that happens on the last page. I just didn’t know what to think about it.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield

This novel is very well-written, but I just didn’t have a lot of feelings about it. I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t click with this novel about a young girl in a small town where there is a grisly murder of another young woman. Their lives are connected somehow, and the story is told in alternating chapters from the perspective of Becca, right after Amelia’s murder, and then Amelia Anne’s perspective leading up to the murder. The “twist” at the end of this novel is a good one, but I found the pacing of this story to be off. I will definitely be reading the next thing Kat Rosenfield writes, because I do really the melancholy tone and lyrical writing.

Red Rain by RL Stine

Truthfully, I never read Goosebumps as a kid, so I don’t know why I was so intrigued by Red Rain. It’s not my usual book and I have no nostalgic reasons for reading it, but read it I did. First, there were a lot of factual errors that drove me nuts. A hurricane? In April? That doesn’t even make sense! There wouldn’t be a named hurricane then! Not even a creepy twin producing hurricane. It just doesn’t make sense. And yes, I get that it is a magical hurricane, but no one would call it a hurricane. Hurricane is not synonymous with “big storm.”

Okay, now that I got that off my chest… I don’t know why I kept reading this book. It was pretty awful. Creepy twins! It’s very overdone, but their murders were particularly creepy. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one other than if you are a regular horror reader or a fan of RL Stine’s you will probably read this one, but it really didn’t do a whole lot for me. That being said, I did finish it, which in some ways is a recommendation all its own, because it’s not like I finished it just to hate on it. It’s a book I would have gladly given up on, but something kept me reading. I guess I just wanted to see how the family got out of this mess.

The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D by Nichole Bernier

By Lu Posted in Books, review 6 Replies

I’m the first to admit that I am a judge-a-book-by-its-cover kinda gal. I’m also the first to admit that I make snap judgments about books that, as you will see, are often very wrong. I had it in my mind that The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. was a certain type of book that I tend not to like. I wasn’t going to read The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D by Nichole Bernier, but then I saw the blurb from one of my favorite authors from last year, J. Courtney Sullivan:

Bernier will have you thinking about her characters long after you’ve turned the final page.

And I’m only bringing this up because, blurbs! They work! Who knew? What made me stop about this blurb is yes, it is by an author whose writing I adore, but also, that is one of the most important things for me when I’m reading. I want characters that stick around long after I’ve finished reading. I’m willing to overlook a lot of flaws when I’m reading if the author makes me care about the characters.

I would say that this is easily Elizabeth D‘s greatest success. I did care about the characters and I still think about them, weeks after finishing the novel. When Elizabeth suddenly dies in a plane crash, her friend Kate is surprised to learn that she has inherited her friend’s journals instead of Elizabeth’s husband. Dave suspects that Elizabeth was having an affair in the weeks before her death and he is eager to find out the truth. Kate is hesitant to share the journals with him until she’s read them. After all, Elizabeth left the journals to Kate instead of Dave for a reason.

The summary, in all honesty, did not do much for me and, ultimately, the way the “mystery” plays out was a little bit of a let down, or at the very least, unnecessary. This is the kind of book that could have stood alone, with just the amazing characters, without a big reveal at the end. I know that many readers will be moved by the end, but I was much more moved by the rest of Elizabeth’s story than the reason she gave the journals to Kate.

Where Bernier succeeds is making you care about Kate, Elizabeth, and their friendship, even though through the course of reading Elizabeth’s journals, Kate realizes that she did not know her friend nearly as well as she thought. In many ways, Elizabeth D is about perception and relationships, the way we often see what we want to see when it comes to our friends and even our family. It is about the way women judge and are silently judged for the choices we make as mothers, to stay home or not stay home, to give up one dream in favor of another one.

I finished The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D in an afternoon on the beach and there wasn’t really a better way to read this. Last year I read Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan and there is just something perfect about reading a book that takes place on the beach, at the beach. If you’re not a regular reader of the type of book that is usually marketed as women’s fiction, then I recommend both these novels as a “beach read” that you might be interested in.

I received a copy of The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D by Nichole Bernier for review as a part of TLC Book Tours. You can read more about this tour here.