Though I was immediately drawn to the synopsis of THE PRECIOUS JULES, my expectation that it was going to be a heavy, depressing read was not entirely accurate. Shawn Notcher has written the story of the Jules family with a great deal of sensitivity. The characters are all quite complicated and many are flawed but they are presented with a unique objectivity that made them realistic and, for the ...
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Blog Tour: On a Quiet Street by Seraphina Nova Glass
Wow! If you're looking for a character driven domestic suspense that you'll want to devour in one sitting, look no further! ON A QUIET STREET is set in one of those communities where everything looks soooo good from the outside. But you know the saying — Looks can be deceiving. Add one bereft mother intent on discovering the truth about the death of her golden child with equal parts ...
Review of “Behind Closed Doors” by B.A. Paris
My Review Isn't Grace the luckiest woman alive? She's beautiful and married to Jack, a handsome and successful attorney. She lives in her dream home; Jack's wedding gift to her. He dotes on her. They are never apart. And he just loves her sister, Millie. He's even insisted that Millie, who has Down's Syndrome, move in with them as she ages out of the residential school she attends. Sound's ...
Review of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
My Review "Some years later, the Count would come to understand that he had been looking at the matter upside down. The pace of evolution was not something to be frightened by. For while nature doesn't have a stake in whether the wings of a peppered moth are black or white, it genuinely hopes that the peppered moth will persist." A Gentleman in Moscow is the story of Count Alexander Ilyich ...
And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
How could I could not say no when the publisher asked if I'd like to review this book?? Though I don't read many novellas, I am an absolute evangelist for anything written by Fredrik Backman. I would read his grocery lists. (5 stars, I'm sure!) I met the Fredrik Backman at BEA this year and was a little surprised to find that he's absolutely nothing like his aging, curmudgeonly characters. In ...
Review of “Cruel Beautiful World” by Carolyn Leavitt
Cruel Beautiful World is a book filled with so many stories within stories I'm not sure how the author, Caroline Leavitt, managed to incorporate them all so organically and seamlessly into one book. Sixteen year old has run away with her high school English teacher. Though her sister, Charlotte, and her guardian, Iris, do everything in their power to find her and bring her home, Lucy remains ...
Review of “History of Wolves” by Emily Fridlund
History of Wolves is one of those novels that I couldn't put down but, in the end, I have mixed feelings about. Linda is a socially awkward 14 year old girl living in Minnesota with her family. Her parents, especially her mother, are somewhat strange and detached. When the Gardener family moves in across the lake, Linda begins babysitting for their four year old son,Paul, while Paul's mother, ...
Review of “Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch
Holy weirdness! This book is as strange and compelling as a book can be! I wasn't sure what to expect when I began Dark Matter. It was much-hyped at BEA and I'd seen all of the rave reviews but still... I'm not even a sci-fi fan. Sure, I love a little Stephen King or Dean Koontz now and then. (Who doesn't??) But it has to be good. Really good. Weird enough to be interesting but not weird enough ...
Review of “The Last Days of Night” by Graham Moore
I do not care so much for a great fortune as I do for getting ahead of the other fellows. - Thomas Edison Until I read this book, I had an impression of what it would have been like to see the night lit for the first time. It was terribly romantic. It was surreal, ethereal, and peaceful. (Sort of like this book's beautiful cover.) There were scientists and engineers of all sorts slapping each ...
Review of “Stranger, Father, Beloved” by Taylor Larsen
The book begins with Michael seeing his wife, Nancy, talking to another man at a party. He decides that this is the man who should be married to Nancy. He promptly begins working on his plan to make this man Nancy's new husband. This is a strange book in the sense that a decent writer (clean, articulate language, etc.) has written a bad story about mostly bad, unlikable characters. My ...
