Watch your mouth

I got into a really interesting conversation in one of my bookworm Facebook groups about Netgalley and book reviews, and eventually the discourse turned to what happens when writers don't like the reviews their book is getting.  Turns out, some people can get really heated.  So, with great trepidation, I am back to share some thoughts on this week's reads.

I muscled through In The Vines by Shannon Kirk, and it never got any better for me.  Despite a glowing review on Goodreads, claiming it was a perfect gothic noir thriller, I found the writing style to be nearly intolerable.  I skimmed huge chunks of text, simply unable to connect with the characters or the flowery, irritating prose.  I was not shocked by the purported "twists", and the confusion I felt through the first 75% of the book wasn't the fun, suspense-building experience that most books with an unreliable narrator tend to provide.  I got it over with, I sent my feedback to Netgalley, and I moved on.  They can't all be winners, and this only reinforces my usual opinion that life is too short to force yourself to read books that you don't enjoy.  Notice I didn't say "bad books", because there's no such thing.  Books are pathways, each dictated by tastes and experiences and reliability.  I know there are others who will love the book!

Moving right along.  My beloved Tracy Crosswhite is back for book #6, A Steep Price.  Every time Robert Dugoni releases a new book in this series, I feel like I get to see old friends again.  Kins, Vic, Faz, Dan, Dan's DOGS!, and of course Tracy herself.  I love this series because it feels authentic, manages to remain heartwarming in the face of grim subject matters, and really makes you care about the characters.  

 

This time around, Tracy and Kins are investigating the death of a young Indian woman whose best friend has reported her missing after delivering some life-changing news.  Unfortunately, when she is found murdered in a shallow grave in the park, it creates more questions than answers.  As they delve deeper into her life, they find a lot of ambition that was hampered by her familys societal expectations, her grim determination to raise money for medical school at any cost despite her parents wishes to return home and accept an arranged marriage, and the seedy underworld of "Sugar Dating", which has enough loopholes to escape being classified as prostitution, despite being dangerous and borderline sex work.  Tracy is feeling threatened and on edge due to their newest team member, another female who seems to be snooping in private files and isn't honest about the circumstances of an officer-involved shooting in the case that Vic and Faz are tackling currently.  A young activist woman who spoke out against gangs and the drug trade in her underprivileged area gets shot and killed.  The guys think it's connected to a local gang leader whose father they put in prison years earlier.  The hotter the trail gets, the more in danger they are.  Little Jimmy blames them for putting his dad away, and for his subsequent death in prison when a rival gang member stabbed him.  Just as things are reaching a boiling point, Tracy and Kins figure out exactly who their killer is and they're hot on the trail.  The book, like the others in the series, was a fun, fast-paced read with heart and a satisfying conclusion.  I highly recommend starting this series!

I have to assume that I am being rewarded for struggling through a book that I really disliked, because A Double Life by Flynn Berry absolutely blew me out of the water.  Not only was the writing beautiful, but the story was haunting and touching at the same time.  I loved the alternating timelines of the narrators story (now, as a woman in her mid-30's, still hunting for the father who disappeared from her life after a gruesome attack on her family; and then, as a child who witnessed the horrifying scene and never truly understood what happened and why) and the rich, descriptive writing.  I felt like I was sitting right next to her, and the delicious tension that was built through the story progression made it nearly impossible to put down.  This one is a must-read!  I am off to purchase her first novel, Under the Harrow.  I will be on the lookout for more of her works!

All in all, this is what I love so much about receiving ARC's.  I get to experience an author's style with no financial risk, and it often opens me up to new writers that I may not have heard of otherwise.    It also drives me to purchase their other books, which is great for the writers too. I am happy to be part of the reading and reviewing community, even when I have to give a heavy-hearted one star review.

TBR: 

I don't want to set the world on fire

This week, my hometown of Redding, CA was hit with a devestating forest fire.  The past few days have shown the true character, good and bad, of many local businesses and individuals.  As of today, the Carr Fire has displaced over 30,000 residents, burned over 80,000 acres, and destroyed at least 500 structures in our small rural town.  We have banded together as a community, and I am lucky enough that my home is safe and so are the homes of my families and friends.  My heart goes out to the thousands who weren't as lucky as my loved ones.

In times of high tension and stress, it's so hard for me to relax.  Watching TV is out of the question, and focusing on reading is quite difficult.  Since I couldn't sit still on Friday night, and following the fire updates was compounding my anxiety, I decided to pick up a paper book in case the predicted rolling blackouts happened, since I wanted to maintain my charge on my iPad and phone.  I have a shelf of unread hardcover books that were just waiting for me, so I selected Laura Lippman's "Sunburn", a book I have been wanting to read for a while.  

If you're not familiar with Lippman's works, do yourself a favor and get thee to Amazon immediately.  The blurbs on the back of her books hail her as an observant crime writer with a strong noir feel - and that is a very accurate description.  She has an incredible writing style that makes it so hard to put her books down.  Some of my favorites are linked below.

So far, Sunburn is not disappointing me, even though I had built my expectations far too high (which sometimes results in me being very let down).  I will openly admit that I am still not sure where the story is headed, but I truly enjoy that feeling.  I don't like predictability in anything in my life - books, food, men.  So far, we've met "Polly", who has landed in the small town of Belleville, Delaware with no possessions and no plan.  This is because, as Pauline, she has abandoned her no-good husband with their young daughter while on a seaside vacation.  She is written as an opportunist who has the ability to compartmentalize her emotions and manipulate men in order to get what she wants, but I get a different sense of her in the chapters that are written from her point of view.  The other chapters are written from the points of view of her husband, Gregg, who already had a dim view of his wife before she abandoned him with a toddler; Sue, a lesbian PI that Gregg has hired to find Pauline; and Adam, a PI who is tracking Pauline but we don't yet know why, or for whom.  However, Adam has started an ill-advised affair with Pauline as Polly, though she has not shown any indication that she knows he's following her.  I am on Chapter 13 and cannot wait until the death happens, as I cannot even predict who it will be at this point!

I am going to spend my evening unwinding and delving further into the story, stay tuned for my full review! 

On Netgalley, over-caffeination, and my ever-growing TBR pile

I have been slacking on everything this week.  Slacking on reading, slacking on writing, slacking on reviewing.  Don't worry though, I have been super active when it comes to stressing out about things I cannot change or control, so I've got that one covered.

Like most people, I don't sleep very well when I am feeling anxious or I am under more stress than usual.  This has definitely been the case this past week, so maybe I am not slacking on reading as badly as I thought.  Maybe the 112 degree weather is sapping my energy and fuzzing my brain when it comes to reality.  Luckily for me, as a reader, I much prefer to be entrenched in a fictionalized setting anyhow.  

One peaceful night, I happened to notice that some really great titles had landed themselves on a Kindle sale and I just couldn't resist.  Never mind the hundreds of unread books on my Kindle, iBooks, Play Books, Glose, Libby, and (unheard on) Audible. Turn away from the stacks on the bookshelf, the nightstand, and the end tables.  Shhhh, I needed these.  One of them was "Lying in Wait" by Liz Nugent, which I was seeing EVERYWHERE.  I had requested an ARC, but sadly did not get approved, so I was anxiously awaiting the release.  Needless to say, finding it on a flash sale for under $5 really tickled my peach.  I figured since I couldn't even begin to feel the first inklings of sleep, I might as well make the most of it and get immersed in a story.  I was not at all expecting the immediate fascination and horror that ensued.

This is absolutely a book about murder.  It's not a mystery, because the murder (and the perpetrators of said murder) are revealed right away in the very first chapter.  Instead of a whodunit, it's a whydunit.  It was a very effective storytelling device, as I was holding my breath the entire time waiting for the twist, or the reveal that the narrator had been unreliable all along.  Instead, the story slowly unspools from alternating viewpoints after the event has taken place.  We slowly get to know Lydia and Andrew, who have killed Annie in the opening scene.  We get to know their son Laurence as he grows up under the shadow of a secret he doesn't even know lives within his own home but consumes him just the same.  Lydia's relationship with, and dependence upon, Laurence is one of the most subtly insidious facets of this story.  It crept under my skin in a way that I cannot explain, and left me feeling haunted and slightly sick during certain chapters and long after finishing the book.  As Laurence comes of age, so does his obsession with the old murder case of Annie Doyle.  As his life intertwines with those closest to her, the lines become so blurry you aren't even sure who you're rooting for anymore.  There is a lot of manipulation present in this story, and if you're anything like me, it will leave you shaken.  Even at the higher price point, I would say this book is well worth the cost.  It was a really fun read, and there is a nice little twist at the end.  Let's say a soft twist. For me, the book had a very vintage V.C. Andrews feel to it.  You could almost pretend you were in the grand mansion Avalon, with its once-glorious furniture and curios worn down to a soft scuff and the multitude of rooms feeling far emptier now that they're occupied by ghosts.  I look forward to reading it again in a year or so when the details become foggy to me.  

Scrolling through Facebook the other day, I saw an ad for Shannon Kirk's "In the Vines".  The synopsis sounded quite intriguing...

"Mary Olivia Pentecost, known as Mop, was born into one of the wealthiest families in the country—and one of the most guarded. Now, two years after her mother’s mysterious death, Mop is seeking closure on the disquieting tragedy by returning to the New England seaside  estate of her cloistered Aunty Liv—once her closest relative and confidante.

But behind the walls of the isolated estate, the shadows of the past are darker than Mop imagined. The puzzles of the family history are not to be shared, but unearthed. With each revelation comes a new, foreboding threat—and for Mop, the grave suspicion that to discover Aunty Liv’s secrets is to become a prisoner of them.

How well do we know the people we love? How well do we want to know them? The answers are as twisted as a tangle of vines in this throat-clutching novel of psychological suspense."

I saw that it was free on Kindle Unlimited, so I was about to grab it, when I noticed that I already had it in my Kindle app, as an ARC from Thomas & Mercer (love them!).  Since my Netgalley feedback ratio is nowhere NEAR where it should be, I figured I should get this one read so I could review it more quickly.  If you don't have Kindle Unlimited and would like to buy the Kindle edition, it's $4.99 (just click the cover image above).

My first impression is that the writing is slightly overwrought, and just not cohesive.  There's also a bit of overuse of strange words, like "consumptions".  The storyline bounces back and forth between narrators and timelines, and is quite confusing.  There is an outlandish murder by peanut dust scene very early on.  I am having a hard time plowing through - it's like trying to force the heel of a baguette to be soft enough to masticate without endangering your dental work.  The writing is too verbose, too flowery, not cohesive at all.  The meandering descriptions that don't seem important are a little annoying.  I want to know what is actually going on, but not in a  fun, traditional unreliable narrator way.  More like your narrator is some flighty hippie chick who is so overly emotive that you can't stand to be around her on her best day, and today she chugged an entire magnum of dandelion wine and you want to strangle her with her hemp choker.  I will continue to push through, if only to see what is actually happening.  But this one is not wrapping me up in it like the last few I have plowed through.  A quick glance at the Amazon reviews reveals that I am not even close to being alone in my opinion of this being confusing and strange. An honest review is what they wanted - better late than never.  They're gonna get one when I am finished powering my way through this crusty, confusing loaf of bread.

"Lies" by T.M. Logan - best surprise I've gotten in the mail for a while!

Hello, and welcome to my very first blog post!  I am a lifelong reader, and it's become one of my very few true passions.  A lot of my friends ask me for advice on what to read or what I thought of certain books, so I thought I would start reviewing them on a blog people could actually visit if they're so inclined.  Fair warning - I can be sarcastic and I swear often.  If you don't fucking like that, please do find another book review blog.  They're everywhere.  So without further ado...

I received an ARC of this novel in the mail, I was so excited! As much as I love a digital ARC, holding a real book in my hands pre-publication was next level. I was delighted. Anyhow...SOFT spoilers ahead. 

What a fun read! I was hooked within the first few pages. The premise seems so simple - Joe is driving in London traffic when his son, in the backseat, spots mommy's car across the road. They decide to surprise her and Joe sees her with another man...her best friends husband, Ben. Sounds so predictable, right? Joe decides to confront the man, since he already knows him after all, and he doesn't want to believe his wife would be unfaithful. We all want to hear the simple explanation that clears up what we genuinely hope is a misunderstanding. Unfortunately, this particular conversation becomes a physical altercation when Ben becomes aggressive, and he ends up unconscious and bleeding on the ground in the parking structure. Joe's son begins to have an asthma attack, so he leaves him there. From there - the book gets really good. 

What happened to Ben? Wherever he ended up, he decides that the battle against Joe has begun. As Joe slowly finds himself the main suspect in a murder investigation, even without a body, the lies of his life begin to unravel all around him. You're so busy engrossed in figuring out the mystery that you miss the obvious truth right in front of you - much like Joe. The twist blindsided me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the clever way it was written and the way it tricks and leads your mind as you read. It's been a long time since I stayed up reading until 2 AM, telling myself "just one more chapter" over and over as my eyelids droop.  This book did that to me.  

Thank you MacMillan Publishers! I am loaning it to friends and family next to spread the word!  The book will be published in the US on September 11, 2018, but you can read the first 8 chapters for free through Amazon Kindle here.