Fiction

Review – Don’t Breathe a Word

/ justbookreading / 2 Comments

Don’t Breathe a Word

By Jennifer McMahon

HarperCollins

ISBN: 978-0-06-168937-6

3.85 stars

I want to say this was a fantasy story but I’m held up by reality on this one.  Did I like this book?  Yes and no.  Yes, in that the story was well paced, full of twists, and slightly disturbing in a way that makes you keep reading because you must absolutely know what happens and are afraid to put the book down for fear of not finding out.  No, in that sometimes reality is too disturbing and you want to walk away and forget what you read and imagined and go back to a life happy without disturbing images in your head.

Lisa is an imaginative child so much so that she not only imagines but believes she has found the fairy king in the woods behind her house.  Woods full of strange tales, horror stories, and dilapidated stone homes.  When she goes missing, there’s more to the story of a girl and a fairy king and it’s so much more disturbing than anyone, especially her brother, may have wanted to imagine.  Her brother, now a man in his twenties happy in his life and relationship with his girlfriend, Phoebe, Sam would rather forget parts of his childhood and move on but it’s not meant to happen.  When a woman claiming to be his sister appears saying she’s returned from the land of the fairies, the simple life Sam and Phoebe have together is ruined.

Sometimes when you’re reading, especially a story about a young girl gone missing, you know it’s going to turn out badly and all that was at work was sad, despicable, human behavior.  But sometimes you also want to believe there is another fantasy world where she could have been taken and McMahon does a good job of making you really wonder about that.  Is it all an elaborate ruse to fool you and hide psychotic behavior?  Why can’t there be a happy ending here?  I can tell you, without ruining anything, there is no happy ending here and yes, at times you will find yourself repulsed by the characters behavior. You’ll be uncomfortable with the lies they yield and live.  You’ll be utterly disgusted and disturbed by what they do.  Sadly, it’s also compelling and I’ll admit I had a hard time reading and putting this book down.

That’s also what’s making me a little wishy-washy on this.  Did I not like it because it made me uncomfortable?  Well written books should do that to a certain extent.  But ultimately, I can’t say I loved it and I don’t honestly know if it was because of the subject matter.  Having a visceral reaction to something I read doesn’t mean it’s not good if my reaction was negative, does it?

Either way this book gets credit for holding me nearly hostage for several hours to finish it before my heart stopped pounding.  If nothing else, McMahon knows how to get hold of a reader.

Don’t Breathe a Word will be released May 2011.

I won this book as part of the Early Reviewers Program on LibraryThing.

Review – The Other Life

/ justbookreading / 1 Comment

The Other Life

By Ellen Meister

Putnam

ISBN: 9780399151713-4

4 stars

If I knew I had another life, I would constantly wonder. Would I be jealous? Would I second guess my choices knowing there may be an alternative? Would I have the courage to try out that other life? This is what made Meister’s book so appealing to me — yes, we can all fantasize about another life but it doesn’t exist. For the main character in The Other Life, it does.

Quinn Braverman is living a happy life in Long Island with her husband Lewis and son Isaac. Pregnant with their second child, Quinn is crushed when she finds out something may seriously be wrong with the baby. Doctors can’t answer her questions and more than ever she longs to talk to her mother who committed suicide shortly after her marriage to Lewis. The simple, stable life she worked so hard for is slowly slipping away with each new day. But Quinn has a secret, one she barely lets herself think about — she has another life. In her staid Long Island home, hidden in the basement behind an old ironing board is a portal to her other life. For years she stayed away from it never even letting herself imagine what it would be like but the stress associated with her pregnancy and the decisions she and Lewis may have to face regarding their baby’s life finally weigh on her. She finds herself hovering around the portal until one day, unable to ignore it any longer, she gives in and goes through. She finds herself back in the Manhattan apartment she shared with her ex-boyfriend and even more surprising — her mother, Nan, is alive and well in this other world.

The complications associated with Quinn’s pregnancy are certainly a reason for wanting to escape, but in truth, she wants to know why her mother took her own life. While Nan always had mental health issues which Quinn understood to be the underlying cause for her suicide, she never fully accepted her death. She misses her especially now when she’s questioning whether or not she will be able to care for a possibly disabled child. She keeps going back to her other life in the hope of understanding her mother better, but in many ways it seems she’s doing it to not just to escape a difficult situation — which her pregnancy definitely is — but she wants and needs closure over her mother’s death. But can she really leave her husband and child forever? Unfortunately, having a life with her mother in it means leaving everything she cherishes behind.

Parts of this book fascinated me and others infuriated me. Quinn is a character you can identify with. She’s any woman living a life that one day takes an incredibly unexpected turn and she wants escape or at least a way to understand why things are happening. She has that means of escape and when she uses it the first time, I felt I understood, but when she kept going back I become frustrated with her. It was almost as if she really was trying to decide whether or not to abandon her family. Fortunately, Quinn isn’t a character I stayed annoyed with for very long. She was too likable for that, for me at least. Plus, I became fascinated by what she would find each time she slipped through the portal.

In many ways this is a family story barring the other life portal which is just a means of examining the character’s life choices and her wondering if she made, and is making, the right decisions. Something we all do wonder about from time to time which makes this a particularly interesting story. Quinn is a strong character but she has her faults and I liked that she wasn’t able to do away with any of these faults simply by slipping into another world. Nan, Quinn’s mother, is another character I found myself drawn to much the way Quinn is. In the end, Meister leaves you with a bumpy road but one you’ll want to travel.

In addition to this blog, I also do reviews for The Book Reporter website. The above review was done for the Book Reporter which can be found here. The book was provided to me by the publisher.

Teaser Tuesdays – The Restorer

/ justbookreading / 4 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.  The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

Play along: Grab your current read; Open to a random page; Share two teaser sentences from that page; Share the title and author so other participants know what you’re reading.

I started The Restorer by Amanda Stevens last night and thought I’d share a teaser this fine morning.

“It suggests the flight of the soul, although it’s a little more ambiguous than a dove or a winged effigy.”

He glanced up.  “What the devil is a winged effigy?” (page 66 on Nook)

Review – The Winter Ghosts

/ justbookreading / Leave a comment

The Winter Ghosts

By Kate Mosse

Putnam

ISBN: 978-0-399-15715-8

4.25 stars

I’ve wanted to read a Kate Mosse novel for a while now.  Why I haven’t picked one up earlier is a mystery to me.  Fortunately, I had this book with me on a business trip and found myself so entangled with the story that my flight being delayed over and over again didn’t have the slightest impact.

Freddie Watson is a troubled person.  Still badly grieving the loss of his brother during WWII, he conjures up memories of his brother and talks to him for comfort when the pain gets too bad.  A stay in a mental institution hasn’t done much except to convince him he’s damaged.  In an attempt to find peace and quiet, and possibly a break from the ghosts that surround his life, Freddie takes a trip through the French Pyrenees and while driving through a blinding snow storm, he crashes his car.  Not badly hurt, he finds his way to a small mountain town where an inn keeper is willing to take him in.  She offers him a room, dry clothes, and the opportunity for a bit of socializing as the town will be hosting a celebration that night.  In an uncharacteristic attempt at fun, Freddie decides to go to the event but gets lost on the way.  He finally makes it and is seated next to a beautiful woman he falls instantly in love with.  After speaking to her all night and releasing a few of his tightly held stories about his brother and how he’s obsessed with his death, a fight takes place at the dinner and he runs away to the hills with her.  When Freddie is found the next morning, all he wants is to find the woman he met at the dinner but a fever soon makes his searching impossible and he’s forced back to the inn.  In a daze, he struggles to understand what happened to him and whether or not the woman he met was even real as no one seems to believe him.

There’s a strange coldness to this story and it’s not that it takes place during winter in the Pyrenees.  Freddie is hurting so much he turns himself off from life and when he finally finds something to make him happy, he finds out the woman he has fallen for is most likely a ghost or possibly even a figment of his imagination.  Is he slipping back into the depths of his mental problems or has he found something no one else knew existed?  I won’t say more because I don’t want to ruin it if you plan to read this one.  I will say I enjoyed it immensely and not just because my flight was delayed.  It was a thoroughly engrossing book.

Review – The Gates

/ justbookreading / 1 Comment

The Gates

By John Connolly

Washington Square Press

ISBN: 978-1-4391-7540-8

4 stars

I love me a little humor with my demons and end of world type books and The Gates delivered on that promise.  This is my first Connolly book but I’ve picked them up before thinking that a fantasy thriller might work for me.  It did, and now I can say it won’t be my last either.

Samuel Johnson is an enterprising 11 year-old.  Instead of waiting for Halloween and having to fight the crowds, he decides to start trick or treating a few days early.  Unfortunately for him, his mildly brilliant plan doesn’t work out the way he intended.  Instead of loads of candy, he sees something in the neighbors’ basement that makes him believe his neighbor, Mrs. Abernathy, is now a demon.  He soon finds himself attempting to convince his mother and friends that not only is Mrs. Abernathy an actual demon but that more demons will be arriving very soon through the portal that now exists in the Abernathy’s basement.  No one wants to believe Samuel the end of the world is nearing which makes for an amusing little apocalypse tale.

Don’t pick up this book and think it’s a dark one; it’s actually a really funny take on the usual end of the world scenario and I enjoyed it quite a lot.  There’s some slapstick here — even the dog gets in on it at times — and random jokes laced throughout reminding you what you’re reading isn’t serious.  And that’s good!  I wanted a break from my normal reading which was starting to feel heavy and this came along at the right time.  One particularly amusing character in the book is a demon named Nurd who was banished to a flat, deserted world with a little annoying fellow as his only company.  Somehow he ends getting sucked into Samuel’s world and befriends him.  You see, Nurd is a nice demon looking for a friend to connect with.  His little adventures, especially his one driving a Porsche, are a good interlude and I do wish there had been more time featuring Nurd.

What can I say, if you’re looking for a small break in your regular reading pattern, pick this one up.  Connolly didn’t disappoint and thanks to this book, I plan to pick up more of his work.

Review – To Say Nothing of the Dog

/ justbookreading / 3 Comments

To Say Nothing of the Dog

By Connie Willis

A Bantam Spectra Book

ISBN: 978-0-553-57538-5

4.75 stars

I kept seeing this book around but never picked it up.  Then when I was looking for new science fiction with a time travel element, this once again surfaced.  Figuring the universe was trying to tell me something, I added it to the queue list hoping beyond hope the universe’s plan would yield some good reading.

Ned Henry is a time traveler on a mission.  He is on a mission to find the bishop’s bird stump which went missing when the Coventry Cathedral in England was bombed during World War II.  The cathedral which is being rebuilt in Ned’s time frame needs the bird stump, which probably ranks among some of the most hideous art known to man, to be authentic at least according to the woman who has taken charge of the time travel unit and decided that in rebuilding the cathedral, everything must be perfect. Overcome with time lag due to too many missions, Ned is sent back to Victorian England to recover but what he doesn’t know is that as part of his supposed rest, he’s actually helping to fix a time conundrum which was created when a cat was unexpectedly saved by another time traveler named Verity Kindle.

One thing I don’t normally associate with science fiction is humor.  Yes, science fiction much like any other genre has its funny and amusing moments but personally, I found To Say Nothing of the Dog to be downright funny in places which made me love this book more and more as I approached the last page.  A large portion of this book takes place on a river in a small boat full of luggage — Ned has luggage but being time lagged doesn’t actually know what’s in it but it’s important to know about the luggage.  Also on the boat is a man who is on a mission to find his true love accompanied by his bulldog named Cyril, and a professor who waxes poetic about the grand design of the universe and keeps fish specimens in a kettle.  It’s an odd combination but something about it works so very well.  The entire time this little river jaunt takes place, Ned is so tired nothing seems out of the ordinary at all.  When he ends up in the same place as a woman he momentarily fell in love with when he was back in his own time for a few minutes, he starts to wonder about the grand design the professor keeps going on about and whether or not it might have some merit.

There’s a lot of time jumping here but somehow it never really becomes confusing mostly because the books starts out that way so your expectations for this are set high and it’s a story about time travel so nothing seems odd.  I loved the way Willis worked animals into the story.  I have a soft spot for furry creatures in books and both the dog and the cat are interesting characters in and of themselves.  Ned’s interactions with both (dogs and cats are extinct in his time period) are amusing and slightly heartwarming especially if you’re not a cat person.  The story which is focused on an ugly flower holder (if you read the description you wouldn’t be able to call it a vase either) is rather amusing in the twists and turns it takes to find it in the end mirroring a Victorian mystery novel.  Again, you need to read it to get that reference.  🙂

Willis is now on my list of authors I will be reading again and probably very shortly since I enjoyed this one so much.  If you’re looking for a fun read I recommend this one.

Review – The Girl Who Chased the Moon

/ justbookreading / 1 Comment

The Girl Who Chased the Moon

By Sarah Addison Allen

Bantam

ISBN: 978-0-553-38559-5

4.25 stars

Sarah Addison Allen is an author I knew about but never read.  That changed earlier this year when I finally picked up Garden Spells.  Can I tell you how much I loved it?  I really did.  Then came The Peach Keeper which was just as wonderful, and thanks to a strange confluence of events, The Girl Who Chased the Moon landed in my lap.  As with her previous books, I devoured this one completely entranced to the last page.

Emily Benedict regrets her choice to move in with the grandfather she never knew the moment she arrives at his house.  Her mother’s recent death leaves her somewhat homeless and she’s in need of a parent but Mullaby, North Carolina is turning out to be a more difficult adjustment than she imaged.  Her grandfather, Vance Shelby, borders on being a giant, the wallpaper in her room changes with her mood, and strange lights appear night after night behind the house making her wonder what’s really out there.  Vance tells her to leave them be but it only increases her curiosity.  The town is full of secrets including why her mother is detested by the people in this small town.  She eventually finds out her mother, Dulcie, was ostracized for the way she treated a former boyfriend and some of that same dislike pours over to her but it still doesn’t answer all her questions.

Her neighbor, Julia Winterson, was never a friend of Dulcie’s but she befriends Emily treating her almost as a daughter.  But Julia has no plans to stay in Mullaby.  In town only to pay off her father’s debts after his death, she plans only on staying for two years.  It’s when she gets involved with a man she fell for in high school that her plans change and her own secrets come tumbling out.

I never thought I was a fan of magical realism and truthfully on most occasions I’m not, but there’s something about the way Addison Allen integrates it into the story that it works for me.  Everything about the town has a one off feeling which sets the stage so you know some odd things are going to happen.  Although I will admit one thing here did make me sort fall out of the story a minute and it’s the explanation of the Mullaby lights (you have to read it, I won’t explain more because I don’t want to give too much away) but I quickly got over it and moved right along.

Doing my best not to revert to gushing over this book, I’ll say this — if you’re looking for a book to sink into, try one of Sarah Addison Allen’s.  The stories are soft with a few hard edges to keep you in reality but not nearly enough to make you want to stop reading.  I recommend this one.