I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai 

Read by Julia Whelan, JD Jackson

14 hours, 4 minutes

Published February 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

In I Have Some Questions for You, award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.

My Thoughts: 

It's late and I'm way behind on reviews so I'm going to get straight to it. 

What I Liked: 

• I requested the audiobook version because I find I have far more time for those than physical or digital books (well, far fewer of them waiting for me to get to them, at least) and I'm so glad I did. Julia Whalen is, as alway, terrific. 
• This is a book, ostensibly, about the murder of a young woman years ago. It's actually about far more than that. It's about the way our justice system works (or doesn't); it's about the power of social media to do good and also to destroy lives; it's about the Me-Too movement and the ways men in positions of power can misuse that power; and it's about the ways society discounts and devalues women. Because of the way the book is written, none of it feels forced. 
• Throughout the book are interspersed different versions of what might have actually happened to Thalia Keith and every one of them felt believable. 
• The book is largely written as though Bodie were writing to a former teacher, her favorite, who she has come to realize may have been acting inappropriately, not just with her, but with other young women as well. It's a terrific red herring. 
• There is no happily-ever-after and you know how much I usually like that in a book. And I did...sort of. But it came in a way that made me so frustrated with our justice system, reminding me of the recent executions of men who were convicted but appear to have been innocent. 

What Didn't Work For Me:

• There is a little bit of that feeling that Makkai may have been trying to work in all of the talking points. It seems logical in the course of the story, but yet...maybe too much.
• Did all of that work that Bodie and her students do result in answers and new leads just a little too easily? Maybe. 
• I felt a little bit like Bodie's back story unnecessary. Not that we didn't need it in the book; it explained why she felt like an outcast. But it could have been something far more ordinary. 

All in all, I really liked this one and I'm looking forward to reading Makkai's The Great Believers...when I can find it. Is it on my shelves somewhere? On my Nook app? Thanks to whoever recommended this one to me. 

One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie Series #2) by Kate Atkinson

Narrated by Steven Crossley

14 hours, 8 minutes

Published October 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

Publisher's Summary: On a beautiful summer day, crowds lined up outside a theater witness a sudden act of extreme road rage: a tap on a fender triggers a nearly homicidal attack. Jackson Brodie, ex-cop, ex-private detective, new millionaire, is among the bystanders.

The event thrusts Jackson into the orbit of the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a washed-up comedian, a successful crime novelist, a mysterious Russian woman, and a female police detective. Each of them hiding a secret, each looking for love or money or redemption or escape, they all play a role in driving Jackson out of retirement and into the middle of several mysteries that intersect in one sinister scheme.

When Will There Be Good News? (Jackson Brodie Series #3) by Kate Atkinson

Narrated by Steven Crossley

12 hours

Published January 2008 by Doubleday Books

Publisher's Summary: On a hot summer day, Joanna Mason's family slowly wanders home along a country lane. A moment later, Joanna's life is changed forever...

On a dark night thirty years later, ex-detective Jackson Brodie finds himself on a train that is both crowded and late. Lost in his thoughts, he suddenly hears a shocking sound...

At the end of a long day, 16-year-old Reggie is looking forward to watching a little TV. Then a terrifying noise shatters her peaceful evening. Luckily, Reggie makes it a point to be prepared for an emergency...

My Thoughts: 

One Good Turn is loaded with intricately explored characters, not a single one of whom has much in the way of redeeming characteristics, not even our "hero," Jackson Brodie. It's been a several years since I read the first book in the series (Case Histories) but it was the intricacy of that novel that convinced me to read on in the series. 

That intricacy continues in this books with a seemingly random group of people, connected by one incident, who each have their own stories to tell. A set of Russian dolls, matryoshka dolls, is repeatedly referenced in the book, not so subtly hinting at readers that there are mysteries within mysteries in this novel. They don't, in the end, stack up quite so neatly but there are some deaths I cheered (he deserved it!), some guys that got away, and Jackson manages to survive another situation he didn't so much solve as go along on the ride for. 

I didn't like this one as much, without a single character to truly care about and without enjoying the ending as much. Nevertheless, I immediately launched into the next book in the series. 

When Will There Be Good News? repeats the formula (although I hesitate to use that word as there is nothing really formulaic about the books in the series) of having a large cast and a number of different stories going on at the same time. All of this while we watch Jackson struggle to survive his own life. 

Since the last book, Jackson has rashly married a woman he only knew for a couple of months after finding out that the detective, Louise, he met in the last novel and befriended was getting married. The two of them  both know they would have preferred being with each other and that their marriages were a bad idea and we watch both of the marriages fail. Which doesn't mean that they'll end up together because, really, they shouldn't. 

What worked better for me in this one were characters to care about. Reggie's a girl who has been done hard by life but managing to find a path in life on her own, thanks, in part, to Joanna Hunter who hires her as a nanny. When the train Jackson is riding on crashes just behind the house Reggie is staying at, Reggie saves Jackson's life and the two of them become entwined in trying to help both Reggie and to solve the disappearance of Joanna. Louise also becomes involved in this case, even as she worries about the survivors of a mass killing she worked on some years ago. 

A much more, for me, satisfying endings, even though Jackson had more than one rude awakening to deal with at the end of the book. 

I very much enjoyed Steven Crossley's reading of these books and was looking forward to picking up the fourth book in the series while I wait for one of the books on my wait list to become available. Unfortunately, my library doesn't carry the fourth book in audio. Is it in print on my bookshelves? Maybe. I'll have to go look. 

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

Read by Khristine Hvam

12 hours, 15 minutes

Published April 2013 by Harper

Publisher's Summary: 

Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter’s exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter—now. But Kate’s stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. By then it’s already too late for Amelia. And for Kate. 

An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. At least that’s the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn’t jump. 

Reconstructing Amelia is about secret first loves, old friendships, and an all-girls club steeped in tradition. But, most of all, it’s the story of how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn’t save.

My Thoughts: 

It's late, I'm tired, and I want to make sure I get a review posted this week so let's get straight to it: 

• Readers will have to keep suspending disbelief as a police detective allows Kate to go along to, and even participate in, interviews. Pretty sure that would never happen in real life. 
• Grace Hall comes across like the school in 1999's Cruel Intentions, where the staff is ruled by the parents and seems willing to be oblivious to what the kids are doing. Or unwilling to take a stand. Or too busy with their own interest or wanting to be friends. 
• This book strangely brought to mind The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood for me in the way the story reveals itself. Like Siddalee trying to learn about her mother through other people and a scrapbook in Sisterhood, Kate is trying to understand her daughter through social media posts, emails, texts, and in asking questions of others. Like Sisterhood, here readers learn far more about Amelia than Kate does, as we are privy to Amelia's own voice, a version of what happened beyond what was available to Kate. 
• There's a character who gets a lot of print space without, in my opinion, of course, really contributing to the story, even though told Amelia that he was Amelia's father. Just so she could pretend Amelia's dad wasn't a jerk? Except...well, that's a something you'll just have to read the book to find out. 
• I was fairly well convinced that Amelia didn't jump, but McCreight does a terrific job of making readers doubt that assumption. Her heart's been broken, she's being humiliated, she's just been accused of cheating by a teacher she revers, she's struggling with not knowing who her father is, and  she's 15. I think we can all imagine what all of that would have done to us at that age. 
• McCreight covers a lot of themes here: suicide, sexuality, sexual orientation, homophobia, bullying, mother/daughter relationships, friendship, first love, secrets, and communication. 
• There are a lot of old tropes at play in this book: adults are useless, the good girl versus the bad girl, beware the nice characters, gay best friend. There's also a lot of foreshadowing, which I realized in retrospect. Made me wonder if I had been reading this one, instead of listening to it, if I would have caught on sooner to some of the secrets that were later revealed. 
• And by "sooner," you know I mean "at all" because, of course, I was completely taken by surprise again and again as the book came to its conclusions. And you probably also know that having that happen helped me forgive a lot of the other things that had troubled me about this one. 
• Even when it was all said and done, I still can't imagine how a mother moves on after losing her only child, especially with as much guilt as Kate carried. 

The Children On The Hill by Jennifer McMahon

The Children On The Hill by Jennifer McMahon

352 pages

Published April 2022 by Gallery/Scout Press

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

1978: At her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran—teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, providing them with care and attention and love.

Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl.

Still, Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. She and Vi and Eric do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, meet at their clubhouse in secret to hunt monsters. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere.

2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.

My Thoughts:

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, essentially creating a new genre and making her readers rethink what the word "monster" really means. This year, Jennifer McMahon, who always manages to keep me on the edge of my seat and is one of the only horror writers I will read, puts her own spin on that idea. 

In The Children On The Hill, we're introduced to Lizzy Shelley, a modern day monster hunter, the kind you'd find in shows on the Travel channel. She doesn't entirely believe in the kind of monsters that she's hunting but she does believe in monsters because she's seen them in action. As we meet her, Lizzy is off on another chase to research a legendary monster who her sister may be using as the foil for her own monstrous acts. 

Throughout the book, we move back and forth in time, between the children's search for the truth about Iris's past and Lizzy's search for her sister. McMahon also weaves in pieces from the children's Book of Monsters, excerpts from a book called The True Story of the Hillside Inn, and the voice of the monster, herself. Throughout, McMahon keeps building the tension, as she slowly reveals the truth about what happened in 1978 and the truth about the monster. All of it builds to first one big surprise and then a final twist I never saw coming. I know, I know, you're thinking that it's not the least bit unusual for me not to see the twists coming. But I promise you that you won't see that final one coming, either. 

It's been a long time since I've read one of McMahon's books, although I've been meaning to pick them up again for years. This book did not disappoint and has been more eager than ever to pick up more of McMahon's books. They are just the kind of horror stories I can handle - loads of tension but not a lot of gore and always plenty to make readers think. But even if you're not a wimp like I am, I think you'll enjoy this one. 

Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

Published September 2021 by University of Nebraska Press

Publisher's Summary:

It’s the opening weekend of deer season in Gunthrum, Nebraska, in 1985, and Alma Costagan’s intellectually disabled farmhand, Hal Bullard, has gone hunting with some of the locals, leaving her in a huff. That same weekend, a teenage girl goes missing, and Hal returns with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of, as rumors fly and townspeople see Hal’s violent past in a new light. 

A drama about the complicated relationships connecting the residents of a small-town farming community, Deer Season explores troubling questions about how far people will go to safeguard the ones they love and what it means to be a family.

My Thoughts: 

You know I was one of the first people the ladies at TLC Book Tours thought of when they were asked to host a tour for a book set in Nebraska. And you know I didn't hesitate to say "yes" when they asked me if I'd review it. But after it arrived, I began to worry. What if it was one of those books that makes all of the people in Nebraska look bad? What if I really didn't care for it? I wasn't entirely sure it was the right book at the right time for me, even after I'd started it. Then I realized that the University Press had published the book and they have never steered me wrong yet. So I pressed on, convinced that this would be a book worth reading. I was so right and by page 50, I was racing through this book even though it is a slow-build of a book, focused as it is on its characters. 

Alma Costagan is right up there with Olive Kitteridge as one of my all-time favorite characters who make it hard to like them but then you find yourself so attached to them. 

Alma met Clyle in college; he'd grown up in Gunthrum but she was a city girl. When they married, they never had any intention of living on a farm. But life doesn't always give you what you're expecting. When Clyle's father dies and his mother falls ill, Clyle and Alma move back to his parents' farm to care for it while she's still alive. But after she passed, first one thing and then another kept them just a while longer. Soon Alma realized that Clyle was really happy as a farmer and she agreed to become a farmer's wife and give up her career as a social worker because she loved him that much. But life in a small town in tough for newcomers and Alma, to be honest, didn't make it any easier for people to like her. That disappointment heaped on the disappointment of not having a family began to wear on the Costagan's relationship. 

One thing they did still agree on was that they would both do whatever it took to protect Hal, who they had taken under their wing when his father was imprisoned and his mother left town. Still, when Hal comes up early from a hunting trip with blood in his truck and throughout his house, telling them that he had shot a deer but made a mess of it trying to dress it, they both had suspicions about his story. When they find out that Peggy Ahern, a girl that Hal had a crush on, had gone missing, they both defended Hal from the inevitable town gossip even as they began to wonder what Hal might be capable of doing, even accidentally and what they might be willing to do to protect him. 

That's the suspense piece of this novel. But at it's heart, this is less a suspense novel than it is a work of literary fiction. It's a book about relationships - between spouses, between parents and children, between siblings, between neighbors. It's also a book about the secrets we keep, the dreams we hold tight to our chests, communication, guilt, and, yes, what it means to live in a small town where, even if you don't know absolutely everyone, you know enough of them so that, sooner or later, everyone knows your business even if they don't really know you.

“The list of what one person would never understand about another went on and on.”

This is an impressive novel, particularly when you consider that it is Flanagan's debut. I felt like I knew these people. Of course, I especially enjoyed the references to places I'm familiar with, including the town I was born in. But living in Nebraska is not a prerequisite for enjoying this book; I highly recommend it. 

Thanks to the ladies of TLC Book Tours for thinking of me for this book. For other, less biased reviews, check out the full tour here. 

Purchase Links:  University of Nebraska Press | Amazon | IndieBound 

About Erin Flanagan:

 Erin Flanagan is a professor at Wright State University. She is the author of two short story collections, The Usual Mistakes (Nebraska, 2005) and It’s Not Going to Kill You, and Other Stories(Bison Books, 2013). 

Connect with Erin:  Website | Twitter

The Boy In The Field by Margot Livesey

The Boy In The Field by Margot Livesey

Published August 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. 

Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back. Duncan, the youngest, who has seldom thought about being adopted, suddenly decides he wants to find his birth mother. Overshadowing all three is the awareness that something is amiss in their parents’ marriage. Over the course of the autumn, as each of the siblings confronts the complications and contradictions of their approaching adulthood, they find themselves at once drawn together and driven apart.

My Thoughts:

I've struggled over the years about when to write reviews after I finish a book. Do I write them immediately upon finishing when the book is fresh in my head but when I haven't had any time to reflect on it? Do I wait a while and let my thoughts percolate, knowing that details will begin to fade? I finished this book a couple of weeks ago and just have not had the time to write a review; and now, as I sit down to write one, I find that the second approach isn't the best approach, at least not for this book. I do remember quite a lot of the detail but my feelings about the book have faded and what I find that I really wanted to tell you about this book was how it made me feel. 

While this is a book about finding the man who attacked the boy in the field, it much more about how finding that boy affects Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan, who are newly awakened to the perils and unpredictability of the world around them. The detective who comes to interview the children about the attack says to Matthew: “You’re wrestling with the problem of evil. I’m twice your age, and I’m still wrestling with it. Nothing prepares one for the discovery that there are people who have no conscience." Matthew needs to solve the crime, hoping that by doing so, by finding a reason for the attack, he will be able to right his world again. Zoe, who almost simultaneously with finding the boy finds that her father is having an affair, needs to find someone to love. And Duncan, despite deeply loving the family that adopted him, suddenly needs to find his birth mother. 

There is not one extra word in this book and yet every scene and every person is vividly portrayed. As I was reading it, I was seeing a movie of it in my mind. Much of my appreciation of this novel may come from the timing of reading it. After the events of the past twelve months, I wanted a book that helped make sense of the world. Because of that, I was willing to accept a dog who "chose" Duncan and then seemed offer each of the family members advice and direction simply through a look, to accept that nearly all of the characters are basically good people, and that there are a very few moments were Livesey seems a little insensitive. If you're in the mood for comfort in these trying times, I think you'll enjoy find yourself in the same frame of mind. 

When The Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

When The Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

Published April 2021 by Random House Publishing Group

Source: courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns that a local teenage girl has gone missing. 

The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with saving the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in. 

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives—and our faith in one another.

My Thoughts:

I requested this book from Netgalley without reading the publisher's summary. I'd read three books by McLain previously and assumed this one would fall in that same lane - a fictionalized story about a real woman, whose name is still known because of her proximity to others who were more famous. Imagine my surprise when I started reading this one and discovered that it's not only not historical fiction, but that it's a literary thriller with very dark themes. Definitely not what I was expecting and yet 20 pages in, I was hooked. 

One book blurb called Anna Hart "deeply flawed." It seems the thing to saw any time you have a character who is not all goodness and light. It also seems to suggest a fault of character. I didn't see a fault of character so much as a woman who is the product of her life experiences, a woman deeply committed to her job, to saving the children who have been taken and finding closure for the families whose children won't come home. She's certainly scarred and struggling to come to grips with a marriage that is falling apart and a past that won't leave her. I liked her a lot and never felt that she wouldn't find her way. 

Kirkus Reviews calls this book a "multilayered mystery enriched by keen psychological and emotional insight." Agreed; McLain's writing style delivers an emotional gut punch. So many broken people and all of that sadly believable. My mom heart, especially, ached throughout the book. 

Even though the blurbs rave about this one (as blurbs will do), it's not without it's flaws. I felt like McLain tried to pull too many threads into the story, I wasn't a big fan of the psychic element, and I didn't entirely find the ending believable, particularly because I had long before figured out who the "bad guy" was and felt like he would have been a target much sooner in a real investigation. And yet, despite all of that, I remained hooked on this book. I needed to know what had happened to the local girl who had gone missing and how the characters I had come to care about would come through this trial. 

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

Case Histories (Jackson Brodie Series #1) by Kate Atkinson
Published November 2004 by Little, Brown, and Company
Source: bought this one ??? years ago

Publisher's Summary:
Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. Thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters unearth a shocking clue to Olivias disappearance among the clutter of their childhood home. . . Case Two: Theo delights in his daughter Lauras wit, effortless beauty, and selfless love. But her first day as an associate in his law firm is also the day when Theos world turns upside down. . . Case Three: Michelle looks around one day and finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making. A very needy baby and a very demanding husband make her every waking moment a reminder that somewhere, somehow, shed made a grave mistake and would spend the rest of her life paying for it--until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

As Private Detective Jackson Brodie investigates all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge. Inextricably caught up in his clients grief, joy, and desire, Jackson finds their unshakable need for resolution very much like his own.


My Thoughts:
As you can see above, I've had this one for a  long time. I think I bought it at Borders so that tells you something about how long it's been languishing on my shelf. I finally picked it up as part of a readalong and I'm so glad to have had that push. How silly to have waited so long to find out about Jackson Brodie but how lucky I am to still have the rest of the books in this series to look forward to reading.

Stephen King called this book the "best mystery of the decade." I don't read that many mysteries so I can't laud it to that extent. I'm not sure I've ever read another mystery with so many threads, so many mysteries that Atkinson manages to interweave wonderfully along with Jackson's own personal life and another client who turns out to be pivotal in the book.

As paths begin to cross I started to think I was figuring things out. I wasn't wrong but that was only one of the many mysteries and it turned out to be a little tidbit that Atkinson threw out to us so that we got all cocky and thought we knew everything. We didn't.

One character literally drove off into the sunset and I have a feeling that she's going to show up again later in the series; Atkinson spent way too much time developing her for that to be the end of it. So, if I didn't already want to see what happens next for Jackson (surely he doesn't stay with the woman he was with at the end of this book!), I need to find out what becomes of her. And I can't wait to get to know Jackson's surrounding cast again as well!

Conviction by Denise Mina

Conviction by Denise Mina
Published June 2019 by Little, Brown, and Company
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher’s Summary:
The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life exploded started off like all the days before: Packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone.

Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own — a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of international conspiracy. But this case actually is Anna's problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life, a life she's taken great pains to leave behind. And she is convinced that she knows what really happened.

Then an unexpected visitor arrives on her front stoop, a meddling neighbor intervenes, and life as Anna knows it is well and truly over. The devils of her past are awakened — and they're in hot pursuit. Convinced she has no other options, Anna goes on the run, and in pursuit of the truth, with a washed-up musician at her side and the podcast as her guide.


My Thoughts:
Some months back, one of my bookclub members recommended this book based on an NPR review. It's not my habit to add a book to our list but if Maureen Corrigan recommends a book, I'm prone to believe it's worth reading. I'm not sure I've ever agreed with her more than I do about this book.

Anna has created an ordinary, albeit upper-middle-class, existence as a housewife in the suburbs, raising her beloved daughters. It's all blown apart one morning. First she listens to that podcast and finds that a friend from her past has died and another name has resurfaced, a name that causes her past to come crashing into her present. Then a persistent knocking at her door turns out to be her best friend who has, it turns out, not come to pick her up for yoga but to run away with Anna's husband. To say that Anna does not handle that that revelation well would be a major understatement. She is, in fact, a bloody mess on the entryway floor, contemplating suicide, when Fin appears at the door. The two soon find themselves both trying to find out what really happened to Anna's friend, Leon, and running for their lives.

All of that summary happens in the first couple of chapters and Mina never lets off the accelerator. I wanted to set everything else in my life aside and do nothing but read this book. And, guys, I did. not. see. that. ending. coming. If you read this and you do, please don't tell me. I don't want to find out that it was something everyone else saw coming. Not only is this a great story but Mina manages to hit a lot of heavy themes along the way, rape, addiction, eating disorders, and the damage caused by social networks.

Through all of that, she is weaving all manners of storytelling into the book - Anna's podcasts, books, folk tales, alibis, false leads, and lies. Anna even recalls a conversation she had with her friend, Leon, who died on the yacht, about the Arabian Nights, which he called simple children's tales.

“I was appalled. I went off on a rant about the ‘Arabian Nights,’ the collective nature of it, how it created a whole world through accretive storytelling: layers of lives lived simultaneously, intersecting. And how it bounced from genre to genre, the stories were funny and brutal and romantic and tragic like life. . . . It was produced before stories could only be one thing, before the form was set.”

I do love meta writing and Mina lives up to Scheherazade with all of the stories she has woven into this one book.

As much as I loved this book, and even though I thought the ending was satisfying in many ways, I also felt like it was a bit too easy. The rest of the book was so damn complex and there was a part of me that really wanted the ending to be just as twisty.

The Washington Post reviewer said "Denise Mina is one of the leading practitioners of what's called Tartan Noir: the melding of American hard-boiled detective fiction with the atmosphere and local color slang of Scotland." I've never heard of Tartan Noir but if this is what Tartan Noir is, I'll definitely be looking for more books that fall into that genre.

Hell or High Water by Joy Castro

Hell or High Water by Joy Castro
Published July 2012 by St. Martin's Press
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
Nola Céspedes, an ambitious young reporter at the Times-Picayune, finally catches a break: an assignment to write her first full-length feature. While investigating her story, she also becomes fixated on the search for a missing tourist in the French Quarter. As Nola's work leads her into a violent criminal underworld, she's forced to face disturbing truths from her own past and is confronted with the question: In the aftermath of devastation, who is responsible for rebuilding what's been broken?


My Thoughts:
I wish I were better at remembering or recording where I first heard of books. I know I've been wanting to read this one for several years. I know when I saw Castro at the 2015 Omaha Lit Fest I was hoping to be able to pick this book up then (unfortunately, they didn't have it). Because I can't remember where I first heard about the book, I also can't remember what drew me to it so I went into this one completely blind. Even so, it was not what I expected.

I thought I was going to get a straight mystery with a colorful setting. That's not what I got.

There is a mystery piece to this book - who is kidnapping and killing young women in New Orlean's French Quarter? But that is almost a backdrop for the real stories here.

"In the aftermath of devastation, who is responsible for rebuilding what's been broken?"

In Hell or High Water, that piece of the summary isn't just talking about New Orleans, post-Katrina. It's about those who suffer from sexual predators, who become the subject of an assignment Nola is unexpectedly handed that might make her career. Mostly, though, it's about Nola.

Nola is one of the most interesting characters I've read in a long time. Her mother was a Cuban refugee, her father left them when she was little after moving them to New Orleans, and she grew up in the Ninth Ward, in the projects. To give her a better education, Nola's mother sent her across town to a private school, a place where Nola felt even less like she fit in.

Now, she's feeling stuck and desperate for the kind of story that will allow her to get out of New Orleans, away from her past and away from her mother, an alcoholic who requires Nola's help every Sunday to keep up her place. She has a group of friends that gets together weekly but none of them know about Nola's past and none of them struggle to make ends meet. Even with her closest friends, Nola doesn't feel like she fits in and she can never entirely let her guard down. There's a dark side of Nola that even her besties don't know about and that's the part of her that makes her such an interesting character. And that's the part that's going to make this book really blow up.

The second most interesting character in this book? The city of New Orleans. I'm not sure I've ever read a book where the setting played such a big role in the book. From the French Quarter, to the zoo, to the food, to the nearby plantations, to culture and food. Once in a while it felt like too much, like Castro was looking for ways to get more of New Orleans into the book. But mostly, it really rooted the story and the people in the story.

Trigger warning: When Nola finally gets an assignment she hopes will really launch her reporting career, it's a piece about the sexual predators that went off the radar after Katrina. To get a full story, Nola interviews a number of convicted predators and a psychologist who talks about the effects on their victims. It's a tough read and if it's something that you have experience with, it might be too hard to read.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Published January 2020 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher’s Summary:
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. 

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit—and her sister—before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

My Thoughts:
This book opens with a list of people you quickly realize have died as the result of drug use. The final two people on the list? “Our father. Our mother.”

The first paragraph of the first chapter:
“There’s a body on the Gurney Street tracks. Female, age unclear, probable overdose, says the dispatcher.”

And just like that Moore had me. She tugged my heartstrings and then she made my heart start racing. She never let up for almost 500 pages on either score.

It's saying something that Moore was able to keep me caring about these characters given that this is a book filled with characters that aren't entirely likable or sympathetic. But to paraphrase one of the characters talking about the pieces of a chess board, all people are capable for both good and bad. Despite everything that happens, Moore keeps reminding readers of this. Again and again, I would make an assumption about a character about a person being bad or good. Then Moore would make me rethink my opinions. That went both ways as Moore had some tricks up her sleeve that absolutely surprised me.

Because the book moves back and forth between "Now" and "Then," the tension surrounding the murders wanes when we are looking back into Mickey's and Kacey's history. But Moore has no problem amping it right back up when she is ready to do that. I spent a good deal of time worried about Mickey's safety and was clueless about who the murderer might be. Now, if you read a lot of murder mysteries, you might catch wise before Moore revels the identity or if you're familiar with the idea of Chekov's gun. But then Moore throws a lot of red herrings into the waters to throw readers off. If you read this one, I hope you'll let me know when/if you figured it out.

Back to that very first sentence of my review. While this is a book about trying to catch a killer and about the relationship between these sisters and their family, it's the drug epidemic that surrounds it all. For me, that's where the book really excels. Moore has done a lot of research and it shows. She doesn't glamorize drug use nor does she pass judgment on those who have become trapped in that life. Addiction is a topic that I'm very familiar with and I saw in these characters people I have met. I have heard those people take about the demon of addiction. I have talked to people who have been through rehab more than once and seen those people relapse and then fight their way back. I saw those characters in this book and I appreciated that Moore wrote about them in a way that was sympathetic and honest.

I feel confident in saying that this book will be in my top ten at the end of 2020. It's a book I'll be thinking about for quite a while.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
Published August 2019 by Gallery/Scout Press
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher’s Summary:
When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.



What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.



Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.



It was everything.



She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

My Thoughts:
There was very little doubt in my mind before I picked up this book that Ware can write a mystery that will completely suck me into it. She takes the old tropes and always finds a way to make them unique and new. In this book she channels two of the greats, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. Ballsy, right? While The Turn of the Key may not live up to those books, it’s a pretty impressive piece of work. I couldn’t put it down but I could hardly make myself turn the page for fear of what was coming next.

Most of this book is told through letters Rowan is writing to a Mr. Wrexham, a solicitor she is hoping to convince to take her case. She knows she’s made mistakes in the way she tried to explain things before, first to the police and then to her first solicitor. This time she is going to start from the beginning and tell the whole story so that Mr. Wrexham will know the whole truth before he decides if he will help her.

Rowan is, as you might already have guessed, not the most reliable of narrators. There’s a part of you that will be disliking and mistrusting her from the beginning. There’s another part of you, though, that can’t help but feel bad for her, more and more so as the book goes on. She’s in over her head from the get-go, with an infant and two young girls that aren’t particularly interested in doing what they’re told and parents who have to leave on business the day after Rowan arrives. If you’ve had any experience with children, you can just imagine what that would be like. Then you throw in the fact that Rowan is trying to care for these difficult children while cameras throughout the house are watching her every move. Ware even throws in a housekeeper who doesn’t care much for Rowan (oh, hey there Mrs Danvers). Now let’s amp things up a bit – the “smart” app starts acting crazy, there are pacing footsteps above Rowan’s room at night – but she’s on the top floor, there’s an actual poison garden (yep, I see you Frances Hodgson Burnett), and the family’s teenage daughter arrives home from boarding school and she is really not a fan of the new nanny.

It’s not flawless. Honestly, if Rowan would have been awakened one more night in a row by a noise, I’m not sure I could have gone on, there are some loose ends that never get tied up, and I tired of being reminded of how the two parts of the house were so very different. But by the end of the book, I could not have cared less about those things.

Ware makes readers look this way and then that trying to figure out what’s going on around the house and what’s Rowan’s real reason for taking the job and sticking around when any sane person would have run after the first night. Maybe those of you who read books like this regularly will have figured out all of the mysteries before the end of the book but I was completely blindsided. As I got within 100 pages of the end of the book, I was stymied. It felt like there should be more; I couldn’t imagine how Ware was going to get this story finished in what was left of the book. The answer to that was just one of the big surprises at the end of the book. I finished the book sitting in my car during my lunch break and got back from lunch late because I had to take a few minutes to process what I’d just read. This might just be my favorite Ware book yet. Yeah, it’s that good.

This House Is Haunted by John Boyne

This House Is Haunted by John Boyne
Published: October 2013 Other Press
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher’s Summary:
This House Is Haunted is a striking homage to the classic nineteenth-century ghost story. Set in Norfolk in 1867, Eliza Caine responds to an ad for a governess position at Gaudlin Hall. When she arrives at the hall, shaken by an unsettling disturbance that occurred during her travels, she is greeted by the two children now in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There is no adult present to represent her mysterious employer, and the children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, another terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.
 
From the moment Eliza rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence that lives within Gaudlin’s walls. Eliza realizes that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall’s long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past

My Thoughts:
I know it’s weird to read a haunted house story in December and I could have added it to my “save for later” folder on my library account. But I’ve read so many great books this year and I want to make sure I end the year the same way. I felt certain I could count on Boyne to help me do that. He kicked it off with a bang and set the tone:

“London, 1867 - I blame Charles Dickens for the death of my father”

When her already sickly father and Eliza attend a reading by Dickens on a rainy day, her father takes a rapid turn for the worse and shortly thereafter dies, leaving Eliza an orphan who soon realizes that the place she has always called home isn’t actually owned by her father, effectively leaving her homeless. How very Dickensian! Boyne even throws in some social commentary on prison conditions, religion, and the place of women in society to further parallel Dickens’ writing (although, let’s be honest, Dickens never really worried himself over the inequalities that women faced). Dickens isn’t the only author Boyne calls to mind: there are hints of Wilkie Collins, the Bronte sisters (orphaned girl forced to become a governess), and especially Henry James (think The Turn of the Screw). There’s even a paragraph about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Boyne went so deep into trying to make this a Gothic mystery that the language often felt stilted (there were a lot of phrases like “answers there came none”) and the descriptions sometimes went on over long, as writers of that time tended to do. Unfortunately, that’s not the extent of my issue with this book. Boyne really ratchets up the violence toward the end of the book, culminating with an actual battle scene that feels more in line with the violence level of a modern thriller than a Gothic one. And where Eliza had been a protected, contented, not over intellectual young woman when the book began, later I often found it hard to believe she was only twenty-one.

Don’t get me wrong – I raced through this book. Even though much of what happens is straight out of the Gothic horror writing textbook, it’s still Boyne. There’s still some humor: “It had been hanging on that wall for so long that perhaps I never really notice it any more, in the way that one often ignores familiar things, like seat cushions or loved ones.” And there are plenty of secrets to be revealed and an ending that you might see coming but I sure didn’t. So should you read it? Sure. It’s not Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger but it’s still a fun read, especially if you read it at near Halloween.

Siracusa by Delia Ephron

Siracusa by Delia Ephron
Published July 2016 by Blue Rider Press
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
New Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, a journalist, travel to Italy with their friends from Maine—Finn; his wife, Taylor; and their daughter, Snow. “From the beginning,” says Taylor, “it was a conspiracy for Lizzie and Finn to be together.” Told Rashomon-style in alternating points of view, the characters expose and stumble upon lies and infidelities, past and present. Snow, ten years old and precociously drawn into a far more adult drama, becomes the catalyst for catastrophe as the novel explores collusion and betrayal in marriage.


My Thoughts: 
Unlike some of my fellow bloggers, I am terrible about writing down where I first heard about a book. So I have no idea when I became aware of this book when it came out last year. I just remember hearing good things about it. So when it came out in paperback and I was offered the chance to review, I jumped at it. And then, you know, the great reading slump hit. You'll also know that I've  been working my way back out of that by reading thrillers. While Siracusa might not, technically, qualify as a thriller, it certainly has elements of that genre that made it a book that I raced through. It also feels very much like a work of literary fiction. That combination might be just what I need to ease me back into my usual reading pattern. Fingers crossed.

If you are going to fill a book with unlikable characters, as Ephron has, you had better make them very interesting. Ephron has not only created four unlikable characters, she also has all four of them giving first person narratives. It takes some skill to pull all of that off. Ephron pulls it off wonderfully,   moving the story back and forth, giving readers scenes from multiple points of view, uncovering the lies and deceptions in these characters' lives.

Snow, oh Snow. Now there's a character you rarely see in a book. A character who never gets her own voice but who manipulates much of the action of the book. Sure she's only ten, but she might be the least likable character in the book. But her mother, with her creepy co-dependent ways; her father, who is far more interested in trying to seduce Lizzie than be a parent; Lizzie, who has engineered the entire trip to try to re-win her husband but spends as much time flirting with Finn and with Michael; and Michael, who is carrying on an affair and seems to develop an icky affection for Snow - they are all vying for the title.

All of that wrapped up in a book that explores marriage, fidelity, literary merit, elitism, parenting, travel, truth and lies.

"As for lying, in this story, which is also my life, I will make a case for the charm of it."  - Michael

From the beginning of the book, we know something has happened because the four narratives are told from a future point. But Ephron gives little away and, when we got to that something, Ephron still had surprises for me. Even better, she left me wondering at the end. Given that one of the comforts I've been taking from reading of late has been the tidy ending, the fact that I was happy to be left wondering says something for this book.

Left: Ortigia, part of Syracuse in Sicily; Right: Lo Scoglio, off Ortigia

* With all of those themes and the ambiguous ending, Siracusa would make a terrific book club selection.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
304 pages
Published May 2011 by Harper Collins Publishers
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Two men: Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones. One white, one black. Both living in the same small town in Mississippi. M-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-humpback-humpback-I.

One the surface, Larry grew up appearing to have every advantage. An intact family, the color of his skin in a place and time where that mattered. But in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Larry is the more sympathetic of the two men. Larry never fit in any where. Not in his own family where his father mocked him for not being mechanically inclined, not in school where his love of books and knowledge were not valued. He grows up almost entirely friendless.

Silas is the boy, the man, we should empathize with--he grew up abjectly poor, fatherless and the wrong color in a place and time where that mattered. But there is a darkness to Silas that always keeps us at arms length. As he grows up, things begin to be better for him because, as a star athlete, he does fit in. In high school, while Larry is the boy that the other kids shun, Silas is the boy that other kids carry off the ball field on their shoulders.

Years after growing up, both men are once again living in the small town, no longer friends for reasons that are unclear to Larry. Silas is still the person that every one loves, working as constable and known to everyone by the number from his high school baseball jersey. Because of what happened on the one and only date he ever had, Larry is living a life of complete isolation. No friends, no local business at his father's old service station, his mailbox routinely destroyed. "Scary Larry" lives life with only mountains of books as his friends.

When a wealthy local girl goes missing, suspicion falls on Larry and Silas finds himself investigating. In this little town, it turns out that what happens on the surface is masking a myriad of secrets. Chabot, Mississippi is definitely not Mayberry, RFD.

"The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house."

Tom Franklin drew me in from the opening sentence and the energy and tension of the book never flagged. Who is the monster who has come to shoot Larry Ott? What did Larry say to Silas years ago that led to Silas beating Larry and the end of their friendship. What happened to Cindy Walker, the girl that Larry took on that date twenty years ago? Questions were flooding my mind as I raced through this book. As Franklin moves back and forth in time, slowly the answers begin to reveal themselves even as new ones are raised.

It's hard for me to believe that this book is just now being released. I've been hearing so much about it for months now and I was thrilled to be included on this tour. But, as so often is the case, I was concerned that no book could live up to the hype. This one does, with Franklin deftly blending mystery with the greater story of loneliness and friendship. His writing brings to life these characters and the many dimensions of small-town life. It is spare where it needs to be but never lacking in color. For me, the ending was a bit too tidy; I actually found myself hoping for a unclear ending. But that was the only flaw I found in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. 

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour!