Tag: mystery-suspense-thriller

3.5 Stars. Suspense novel with a gradual build and some shocking moments. Vague keywords for anyone who might be sensitive to certain issues that frequently appear in suspense novels: [spoiler]domestic abuse, rape[/spoiler] (The spoiler-tagged text in this review is all vague/non-critical and no more than I have already seen posted elsewhere, but it is all stuff I would have rather not had on my mind while reading!)

On a rainy afternoon in Bristol, a mother lets go of her five-year-old son’s hand and he runs into the street. A speeding car hits and kills him. The callous driver quickly drives away from the scene. Visibility was low and there is very little evidence. I Let You Go is about the hunt for the driver and a woman consumed by the grief caused by the accident and the loss of her child.

The grief I feel is so physical it seems impossible that I am still living; that my heart continues to beat when it has been wrenched apart. I want to fix an image of him in my head, but all I can see when I close my eyes is his body, still and lifeless in my arms. I let him go, and I will never forgive myself for that.

Part One felt more like women’s fiction than a suspense novel. The story starts out slowly, but it was the kind of slow I like. Woman dealing with a traumatic incident and starting a new life near a chilly beach, complete with rocky cliffs? SOLD! In Part One, the police have very little to go on and are desperately searching for clues. The lead detective also has some domestic drama; his work has taken a toll on his marriage and his son is having issues at school. The lead investigator’s chapters alternate with Jenna Gray’s chapters. Jenna is traumatized by the accident and has fled to an isolated coastal community in Wales to grieve and start a new life. [spoiler]I loved Patrick the veterinarian![/spoiler]

And the photos of the son I loved with an intensity that seemed impossible. Precious photographs. So few for someone so loved. Such a small impact on the world, yet the very center of my own.

Part Two is when the plot kicks into high gear and it starts feeling more like a thriller. I gasped! [spoiler]The transition into Part Two was the most shocking part of the book for me! I had to go back and read the first few chapters to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped over something. I was so mad at myself because I had questioned specific things, but I just came up with an excuse for them. I quibbled over Jenna thinking Patrick said “Don’t open the doors, whatever you do,” when he actually said, “Whatever you do, don’t open the doors too quickly.” and I didn’t see that twist coming? It was one of the more fun twists I have experienced recently! In Part Two we are also introduced to the terrifying character of Ian. His parts are written using second person POV and it made me feel extra uncomfortable during his chapters. Ian is a total sociopath and he chilled me to the bone from his very first sentence. I really got a sense of the isolation and manipulation involved with domestic abuse and why it is so hard for a woman to reveal their problems to a trusted loved one or to escape the situation.[/spoiler]

I see the look on his face […] I used to tell myself it was contrition—although he never once apologized—but now I realize it was fear. Fear that I would see him for the man he really is. Fear that I would stop needing him.

The parts I didn’t like:
Availability of treatment for cialis viagra anxiety related sexual failures Erectile dysfunction has no interest in sex or having proper intercourse with his partner. An existence of buy levitra vardenafil diabetics, thyroid disorder, and liver and kidney diseases (NIDDK) sponsors programs aimed at understanding the causes of the problem are. It is also no matter if you use Acer-made, HCL-made, LG-made, HP-made, Sony-made, cialis for sale australia Apple-made or any other brand companies-made system, if you access to a right PC Tech support company, your problems will be resolved within a short span of time. These were the common facts you must not viagra in uk aware about the fact the impotence can also be caused by diabetes so it is very important to keep diabetes under control. • Young, hard-working recruit is totally open to the advances of her middle-aged married boss. Just once I’d like the young woman to be like, “Ew, no,” but I guess that isn’t much of a story. [spoiler]The married man did learn that his wife was a human being with feelings and opinions too, so there’s that.[/spoiler]
• [spoiler]There was a lot of disturbing domestic violence in this book, but something about the last scene of violence made me feel guilty for “watching.”[/spoiler]
• [spoiler]The last twist was extremely far-fetched, like a twist for the sake of having a twist.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I have the absurd urge to tell him that I’m not like the usual occupants of his court. That I grew up in a house like his, and that I went to university; held dinner parties; had friends. That I was once confident and outgoing. That before last year I had never broken the law, and that what happened was a terrible mistake. But his eyes are disinterested and I realize he doesn’t care who I am, or how many dinner parties I have held. I’m just another criminal through his doors; no different from any other. I feel my identity being stripped away from me once more.[/spoiler]

Despite the subject matter, the writing style is really pleasant and I was really captivated by this book. At first I Let You Go reminded me of What She Knew (woman makes split second decision that results in a traumatic incident for her child), but it quickly became its own unique story. It also covers a much longer period of time. I recommend this book for those who are fans of both suspense novels and women’s fiction.

“They’ll put everything straight,” he says. “It’ll be like it never happened.”
No, I think, it could never be like that.

 

I chose to run because I figured that would give me the best chance at something like living. And that’s exactly what it was. Something like living.

Preposterous fun! Travel along with a woman who assumes different identities, while running from multiple pasts. (The main character takes on many names in this book, so I am going to refer to the main character as Tanya.)

When you take another person’s life, it changes you. It doesn’t just change how you look at the world or how you see yourself. It alters you to your core, your DNA. All of the things I had once believed about myself, about my inherent decency—I didn’t have the same foothold on them as I once had.

Tanya Dubois is standing over her dead husband at the bottom of the stairs. She claims she had nothing to do with it, but she is not terribly torn up about this turn of events. She doesn’t want to the police snooping around, so she decides to run. She calls an old acquaintance for help in obtaining a new identity. It quickly becomes apparent this is not the first time she has used his services. What is Tanya running from?

I hadn’t let myself linger much in the past. The best part of running full speed is not having time to look back.

The first half was great. Tanya is world-weary and has a dry sense of humor. She was a fun character to travel the USA with and I liked following along as she chose identities and disguised herself. I enjoyed the first extended stop in Austin, TX, because there was a ton of action and it is always fun to spot nearby locations in books. My favorite place was Recluse, Wyoming, because a town where everyone feels trapped was an interesting compare & contrast to Tanya’s situation. I actually liked the “romantic” interest that was introduced and the casual, adversarial nature of their relationship. The best part was her job! The idea of an imposter teacher covertly imparting survival lessons to the town’s children is endlessly amusing to me! [spoiler]“I want you to write one page on what you want to be when you grow up, and then one page on what you want to be if that first thing doesn’t work out, because sometimes things don’t work out the way we’d like them to. Then another page on what you’d do if the first two things you’d like to be don’t work out. Then two pages on the one thing you definitely don’t want to be no matter what. It’s really important not to let the bottom drop out of your life.” I loved little Andrew and I hope he gets to use the road maps![/spoiler] During our travels, we also get to read Tanya’s email communications with an old boyfriend. These emails help shed a little light on her first life.
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If you murder someone once, even with a tenuous argument for self-defense, you can blame it on chance, being at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong name. But the next time you kill someone, you have to start asking the hard questions. Is it really self-defense or a lifestyle choice? When you kill another human being in cold blood, you kill part of yourself.

I lost my reading momentum in the second half. After Recluse, Tanya doesn’t set foot in any location or identity for very long. There are a series of isolated incidents that are hurdles in her path, but they never amount to anything except reminding Tanya of her humanity in a couple of cases. The publisher summary led me to believe Tanya was more experienced at deception than she actually was. The trip gets really disorganized and she makes some silly decisions. [spoiler]Going back through Chicago was a TERRIBLE idea, strict policy or not![/spoiler] I never felt the weight of her actions bearing down on her, nor did I feel like anyone who was chasing her was close to catching up. Even though I really enjoyed Blue’s character, her actions ended up being the most ridiculous part of the book [spoiler](the quick trust, journalism, the final accident)[/spoiler]. The ending was anticlimactic for both me and Tanya. [spoiler]”I have to admit, it was a bit of a letdown. Running so hard for so long only to learn I was free. It was like gearing up for a championship fight only to have your opponent take a fall. I still wanted to fight. I had lived for so long with my options narrowed into a foxhole, I wasn’t sure how I would proceed now that the real world was open to me.”[/spoiler]

“There’s nothing else to you, besides youth. You’re just a shell. You seem empty inside, as if your personality has been hijacked.”

The main character is not in the driver’s seat of her own life and she has almost completely disappeared into the cast of characters she has been forced to become to survive. She is an empty vessel who has to remain vigilant and ready to react at any moment. She is loyal to a fault. While the main character’s situation leads to her not feeling like a complete person, I really liked her toughness and her folksy humor! I had a lot of fun reading The Passenger, but the second half didn’t consistently maintain the tension created in the first half. Another book about a woman who assumes multiple identities is The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty, though she does it in a more unintentional way.

“I do love symmetry, don’t you?” “I prefer justice,” I said. “Sometimes you get both.”

Everyone was very kind and trying to stop me from seeing his body, but I couldn’t tell them I was glad he was gone. No more of his nonsense.

2.5 Stars Glen Taylor is out shopping with his wife Jean when he suddenly falls in front of a moving bus and is instantly killed. Bystanders comfort Jean, but truthfully she is relieved. The police and media are eager to talk to Jean after her husband’s death, but it turns out this isn’t the first time Jean has crossed paths with these people. For three years, her husband had been the main suspect in a very public kidnapping case. Was Glen guilty or was he a victim himself? Was his death an accident or murder?

No one wanted to know us now. They just wanted to know about us.

This book deals with crimes against children, but it is not graphic. It was really more about the secrets in a marriage and news media sensationalism than the crime itself. The clearly labeled chapters alternate between:
• The Widow – Jean Taylor.
• The Detective – DI Bob Sparkes, a dedicated detective who becomes obsessed with the case.
• The Reporter – Kate Waters, a charismatic investigative reporter who uses emotional manipulation to score coveted interviews.
• Plus, a few cameos from some of the supporting characters.
It also goes back and forth in time in two sections: the events following two-year-old Bella Elliot’s disappearance on October 2, 2006 and the events following Gene’s death on May 14, 2010.
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And then there he was. Glen Taylor. He looks like the bloke next door was Sparkes’s first thought. But then monsters rarely look the part. You hope you’ll be able to see the evil shining out of them—it would make police work a damned sight easier, he often said. But evil was a slippery substance, glimpsed only occasionally and all the more horrifying for that, he knew.

As facts are revealed, we learn that Jean and Glen’s relationship does not resemble a typical modern marriage. There is a strong stereotypical 1950s vibe. I kept picturing Jean as much older, even though she is in her late thirties. Glen is controlling and manipulative. Jean is submissive and comes across as a bit dull. She stands by her husband, even as the circumstantial evidence mounts against him. Their relationship was interesting and the book explores the mental hoops Jean has to jump through to continue to defend Glen in public and to remain committed to her marriage. A marked difference begins to develop between Jean’s public face and her private life, as she struggles to reconcile the new information with the man she thought she knew. I do love every time Jean says “no more of his nonsense” and I have been overusing variations of that phrase ever since I read this book!

I think I know, but really, I don’t know anything about this man that I’ve lived with all these years. He’s a stranger, but we’re bound together tighter than we’ve ever been. He knows me. He knows my weakness…I know that I caused all this trouble with my obsession.

The Widow was entertaining enough on a surface level, but I was never really excited about it. Everything between the first and last chapter felt so slow. I’ve grown really impatient with books where there is a slow leak of information from an informed character. The constant switching between characters and time periods add to that frustration. The Widow’s chapters were actually my least favorite, because of the dithering about revealing more information. I felt the same way about The Reporter’s chapters when the focus was on Jean. The Detective’s chapters were my favorite because that was when the story felt like it was moving forward. I liked The Reporter’s chapters best when the focus was on the media manipulations of their interview subjects and readers.

It was journalism at its most powerful, hammering home the message with a mallet, inciting reaction, and the readers responded. The comment sections on the website were filled with unthinking, screaming vitriol, foulmouthed opinion, and calls for the death penalty to be reinstated. “The usual nutters,” the news editor summed up in morning conference. “But lots of them.” “Let’s show a bit of respect for our readers,” the editor said. And they all laughed.

If you like this book, you might also be interested in What She Knew.

Great mix of plot-driven mystery and character-driven psychological drama. It deals heavily with the mental toll a child abduction case has on the investigative team and the victim’s family. One of the most interesting parts for me was the close look at the involvement of social media in high-profile cases.

In the eyes of others, we’re often not who we imagine ourselves to be. When we first meet someone, we can put our best foot forward, and give the very best account of ourselves, but still get it horribly wrong. It’s a pitfall of life…if we’re not who we imagine we are, then is anybody else? If there’s so much potential for others to judge us wrongly, then how can we be sure that our assessment of them in any way resembles the real person that lies underneath?…Should we trust or rely on somebody just because they’re a figure of authority, or a family member? Are any of our friendships and relationships really based on secure foundations?

Rachel and her eight-year-old son Ben take regular walks in the woods outside their hometown of Bristol, England. On one chilly October day, Ben begs to run ahead so he can have some extra time on the rope swing before it gets too dark. Rachel is reluctant to say yes, but she relents. She can’t always be so overprotective. Why not let him have a bit of independence? He’ll be fine! Ben and his dog run ahead to the swing while the distracted Rachel hangs back. By the time she reaches the rope swing, Ben and the dog are gone and there is no sign of them in the surrounding woods. The police are called and Rachel’s worst nightmare begins.

I marveled at how the mundane activities that life demanded still needed to be done, even while the worst was happening. I even felt resentful toward my body, toward its demands for sleep, for food, for drink, for bodily functions. I thought that life should stop until Ben was found. Clocks should no longer tick, oxygen should no longer be exchanged for carbon dioxide in our lungs, and our hearts should not pump. Only when he was back should normal service resume. Anything else was an insult to him, to what he might be suffering.

Normally my library holds come available at the WORST possible time (and all at once, no matter how different the wait times are!), but this one became available while I was in the midst of a cold and it was perfect company! I’ve read a number of thrillers lately where the end is a known fact and it is the middle of the story that is in question. In this book, the child is kidnapped in the beginning and we have no idea what happened to him or if he is alive or dead. It adds a real sense of urgency. Part or what makes this book is so scary is that it begins with a choice regarding independence that parents have to make all the time as their children grow older. And really, 99% of the time Rachel’s decision wouldn’t have been so life-altering, but that 1% of the time….

The sense of urgency is further escalated with excerpts from real-world child abduction resources at the beginning of each chapter. There are nine chapters, each representing a day. In each chapter there are several sections, alternating between the mom of the missing boy and the lead investigator, Jim. Jim’s chapters push the investigation forward, while Rachel’s chapters show the trauma of losing a child and the ramifications of being in the public spotlight. There are some glimpses into the future during sessions with the lead detective and his psychologist, but all we know is that the case had a terrible impact on him and it seems like something might have gone wrong with the investigation.

These were people, I thought, with a growing sense of desperation, who would have put me in a workhouse a hundred years ago, and a few centuries before that strapped me into a scold’s bridle, or built a tall bonfire just for me to sit atop, and lit it with flaming torches, which underscored with flickering light their hard-bitten features, their lack of mercy or compassion…I was their target because I was socially unacceptable, and so they did everything they legally could: they publicly lanced me with words which were written, examined, and edited, each process carefully honing them in a calculated effort to push people’s buttons once they were published, to froth up public opinion around them so that my situation could titillate others, could thrill and bolster the minds of the smug and judgmental. Schadenfreude. Conservatism. Better the worst happens to somebody else, because, quite frankly, they must have done something to deserve it. And they felt entitled to do that, these so-called “thinkers,” as they sat comfortably behind their desks with their reference books and their own unexamined moral compass, because I was nothing to them. Ben and I were simply the commodity that would sell their papers, nothing more. And these were the very papers that I used to read, that I used to carry down the road from the shop and bring into my home.

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I don’t know if you’ve ever gone down the rabbit-hole of sleuthing communities, but they can get real weird and people get extremely invested in these unsolved cases. It is good when people are talking about a case because it keeps it in the public eye and increases the chance of a conclusion, but there is also a dark side. What makes this book special is the examination of social media and its effect on the investigation and the victim’s families. Blog posts and online news articles with comment sections are included. Rachel suffers real-life consequences from the fervor that the media and the online community whip up. There are sections where Rachel becomes confrontational with the reader. These parts were really jarring at first, but it serves as a mirror to reflect on your own judgments.

And I suppose I’m interested now to know whether it troubles you to read these things, to know that the rug you’re standing on so securely can be whipped out from under your feet rapidly and completely? Or do you feel safer than that? Do you assume that your foundations are more secure than mine, and that my situation is too extreme to ever befall you? Have you noted the moments when I made mistakes that you might have avoided? Do you imagine that you would have behaved with a more perfect maternal dignity in my situation, that you would be unimpeachable? Perhaps you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to lose your husband in the first place. Be careful what you assume, is what I’d say to that. Be very careful. I should know. I was married to a doctor once. I’m also interested to know how uncomfortable you feel now. Whether you’re regretting our agreement. Remember the roles we allocated each other? Me: Ancient Mariner and Narrator. You: Wedding Guest and Patient Listener. Do you wish you could shuffle away yet? Refill your glass perhaps? Now that my grip is loosening whose side are you on? Mine, or theirs? How long will you stay with the underdog, given that she’s so beaten now, so unattractive? Displaying here and there signs of mental instability.

What She Knew forces you to look at the general human tendency to vilify others and look for signs that they deserve whatever bad things happened to them. The world seems to feel too chaotic and random otherwise. It also asks if we can truly know or trust anyone. This book is a bit longer than most popular mysteries, but I really loved the satisfying mix of procedural and psychological that those added pages allowed for.

What I know now is that even after the divorce I should simply have been grateful for what I had. I should have celebrated my life as it was, imperfections, sadness, and all, and not forensically examined its faults. Those faults were largely in the eyes of a critical and sharp-edged society anyhow, and I had learned to recognize them by osmosis, by following the herd.

____________
Quotes I thought of after reading.
“We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour.” – Stephen M.R. Covey

Charles: So April missed the airway, huh? That’s so stupid. Lexie: Airway first. Jackson: It’s like med school 101, right? Alex: It’s pretty basic. Reed: It was one second! She got distracted for one second and she made a mistake. Charles: That we all nearly got fired for. Jackson: Nose dive’s got a point. Charles: Thank you. … What?! Alex: We nearly got fired for trying to fix what she screwed up in the first place. Cristina: Yeah, ’cause that’s our job. (to Lexie) What you didn’t make any mistakes today? (to Alex) You’ve been distracted for the entire week. (to Jackson) And who knows what you screwed up. But our patients didn’t die and that’s why we didn’t get caught. It could’ve happened to any one of us. (Grey’s Anatomy, Episode: I Saw What I Saw)

Fun start, slooooooow finish.

Nora hasn’t spoken to her high school best friend Clare in a decade, until one day she receives an invitation to Clare’s hen party. Nora is immediately wary of the invite, but she decides to attend anyway. The story opens after the party has taken a tragic turn for the worst and Nora is in the hospital with no memory of what happened.

The brain doesn’t remember well. It tells stories. It fills in the gaps, and implants those fantasies as memories.
I have to try to get the facts . . .
But I don’t know if I’m remembering what happened—or what I want to have happened. I am a writer. I’m a professional liar. It’s hard to know when to stop, you know? You see a gap in the narrative, you want to fill it with a reason, a motive, a plausible explanation.
And the harder I push, the more the facts dissolve beneath my fingers . . .

The first half of the book alternates between “before the incident” and “after the incident”. The hen party itself was a lot of cringey-fun. The author really captured the awkwardness of an event where the only thing anyone has in common is a relationship with the honored guest. The premise for Nora’s invitation and the party games in that context were so cruel, but definitely entertaining. The characters (all in their late twenties) are immature and shallow, but it was actually fitting for this book. I loved the setting of an isolated glass house buried deep in a creepy forest in the English countryside. (“The night was drawing in, and the house felt more and more like a glass cage, blasting its light blindly out into the dusk, like a lantern in the dark. I imagined a thousand moths circling and shivering, drawn inexorably to its glow, only to perish against the cold inhospitable glass.”). There is a great theater motif running through the novel and the see-through house is a great manifestation of it. It actually became like an extra character and I missed it in the second half!
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I realize how young we were—hardly more than children with the careless cruelty of childhood and the rigid black-and-white morality, too.
There is no gray when you’re young. There’s only goodies and baddies, right and wrong. The rules are very clear—a playground morality of ethical lines drawn out like a netball pitch, with clear fouls and penalties.

It all fell apart for me halfway through this 320 page book, when the story completely catches up with Nora in the hospital and it becomes all amnesia, all-the-time. All the “WHAT HAPPENED?”, “I MUST REMEMBER!”, and rehashing was so frustrating. New information comes in at a slow drip and by 80% I wasn’t even sure if I cared what happened! I kept going because I was hoping for some insane twist, but I was disappointed when my initial impressions were correct. Also: the fact that tea-hating, crime writer Nora thought that that last tea was a good idea was baffling!

“People don’t change,” Nina said bitterly. “They just get more punctilious about hiding their true selves.”

My husband always tells me how his father would joke that the moral of every story was “they should have kept their ass at home!” That was definitely the case with this story! While this wasn’t an “add it to the top of your list immediately” book for me, I think it would be a fun beach read.

Alex Dale is a functioning alcoholic and very-part-time journalist working on a story about comatose patients. While Alex is visiting the Neuro-Disability ward at the hospital, she recognizes Amy Stevenson, a young woman who was left for dead in the woods. It was a huge case in the local media, but the perpetrator was never identified. Alex becomes obsessed with telling Amy’s story. This is complicated because Amy has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years and there are only a few cold leads to follow. I received this book from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review. This book will be released on February 23, 2016.

Time is not a good healer. Time is a blank page on which the left behind scribble their regrets and their confessions.

Try Not To Breathe is your standard page-turning suspense novel, with a female journalist lead. The writing was straightforward. There are three points of view: Amy (the victim), Alex Dale (the journalist), and Jacob (a mysterious man who visits the ward, with a special focus on Amy). What makes this book interesting is the central focus on people in a persistent vegetative state and the potential for simple communication with a small percentage of them. My favorite chapters were from Amy’s and the chapters where Alex interacted with Amy. Amy is a wake-up call for Alex and she is able to reflect on her own struggles by spending time with Amy and investigating her story. They have both lost everything and everyone around them, except Amy didn’t have a choice in the matter and there don’t seem to be any second chances in her future.

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She wasn’t getting better, she’d just mistaken survival for progress. (Alex)

The tension between Jacob and his wife ran a little too long and his chapters were my least favorite. The ending was really easy to predict and I am not someone who usually has it all figured out. [spoiler]Due to Amy’s point of view in the beginning chapters of the book, the leads that Alex gets sidetracked with feel like a waste of time rather than suspenseful. Plus there is a character that we never meet, but has just enough presence that we can’t forget them. The lack of presence for that character also makes it less satisfying when their identity is discovered, though I did enjoy the trial scene.[/spoiler] However–Even though I was 99% sure who did it, I raced through this book. I am usually a one-hour-a-weeknight reader and I stayed up way too late with this one!

Overall, it was entertaining with an interesting concept. In terms of thrillers I’ve read recently, I’d put it in the A Line of Blood/Those Girls category. If you liked this book or typically like thrillers similar to this book, you might like The Girl on the Train (England, isolated alcoholic protagonist) or Black-Eyed Susans (victim with no memory of event + a little bit of science).

It’s not just loud noises that accompany disasters, little sounds do, too, and even silence.

An intriguing, multi-layered mystery with a fascinating historical context.

Lisandra is found dead on the sidewalk outside the window of her sixth-floor apartment and her husband Vittorio is the main suspect. He is a psychoanalyst and one of his patients, Eva Maria, agrees to help find clues to prove his innocence. Eva Maria, who is experiencing immense grief over the disappearance of her daughter a few years prior during The Dirty War, becomes obsessed with solving the mystery and providing justice for Vittorio and Lisandra. The Case of Lisandra P. is based on a true story and takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina in August 1987. It is translated from the original French by Alison Anderson.

Falling out of love is progressive. Before you no longer love, you love less. And less again, then no more at all. But it’s not something you are aware of. Falling out of love. A relationship gone lukewarm, humdrum, pragmatic, everyday, utilitarian and habit-worn, and you don’t even think it through because you don’t think about it at all.

The publisher recommends this book to fans of The Girl on the Train and The Silent Wife. I did really like those books and they were fun to read, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend The Case of Lisandra P. to all the fans of those two books. There is an element of domestic drama that is comparable, but that certainly isn’t the whole story or the main draw to this book. Most of the popular thrillers have an easy-breezy writing style which compels you to keep turning the pages, but this one is more literary with a deliberate pace. It took me quite a few pages to get into the writer’s style. The style actually reminded me a little more of Saramago than of Hawkins or Harrison, because of the insight into the human mind, the way the immediate story was tied to a greater context, the way the author was able to write little actions as intriguing, and the breathless way in which it is written. The format is untraditional and almost collage-like. The main story was interspersed with Vittorio’s session transcripts, lists, stream of consciousness, and even sheet music at one point. There is not much in the way of transitions and the story changes directions very quickly.

Monstrosity never thinks it is monstrous; it always finds reasons within itself to behave as it does—acts of torture become acts of justice, or even honor—…

Normally every hospital provides trauma surgery facilities. viagra 100 mg Gupta is the most trusted Sexologist Doctor In Delhi. levitra 100mg The drug not only helps wholesale viagra online to achieve and maintain strong erection for longer period of time. Now a days, market is covered with millions of products for sexual boost or erotic turmoil, which is also denoted as erectile dysfunction or ED. cialis 20 mg http://deeprootsmag.org/2016/02/17/beyond-arcady-and-bethlehem/ The part that makes this book most interesting is the setting. It takes place four years after the end of The Dirty War, an event I didn’t know anything about. The descriptions of the atrocities committed are intensely disturbing: people disappearing without a trace, people being tossed from planes to destroy the evidence of torture, and children being stolen and given to families sympathetic to the junta. The lack of justice for the victims is appalling. One of the more unsettling parts of the book is a transcript of Vittorio’s session with Miguel, where Miguel describes the torture he received while imprisoned by the military junta. The acknowledgments mention that the section owes much to the real-life testimony of Miguel Ángel Estrella.

Impunity imposes impossible cohabitation on murderers and their victims; it exacerbates suspicion and hatred. In the deepest recesses of the soul. In that secret place where bile gathers and accumulates. The heart of a volcano. In that hiding place where the most violent anger lurks, the anger that ravages everything when it erupts. Because it will not fail to erupt. In the light, perhaps, of another historical context, but it will erupt.

This is not a mystery where what actually occurred is obvious, but it is not out-of-the-blue in a gimmicky GOTCHA! way. [spoiler]I did start to get an inkling of what was to come with the list of phobias and a long monologue with shades of Anna Karenina, but the conclusion is impossible to guess in its entirety.[/spoiler] There are strong parallels between the tragic events of Lisandra’s life and historical context of the book: the strong and powerful imposing their will over the weak and the powerful getting away without punishment (despite mountains of evidence) while the oppressed suffer the worst repercussions.

There were some sections that ran a little too long for me because characters would get really repetitive in these big, blocky paragraphs that would go on for pages and I was just ready for the story to move forward. Overall, it was an intriguing mystery with a fascinating setting.

Memories are free. They play with us. They get fainter, they expand, they retract, they avoid us or strike like lightning. Once life gives birth to them, they become the masters of life. They are time’s foot soldiers, driving us mad. Without memories we would be free. Memory is time’s bad fairy. No memory brings true joy, serenity. Regret, remorse—memories are like so many dissonant little bells clanging inside us. And the more life goes on, the more the little music of memories rings false. You think you are your own self, but you’re nothing but your memories.

I was so excited when I saw a new release from Gillian Flynn pop up on my feed, until I realized it was an already published (very) short story! It originally appeared as “What Do You Do?” in George R. R. Martin’s [book:Rogues|20168816] anthology. Regardless, it is an entertaining and creepy short story, recommended for fans of Gillian Flynn.

I DIDN’T STOP giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it.

The narrator performs happy ending massages at Spiritual Palms, a massage and psychic parlor. She is diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and transfers to the psychic part of the business. One day a jittery client named Susan walks in, concerned that her stepson has become threatening and aggressive since they moved into their new home. The narrator was already considering getting into the aura cleansing business, so she offers to perform spiritual cleansings of Susan’s home. And then things get real weird!

I would rather be a librarian, but I worry about the job security. Books may be temporary; dicks are forever.

The Grownup is darkly humorous. These berries are also high in antioxidants and vitamins and cheapest cialis in canada minerals. Many of no prescription viagra the ingredients found within natural libido pills are found in chemical versions. It has been cialis 20mg no prescription noticed that people prefer to go for natural treatments of se-xual problems. Tell your specialis online prices t on the off chance that you think an overdose. The unnamed narrator’s observations made me laugh. She is exactly the sort of fascinating character you would expect from Gillian Flynn. She is cynical, manipulative and observant. She has an unbalanced mother and an interesting past. My favorite part of this short story was the building of her character, especially in the beginning. The rest of the story is decent too with several twists, but I just wanted more! More story, more about Susan and Miles, more about the house, etc. Almost everything I like most about this author works better in long form.

Despite wanting more from it, I did think it was a really fun, quick read.

But I was either screwed or not screwed, so I chose to believe I wasn’t. I had convinced so many people of so many things over my life, but this would be my greatest feat: convincing myself what I was doing was reasonable. Not decent, but reasonable.

Solid suspense novel, about a family dealing with being under suspicion for their neighbor’s mysterious death.

The truth was our enemy now; the truth would not set us free.

A Line of Blood centers around the Mercer family: Alex, Millicent and their eleven-year-old son Max. When the Mercer’s cat wanders into the neighbor’s house, Alex and Max stumble upon their neighbor dead in his bathtub. The scene initially appears to be a suicide, but the police soon begin to suspect foul play. There are many people who have a motive to kill the neighbor, including Alex and Millicent. The Mercer family begins to fall apart at the already loose seams, as they deal with the terrible incident and the suspicions that follow.

These people are AWFUL to each other! Alex and Millicent have a very damaged relationship. Sample conversation:

“Your cute and adorable son,” [Alex] said, “thinks you’re a bitch, by the way. It was hard to know what to say.”
“A bitch?”
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My reaction to these type of things is usually more this, rather than this, so I was fascinated by this couple’s relationship!

Their family dynamics are extremely dysfunctional and all of their conversations are built on half-truths and omissions. Max is always seeing and hearing things that he shouldn’t. He is more aware of what is going on in his parent’s marriage than they are most of the time! It is interesting how he processes all this information and the conclusions his eleven-year-old mind comes too about all these things he shouldn’t know.

I thought about the rot in the floor-boards, now spreading from the bathroom to the bedroom, of the window frames that barely fitted, of the pathological mess of the life we lived: God, but the neglect of it. The house was tidy, now, but give it a week. Coming in through the front door, the neglect would be the first thing that hit you.
House, marriage, and child. She was going to leave you.
Had we neglected each other as we’d neglected the house? I didn’t think so, but how do you know? Only the very naive believe that love is all you need; but the other stuff, the boundaries and the fights, the sex and the food? Hadn’t we been good at that?

The book is really easy to read. It is dialogue-heavy, so it goes fast. It examines a child’s awareness of the world around them and the damaging consequences of cynicism and living passively. I thought of the following books while I was reading (just based on tone), but I wouldn’t click on these recommendations until you have read the book: [spoiler]The Dinner and Defending Jacob.[/spoiler]

My grandfather once told me that God puts pieces in the wrong places to keep us busy solving puzzles, and in the perfect places so that we never forget there is a God.

Fun-to-read suspense novel that takes place in Texas with an amnesiac narrator. I had a four-star time reading it.

I used to stand in this garden and pretend. The blackbirds stringing across the sky were really wicked witches on brooms. The distant fringes of wheat were the blond bangs of a sleeping giant. The black, mountainous clouds on the horizon were the magical kind that could twirl me to Oz. The exceptions were brutal summer days when there was no movement. No color. Nothingness so infinite and dull it made my heart ache. Before the monster, I would always rather be scared than bored.

When Tessa Cartwright was a teenager, she was buried alive along with other human remains in a field of black-eyed susans. Tessa had little memory of the event, but her testimony was enough to sentence one man to death. Two decades later the man convicted for the crimes is about to be executed and mysterious patches of black-eyed susans have been appearing on her property. She has begun to doubt whether the man is prison is the one who committed the crimes, but she is is scared to confront the past and she has a daughter to protect now. Tessa is under pressure from the his lawyer Bill to remember anything that might exonerate his client. The investigation has little hard evidence to go on, so their only chance at freeing who they believe to be an innocent man is to jog Tessa’s memory. Will she be able to remember in time to save a potentially innocent man?

And the smile. I know that smile because I’ve worn it, the one that pulls at thirteen muscles and strikes a match for all the other smiles in the room and makes you appear perfectly normal and happy.

The narrator is referred to Tessie when she is a child and Tessa when she is an adult. The book is divided into three parts. The first part is “Tessa and Tessie,” which alternates between Tessa when she is a teenager in 1995 and Tessa in the present day. Some of my favorite chapters were those between young Tessie and her psychologist. Tessie is so defiant and so different from the older, more fearful Tessa. The second part is “Countdown” which alternates between testimonies at the trial in 1995 and the countdown to the convicted’s execution in the present day. [spoiler]The third part is “Tessa and Lydia” which alternates between Tessie’s eccentric friend Lydia in the 90s and Tessa in the present day.[/spoiler]

“I thought there would be more people. Where are all the people who scream on Facebook?” “On the couch. Screaming.” (at an execution)

This one was a lot of fun to read. The creepy house and the creepy flowers had me hooked from the beginning. Tessie’s childhood friendship with Lydia was also intriguing. They were really morbid kids! There are quite a few aspects that make Black-eyed Susans stand out. It takes place in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the author adds a lot of Texas flavor to the story. It was fun to recognize many distinctly Texas places and quirks. The book also explores the ramifications of Tessa not remembering, when Tessa and Bill witness an execution in Huntsville. The author goes into the logistics of an execution, as well as the ramifications of the death penalty and incidences affecting the wrongly accused. The forensic science was also really neat, especially the part with the forensic geologist explaining how they identify a person’s geographical history from bone.

He believed that a person’s most profound flaws or virtues emerge in great crisis, or they remain buried forever. I remember leaving his office that day thinking it was sad that ordinary, dull people die all the time without ever knowing they are heroes. All because a girl didn’t go under in the lake right in front of them, or a neighbor’s house didn’t catch fire.

I did not care for the super obvious and needless romance with Bill and the appearance of Tessa’s ex-boyfriend Lucas was completely forgettable. I got a little bored of Tessa’s [spoiler]mostly fruitless[/spoiler] digging, but at least she was doing something! [spoiler]I wish the investigation had led to the conclusion or at least to the person who had the answers, rather than a character appearing and explaining everything. I also wish Tessa would have regained a little more of her memory. I don’t need all the gory details, but a little more than what we got would have been nice![/spoiler]

“There is a reason you feel the need to blame yourself,” he continues. “From all accounts, you were a very careful girl. If you accept the blame—decide you took a rare misstep—you can reassure yourself this was not a random event. If you blame yourself, you can believe that you are still in control of your universe. You’re not. You never will be.”

I also had issues with the structure. There are very short chapters and constant of back-and-forth between time periods and/or characters. Sometimes I don’t mind that type of structure, but it made me feel like I was getting an incomplete picture with this one. I felt like I was trying to piece together the mystery, while I am also trying to piece together the story. That feeling was enhanced by the fact that you don’t get all the answers with this book. You get the main answer, but there are still many questions at the end.

“Closure doesn’t exist,” she responds smoothly. “Just…awareness. That you can’t ever go back. That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people don’t.”

Overall it was a good book and lovers of thrillers by Gillian Flynn or Paula Hawkins will like it.

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