Novels Now

Twisted by Andrea Kane
Sloane Burbank, book 1

Pages: 376 pgs.
First Published: Mar. 2008
Rating: 4.5/5

First sentence:

She was a true warrior.

Reason for Reading: Honestly, the cover put me off this for some reason. So it has taken me a while to get around to reading it.

Summary: Sloane Burbank is a former FBI agent who was injured in the line of duty and instead of taking a desk job decided to leave the Bureau until her therapy made her fit for active duty once more. In the meantime she is working as a private consultant for corporations and the police. She is contacted by the family of a childhood friend as a last resort that their daughter has been missing for close to a year and hired to look into the case for them. This one missing person case takes her into a series of related missing women cases, all having even the remotest link to herself, leading officials to believe Sloane is the ultimate target. At the same time the FBI agent in charge is involved in a case of a series of brutal prostitute murders down in Chinatown which may somehow be related to the missing women.

Comment: Wow! This was a stunner! I wish I hadn’t waited so long to read this as I would have read the sequel by now too. Two things initially put me off, the cover and the description on the back as a “romantic thriller”. I’m not a romance reader and the word had me thinking this might be a bit of fluff, but boy was I wrong!

A very creepy, unusual serial killer is the focus of this book which shifts focus occasionally to the criminal’s first hand point of view and then back to the third person narrative of the main plot. This person is very freaky and the whole story of motive that the author has created is very unique and fantastic. I quickly had my eye on a suspect and played into the author’s hands all along as I followed her red herrings and was joyfully surprised how wrong I was at the reveal.

Usually, in these thrillers with male/female partners we have s*xual tension or a relationship going on, but the ‘romance’ writer in the author comes out in this area of the book and there is quite a bit of descriptive s*x in the book that I would rather have done without. Some people would consider it quite graphic, though in the whole realm of what I’ve read I’d say it gets very close without quite getting to full fledged graphic. For this reason I can’t give the book a full rating. I’ve read a lot of thrillers and this type of ‘romance=sex’ doesn’t sit right with me. Save it for the paranormal romances, I say.

Otherwise, Ms Kane has crafted a taut, unique and very satisfying page turner of a thriller. I will be reading the sequel soon.

The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe
Hazel Micallef Mystery, book 1

Pages: 419 pgs.
First Published: Mar. 4, 2008
Genre: crime, thriller
Rating: 4/5

First sentence:

He was precisely on time.

Reason for Reading: My sister brought the book to my attention and I saw that Mo Hayder had put a blurb on it so I definitely was intrigued by this new author.
Summary: Inspector Hazel Micallef is the acting chief of police at a small Ontario town. At 61 years of age daily life for Hazel and this police force involves drunks, trespassing, speeding and maybe the occasional domestic dispute. That is until an elderly town citizen dying of cancer is brutally murdered and drained of all her blood. Investigating the murder Hazel and her force stumble upon a similar case in a small town not so far away and believe they have stumbled upon the trail of a serial killer who has been working his way across Canada. Can they find him before he reaches the Atlantic?

Comments: A fabulous new crime writer for me to follow! Inger Ash Wolfe is actually a pseudonym for Russell Smith, an already published Canadian author. While Smith’s own books don’t hold any appeal for me to read, The Calling is a fantastic addition to the serial killer genre. Very well-written with a creepiness that just oozes from it’s pages. The gruesome factor nowhere matches Mo Hayder but it has enough, written with style to satisfy fans looking for hard edge mysteries. It was mostly the plot and the mystery that kept this book alive for me though as I couldn’t quite find myself comfortable with the main characters. Hazel is the central figure with a few of her police officers taking secondary character roles. Nobody was particularly likable to me; they all just rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps this may be unique to this particular reader. Yet I find it hard to 100% enjoy a book when I don’t like any of the main characters. There was one guy who I started to like by the end of the book but it is left up in the air as to whether he will be returning. I guess I’ll find out in The Taken. I’ll certainly be continuing with this series. The plot and the crime are so very unique that I’m eager to find what else Wolfe will come up with and I’m hoping that with another book I’ll find a regular character that grows on me. A definite not-to-be-missed book for serial killer crime fans.

I first saw a review of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (Hyperion Books, 352 pgs. 2008) over a year ago and thought that it looked great. I’m a big fan of YA books, as you well know. Not sure what took me so long to read it, but once I decided to join the Printz Project, I knew this would be one of the first books I read.     

I, Frankie Landau-Banks, hereby confess that I was the sole mastermind behind the mal-doings of the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. I take full responsibility for the disruptions caused by the Order — including the Library Lady, the Doggies in the Window, the Night of a Thousand Dogs, the Canned Beet Rebellion, and the abduction of the Guppy. That is, I wrote the directives telling everyone what to do.

Frances (Frankie) Landau-Banks is a student at the prestigious Alabaster boarding school. As a freshman, she was pretty much unnoticed. When she was, it was only because her sister, Zada (a senior) was really popular. But the summer after her freshman year was good to her, and she came back to school in the fall with a knockout figure. When Senior Matthew Livingston, the boy she coveted her entire freshman year, showed interest in her, she was ecstatic. Until she realized she was playing second fiddle to his best friend, Alpha.

Then she found out that Matthew was a member of Alabaster’s secret ALL-MALE society known as the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. Because her father was also a member when he attended Alabaster, Frankie knew a bit about the group. And she wanted in. Of course, as a girl, there was no way the boys were going to let her in.

But after she figured out the clues given to her by her father (and spying on a meeting of the Bassets), Frankie found the lost and secret Disreputable History written by years of members. Arming herself with a new email address, Frankie set in motion a series of events that was sure to leave the campus talking.

What I loved about this book was Frankie. She is strong-willed and smart. Not a person to take stereotypes lightly, Frankie tried to break ranks and do what she felt was right….and damn the consequences. She decided she wasn’t going to sit by and do nothing when she knew she was smart enough and strong enough to be a member of this group. She was going to break down the barriers that said she couldn’t do something because she was a girl. My favorite paragraph in the entire book is this:

Matthew had called her harmless. Harmless. And being with him made Frankie feel squashed into a box — a box where she was expected to be sweet and sensitive (but not over sensitive); a box for young and pretty girls who were not as bright or powerful as their boyfriends. A box for people who were not forces to be reckoned with. Frankie wanted to be a force.

I love a strong female protagonist. I’ve said that many times. And that is exactly what Frankie is. She doesn’t want follow the expectations of others….she has her own expectations. And she is taking no prisoners.

But as in real life, every action has a consequence. And Frankie has to face up to those consequences. She is young and naive enough to think that Matthew and the other Bassets are going to be impressed with her intelligence instead of upset that she thought outside the box. I have to say, I wasn’t thrilled with the ending, but in all actuality, it was probably the best way it could have been written. Very real life, and not some fairy-tale, happily-ever-after conclusion. In Frankie, Lockhart has created a strong, unforgettable character, that defies cliques and stereotypes and just is. She is the person SHE wants to be, not the person that others thinks she should be. And that is commendable. Every girl should read this book to show them they don’t have to follow the “rules” society has set for them. And every boy should read it as well…just to prove to them that there are girls that won’t handle being “put in a box”l!! Highly Recommended!!

4.5/5

On the bald spot and through the strands of his scant pale hair could be seen glistening beads of sweat. “That’s not her name, by the way,” he said. Quirke did not understand. “I mean, it is her name, only she called herself something else. Laura – Laura Swan. It was sort of her professional name. She ran a beauty parlor, the Sliver Swan. That’s where she got the name – Laura Swan.” - from The Silver Swan, page 10 -

The Silver Swan is the second novel in the Quirke series written by John Banfield under his pseudonym Benjamin Black. Dysfunctional Dublin pathologist Quirke’s return appearance happens two years after solving the Christine Falls case. Finally sober, he is mourning the loss of his unrequited love Sarah and trying to make amends with his daughter when he receives a phone call from an old school friend whose wife’s body has been fished out of the dark waters near Dublin. The man requests that Quirke ignore the law and refrain from performing an autopsy to cover up the apparent suicide. But Deidre Hunt’s death is not as straight forward as it first appears, and Quirke once again finds himself embroiled in the dark side of human behavior. He is unable to let the mystery alone.

It was a postmortem he had performed on the body of another young woman that had led to the unraveling of the Judge’s web of secrets; did he want to become involved in another version of that? Should he not just let the death of Deirdre Hunt alone, and leave her husband in merciful ignorance? What did it matter that a woman had drowned herself? - her troubles were over now; why should her husband’s be added to? Yet even as he asked himself these questions Quirke was aware of the old itch to cut into the quick of things, to delve into the dark of what was hidden – to know. - from The Silver Swan, page 25 -

Banfield’s writing is dark and rich and The Silver Swan, like its prequel Christine Falls, reads more like literary fiction than straight genre mystery. Characters are well-developed and plot is secondary to the motivations of the characters. The story unravels through alternating point of view which gives the mystery greater depth and interest. Once again, I found myself not entirely liking Quirke who always seems to be struggling with ethical decisions, while unable to deal with his personal demons. But, despite this, Banfield’s strong prose engaged me in Quirke’s story. I found The Silver Swan less predictable and with more intriguing twists than its predecessor – just when I thought I had solved the mystery, the story took an unexpected turn which kept me guessing.

He flicked the stub of his cigarette over the embankment wall. A gull, deceived, dived after it. Nothing is what it seems. - from The Silver Swan, page 55 -

Both Christine Falls and its sequel The Silver Swan will appeal to those readers who enjoy a good mystery, but also appreciate literary fiction. Speaking for myself, I know I would not hesitate to pick up another thriller-mystery by this author.

Highly recommended.

Read Caribousmom’s review of Christine Falls.

Hillary Jordan
336 pages

It’s hard to say that I loved a book that deals with such tough subject matter as prejudice, hatred, and violence but when the author is so skilled in evoking emotion, you gotta love it.

When Laura McAllen’s husband Henry drops the bombshell on her that they are leaving her city home and all of her family behind and moving to the Mississippi Delta in a week, I was angry at his lack of consideration for her feelings and sympathetic to Laura and her difficulty in adapting. I’m not sure I could go from having a shower in my home to bathing once a week and then having it be such a chore that it is turned into something that must be done rather than an enjoyment.

The profiles of the racism and prejudice are difficult but they are moving. It’s a sad journey back into our past where these events took place but, as with other painful historical facts, it is necessary to revisit them to keep the memories alive so that the learning continues.

I was really drawn in by Mudbound, much more than I expected to be. I would recommend this to lovers of historical and/or southern fiction. There are also WWII elements to this story but they are played out to a lesser extent. (4.5/5)

Wake by Lisa McMann
Wake Trilogy, Book 1

Pages: 210
First Published: Mar 4, 2008
Genre: YA, magical realism
Rating: 5/5

First sentence:

Janie Hannagan’s math book slips from her fingers.
Comments: Seventeen-year-old Janie gets sucked into other people’s dreams. It’s been happening since she was eight. Now that she is getting older things are getting worse. More and more students in high school fall asleep at their desks and Janie blacks out and enters the dreams more frequently. She blacks out at school, on the job at a seniors home, and shortly after buying her first car, while driving. This is getting out of hand and she must learn how to take control of the episodes. So far all she knows is that distance or a closed door will prevent the dreams.

I’m going to say it straight off. I loved this book so much, I could gush about it on and on. Page one and I was hooked! With an absolutely unique plot and characters that appeal to you from the first; I could not put this book down. The world around me stood still as I entered this fabulous plot.

It is a quick read, compelling and moves at a fast pace. Written in a journal type format, yet in the third person, there are no chapters but only short dated entries that make it so easy to keep saying “just a few more pages” well into the wee hours of the morning.

This is a book that is going to appeal to older teens and adults, equally. The story is very realistic; dealing with issues of abusive and negligent parents. This will haunt me for quite some time and is most certainly my most favourite book read this month.

Lisa McMann
210 pages

Janie Hanagan has problems. Her mom is a drunk and it really seems that she couldn’t care less what Janie does.  She also has a secret. She gets sucked into other people’s dreams if they fall asleep near her.

Janie is determined to make a better life for herself. She works all the hours she can get at a nursing home and she studies hard because she wants to go to college. But being considered “white trash” by your peers and the secret of being a dream catcher don’t exactly make life easy. Then Janie meets Cabel Strumheller and life gets really complicated.

I saw this book at the bookstore last weekend when I was browsing the YA section. Lately, I have just really been in the mood for some pure escapism and this seemed to fit the bill. I’m glad I chose this one. It reminded me a bit of A Nightmare on Elm Street without the gore. Anyone who knows me knows that, as a rule, I hate horror flicks. However, I loved the premise of dreams and the boogey man. It worked really well for this book only on a much tamer level. Still, I found it to be a fast-paced page-turner that kept my interest right up until the end.  I didn’t really have a guess as to where the story was going and I like that. I did find it hard to suspend disbelief in a couple of places but to say where would risk spoiling the plot for others.

Overall, I really enjoyed Wake. If you’re looking for a quick read and you enjoy YA fiction, you can’t go wrong with this one. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series, Fade, as soon as my library gets a copy. I’ve heard it’s even better than this one. (4.5/5)

Wonderful Southern Fiction

In 1939, at 31 years old, spinster, Laura meets Henry McAllen. After a bit of dating, they get married and start a family. Henry works for the Army Corps of Engineers, they’re in the city. This is great, because Laura is a city woman through and through.

One day Henry comes home with news, he has bought a farm in the Mississippi Delta and is quitting he job to farm. Of course this is quite a blow to Laura, Henry didn’t even consult her. The farmhouse has none of the conveniences that city folk take for granted such as running water, plumbing, electricity, etc. However, Henry is her husband, so Laura goes along with it.

After WWII Henry’s brother Jamie shows up at the farm. At the same time Ronsel Jackson returns home as decorated solder. He is the son of the black sharecroppers’ family living on the farm.

Ronsel and Jamie become friends, which is very risky in the Jim Crow south. This unlikely friendship is what brings this powerful novel to its grim conclusion.

Mudbound is told by each of the character’s own point of view. This technique works very well for this novel. Jordon was able to write each characters point of view so well, that it felt as if I was each character. She really enables the reader to get in side the heads of the characters.

Jordan’s prose sings! She makes the farm a kind of character itself and captures both its beauty and muddy short falls, exquisitely!

I highly recommend this book and can hardly wait for Hillary Jordan to write another novel!

5/5

WARNING: There may be spoilers of previous books, especially Betrayed in this review. If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to skip to the last 2 paragraphs!!

“Yep, I have a seriously sucky birthday,” I told my cat, Nala. And Zoey Redbird couldn’t be more accurate with that statement!! First of all her birthday is December 24th, and everyone always gets her Christmas themed birthday presents. Her mother has basically given up on her. Her step-loser (uh, step-father) is an elder in the People of Faith church. They believe that all Vampyres are evil, and now some not-so-veiled threats have been received. Her best friend, Stevie Rae, “died” at the last Full Moon Ritual. But I guess you have to use that term loosely. When a fledgling is “marked”, the change process to become an adult Vampyre begins. Not all fledglings survive the change because their bodies reject it. Some die. But Stevie Rae’s death was actually another type of change. Because now she has become “undead”, almost a caricature of what people believe vampires to be: full of bloodlust, only can move at night, and rather evil. But at least in Stevie Rae’s case, a small part of her humanity is still present and Z wants to help her.

Then there’s the fact that she has 3 boyfriends. The wonderful Erik Night, who is an upperclassman at the House of Night and a total catch. Her human ex-boyfriend, Heath who doesn’t really want to be an ex. Ever since Zoey drank a little of his blood, they Imprinted and Heath just can’t leave Zoey alone. And then there is Loren Blake, the Vampyre poet Laureate. He’s gorgeous, sensitive, an adult Vampyre and a teacher to boot. Completely off-limit to students, but he really has a thing for Z.

Finally, there is Neferet, the High Priestess at the House of Night. She was Zoey’s mentor and friend, until she betrayed her. Zoey knows she has something to do with the Undead fledglings and Stevie Rae. Zoey knows in her heart that Neferet represents something evil, but she doesn’t know what to do about it. She can’t even discuss it with her friends. Since Neferet has the ability to read minds, the little her friends know, the safer they will be. Zoey feels awful about lying to them, but she really is doing it for her own good. Then there is Aphrodite….Zoey’s sworn enemy. When Zoey took over control of the Dark Daughters from Aphrodite, Neferet told everyone that the Goddess Nyx had withdrawn Aphrodite’s powers to see the future. But that wasn’t true. And since Neferet was unable to read Aphrodite, she turns out to be the one person who can really help her navigate her way through the mess her life has become!

When Zoey and Aphrodite stumble across the body of one the adult vampyre professors, it’s almost a certainly that something bad is on the horizon. A war between the humans and the vampyres is coming and Zoey is trapped smack dab in the middle.

Can I just say now how much I really LOVE this series?? With that said, I really hated the ending of this book. I do realize Chosen ended in a way that will lead us to the next book. Zoey is a wonderful character: she is strong, smart and vulnerable at the same time. When she makes mistakes, she tries to own up to them and that makes her something special. She has been blessed by Nyx with an affinity for ALL the elements AND the spirit. Again, that is something that has never happened before. She is definitely a High Priestess in training. She just needs to figure out who she can really trust and find a way to do something about all the drama that has become her life!

This book was fantastic, even with the ending that I didn’t like. Doesn’t make it a bad book. Just leaves me on pins and needles until the next book is out. And I can’t WAIT until Untamed, Book 4 in the House of Night series is released later this year!!

4.5/5

I have long been a fan of Jodi Picoult. Most I have loved, like My Sister’s Keeper and Plain Truth. One I hated, The Tenth Circle. But on a whole, I’m totally enamored with her work. So…..when I saw a new book by Picoult on the shelf, I figured it would make a great addition to my reading list for “The Pub Challenge”.

Shay Bourne is the first man on New Hampshire’s Death Row for over 69 years. He was convicted 11 years ago of killing a police officer and his 7 year old step-daughter. A jury of his peers found him guilty and sentenced him to die by lethal injection. But now that the execution has been set and Shay has been moved to the I-Tier, “miracles” seem to be following him around. A dead bird is “resurrected”, a dying AIDS patient’s disease seems to disappear, and a tiny piece of gum seems to be stretched to feed all the inmates of the block. Now, people are lining up outside the prison to see the “Death Row Messiah”.

June Nealon knows better than anyone about Shay Bourne. It was her husband and daughter that were killed. She holds an amazing amount of hate towards Shay. But will she be able to get past all that hate to accept a gift from him that could save her OTHER daughter, Claire?

Maggie Bloom is an ACLU attorney that would like nothing better than to do away with the Death Penalty altogether. But in her quest to shed light on this issue, she takes Shay’s case about HOW he is going to be executed. As much as she would like to have Shay’s case reopened for fear that an innocent man will die, she has to follow her heart and the things Shay is asking her to do.

Father Michael has been called in from St. Katherine’s Church to be a spiritual advisor for Shay Bourne. But is Father Michael as interested in saving Shay’s soul as he is his own? Because before Father Michael was a priest, he was a college student that sat on the jury that sent Shay to Death Row.

One of the things I love about Picoult’s writing is her amazing ability to see all sides of a situation. In this book, she writes from numerous perspectives, so you can see what many of the characters are feeling. And as with all of her previous books, she tackles tough issues. In this one, namely the death penalty. And if she had just stuck with one, it probably would have been a 5 Star review. But instead, she hit on some other topics that kind of muddied the point of view. Reminiscent of The Green Mile with “miracles” performed by an inmate, she also choose to touch on religion, which is another subject all together. Bringing in topics like the Gnostic gospels, while interesting, took away from the main storyline a little.

Don’t get me wrong. I still loved the book. And I still cried in the end, as I usually do when I read a Picoult. But I had figured out the “Twist” long before it was actually revealed. And unlike a lot of Picoult’s books, this actually left me with questions to ponder, even after the book was finished. No clear cut ending for this one. Still, it was a page-turner and I’m glad I read it. I’d love to hear your opinions, if you read this one yourself!!

4/5

Hillary Jordan has written a very good debut novel that speaks on war, racism, marriage, and living off the land. The story is told by various narrators throughout the book. Henry and Laura are a white married couple who move to the Mississippi delta to raise cotton. Henry loves the land, but Laura misses city life and is deeply unhappy. She also has to live and deal with her racist father-in-law for the first time.

Hap and Florence are a black couple living on Henry’s farm as renters. Hap is a preacher, while Florence is a midwife who also helps Laura with some of her housework. Their oldest child Ronsel is in the military and serving in Germany, and when he comes back, he has to adjust back to a way of life that he is no longer accustomed to. He does find a friend, however, in Jamie, Henry’s younger brother. But, this doesn’t sit well with Henry and Jamie’s father, and trouble ensues.

This book all too painfully illustrates how much African-Americans have had to go through in this country. It does seem like the tide has changed with the historic election of our first black President, Barack Obama. I sincerely hope that this event will be the turning point in race relations in the United States.

(All along while reading this book, I was thinking it was going to receive a 4.5 rating, but then at the end something is stated by Jamie that I was deeply offended by, and I changed my rating to a 4. It didn’t ruin the book for me, but I think a better choice of words should have been uilized to avoid offending some readers.)

2008, 328 pp.

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Pages: 324
First Published: March, 2008
Genre: southern fiction, historical fictionRating: 5/5

First sentence:

Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep.

Comments: A story of 1940s Mississippi. A tale of two families; one black, the other white. Henry McAllen moves from the city with his wife, two young daughters and his cantankerous, racist father to land he has just bought. On that land are four sharecroppers but the story focuses on one family, that of Hap Jackson his wife and three young children. Henry’s younger brother is off fighting in WWII as is Hap’s oldest son who are both around the same age. When the war ends both of these young men eventually return war weary and world-wise to the South of the Forties, a viciously, racist time and place.

Each chapter is narrated by one of the six main characters and the whole story unfolds slowly through the eyes of each one. The contrasting eyes of Hap, an enterprising black man trying to get his family their own land, and Henry, who considers himself forward thinking where ‘coloreds’ are concerned yet who knows the limits. The contrasting eyes of Florence, black sharecropper wife who is midwife to the local black folks and Laura, a city bred white woman who becomes beaten down by the farm land. And finally through the contrasting eyes of Jamie, returning white air force hero who is so mentally disturbed by the war he has become an alcoholic and cares not what anyone thinks of him outside the family, and Ronsell the returning hero from the first fighting black platoon, directly under Patton’s orders, and a deeply loving and caring man but in his returning home of Mississippi he is just a n*gger.

I really hate to gush in my reviews but all I want to say about this book is “Wow! Wow! Wow!”. Beautiful, brilliant, sad, and disheartening yet ending on a bittersweet slight glimpse of hope. I felt for each and every one of the six main characters. It takes a lot of skill to write a book through the eyes of 6 different people but Jordan pulls it off with flowing grace. Beautiful and heartrending. Read this book!

Beautiful and Haunting Story of an Portuguese Immigrant Family

Manuel was sent off to fish for his Portuguese village, as all other men and boys do. But he wanted more for his life, and wanted to get away from this life forever. This is the story about him and his family’s immigrant experience in Canada.

This is said to be a book of linked stories, however, I read it as a novel. I loved the breath taking descriptions of both Portugal and Canada. Anthony De Sa paints a beautiful, at times haunting portrait of the immigrant experience. With sumptuous prose, he tells of the ups and downs of the Rebelo family. The only thing that I found difficult, is when the narrator changes from father to son, it took me a little while to figure out that the son took over.

That said, I recommend this beautiful small book. In this case, good things do come in small packages!

4/5

Publication Date in Canada: March 18, 2008

Warning: Do not read this right before bed!

The year is 1837 and Liberty Lane, runs away from her overbearing aunt to meet up with her father in France. She receives an anonymous note telling her that her father was shot in a dual. She knows that this can’t be true, due to her father’s ethical belief against duels. He must have been murdered, but by whom?

Liberty does some investigating and gets herself caught up in some very close calls herself. She agrees to pose as a governess for a family that was said to be, somehow involved in her father’s death. To tell more of this riveting early Victorian Gothic mystery would give away too much.

This is a compulsive read that I was unable to put down! Caro Peacock’s characters are well fleshed out and come to life. I felt like was inside the story myself. This book is very close to a five star rating for me, however, there is one little part towards the end that I think could have been set up better. I can’t mention it here without giving away a spoiler.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, I was up until 3:00 in the morning with this wonderful heart-racing book!

4.5/5

Note: This book was also published with the title ‘Death at Dawn’

Deeply Moving and True to Life

Its 1975 Yellowknife where Harry arrives on the scene to temporarily manage the small town radio station, back where his radio career started. When he arrives, he is enchanted by an exotic and sensual female voice on the air, that of Dido. He falls instantly in love but finds out that Dido is more than what her voice portrays.

There is also Eleanor, the wise and supportive receptionist, Gwen the woman who drove cross-country hoping for a producer job behind the scenes, but instead is put on as an amateur announcer, and there is Ralph the book critic and photographer. Of course, Yellowknife is also a central character with its beauty and biting cold.

In the background, we learn about the real life controversy of the proposed Mackenzie River Valley natural gas line, which threatens to go into the Arctic and destroy native people’s land. We also learn the rich history of the extraordinary explorer John Hornby, which prompts Harry, Eleanor, Gwen, and Ralph into an ambitious and difficult 6-week journey through the harsh climate on foot and by canoe.

Throughout the entire book Elizabeth Hay allows us to get to know and love the richly-textured characters that come to life. I felt as if I was part of the book as I was reading it. Having to bundle up when reading about the harsh winters and in awe of the beauty both sounds and sights that Hay paints. The characters seem like people who are true to life, which makes the book very readable and believable.

Hay won the prestigious Giller Prize for this work and I couldn’t agree more. This book is a must read and will appeal to readers of literary fiction, fine character studies, and historical fiction alike. This was my first voyage through Elizabeth Hay and it has left me yearning for more by this outstanding author.

5/5

The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen
Thriller
2008 Bantam
368 pages
Finished on 8/28/08
Rating: 4.5/5 Very Good

Publisher’s Blurb:

Cody McFadyen has shocked even the most jaded suspense fans with Shadow Man and The Face of Death. Now comes a thriller that outdoes them all, featuring a psychopath on a perverse crusade of murder. And the one woman who can stop him may have to cross the line to do it.

A lie, a long-ago affair, a dark desire—what secret was a very private young woman keeping that led to her very public murder? That’s the question FBI special agent Smoky Barrett and her handpicked team of experienced manhunters are summoned to answer by order of the FBI director himself. Brilliant, merciless, righteous, the killer Smoky is hunting is on his own personal mission. For in his eyes no one is innocent. Soon Smokey will have to confront a flawless killer who knows her flaws with murderous intimacy.

McFadyen has done it again. He’s written a gritty, disturbing thriller that kept me wondering what kind of person writes about such horrific killings, and perhaps more importantly, what kind of person reads them?! The Darker Side reads a bit like true crime (although my experience with that genre is limited to Helter Skelter), full of tension and edginess that invades my thoughts and dreams. As with all my favorite series, it’s the characters that keep me coming back. Smoky’s an intriguing heroine and I enjoyed learning more about her and her co-workers, curious to learn more about the life of an FBI agent.

On murder…

The murdered move me. Good or bad, they had hopes and dreams and loves. They once lived, like all of us, in a world where the deck is stacked against living. Between cancer or crashes on the freeway or dropping dead of a heart attack with a glass of wine in your hand and a strangled smile on your face, the world gives us plenty of chances to die. Murderers cheat the system, helping things along, rob the victims of something it’s already a fight to keep. This offends me. I hated it the first time I saw it and I hate it even more now.

One of my frustrations with series of this genre is the need to outline the back-story of previous books. Often I’ll find myself a bit annoyed and bored when an author spends too much time reminding the reader of significant events from an earlier work. This was not the case with The Darker Side. McFadyen writes like a veteran, deftly laying out all the necessary details without falling into the trap of overstating the obvious or padding the story with unnecessary commentary. I was immediately drawn into the narrative; the pacing is consistent and riveting, and the situations and dialogue completely believable. And, yes, in spite of the nature of these thrillers, I’ll be one of the first in line to buy Cody’s next book.

And now for a couple of give-aways! I have a brand new mass market copy of The Face of Death (Cody’s second book in this series), as well as an ARC of The Darker Side. Leave me a comment with the title of the book you’re interested in and I’ll pick the winners in one week.

If you’re like me and curious as to how Cody can create such evil villains (and how this affects him), check out his guest appearance here and here.

Better yet, Cody now has a blog! You can find it (and pictures of his dogs, aka “The Black Forces of Destruction”) on his website.

Note to Cody: I like this title much better than Secret Sins!

Olive Kitteridge
By Elizabeth Strout
Completed August 13, 2008

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout was a novel comprised of thirteen short stories about people living in rural Maine. Several of the stories were based on the title character, but many of the stories only showed us a glimpse of Olive. From any perspective, Strout provided her readers with an enjoyable cast of characters and their life stories.

Olive was a retired teacher, married to Henry, and the mother of one son, Christopher. As a teacher at the same middle school for years, she had the rare opportunity to know most of her neighbors through school. Olive was flawed, often depicted as angry, condescending and sharp-tongued. However, in other chapters, Olive showed many favorable characteristics, helping her former students and fellow townspeople in small but significant ways.

Through this quilt of stories, the readers – and Olive –gleaned lessons of loving and living. One of my favorite thoughts from Olive Kitteridge was at the very end: “…that love was not to be tossed away on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t choose it.” Though Olive’s life story, I learned something about my own life and choices (good and bad) that I’ve made.

The character of Olive Kitteridge with her detestable moments in one chapter and her tender moments in another made her real and alive to me. She was a cantankerous old lady with a heart of gold. Indeed, she will go down as one of my favorite literary characters.

If you enjoyed the structure of Winesburg, Ohio or the small-town writing style of Richard Russo, then grab Olive Kitteridge. But even if you don’t, grab this book anyway. I think most readers of contemporary women’s fiction can find something to like in Olive Kitteridge (and I bet it will be Olive herself). ( )

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

My son just said to me, “Didn’t you just start that book yesterday?” Always the sign of a good book, one that I just race through. I’ve been reading some good reviews of this one in the Southern Reading Challenge. It’s a classic southern novel, tackling racist life in Mississippi just after the second world war. Told from several different points of view, two families - one black and one white, living on the same farm, deal with a terrible tragedy. Several characters, all likable in their own ways, narrate the action.

There’s Laura. A city woman who married late, she loves her older husband, but with the return of Henry’s younger charming brother from the war, she is forced to examine the decisions she has made.

Henry has a strong sense of family obligation. He tries to do the right thing, but living in the Mississippi Delta, racist behaviour is ingrained. He takes his hateful father in to live with his wife and children, even though Pappy makes everyone miserable. Henry just wants to own land, and be a farmer, but loyalty and proper behaviour is important too.

Florence is the wife of Hap, the black tenant farmer. She’s a midwife who comes to help out Laura in the cabin. Her son Ronsel has just returned from the war, and he isn’t fitting in on the farm.

Ronsel was a decorated soldier in an all black battalion and is having a hard time adjusting to his subservient role in town after the freeing life he was able to live in Europe. He and Jamie bond over their war memories and are able to forget the race differences, much to the consternation of all the families.

And Jamie. He is really the catalyst for much of the tension - with his father, his brother, his sister-in-law, and with Ronsel. Pappy never narrates, but the level of hatred I felt as I read about him made him a character unable to narrate.

There is much tackled in this novel, but it all flows so seamlessly, that it wasn’t until I tried to write a summary that I realized how complex this was. Life in Mississippi before Dr King and the civil rights movement, the returning soldiers from war who are unable to fit back into their former life, and the different types of love within a family are the main ideas I noticed.

“The world is full of miracles, Mama. All we have to do is find the ones that belong to us.” [pg 27]

Tarnished Beauty by Cecelia Samartin
Atria Books, 2008 (ARE)
Fiction; 339 pgs

Jamilet is a naïve and imaginative young woman who carries a burden, an ugly birthmark that stretches from her shoulders, down her back, reaching to the back of her knees. She is ashamed of it and wants nothing more than to be rid of it. All her life, the birthmark has proven to be a curse, earning taunts and stares from her fellow villagers. It is the mark of the devil, some say.

Having reached adulthood and upon the death of her mother, Jamilet leaves behind her small Mexican hometown for the sprawling city of Los Angeles in hopes of finding a doctor who will remove the offending birthmark. She takes up residence with her Aunt Carmen, a woman Jamilet admired as a child. Carmen was a bit of a rebel in her day and one of the only people in Jamilet’s life who rarely gave Jamilet’s birthmark a second thought.

Jamilet takes a job working in an asylum, her only task to watch over and take care of the needs of an elderly man from Spain, Señor Peregrino. Her charge is not an easy man to work with. He is demanding and likes things done just so. She had been instructed not to engage Señor Peregrino in conversation; however, he coaxes her into listening to his life story, a story that soon captivates not only Jamilet but the reader as well. His is a story of love, betrayal and regret. A story Jamilet can relate to in her own way.

Señor Peregrino was as confident and steady as Jamilet was shy and unsure. The two form an unlikely bond. Just as Señor Peregrino set out as a young man on a pilgrimage to discover his fate, Jamilet’s journey to the United States was in a similar vein. Both had expectations and hopes that the road would lead them in one direction, when instead it took them in an entirely different one.

Jamilet’s plight is one most people can relate to, the feeling of being singled out, of being different, and wanting nothing more than to be “normal” and to fit in. Jamilet felt alone in her suffering, not believing anyone would understand what she was going through. She carries her birthmark like a secret, the shame of it always near the surface. I was slightly disappointed that the author did not take this particular story thread farther than she did. Still, I think that Jamilet’s story will appeal to many readers. Her story is not so different than our own in some respects, even if we do not wear the birthmark as she does.

Author Cecilia Samartin has written a heartfelt and bittersweet story. Each time I picked up the book, I looked forward to reading more of Señor Peregrino’s story just as Jamilet came to wanting to hear it. Tarnished Beauty seemed a perfect book choice for a warm spring day—gentle in style and thoughtful in nature.

Rating: (Good +)

Check out the author’s website for more information.

The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Memory and Murder
by Sharon Butala

Pages: 260
First Published: March, 2008
Genre: memoir, True Crime
Rating: DNF

First sentence:

One soft spring evening in 1962 a young nurse named Alexandra Wiwcharuk wasmurdered and an entire city came to a stop: Alexandra’s murder was all anyonecould talk about.

Comments: With that promising first sentence, I was interested to read about this true crime and the unfortunate girl who was murdered. Unfortunately, this book was all about the author. I couldn’t finish it. I got to page 104 and had not learnt anything about the crime that was not stated in that first sentence. I don’t normally write about books I don’t finish, but since this was sent to me as a Review Copy I feel obligated to give my opinion however short. The author spends the majority of this book (the part I read) comparing her life to the victim’s, how they were similar and how they were different. I didn’t care for the author’s voice and was mostly bored with the narrative. If you are looking for True Crime, this is not the book for you.