Reckless Abandon by Stuart Woods

As you may notice, I took a double break with Stuart Woods over the weekend after Mother's Day. This book is yet another in the Stone Barrington series, specifically #10 of (currently) 18. If you haven't already, read my review of Dirty Work, which comes before this one in the series.

Woods brings a character from another of his series into Stone Barrington's world in this book by having Holly Barker hook up with Stone while she is in New York hunting a fugitive. If you've read the Holly Barker books, this story in this book comes between Blood Orchid and Iron Orchid. The fugitive that Holly is after is the "one that got away" at the end of Blood Orchid.

At the beginning of this book, there seem to be a bunch of separate things going on that don't seem to have much to do with each other. CIA agent Lance Cabot shows up and wants both Holly and Stone to sign on as "contractors" for the agency. The FBI is involved here too... and no one wants to play nice together to catch the bad guy (of course). Holly and Stone end up (big shocker) in bed and Woods is back to his usual over-sharing of the sex details. I actually find it so interesting to do a mental comparison between a Stuart Woods sex scene and, say, a Nora Roberts sex scene. A man's take on the whole thing is so very different from a woman's!! (As my mom would say... men ARE from Mars, after all)

Ok, so the point here... Did I like this book? I did, well enough. It verges very closely on mindless... because if you think too much about some stuff (How can a Florida chief of police spend so much time away from her department to hunt for a killer that the federal government doesn't even want her to have?)... well, think too hard and your head might really hurt. Take it for its basic entertainment value and you're ok. I'll keep reading this series... because, as Stone's buddy Dino so articulately puts it, wherever Stone goes, "people drop dead, and women take off their underwear." Can't get much better than that!

Dirty Work by Stuart Woods

I discovered Stuart Woods about a year ago, maybe, after a couple of folks had recommended him to me. He's another one of those who meets two of my biggest criteria: mystery and series. I've been working my way through the Stone Barrington series, of which this title is #9 of (currently) 18. I pretty much just grab them off the shelf at the library when I run out of other things to read (i.e. I am waiting for something else to become available) and mow through them in a day or two. Not heavy intellectual reading, but entertaining.

So in this story, Stone once again finds himself with his pants around his ankles (literally and figuratively). Woodman and Weld (the law firm that he does the dirty work for) asks him to get proof of a husband's infidelity. So Stone hires the nephew of a friend to take some pictures through a skylight... and the kid ends up breaking through the skylight and onto the dead body of the naughty husband. D'oh! But did the stupid kid kill the guy, or was something more nepharious in the works? Well, of course it was the latter! And before we know it, British intelligence is in town and Stone is making nice with a pretty intelligence officer that he met in the last book... and everyone is trying to find the mystery woman that was photographed with the dead husband.

Ok, so it is once again an entertaining story. Woods draws the reader in and keeps the twists coming. This book actually had less gratuitous sex than previous ones... I'm not a big fan of Woods' habit of getting real descriptive with his sex scenes. I mean really... the story would be the same with or without it, am I right? Of course Stone's former police force partner Dino Bachetti has to come along and save Stone's butt once or twice... although sometimes it seems a stretch for Dino to HAVE to be there. The two characters have great chemistry, though, and there is this great scene where a woman at a neighboring table in a nice restaurant asks them if they are a couple because they are fighting like an old married one. LMAO!

So anyway, as I probably would with any of the books in this series, I enjoyed this book. I wouldn't call it totally mindless reading, but definitely light. If you haven't read any of these Stone Barrington books, though, I suggest reading them in order: Search Amazon.com for stone barrington novels in order

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

This is the first book by Kristin Hannah that I have read, although I had heard her praises sung before. I had always sort of classified her, in my mind, as a Barbara Delinsky sort of writer. I have read a few of Delinsky's books and enjoyed them... but they aren't what I would normally gravitate toward. So I guess this is why I hadn't really picked up any of Hannah's books before either. I kept hearing about this particular book and how wonderful it is, though, and the historical part of it is what finally drew me in.

This is a story about two sisters, Meredith and Nina, and the mother that they never had much of a relationship with... at all. Their mother is a Russian immigrant who was not only emotionally distant from her two daughters but almost never even looked at the two girls. As children, the only time that they felt close to their mother is when she would tell her fairy tales to them. Eventually, though, even the stories stopped.

The year that Meredith is 40 and Nina is 37, their father passes away. Before he dies, he asks Nina to promise him that she will make their mother tell the fairy tale again, and tell the whole thing this time. She almost lets this promise get away from her, but eventually she is able to get her mom to tell the story and both sisters learn the truth about their mother's past and what made her the woman that she is. They also learn a lot about themselves in the process.

As I mentioned, there is a historical backdrop to the mom's story; specifically Russia during World War II. Hannah obviously researched very thoroughly for this story and she paints a very clear and very heartbreaking picture. I don't tend to get too emotional over books, but I shed a few tears over this one. The character development is also wonderful here and the growth of all three of the women through the book (and through the mother's story) is very well done. I really didn't want to put this book down once I had started it, even before the mother's story started to be told! I will admit the ending was a little too neatly tied in a bow for me... but I am willing to look beyond that because the rest of the book is so wonderful.

I think I will read more of Kristin Hannah's books in the future.

The Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark

I think I have read everything that Mary Higgins Clark has written. I've always found her books to be good for a fairly mindless read but a good story. A couple of her older books creeped the heck out of me! So, whenever she has a new book come out, I always make a point of reading it.

Ok, so this is a story about beatification hearings for a nun who helped sick children and who (after her death) apparently cured a terminally ill child of brain cancer because his mother had prayed to this nun. The catch is, this nun (Sister Catherine) had given birth just before she went into the convent and there are two people who know the truth about who fathered that child; Sister Catherine's cousin and the doctor who cared for the cousin's mother (Sister Catherine's aunt, of course). Turns out that the father of this child was a multimillionaire who left a huge fortune to a charitable foundation whose board members have made themselves beneficiaries of a lot of the money. So, to keep their evil doings a secret, someone related to the foundation has decided to kill off Sister Catherine's cousin, as well as the one surviving descendant of that child that Sister Catherine gave up for adoption, Dr. Monica Farrell.

Sadly, this book was not at all up to MHC's usual quality. The most annoying thing, to me, was the way that she inserted the thoughts of the characters as a key storytelling device. Long sections of background are given as a characters thoughts... and it is really not done in a smooth or believable way. I actually complained to my husband as I was reading the book that this style was making me nuts. The actual story was engaging once I got past the storytelling. There wasn't a whole lot of suspense here, though. The author reveals from the beginning most of the information about the bad guy(s) and what they are going to do, so that is a bit of a letdown. I think that MHC is having trouble keeping up with the times a bit, also, as some of the actions and dialog of some of the younger characters seemed a little out of date. The ending is also a disappointment, with the final conflict played out in an unreal and hurried way and the "big reveal" is simply told to us by a character. Overall, I really was underwhelmed by this book. I hope that this isn't an indication that MHC is losing her touch.

Caught by Harlan Coben

How do I love Harlan Coben? Let me count the ways...

But really, this man can WRITE! I got hooked on his books by my mom (yet again!) who mentioned the Myron Bolitar series (Search Amazon.com for myron bolitar series in order) because I am a sucker for mysteries and series. So I think I've pretty much read everything that Harlan Coben has written now (he has a lot of "stand alone" books that are also wonderful) and had to get my grubby mitts on this brand new one. And I wasn't disappointed.

So, our story starts with social worker Dan Mercer heading to a darkened house to meet a teen-in-trouble and ending up caught in a TV news sting to catch a pedophile that has been preying on young girls in internet chat rooms. Wendy Tynes is the news anchor that jumps out and confronts Dan and truly ruins his life. Couple this with a missing seventeen year old and evidence that ties her to Dan as well... and oh goodness, he sure looks like a first class creep. But is he really guilty? Wendy ends up with some head vs. heart doubts and goes looking a little deeper into Dan Mercer and finds some interesting questions.

As with most of his books, Coben sets this one in suburban New Jersey. Not the New Jersey of Newark or even Trenton (think Stephanie Plum), but an upper middle class suburbia where the worker bees of New York City reside. I feel like I know these neighborhoods by now, and I've never set foot in the state of New Jersey. I think Coben needs to come up with a Wiki of all of the characters that cross over his books, because there really are a lot of them (the ever charming Win, best friend of Myron Bolitar, makes an appearance here). And then there are those characters who seem like maybe they were in another of his books, but you're just not sure. And yet, even with all of these similarities to his other novels, this one is still fresh and engrossing. Coben grows with the times, referring to Facebook and viral internet advertising... and I just LOVE that he actually used the word "asshat" in this book!

I gotta say, Harlan Coben has done it again! It is amazing how many stories this man has in his head and how he weaves them into such an intricate maze that can still keep you guessing even after you have read all of his other books. I guessed at one twist early on and then doubted myself later... and then ended up surprised anyway! And the biggest twist of all seriously had me sitting with my mouth hanging open. This book is awesome... don't pick it up unless you've got time, because you're not going to want to put it down!

The Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt

I'm not exactly sure why I decided to read this one. I actually requested it in from another library... maybe I saw it cross my desk and thought it looked interested. Anyway, I read it and there you go!

So this book is set in the 1600's in England and is actually based on a true story (which I didn't realize until I read the author's note at the end of the book). The story spans a fairly large amount of time, beginning with Elizabeth (Bess, AKA Demdike) telling of her younger life and ending with her granddaughter, Alizon, telling the end of the story. Each of these two narrators has their own "voice", and the grandmother has an especially heavy dialect that is a bit hard to get used to.

Given the fact that I have some interest in the Tudor and Stuart eras in England, this book was a great find for that historical setting. The story starts during the short reign of Henry VIII's son Edward VI, then the also short reign of Mary I, into Elizabeth I and ending up with James I. The key to all of these monarch changes in this story is the religious changes. Our main characters are Catholics (or popists, as they called them) and they felt the results of the Protestant changes that came about after Henry VIII. It is a documented fact that those who continued the Catholic practices in England during those days were persecuted. Priests were tortured to death and their heads placed on spikes... and the horrors went on from there. Obviously, from the title, this story deals with witchcraft... or at least those who were accused of witchcraft. Did differing beliefs and practices of old lead to these accusations? An interesting question. One reviewer quoted on the back cover of the book talks of the fine line between good and evil... and I really think this book leaves so much of these questions up to the interpretation of the reader.

I have read all of Philippa Gregory's Tudor series (The Other Boleyn Girl, etc), which are stories of the royalty or at least the gentry during this era. This book looks at a completely different group of Englanders... the utterly poor and destitute. Old Demdike actually has a permit for begging... she and her family go from house to house, offering to do small chores in exchange for the most basic of things: a piece of fabric, a loaf of bread, etc. For me, this stark juxtaposition was a learning experience in itself. Now, of course, we can't really know for sure what life was like for these poor folks back in the 17th Century, especially given that the poor were obviously illiterate. But the picture that is created by Sharratt here is a believable and shocking one. Definitely leads one to be grateful for all of the comforts that 21st century life affords us!

It took me a while to get into this book. I was disappointed that the jacket description mentioned an event that didn't happen until about 2/3 of the way into the book. And truly, that was where the main action of the book really started. So you can see why I had a hard time getting into it. I didn't hate it... but I did find myself wishing for it to hurry up and get on with itself. It usually doesn't take me almost two weeks to get through a book, especially one with relatively few pages (about 330). But yet I found so much of the story quite fascinating... and I might have been even more fascinated if I had known that it was based on a true story with all of the characters being actual people. But the author had her reasons for saving that revelation for the end of the story (which is why I'm not going into too many details here). Maybe a Dan Brown-esque intro page stating simply that "all of the characters in this story actually lived and such-and-such events have been documented" would have been nice. Anyway, it is worth the read, even if just for the historical points of interest.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

So it may appear that all I read are best sellers... don't be deceived! I just happen to have a few recent reads that are (or were) bestsellers. Stay tuned, though... there are lots of books out there!!

Anyway, The Help is another example of a book that my mom recommended. I really didn't know a thing about it before she mentioned it, except for the fact that people seemed to be checking it out a lot. I will admit that I was under the (totally incorrect) assumption that this was a non-fiction, self-help book. That'll teach me to judge a book by its cover, huh?

What this book is about is the black women who worked for white families in the deep South during the 1960's... the women who were "the help". This novel specifically takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. We see that in many families, the help are the main caregivers for the children, to the extent that the children form stronger bonds with the black women than with their mothers.

The story is told from three points of view: Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a white recent college graduate who stands out from her Junior League friends in that she isn't yet married and she questions some of the things that everyone else just seem to take as given. Aibileen is a middle aged black woman who works for one of Skeeter's friends. And Minnie is probably a 30-something black woman who once worked for the mother of another of Skeeter's friends and who did a "horrible something awful" when she was fired from that position.

Skeeter wants more than anything to be a writer and is challenged by a book editor in New York (via mail correspondence) to write about something that disturbs her about the world. She decides to write a social and anthropological type book telling the stories of these black women who work for white families. Obviously she faces an uphill battle, even in just getting women to tell their stories. Not only is it taboo for them to talk about their employers, it can be life-threatening. Aibileen and Minnie, each in their own way, become important to the project.

I liked this book quite a bit. Parts were hard to read, but I think that proves that the author was able to capture the conflict of the era quite well. Each of the three voices in this book have a distinct personality, which must be a hard task for an author. I truly felt that I came to know these three woman through their stories.

This isn't really a happy ending story, but it is one that makes you think. It feels like reality... and reality can be hard. But the growth of these characters is clearly understood and as the reader I, at least, felt that the ending was the way that it should be.

JHP NOTE: Sorry this one took so long to post. I started it the day after writing my Eat, Pray, Love review and then got wrapped up in the acquisition of a new puppy. Now that she is settling in, I plan to write reviews as often as I can!!

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Of course I have to blog about this wonderful book as I start this new blog! I just recently read it for the second time. The monthly book group that is hosted by the library where I work was reading it and I was so excited to be in on this discussion. So I read it and loved it even more the second time... marked up the pages of the book... underlined favorite passages... you get the idea. I showed up to book group clutching my beloved book and quickly discovered that I was the only one (in a group of about 12 people) that liked the book! ACK!

So here's my warning to you, oh rare reader who has not yet read Eat, Pray, Love (if you in fact fit into that category): people seem to either love it or hate it. I don't have an explanation, it just appears to be a fact. Go figure...

I was hesitant about reading this book when it first became a huge hit and everyone and their brother and their brother's dog were buying it and placing library holds on it. I read the title and the jacket description and thought "eh, whatever..." But then my mom told me that I HAD to read this book. She and I usually agree about books, so I put my name on the list. Then it came available for me and I checked it out and I brought it home... and still I was un-enthused. I think I chose to read a Harlan Coben mystery first. But then finally I picked it up... and I didn't want to put it down!

Here's the basic deal: Elizabeth Gilbert is a writer who has written fiction and non-fiction and has received some nice praise for her work, but before this book it wasn't anything spectacular. She was married to a man that she had married in her early 20's, serving as the primary breadwinner in the house, trying to convince herself that she wanted to have kids... and she suddenly realized (in her early 30's) that she was dreadfully unhappy. She has found herself in a marriage that doesn't seem to work with the person that she is growing to be... and she painfully admits that she doesn't want to be married anymore, let alone have children. So she finds herself crying on the floor of her bathroom and somehow, although never having much religion or spirituality in her life, starts to pray for the first time ever. For me, this is an amazing "hitting the absolute bottom of depression and reaching for help" moment... and I've been there. And maybe that's why I love this... because I feel like I've been there.

Ok, so after going through this painful divorce, she realizes that she needs to do something to put her life back together. She comes up with this idea to travel the world over the course of a year: to Italy, India and Indonesia. In Italy, she will explore pleasure; specifically, she will eat tons of wonderful food and learn to speak Italian simply because she loves how the language sounds. In India, she will explore spirituality as she has an extended stay in an ashram. And in Indonesia, she will explore how to have balance between pleasure and spirituality. By a stroke of luck, her publisher offers an advance on the book that she will write about this experience and that is how she pays for the trip. The book is organized into 108 fairly short chapters, 36 for each of the three sections of the book. Each of these chapters is almost like a blog post, chronicling a period of time or a particular occurrence during her trip.

Gilbert's style of writing is flowing, informed and sometimes laugh out loud funny. She has a very dry humor which matches my own quite well. She lays herself wide open in this memoir, in a way that I imagine might be uncomfortable for some. And she makes herself a target for people to say "oh poor thing, you got to travel around the world. Stop whining and buck up." And that is exactly what all of those women in my book group said. None of it came across as whining to me, though. It came across as a woman being brutally honest about having found herself in a situation that wasn't making her happy, realizing that she needed to figure out who she really is and then taking a journey to make that discovery. Yeah, she got to travel the world... but metaphorically, don't we all take journeys in our lives to discover important (and sometimes painful) lessons in life?

Gilbert's growth through the novel (and she is writing as she travels) is apparent to me. She does start out as a person who wants to take from the world (but she knows that she isn't a happy person), but she ends up as a person who really wants to give back. It is a wonderful journey... and I hope you turn out to be one of those people who thinks so too!

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

So I saw that this book was hanging out on the New York Times Bestseller list a couple of weeks ago and my curiosity was stirred. I hadn’t even seen it come across the counter at work. So I had to check it out and see what it was all about.

At first, it is slow going and it took me some time to get into this story. It starts out with two apparently divergent storylines (although we always know that they will converge eventually, don’t we?) Sister Evangeline is going about her day at the St. Rose convent in Upstate New York (including her daily “job” of working in the convent’s library… cool!) and discovers a request for access to information from a scholar in New York City related to Abigail Rockefeller’s communications with the late abbess of the convent. Despite the convent’s usual policy of politely refusing requests for access, something about this request leads Sister Evangeline to go searching into the archives. I wasn’t convinced by Sister Evangeline’s motivation to follow this request, but of course there wouldn’t be a story if she hadn’t!

The second storyline turns out to be about the very same young scholar that had sent the fascinating letter to the convent, who seems to only be known by his last name: Verlaine. (Ok, they might mention his first name once or twice, but without the book in front of me, I can’t remember for the life of me what it might have been) Verlaine is working for a creepy guy named Percival Gregori who is apparently quite infirm… and did I mention creepy? So we follow Percival home and we come to discover that he isn’t completely human at all! He lives with his mother (even creepier!) in a luxurious 5^th Avenue penthouse, and they all have wings! Percival has apparently contracted some sort of winged-creature disease, though, and his wings have shriveled to blackened stumps and he has trouble breathing. (Seems to me he deserves it… and too bad the disease doesn’t seem to be contagious. His mom is a piece of work, too!)

Anyway, all of this leads to the revelation that these part angel/part human creatures, called Nephilim, live in the world. They are descended from the original fallen angels who broke the rules and mated with human women way back when.  And they are evil. Pretty, but evil. Makes you think that the author might have a thing against tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed folks. They all live a super long time, are quite rich and very snobby. And they are apparently behind all of the bad stuff that has happened in the world. That would figure, huh? It’s always the rich, pretty people!

Ok, so without giving away much more of the plot, the good guys are the Angelologists and the bad guys are the Nephilim and they are both searching for a particular treasure that was recovered on an expedition back in the 1940’s but then secreted away. All of life as we know it hangs in the balance with this treasure. Wow!

I started getting more interested in the book after the first third or so. The story is definitely engaging. There is really a lot going on in this book, but not so much that you have to keep going back and forth saying “Wait, who’s that? What are they talking about?” The writer’s style is clunky at times… the dialog is beautiful, but some of the connecting prose is a big awkward. I found myself wondering “who would think something like that?”

Comparisons to Dan Brown’s novels and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian are unavoidable. I think the story is more artfully formed than Dan Brown’s novels although the plot twists are more subtle in this book. I saw a couple of things coming quite a bit beforehand here… Brown is able to surprise me more effectively. There is some good action, bringing to mind that the book might make a nice Hollywood film.  Trussoni’s writing doesn’t match the beautiful flow of Kostova’s, but the story kept me almost as engrossed as The Historian did. The descriptive passages in this novel are quite beautiful and created a vivid mental picture of the places and people in the story.

The ending of this book was a bit of a disappointment to me… mostly because it was abrupt. It seems to me that the author already has plans for a sequel… the story just seems to be too unfinished. If she doesn’t write a sequel, I will be very disappointed, because I would enjoy reading more about this story and these characters.