I’m so glad last week is over – what a drainer!  Between work, getting my car back, dealing with the rental company, and still catching up on last week’s chores….. man, I’m tired. But, thanks to some good planning, I’ve had an amazing selection of reads for the week. There’s nothing like coming home to a good book or zoning out on your lunch hour – just completely disappearing in the pages of a great story! Perhaps that’s why I’ve been gravitating toward thrillers so much lately – I can completely escape reality, just let myself get swept away by the mystery and pure adrenaline of the characters.

I already have a great batch of books lined up for this week too. Book haul coming soon!

The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson

Paula Vauss is a high-power divorce attorney. Successful and cut throat, nothing can stop her, that is until her monthly check to her estranged mother is sent back…with a message. The first words she’s received from her free spirited mother in years, bringing news of her illness and a journey. Thrown in shock, Paula recounts her chaotic childhood spent on the road with her mother moving from town to town with each new boyfriend and filled with tales of Hindu mythology. With the help of her ex-boyfriend and in-house private eye, she’ll discover her mother’s deepest secrets and uncover a far greater debt than she ever imagined. Will she find her before it’s too late? Can you begin again?

“I had spent my whole life hungry for forgiveness. It had not come, so I didn’t know firsthand what he was feeling. But I had imagined it, over and over. I’d wanted it so bad. I’d wanted Kai—or anyone, anyone who knew the worst in me—to say that I was still dear, and good, and worthy.”

This novel took me by surprise. At first, I couldn’t figure Paula out – she’s tougher than dirt and yet so vulnerable, always looking for approval from anyone and everyone. But as her story is slowly unveiled, her nomadic years on the road, her time in foster care, her guilt… it all makes sense. She makes sense. That said, I did have a few issues with the novel. I’m still not comfortable with the fact that Paula felt entirely responsible for her mother’s imprisonment, she was a child and was not being cared for properly, and was their own fault for growing pot! Sure, she didn’t have to call the cops on her mom, but SHE WAS A CHILD! I understand it was a great plot device – her guilt was ultimately her saving grace after all those years in foster care, it’s what kept her humble and hungry for redemption, but she could have cut herself some more slack. Then there’s the ending. It feels rushed and unsure, taking things from it’s complicated to happily ever after in record time. Everything is resolved in a neat little box, but it’s resolved separately – each plot line summed up in it’s own way, while the weaving of all her stories could have been carried out to the end. How will Birdwine fit in with her new family? How is she suddenly fixed out of nowhere? I need to know!

Rating: 3 Stars

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

 In the midst of World War II, four teenagers are trapped in the wintery snares of East Prussia, desperate for a passage to safety. The way to the coast is long – they’ll have to brave extreme conditions, avoid their Russian “liberators” and cross treacherous ice-covered waters.  But as the number of refugees steadily increases to the thousands, a place aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, one of the few remaining ships, will prove just as difficult as the passage itself. Every inch of space filled to admit as many refugees and injured soldiers as possible, the ship is beyond it’s capacity by thousands, resulting in catastrophe when a Soviet submarine approaches. Each with a secret and a family to find, they’ll band together for survival, but who will live to tell the tale?

“Two warring nations gripped Poland like girls fighting over a doll. One held the leg, the other the arm. They pulled so hard that one day, the head popped off.”

 The novel highlights one of the greatest maritime tragedies in history. With the destruction of the Wilhelm Gustloff, an estimated 9,400 souls were lost to the icy waters of the Baltic. Constructed as a cruse ship for the Nazi party, it was meant to be a luxurious escape for it’s 1,500 passengers, but in the winter of 1945 it served as a hospital for the wounded before taking its last voyage carrying civilian refugees and the wounded. Sepetys’ characters were a few among the many aboard, fighting for a spot on one of the few life rafts available. Not only an amazing historical work, the novel is a thrilling adventure – a story unlike any other war-time novel I’ve read. The four characters, a Lithuanian nurse, a German soldier, a Polish girl, and a Prussian on a mysterious errand, alternate the telling of the story. Each chapter told by a different character and no more than 2 to 3 pages long. The effect is overwhelmingly personal and thrilling. I instantly felt an emotional connection with them all, hoping they’d make it to the end together. My mother’s family is from Poland and Western Europe, and while much of our family had already crossed to America by the war, many of our remaining family members were lost to us those years. I can’t help but wonder if they walked these same forests? Did they suffer the same way? Did they escape? For many, their fate will never be known to us, but I’m thankful they have a voice in Sepetys’ stories, a beautiful remembrance for all.

 Rating: 4 Stars

Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tuchoke

Wink is the quirky, mysterious girl next door with wild red hair and a bookshelf full of stories. Poppy is the golden hair beauty, ruling the school with her mischievousness. Midnight is the shy, thoughtful boy caught between the two. Who is the hero? Who is the villain? Who’s keeping secrets?

“Revenge. Justice. Love. They are the three stories that all other stories are made up of. It’s the trifecta.”

“For your sake I have braved the glen, and had to do with goblin merchant men. Eat me, drink me, love me. Hero, Wolf, make much of me. With clasping arms and cautioning lips, with tingling cheeks and fingertips, cooing all together.”

Tuchoke’s writing is beautiful and poetic, but lacks substance. The story follows the troubled woes of youth who have nothing better to do than stir up drama where there isn’t any, all the while believing themselves to be some grand character in a fairy tale. Of course, you’ll be pleasantly charmed by layers of mystery and prose before coming to this realization, but by that time, you might as well finish. Otherwise, you’ll miss the over the top, melodramatic séance as well as Poppy’s laughable self discovery (leading her to give up society to live in the woods, hoping her knight in shining tie-dye will return). The only one to learn something out of the whole debacle is Midnight, who finally finds his voice and a way to fix his family, from a rift about as wide as the Atlantic Ocean and no more. The real mystery is how they manage to have this much time unsupervised? Don’t they have dinner or curfew or something? And why is Poppy so obsessed with Leaf? I understand he’s the one person she can’t win over, but couldn’t she have at least had some grand epiphany at the end? Some kind of growth showing she can move past her superficial attraction for him in exchange for self respect? And poor Wink…she’s right back where we met her in the end. So much for strong leading ladies.

Rating: 2 Stars

What have you been reading lately?

Happy belated Mother’s Day! I hope y’all had a wonderful weekend with the family – we sure did! Last week I had picked-up 5 holds from the library, only to be inundated by even more this week, ebooks included. Luckily most of them will be renewable, I just hope I don’t get any new alerts this week – but of course, I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to check-out more if I did. I have all the books from my recent TBR list, what could be better!?

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

 A heartbreaking story of an old curmudgeon, A Man Called Ove will have you either laughing out loud or in tears to the very last page. Ove is a man set in his ways, he dislikes automobiles in the residential area and people who can’t even do the simplest of tasks – what kind of man can’t back-up a trailer? That is, until a young family moves in next door. With a shy husband and chatty daughters, the very pregnant Parveneh pesters Ove to no end until he has no choice but to help them, forging an unlikely friendship and exposing Ove for not the bitter old man he’s presumed to be, but an endearing man with a big heart.

“Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t.”

“Ove feels an instinctive skepticism towards all people taller than six feet; the blood can’t quite make it all the way up to the brain.”

 Ove is easily one the most well-written and lovable characters I’ve come across in my reading, but the same can really be said for any of Backman’s characters. From his equally curmudgeonly neighbor Rune to the feisty Parveneh to Ove’s wife Sonja – each character is equally loveable as they are quirky.  But when it comes to Ove, it isn’t just his quirks that make him beloved, it’s his overwhelming generosity when he repeatedly helps others around him in need without seeking anything in return, and often, to his detriment. Ultimately, this is the quality that allows Parveneh to draw him back out of his shell to reengage with the world after his wife’s death. It doesn’t just take a village to raise a child, it takes a family to raise a village.

Rating: 5 Stars

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

The Queen of the Night is a story of intrigue, suspicion, espionage, opera, and ball gowns….a true Parisian tale for the ages. Lilliet Berne is a legendary soprano, the star of the Paris Opera, and a notorious subject of gossip. To her delight, she’s made an offer to originate a role for a new opera, based on a newly released novel which just so happens to be the story of her life, an operatic version of her deceits and follies, one alias after another. The opera that could be the height of her career could also destroy her – she must, at once, discover her betrayer. It could only be one of four: “one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.” Here she recounts her story and the many lives she’s led, her escape from the American frontier to her grand circus feats in the streets of Paris, to her fall into servitude and her glorious rise to fame. She’ll tell it all in hopes to discover the one who means to destroy her, unveiling a complicated web of romance and political schemes. Little does she know she’s been the perfect pawn, but will it be too late to change her fate?

“She wanted only to be feared. I wanted to be feared and loved. I didn’t want everything she had as she stood onstage that night. I wanted more.”

“A singer learned her roles for life – your repertoire was a library of fates held close, like the owns in this closet, yours until your voice failed.”

 I was super excited to finally get a copy from the library, but unfortunately, it just didn’t live up to the hype. For starters, the novel is too long. While the beautifully worded descriptions of Parisian life and scandal are fascinating, much of it feels forced. Then there were all the times I had to stop and ask, okay, so what does it really matter if anyone knows this about you or not? There are so many characters, and they all seem to know more than she believes they do, that the final twists are not so twisty after all. While her servitude to The Tenor begins, at best, romantic, it quickly falls into a pit of confusion and utter senselessness in the story – at one time she’s free of him, but then back in his clutches to free herself again, and then shockingly hands herself back to him again? At the beginning of the story, she’s completely free of him, but this instance of freedom is never quite explained or part of her history – as well as her final return to Paris. Where has she been in the last few years? Or was it nothing but a fluttering of operas and balls, too boring to be included? I’m not even going to get into my issues with The Composer and their relationship. I don’t want to give anything away, but brace yourself for drama and a lot of really? Why do you like him again? Besides the plot holes and unfavorable characters, the entire book is kind of a mess editorially. The text is void of all quotation marks, making it necessary to reread passages several times just to understand who is speaking to whom and saying what, but I also found a treasure trove of passages with repeated words (lots of were were going on) and noticeable typos. I swear I wasn’t even looking!

Rating: 3 Stars

You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

A new self-help sensation, You Are a Badass is an inspiring work, cutting through all of our lazy excuses to get us up from the couch and into the reality of our dreams. Or at least that’s what it’s supposed to be. I found it a little too forced, more than a little pretentious, and completely unfounded. Yes, Sincero can write an inspiring mantra – believe in yourself, don’t listen to the sullen Sallies, take the first step and you’ll achieve your dreams! But, the ways she went about it for herself are too far fetched for the average person. For instance, when buying a new car, she could have gone for the safe and reliable mid-grade SUV, but instead, she chose the more expensive, way out of her budget SUV, all the while serving the mantra believe you can make the money to pay for the life you want and you will! That simply doesn’t happen for everyone, and someone’s going to fall for it in the worst way.

You’re powerful. You’re loved. You’re surrounded by miracles. Believe, really believe that what you desire is here and available to you and you can have it all. Love yourself. You are a badass.”

While I did make a few notes listening to her book, most were generic takeaways you’d get from any kind of self-help. I could have totally saved five hours listening to the first chapter and skipping to the last line – pretty much the tldr of her book.

Rating: 2 Stars

What have you been reading lately?