Pretty Girls – Karin Slaughter

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Christie

So my son asked me how I liked Karin Slaughter’s novel Pretty Girls and I really had to think about my answer. I couldn’t just say “yes” because that isn’t exactly true. I couldn’t say “not really” because that isn’t true either. I read about 300 pages of it last night, turning the pages to get to the end, my skin crawling and my eyes burning. PrettyGirls_HC

Pretty Girls is the story of sisters Julia, Lydia and Claire – actually it’s mostly about Lydia and Claire because twenty years back Julia, then 19, went to a bar with friends, and disappeared. Claire is married to Paul, successful architect and doting husband; Lydia is single mom to 17-year-old-Dee. She’s 19 1/2 years sober. Lydia and Claire have been estranged for twenty years, but when Claire’s husband is brutally murdered in a botched alleyway robbery Claire turns to her sister to help her make sense of her unraveling life. And trust me – Claire’s life is about to go belly up, big time.

That’s pretty much all I can tell you about the plot without giving too much away.

The one other voice we hear in Slaughter’s novel is the girls’ father. He never gives up trying to find Julia and keeps track of his search and his feelings in journals. “When you first disappeared,” he writes, “your mother warned me that finding out exactly what had happened to you would be worse than never knowing…’The details will tear you apart.'” She wasn’t wrong.

There’s some bad blood between Claire and Lydia, but soon enough they find themselves in a heap of trouble and they have no choice but to put the past aside. The plot catapults along and if you don’t care too much about the quality of the prose (not that there’s anything wrong with it – Slaughter’s writing is more than up to the task at hand) you’ll fly through the pages unhindered by flowery language. What will give you pause are the gruesome crime details – or maybe not. Maybe we have been desensitized to that sort of thing. I’m not easily bothered, but this book bothered me.

There’s nothing pretty about Pretty Girls. If there is redemption to be had, it comes at a high price for Claire and Lydia and readers will have to have a strong stomach to go along.

Still Mine – Amy Stuart

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Christie

I haven’t read a book quite as weird as Amy Stuart’s Still Mine in a long time and I still can’t decide whether it was good weird or just weird. It reminded me a little of Go With Me – a quirky, but affecting novel by Castle Freeman Jr.

Clare O’Dey has run away from her abusive husband, Jason. In an unusual twist, the man Jason sends to find her, Malcolm Boon, hires Clare to go to Blackmore, a remote mining town in the mountains, to look for another missing woman, Shayna Fowles. For reasons that won’t be immediately clear, Clare invests wholeheartedly in the search for Shayna, a woman whose past is as tricky and messed up as Clare’s.

Blackmore is a shriveled up nothing of a town. “A blast at the Blackmore Coal Mine five years ago killed thirty-two men and trapped eighteen others underground for three weeks,” Malcolm’s notes tell Clare. She pretends to be a photographer in town to take pictures, but it’s a ruse no one buys. The only hotel in town is closed and so Clare rents a trailer on Charlie Merritt’s property. Charlie is the town drug dealer and his property (his father and brothers were killed in the mine) butts up against Shayna’s parents’ place. Clare figures it will be a good place to snoop.

Blackmore is filled with broken people: Jared, Shayna’s ex-husband; Sara, her friend; Derek, the town’s only doctor and Shayna’s parents, Louise (who is suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s) and Wilfred, her father, the man responsible for saving the eighteen men who did make it out of the mine alive (but also the man Charlie holds responsible for the deaths of his father and siblings). None of them seem to know what happened to Shayna and with no police in town, no one is looking for her.

As Clare attempts to find out what has happened and which of the town’s odd assortment of outcasts might be responsible for Shayna’s disappearance, her own past is revealed; her own frailties are exposed. Like Shayna, Clare has a penchant for drugs and alcohol, making Charlie particularly dangerous to her. She also finds herself strangely attracted to Shayna’s ex-husband, Jared. She forges a bond with Louise, replacing the mother she recently lost to cancer. In many ways, Clare steps into the life Shayna has abandoned. Even so she realizes

These people in Blackmore, they are not Clare’s friends. Derek and Jared and Sara and Charlie. They are not even one another’s friends. They are only characters in Shayna’s story and Shayna is not here.

Still Mine is an unusual, albeit strange, psychological mystery. Apparently there is a sequel on the way, but I was quite content with how the book ended.

Definitely worth checking out.

Night School – C.J. Daugherty

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Christie

Over 400 pages and I read them all lickety-split. C.J. Daugherty’s YA novel Night School is so much fun! Even when I discovered – about half way in – that the book is the first in a series (and you know how I feel about series), even then…I had to keep reading. (I don’t really have anything personal against series. It’s just that it’s such a commitment of reading time and that’s in short supply in my reading world. Still, as soon as I finished the book, I had to go online to see whether the sequel(s) was out. Um. There are four more books, people!)

Sixteen-year-old Allie Sheridan is always in trouble these days. She used to be a good kid, but then her older brother, Christopher, disappeared under extremely mysterious circumstances, and Allie’s been hanging with losers, defacing school property and just generally getting into trouble ever since. Finally her parents can’t take it anymore and decide to send her to Cimmeria Academy, an elite private school in the middle of the English countryside.

There – cut off from the outside world (no technology allowed) – she meets Isabelle, the school’s headmistress, and a cast of intriguing teenagers, among them Sylvain, gorgeous and French; Katie, the snotty rich girl; down-to-earth, Jo and Carter West, he of the endless brown eyes and bad reputation. They are all staying on at Cimmeria for the summer term. (School breaks up about mid-July in England and then goes back after Labour Day, early September…so about a six week break.)

Allie soon falls into the school’s rhythms and discovers that she kind of likes it at Cimmeria. Jo is nice and Sylvain is paying special attention to her. The food is great and the school is beautiful. What’s not to like?

Well, first of all there’s ‘Night School’, but like ‘fight club’ – you’re not supposed to talk about it.

Students in certain advanced areas of study take part in Night School to prepare them for life after Cimmeria so you will sometimes hear them working late in the evening. Only very few select students are offered this opportunity; if you are not among them, you must not attempt to interfere with or observe Night School, and the fourth floor of the class-room wing is off limits.

Then there’s the woods though, according to Jo, “we don’t actually do much in the woods, and they kind of discourage it because of, I dunno, health and safety or something.” Then there’s Carter’s cryptic warning: “You haven’t been at Cimmeria long enough to understand how things are here. So be careful, okay? Things are not what they seem. People aren’t always who they seem to be.”

And I still had 200 pages to go!

There are creepy moments aplenty in Night School. Intrigue galore. And even if the payoff isn’t quite there, there’s more than enough to keep readers turning the pages. I would definitely be interested in reading the next book in the series, Legacy, to see how Allie makes out.

My only other niggle is that the characters don’t sound British. The occasional ‘blimey’ thrown into their dialogue does not a British accent make. They sounded decidedly American to me, which stands to reason: Daugherty is from New Orleans, though she now lives in England. That’s a small thing, though, and in no way undermined my overall reading experience.

Fun, fun, fun!

The Widow – Fiona Barton

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Christie

Although I often enter book giveaways on Good Reads, I never win. That is until a couple weeks ago when an ARC of Fiona Barton’s novel The Widow showed up at my door compliments of Penguin Random House Canada. The book was cleverly packaged in an ‘evidence bag’ along with a package of Skittles. Awesome to get a book in the mail, but Skittles, too. Jackpot!

I seem to be on a roll these days, reading books I can’t seem to put down. I motored through The Widow in a couple of days. Although the subject matter (porn) may not appeal to everyone, rest assured that there’s no graphic content in Barton’s book. Your imagination will fill in the gaps, trust me.

Jean and Glen Taylor are an average thirty-something couple living in England. Jean is a hairdresser and Glen, a banker. They are unremarkable until they come under the scrutiny of the police because of the disappearance of a little girl, Bella, who has gone missing from her front garden.

Told from various viewpoints, The Widow mostly revolves around Jean as she decides whether or not to share her story with the press. Glen has been killed, “knocked down by a bus just outside Sainsbury’s” and now Jean no longer has to keep his secrets or put up with his “nonsense.”

When we are not with Jean, we’re with Kate, the reporter who is trying to convince Jean to tell her side of things or Bob Sparkes, the police detective trying to figure out what happened to little Bella. It’s Bella’s disappearance that drives Kate and Bob, although each of them views the crime from a different perspective. As Sparkes follows a trail of clues, many of which don’t pan out, Jean reveals her own misgivings about Glen and what he does on the computer in the spare room. Slowly she unravels the story of her marriage and while she may seem like a victim, there is something unreliable about her narrative. She admits “I had to keep his secrets as well as mine.”

The Widow delves into the sordid world of online pornography, skeezy Internet clubs where men hide in booths to pay-per-view and magazines sold out of the back of trunks at gas stations on the motorway. When Jean finally learns about her husband’s preferences

he told me it wasn’t his fault. He’d been drawn into online porn by the Internet – they shouldn’t allow these things on the Web. It was a trap for innocent men. He’d become addicted to it – “It’s a medical condition, Jeanie, an addiction.” But he’d never looked at children. Those images just ended up on his computer – like a virus.

Whether or not Jean suspected Glen of anything is one of the key elements that will keep you turning the pages. Barton’s crisp, no-nonsense prose is another. The Widow will keep you turning the pages way past your bedtime.

The Replacement – Brenna Yovanoff

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Christie

Brenna Yovanoff’s YA novel The Replacement is quite unlike anything I have read before, which is a good thing. It was well-reviewed when it debuted in 2010 and I have been wanting to read it for a while. I was particularly intrigued by the cover, which is creepy, although I try not to chose books based on their cover alone – that has lead me down a few crap book paths.

Gentry isn’t like other places and Mackie isn’t like other 16-year-olds. He’s a replacement, left in the crib of a human baby who was spirited away by the strange inhabitants of the the labyrinthine world beneath Gentry.

7507908 Mackie lives with his older sister, Emma and his parents. He has a best friend, Roswell. He has a crush on a pretty girl, Alice. But he also can’t abide blood. Or get close to anything made of stainless steel. Or go to church, even though his father is a preacher.

Mackie knows he is different. “I dream of fields,” he says, “dark tunnels, but nothing is clear. I dream that a dark shape puts me in the crib, puts a hand over my mouth, and whispers in my ear. Shh, it says. And, Wait. “

The way his sister tells it, someone took her real brother in the middle of the night when she was four years old.

When she reaches her hand between the bars, the thing in the crib moves closer. It tries to bite her and she takes her hand out again but doesn’t back away. They spend all night looking at each other in the dark. In the morning, the thing is still crouched on the lamb-and-duckling mattress pad, staring at her. It isn’t her brother.

When the little sister of Mackie’s classmate, Tate, goes missing, Mackie is forced to confront his own origin story and this leads him the The House of Mayhem and The Morrigan, a girl who rules there and whose “jagged teeth and tiny size made her seem more implausible, more impossible than all the rest.” All the rest of what, you might ask? Yeah, that would be the living dead girls. The Morrigan tells him “We were so pleased that you survived childhood. Castoffs generally don’t.”

When Tate asks for Mackie’s help, he is reluctant; he’s got his own problems. But when The Morrigan offers to help Mackie feel better even he can’t resist. There is a strange barter system between Mayhem and Gentry: Mayhem thrives on adulation. But Mayhem isn’t the only world beneath the town. The Morrigan has a sister, and she thrives on blood sacrifice.

Mackie doesn’t fit in, but whether or not Yovanoff meant for his journey to be a metaphor (like Joss Whedon’s monsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) hardly matters because The Replacement is a thrill ride.

Great book.

Pulse Pounding Thrillers

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Christie

There’s nothing I like better than a thriller; it’s my go-to genre when I want to jumpstart my reading. I love a good mystery, a page-turning, heart-pounding, protagonist in peril book that I can’t put down. I know I am not the only one who likes suspense, just look at how popular books like The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl are. I love it when you find a book with the perfect combination of creepy thrills and stellar writing, so I thought I would share five books for any readers out there who are looking for something to curl up with while the weather is crappy.

Intensity – Dean Koontz

So, I read this book about twenty years ago. Koontz is a very prolific writer of supernatural fiction. I’ve read a few of his book, but this one was totally propulsive. It’s about a Chyna Shephard, a young woman who is visiting a with her best friend’s family when really bad luck arrives in the form of serial killer Edgler Forman Vess. What follows is a thrill ride that will have you turning the pages super fast.
Instruments of Night – Thomas H. Cook

You might have to order books by American mystery writer Thomas H. Cook online because it’s rare to find him on the shelves of our local book stores-which I don’t get because he’s fabulous. The first book I ever read by Cook was called Breakheart Hill and it had a killer opening line: “This is the darkest story I ever heard and all my life I have labored not to tell it.” I had to buy it…and I’ve probably read seven or eight books by him now. One of my favourites by Cook is Instruments of Night.

It’s the story of writer Paul Graves, a man who has spent his career writing about the horrible dance between serial killer and sadist Kessler (and his accomplice, Sykes) and the man who has spent his career chasing him, Detective Slovak. Instruments of Night operates on more than one level, though. Graves has almost completed the 14th installment of his series when he is invited to upstate New York to meet with Allison Davies, mistress of an estate known as Riverwood. Fifty years ago, Allison’s best friend, Faye, was murdered on the grounds and now Allison wants Paul to “imagine what happened to Faye. And why.” Couldn’t put it down

If you like literary mysteries- you’d be hard pressed to find anyone better than Cook.
Dark Places – Gillian Flynn

So everyone knows Flynn for her novel Gone Girl, but I actually read her book Dark Places first. It’s her second novel, her first is Sharp Objects…also really good, but Dark Places is – I think – her best. It’s about Libby Day, this rather unlikeable woman who has – no question – survived a lot of hardship. Her mother and two older sisters were murdered when she was a kid and her testimony helped convict her older brother Ben – who was fifteen at the time – for the crime. Flynn weaves the past and present together as Libby finds herself confronted with the truth of the crime that changed her life. Fantastic book.
End of Story – Peter Abrahams

You could polish off End of Story in an afternoon – because once you get going you won’t be able to put it down. It’s the story of tells the compelling tale of Ivy Siedel, an aspiring writer, who takes a job teaching writing to a small group of inmates at Dannemora Prison, in Upstate New York. When one of her students, Vance Harrow, turns out to be a talented writer, Ivy decides to take a closer look at his history and discovers something about him that both shocks and excites her…and changes her life forever.
And my last pick is a book I just purchased this weekend and I haven’t read it, but I am expecting great things because it’s been given copious praise by everyone and their dog. It’s called Descent and it’s by a new-to-me author, Tim Johnston. A family is on vacation. The college age daughter and her brother go out for a run and only the brother returns.

I’ll let you know how that one turns out.

Have you read any good thrillers? I’d love to hear about them.

The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Christie

So, you know how everyone and their dog was reading and talking about Gone Girl when it was released? The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins’ debut novel, is this summer’s version of that book. I talked about books with buzz last week on Information Morning and this book most definitely had buzz. Is it worthy, though? That’s the question.

Rachel takes the same trains from Ashbury, a tiny suburb outside of London, every day – into the city on the 8:04 and home from the city on the 17:56. From her seat, she can see into the gardens of the homes she passes and one garden in particular captures her interest. That’s the house where Jason and Jess live.

They are a perfect, golden couple. He is dark haired and well built, strong, protective, kind. He has a great laugh. She is one of those tiny bird-women, a beauty, pale- skinned with blonde hair cropped short. She has the bone structure to carry that kind of thing off, sharp cheekbones dappled with a sprinkling of freckles, a fine jaw.

Every day when Rachel’s train shudders to a stop at the red signal, Rachel imagines the life Jason and Jess must share (imagining is all she can do because she doesn’t really know them, not even their real names). But there is another reason that Rachel is fixated on this house and that’s because for five years she lived just down the road with her husband, Tom. Tom still lives in their old house, only now with his new wife, Anna, and their infant daughter, Evie.

It won’t take the reader very long to figure out that Rachel is an unreliable narrator and the reason for that will be obvious: Rachel is a drunk. She drinks in the morning, in the evening, mostly alone. She throws up, passes out and often doesn’t remember what has happened to her. She calls her ex-husband at all hours. She admits

I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s not just that I’ve put on weight, or that my face is puffy from the drinking and the lack of sleep; it’s as if people can see the damage written all over me…

Then one day Jess (whose real name is Megan) goes missing and Rachel is sure that she has seen something that will help the police to find her. The problem is, of course, that once she pulls on the thread of what she thinks she saw, a whole lot of things start to unravel.

As messed up as Rachel is, it’s difficult not to empathize with her; her life has gone to hell in a hand basket in a variety of ways and she isn’t quite sure how to right herself. Hers is not the only viewpoint Hawkins allows the reader, though. We also spend time with Megan and Anna and each woman has their own suspect relationship with the truth.

The Girl on the Train is an entertaining read. I can certainly see what all the fuss is about and given that it only took me a few hours to read, I certainly can’t say that I didn’t like it. But I didn’t love it.

Bird Box – Josh Malerman

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Christie

It seemed like everyone was talking about Josh Malerman’s debut novel, Bird Box, but it was still a surprise when it was chosen as our April read for book club. In the 15 years we’ve been together we’ve never read anything even resembling a horror story. I was really looking forward to this one because I love a scary book.

Malorie lives alone in a house in a Detroit suburb with two children she calls Boy and Girl. The house used to be nice but now she notices the “rusted utensils and cracked dishes. The cardboard box used as a garbage can. The chairs, some held together by twine.” Clearly, it’s not situation normal and Malorie’s musings allude to “older stains,” for which there are “no chemicals in the house to help clean.”

Malerman doesn’t waste any time with preamble. That’s probably a good thing because Bird Box relies on a heavy dose of the unknown to make it tick. Something has happened to the world. The “Internet has blown up with a story people are calling ‘the Russia Report.'” People are behaving monstrously, attacking strangers and family members in gruesome ways (a mother buries her children alive) before ending their own lives. It’s a “the whole world’s going crazy” scenario, but it spreads from Russia to North America (and who knows where else) like wildfire. The only way to prevent doing harm to others and yourself is to prevent yourself from seeing whatever is out there. People hole up in their houses, windows covered, and if they must venture outside, they wear a blindfold.

Bird Box bounces between Malorie’s perilous journey down the river in a boat (she’s heard that there is a safe community and after four years alone, she longs for something more for herself and her children who she laments “have never seen the sky. Have never looked out a window.” ) and her time in the house with a group of strangers she discovered through an advertisement in the paper.

I can’t say I was fussy about the beginning or the ending of Bird Box, but I was seriously creeped out in the middle. There’s a scene when members of the house have to go out into the backyard to get water from the well. They have to be blindfolded, of course, and a rope is tied around their waist. The person whose job it is to go to the well must make the journey three times. On this occasion, it’s Felix’s turn. On the third and final trip from the house to the well he hears a sound.

But now he can tell where it is coming from.

It is coming from inside the well.

He releases the crank and steps back. The bucket falls, crashing against the stone, before splashing below.

Something moved. Something moved in the water.

It’s moments like these when Bird Box is at its best. Like Malerman’s characters, we are blind and we realize that the scariest thing in the world is what we can’t see.

Kept in the Dark – Penny Hancock

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Christie

I read Penny Hancock’s debut novel Kept in the Dark in one breathless gulp. I absolutely couldn’t put it down. I love it when that happens.

Sonia lives in a house next to the Thames. Her husband, Greg, is a lecturing neurosurgeon; her daughter, Kit, is a student at university and Sonia herself is a vocal coach. From the outside looking in, it would appear that Sonia has it all. It’s pretty obvious, though, that Sonia isn’t entirely sane. When the nephew of a friend drops by to pick up an album, Sonia plies him with wine, then drugs him and locks him upstairs in the sound proof music studio.

Jez is just fifteen. He’s in London visiting his Aunt Helen and Uncle Mick and applying to colleges. His mother, Maria, lives in Paris. Sonia is taken with Jez immediately.

His dark fringe has fallen across one eye. He flicks I back, and looks at me from under long, perfectly formed black eyebrows. I notice his sinuous neck with its smooth Adam’s apple. There’s a triangular dip where his throat descends towards his sternum. His skin has a sheen on it that I’d like to touch. He’s of adult proportions yet everything about him is glossy and new.

The novel’s first person narrative is so creepy and claustrophobic. We get to watch as Sonia justifies her behavior and work through the endless complications of keeping a fifteen-year-old boy captive. First of all, what happens when her husband arrives home from his business trip? What will she do when her daughter and her boyfriend come home from university. And then there’s Seb. He’s clearly someone from her past and Jez obviously reminds her of him, but who is he? Sonia says he was “the most beautiful creature that ever walked upon the earth.” Hancock seamlessly weaves Sonia’s present with her past and the mystery of Seb is equally as compelling as Jez’s fate.

There is a second narrator: Helen. Jez’s aunt is a bit of a mess in her own way. Jez’s disappearance while under her care has thrown Helen’s life into turmoil. When her sister arrives from Paris and the police get involved, Helen feels more like a suspect than a relative.

This book was so good. S.J. Watson, author of Before I Go to Sleep, sang its praises and I have to say I agree with Mr. Watson. Sonia’s midlife crisis – a rather strained relationship with her daughter; a sexless marriage; a difficult mother; and the house she grew up in that she vows never to leave despite the fact that her husband wants to sell and move to Geneva all seem to be conspiring against her. But none of it is convoluted or silly. The plot unravels like a dream that is both terrifying and strangely erotic.

Highly recommended.

The Girl in the Park – Mariah Fredericks

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Christie

Rain, the compelling narrator if Mariah Fredericks’ YA mystery, The Girl in the Park, attends the prestigious Alcott School in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “At our school,” she says. “everybody is the child of a somebody.” Rain’s somebody is her mom, an opera singer and “if you’re into opera, you probably know her.”

Rain is a watcher, a listener. Mostly it’s because she was born with a cleft palate, and although speech therapy has smoothed out some of the T’s and S’s, Rain’s still self-conscious. She hates how she sounds, “mushmouthed and nasal.” That is, until Wendy starts school and tells her “Big deal. Okay, maybe you sound a little funny. But you need to forget about that and speak up girl.”

Wendy is larger than life. Although she’s rich, she comes from Long Island and doesn’t have the right kind of money or pedigree. The students at Alcott are snobbish and clique-ish, but that doesn’t stop Wendy from trying to make inroads. It’s when Rain tells her that she’s approaching it all wrong that the two girls become friends.

We only ever really see Wendy through Rain’s eyes because when the novel begins, Rain discovers that her friend has been found dead in Central Park. At this point, Rain and Wendy were friendly but no longer really friends. Wendy’s blatant disregard for the prep school rules and her reputation as a “skank” have caused Rain to distance herself from the girl who once told her that “You. Other the other hand. Listen. And you think. So when you do speak? You’re brilliant. So, give up the silence, okay”

Rain can’t stand the thought that something so horrible has happened to Wendy. Worse, the night it happened Rain was at the same party as Wendy and she feels she may have seen something that could help the police – she just doesn’t know what it is.

The Girl in the Park is a fast-paced mystery with enough suspects to keep readers engaged and guessing whodunit. It’s also a story that peers into the nasty, and sometimes heartbreaking, world of teenagers. I couldn’t put it down.

The Ludic Reader

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