Fractured Book Review

Fractured by Catherine McKenzie

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Blurb:

Julie Prentice and her family move across the country to the idyllic Mount Adams district of Cincinnati, hoping to evade the stalker who’s been terrorizing them ever since the publication of her bestselling novel, The Murder Game. Since Julie doesn’t know anyone in her new town, when she meets her neighbor John Dunbar, their instant connection brings measured hope for a new beginning. But she never imagines that a simple, benign conversation with him could set her life spinning so far off course.

After a series of misunderstandings, Julie and her family become the target of increasingly unsettling harassment. Has Julie’s stalker found her, or are her neighbors out to get her, too? As tension in the neighborhood rises, new friends turn into enemies, and the results are deadly.

Review by Brittany:

I requested this book off of Netgalley because I loved the cover and the blurb. I'm still on my suspense novel kick, so this one sounded like it would fit the bill.

I loved the way the story bounced from present time to months past. This really added to the mystery part of the novel. The present day parts are told from John's perspective, and the reader becomes aware that there is some kind of court case that he and his family are involved in. As the story develops, it's revealed that there was an accident in which someone was killed, but we don't know who the victim was.

In the parts that relay the past, the reader becomes embroiled in the drama of living in Mount Adams and the ways in which small misunderstandings can build up to ruin someone's life. Julie and John become easy friends, running together each day as they both work from home. This, of course, causes some trouble among the neighborhood - a man and a woman can't just be platonic friends. As the relationship develops, it becomes clear that they do struggle to maintain a certain level of platonic friendship.

Couple the nosiness of Julie's neighbors with her own paranoia at what had happened to cause her to move, and the buildup of this story leaves you flipping pages and dying to figure out what happened. The end of the book is definitely a surprise, and it left me feeling satisfied with the climax but so sad for everyone involved. This book was well-paced and a fantastic suspense, with believable characters who I could sympathize with.

Notable quotes:

Everyone's life has its complications. Sometimes you get to choose them, and sometimes they're thrust upon you.

We all wear masks. The challenge is keeping them in place.

It's just that sometimes you can't shake a dream. It clings to you like film.

I felt better having him next to me, which felt like something I needed to remind myself.

"Everyone has their stuff. Things they'll do that you find annoying or don't understand. But if you love someone, or think you might, then you decide what's the most important thing. Them in your life, or not."

Memory isn't a provable thing. We see what we want, hear what pleases us, and remember what grieves us. That is the human condition.

Just because I felt something didn't mean the person who had caused the feeling had done anything wrong.

Fangirl Book Review

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

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Blurb:

In Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life--and she's really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.
Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

Review by Brittany:

So I'm a little late to the Rainbow Rowell sensation, just now picking up Fangirl. And I loved this book.

First of all, the pieces of the Simon Snow series that Rowell tucked into Cath's story were fantastic. I enjoyed jumping into that piece of fiction which reading my own piece of fiction, if that makes any sense.

Secondly, the themes of anxiety and depression were spun in such a way that the book was able to stay light. While the reader recognizes that Cath struggles with anxiety, largely due to her mother leaving her at a young age, Cath's character is written in such a way that she is able to joke and function, keeping the book from getting bogged down with what could be dark themes. Her twin sister Wren is also clearly a bit of a mess, partaking in underage drinking constantly and even ending up in the hospital. It takes a lot of work for both girls to trust those around them and to overcome the pieces of life that have pulled them down.

I also liked that Reagan, Cath's roommate, is such a great character without being a super nice character. She's rough around the edges and doesn't say all the right things all the time, but she clearly cares for Cath and quickly became a favorite of mine. I wonder about her issues and why she's so rough and tumble.

There is also a really great family dynamic written into the book, allowing Cath the chance to decide if she wants a belated relationship with her mother or if she's better off not pursuing that avenue. The reader also gets invited back home, where Cath's father is still clearly struggling with his wife leaving a decade before. His heart was broken and he never quite recovered, which then had a huge effect on Cath.

Overall, this book had some great themes to explore, well-written characters, and fantastic relationships. I loved reading this book and would definitely recommend.

Two Days Gone Book Review

Two Days Gone by Randall Silvis

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Blurb:

What could cause a man, when all the stars of fortune are shining upon him, to suddenly snap and destroy everything he has built? This is the question that haunts Sergeant Ryan DeMarco after the wife and children of beloved college professor and bestselling author Thomas Huston are found slaughtered in their home. Huston himself has disappeared and so is immediately cast as the prime suspect.

DeMarco knows-or thinks he knows-that Huston couldn't have been capable of murdering his family. But if Huston is innocent, why is he on the run? And does the half-finished manuscript he left behind contain clues to the mystery of his family's killer?

A masterful new novel by acclaimed author Randall Silvis, Two Days Gone is a taut, suspenseful story that will break your heart as much as it will haunt your dreams.

Review by Brittany:

I requested this book off of NetGalley because the blurb sounded interesting, and it fit in with my current suspense/thriller kick for reading. 

I did not anticipate loving this book as much as I did. DeMarco is a bit rough around the edges, dealing with his own issues and his own struggles, but he is such a great character. He's sharp, picking up on the subtle signs that are there for the reader but that I never noticed. He has good intuition and an understanding of the human psyche that makes him good at his job, and as a character, none of this is outside the realm of believability.

The book flip-flops between DeMarco's search for answers, and Huston's travels as a fugitive. The parts that are written from Huston's point of view are so intense and so shocking, illustrating how disconnected Huston has become after the tragedy of losing his family - and possibly being the cause of it. As a character, Huston is a best-selling author, and the reader learns about him through DeMarco's questioning of people Huston knows. In the passages where Huston is on run, he often draws the connection between himself and a character in the novel, separating himself from the reality of what has happened and basically writing his own story. It's an interesting way to show what's going on in Huston's head, and I loved reading those passages.

The end of the book has one twist after another. It's both what I was expecting and a surprise. Nothing is quite what it seems, and even the most unseemly of characters are given a bit of redemption in the book.

I really enjoyed this book. It kept me turning pages all the way through, and I found myself easily sucked into the story. This one definitely fulfilled my current obsession with suspense novels, and I recommend it to anyone who's interested in the genre.

Notable quotes:

...writing a story is like driving at night through a fog. The thing to do is to just keep moving.

Then he dried himself off and wiped the fog off the mirror, and just like that, the routine took hold as always, the mechanics of living, step one, step two, step three, and the wind-up man was moving again.
 

The Woman in Cabin 10 Book Review

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

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Blurb:

In this tightly wound, enthralling story reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s works, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

Review by Brittany:

I recently joined Book of the Month and this was one of the options. I have been on a bit of a mystery/thriller kick, so this sounded suspenseful enough to fulfill my reading need.

My favorite thing about this book is how unreliable the narrator seems. Lo is, from the very beginning of the book, kind of a mess. She's drunkenly burgled, which causes her issues with sleeping and ultimately puts her on edge. She drinks often throughout the book, and it is also revealed that she is on anti-depressants. She is not the most believable of characters, so when she claims that a woman has been murdered on the cruise ship, the other passengers are hard-pressed to believe her.

Her one possible ally is Ben, an ex of hers who is on the ship as well, but she gets so tangled up in trying to find "whodunnit" that she can't even trust him anymore. Everyone seems shady and deceitful, and this just adds to the unreliability of Lo.

The story line itself gets a bit crazy by the end. Lo often thinks that it's too crazy to be believable, and as a reader I had a similar feeling. It's far-fetched, but just enough so that it kept me turning pages and eager to find out what was going to happen next. Honestly, is there anything scarier than being trapped at sea with a killer?

This one is definitely worth picking up for those who are fans of suspenseful thrillers. Lo's slow unraveling of the mystery (and a bit of her sanity) kept me hooked and reading all day, until I had devoured the very last page.

Hidden Bodies Book Review

Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes

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Blurb:

In the compulsively readable follow-up to her widely acclaimed debut novel, You, Caroline Kepnes weaves a tale that Booklist calls “the love child of Holden Caulfield and Patrick Bateman.”

Hidden Bodies marks the return of a voice that Stephen King described as original and hypnotic, and through the divisive and charmingly sociopathic character of Joe Goldberg, Kepnes satirizes and dissects our culture, blending suspense with scathing wit.

Joe Goldberg is no stranger to hiding bodies. In the past ten years, this thirty-something has buried four of them, collateral damage in his quest for love. Now he’s heading west to Los Angeles, the city of second chances, determined to put his past behind him.

In Hollywood, Joe blends in effortlessly with the other young upstarts. He eats guac, works in a bookstore, and flirts with a journalist neighbor. But while others seem fixated on their own reflections, Joe can’t stop looking over his shoulder. The problem with hidden bodies is that they don’t always stay that way. They re-emerge, like dark thoughts, multiplying and threatening to destroy what Joe wants most: truelove. And when he finds it in a darkened room in Soho House, he’s more desperate than ever to keep his secrets buried. He doesn’t want to hurt his new girlfriend—he wants to be with her forever. But if she ever finds out what he’s done, he may not have a choice...

Review by Brittany:

So I loved You, the weirdness and all. In fact, it was one of my favorite reads of 2015, so picking up this one was an obvious choice for me.

How can I possibly love Joe Goldberg so much when I know he's a freaking psycho?! There's something about him that I find so shamefully appealing. And now he's in  LA, making fun of the people with aspirations while becoming one of them.

What I liked about this one was that Joe becomes more human in this book. He begins to want things and to care about people, something that didn't seem to happen in the first book. He figures out that he actually enjoys writing screenplays and maybe this could be his thing. He falls in love with Love, a woman he meets while trying to chase down Amy to kill her, and begins to want a future with her. He notices how her brother tears her down constantly and starts dreaming about making her life better, even if that means getting rid of her brother. Joe's still Joe, twisted and willing to murder if that makes life easier, but he's developing a little bit of humanity this time around.

It was the other characters in this book that made it less of a favorite than the first one. Forty, Love's brother, was so annoying and obnoxious. I reached a point where all I could think about was how he was thirty-five and still a childish mess. I needed him to get his stuff together, and that just didn't happen. Love was similar in that she was always forgiving Forty's behavior. Like everything he did was fine because they were twins and you have to love your family.

I did like this book, but I think You was better. Joe just didn't have the same spark in this one, and I liked the characters from the first book better. However, if you're a fan of Joe Goldberg, then you should still pick this one up.

Notable quotes:

This is what all the love songs are about, the moment when you find your own way forward with someone and there is no turning back. 

I wonder when the wondering will stop. I hate this part of the split, when that girl just lives in your head.

Sometimes, what you do for one night destroys your future.

It's an ugly thing, the inside of a family, the disappointments, the disgust...

I don't know any perfect couples, true partners who share the load equally.

...most of the time in life, I'm starting to realize, love is not the problem.

The Decision Book Review

The Decision by Penny Vincenzi

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Blurb:

A love affair between self-made property tycoon Matt Shaw and dazzling fashion editor Eliza Clark, spanning sixties London, the extravagance of Milan and the glamour of New York.

A marriage that's both passionate and difficult, as Matt and Eliza's lives become irrevocably divided and entwined with others: charming advertising man Jeremy Northcott; flamboyant Italian fashion icon Mariella Crespi; Matt's sister Scarlett, who has her own complicated love affairs. And then there's Louise, Matt's tough and sassy business partner, as successful as he is and fighting for her future.

A child, Emmie, adored, precocious, and ultimately the victim of her parents' doomed marriage, she both holds them together and drives them apart.

The decision, which is agonizing and desperate, and taken in the divorce courts - where truths will be told, secrets revealed and reputations shattered. And at the heart of it all lies the fate of a little girl.

Review by Brittany:

I am a die-hard fan of Vincenzi's novels, and this one was no exception. Her characters are always so well fleshed out, even the minor characters, that they feel more like real people than so many other characters in other novels. Vincenzi also fleshes out her plot lines well, leaving no detail out and covering even the most tedious parts of a story.

This book had all of the qualities that I so love about Vincenzi. One thing that did stick out to me in this one is that Matt, the "hero" of the story, is not quite as likeable as other characters in the novel. He has moments when he is so surprisingly generous and sweet, but often he is buried under the chip on his shoulder from being brought up poor, which never leaves him. Even as he becomes successful and makes oodles of money, he still holds onto his grudges about having to be self-made. He was often grumpy and unbending, constantly giving Eliza a hard time throughout their marriage for wanting to maintain some of her own identity, even after becoming a mother. I found him hard to like.

Emmie was written to be a spoiled, manipulative child who knew what strings to tug to get her way every time. Towards the end of the book, when the divorce and custody case is being worked out, I was almost surprised at how much both Eliza and Matt wanted to have Emmie live solely with them. As a character, Emmie wasn't written to seem particularly wonderful, and there aren't many times in the book when either of her parents seemed overly taken with her, with the exception of the end. Matt often expressed his feelings that it was Eliza's job to take care of Emmie, leaving me with the feeling that he was disinterested in being an active father.

Despite the inconsistencies I felt there were in each parent's relationship with Emmie, and my general dislike of Matt as a character, I still loved the book. Vincenzi used this book to focus on marriages, the ways in which they work and the slow ways in which they can crumble. While Eliza and Matt are the focus of the book, other relationships are explored. Scarlett, Matt's sister, has an inability to meet single men and often gets entangled with married ones instead. Mariella, Eliza's good friend, is married to a man who is twice her age and exceptionally rich, causing questions as to why she married him in the first place.

All of these relationships are well-explored, making this another big hit with me. I love Vincenzi's delicious writing and the ways in which she can make me think about relationships.

Notable quotes:

In short, being with him was complete and absolute pleasure; she felt cared for, amused, interested, satisfied in every way.

Love invaded you, and even when it had become the enemy it was not to be easily overpowered.

Money, she saw in that moment of ferocious clarity, wasn't just the means whereby you acquired what you wanted or even needed; money was power, and lack of your own supply, even under the most benign and domestic of circumstances, was a genuine and rather ugly impotence.

"It's hard to describe, it's a kind of fear, I suppose. Of being judged and found wanting. A feeling you're safer just with yourself."

Marriages do not suddenly drop dead; they expire slowly, from a thousand cutting words, a million misunderstandings, from an unwillingness to apologise to a willingness to take revenge. There is a dawning, slow at first then gathering pace, that things are not as they were and moreover not as they should be, that responses are not what is hoped for, that disappointment is more frequent than delight, that resentment is more persistent than forgiveness, all remarked upon and brooded over and then stored angrily away. Desire dies, affection withers, trust becomes a memory.

By this time tomorrow she would know. Whether she would still be a mother, a proper mother, the sort that did the ordinary things, got her child up every morning and tucked her up in bed every night, took her to school and picked her up again, knew when she'd had a tummy ache or a bad dream, got cross with her, argued with her, decided when the get her hair cut, or that she needed new shoes, tolder her off for skimping on her homework or her ballet practice, insisted she made her bed and tidied her room and wrote thank-you letters and cleaned out the hamster's cage...Or the other sort, the once-a-week sort, the provider of a perfect room and whatever-you-fancy food, who waited impatiently outside school, aware of the mild curiosity of the other mothers, the purveyor of treats and outings, and ultra-generosity to friends, surprised by a new dress, a fringe, a fad, always with time to give, over-indulgent, never cross, never critical, desperate to know about a school concert, a friend's party, plans for a holiday, watchful for new loyalties, jealous of new traditions... 

The Tea Planter's Wife Book Review

The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies

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Blurb:

Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper steps off a steamer in Ceylon full of optimism, eager to join her new husband. But the man who greets her at the tea plantation is not the same one she fell in love with in London. Distant and brooding, Laurence spends long days wrapped up in his work, leaving his young bride to explore the plantation alone. It's a place filled with clues to the past - locked doors, a yellowed wedding dress in a dusty trunk, an overgrown grave hidden in the grounds, far too small for an adult... Gwen soon falls pregnant and her husband is overjoyed, but she has little time to celebrate. In the delivery room the new mother is faced with a terrible choice, one she knows no one in her upper class set will understand - least of all Laurence. Forced to bury a secret at the heart of her marriage, Gwen is more isolated than ever. When the time comes, how will her husband ever understand what she has done?

Review by Brittany:

I requested this book off of NetGalley because the blurb intrigued me, and, yes, because I thought the cover was pretty.

I really enjoyed reading about Ceylon and learning about the tea business and the life of the laborers and servants along with Gwen. It is a totally different world to the one we live in, and to the one Gwen lived in before marrying Laurence. Her attempts to adapt to his world are heroic, especially considering the barriers that his sister, Verity, constantly puts up for Gwen.

Laurence was an interesting character to me. Half the time he seemed invested in Gwen, but there was the other half when he seemed to not care much either way. His focus was clearly on his business, and his shady relationship with Christina left me feeling sorry for Gwen often throughout the story. Christina was blatant about her feelings about Laurence, and Laurence often let Christina act outrageously, which made me angry on Gwen's behalf.

When Gwen gives birth to twins, one of whom is dark-skinned, she is forced to evaluate her options. She frantically thinks back to what might have happened to cause one baby to be born white and one to look Sinhalese, and she panics about what this might mean for her relationship to Laurence. The choice she makes that night completely alters the person she becomes, taking some of her relationships with her.

Overall, I thought this book was good. The imagery of Ceylon was well-written, along with the challenges that Gwen faces in trying to become the mistress of Laurence's house. There were times when the story dragged and times when I wanted to shake Gwen for some of her choices, but I think this goes a long way toward proving how good of a writer this author is.

Notable quotes:

She knew it wasn't fair, but couldn't help feeling stung.

She felt poised at the point when life shakes itself up, and you have no idea where you'll be standing when it settles in a new pattern, or whether you will be standing at all.

She understood home wasn't a place. It was her daily relationship with everything she touched, saw, and heard.