The Murder House by James Patterson and David Ellis

June 28, 2020

The Murder House by James Patterson and David Ellis

After barely escaping prosecution for corruption, former NYC detective Jenna Murphy takes the only job she can get, with the Southampton Town Police Department, where her uncle is the chief of police.  She is shocked to find the wealthy and privileged community is a hotbed of murder, where a serial killer has apparently been preying on tourists and transients for years.  All of the murders seem to center around Number 7 Ocean Drive, a fabulous oceanfront mansion that has stood empty for years, locally known as The Murder House.

The main character is flawed almost to the point of being ridiculous.  Although we’re told repeatedly what a great cop she is, she accuses one male character after another of being the murder, physically attacks suspects before questioning them, and does not demonstrate any of the instincts that are vital to being a good police officer.  She is also paranoid and a heavy drinker.  Noah, the character that she attacks repeatedly, unbelievably ends up being her love interest.  Although some readers gushed about the great suspense, I figured out who the killer was a little over halfway through the book. 

James Patterson isn’t one of my favorite authors, and I had a really hard time finishing this one.  The female narrator’s voice in the audiobook grated on my nerves.  I finally ended up returning the audiobook and getting the print version instead.  I don't recommend this one at all.

Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams

June 27, 2020

Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams

Photojournalist Janey Everett has long been fascinated by legendary aviators Irene Foster and Sam Mallory who both disappeared in 1937.  At the time of their disappearances, Mallory was fighting with the loyalist forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, while Foster was participating in an around-the-world aviation race before she vanished somewhere over Africa.  A chance meeting with an RAF pilot in 1944 leads Janey to believe that Irene not only survived but that she is living in seclusion in Hawaii.  Determined to write a photo-biography of forgotten aviation pioneer Sam Mallory, Janey sets out to find Foster to fill in the gaps in Mallory’s story.

Very loosely based on the life of Amelia Earhart, author Beatriz Williams started out with Earhart's story but imagined a different ending for the famous aviatrix.  Janey and Irene are both strong-minded independent women who work in male-dominated fields.  Both had difficult childhoods, but Janey’s backstory is especially heart-breaking.  Following dual timelines, Williams weaves the many threads of the story together to a satisfying and surprising conclusion.  I much prefer her historical fiction to the historical romances that she writes with Lauren Willig and Karen White.  This is one of the best books I've read in 2020.

Like many people, I have always been fascinated by Amelia Earhart, and I keep hoping that someone will finally discover what really happened to her.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in return for a review.

Nothing Can Hurt You by Nicola Maye Goldberg

June 22, 2020

Nothing Can Hurt You by Nicola Maye Goldberg

A college student is murdered in the late 1990's and people who knew her or heard about her reflect on her murder.

Really disappointing.  It's not a mystery or suspense - the murder occurred years earlier, the killer served time briefly in a psychiatric facility and was released, he has a whole new life and family.  The characters either knew or heard about the victim.  Several people in the book know where the murderer is living, and at first I thought one of them would take revenge for the killing, but none of them do anything but ponder the meaning of her death.  The book is being heralded as the new Gone Girl (please, can we stop comparing everything to GG and just let GG be GG?), but it's nothing like that story.

About the best thing I can say about this book is that it's short.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in return for a review.

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

June 21, 2020

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

The unnamed narrator of Pizza Girl is 18 years old, Korean-American, pregnant, and single.  She lives with her mother and boyfriend who are supportive to the point of suffocation, and delivers pizzas at night.  Pizza Girl's father died a year earlier of alcoholism and as she works through her grief, she fears she is more like her father than she originally thought.  She thinks a lot about han, a Korean concept described as a sickness of the soul, an acceptance that life will be filled with sorrow and resentment.  As a pizza delivery girl, she encounters all kinds of people, and their lives seem perfect when compared to her own (until she learns that many of her customers are hiding dark secrets).  Delivering pizzas is just a job until a customer requests a pizza with pepperoni and pickles (how gross is that??).  The woman begins ordering the same pizza every week, and soon Pizza Girl is obsessed with the woman and her life.

The narrator hits new lows in characters making bad decisions and disturbing behavior:  unmarried, pregnant, no interest in college or a stable job, heavy drinking during pregnancy/heavy underage drinking, sexual confusion and obsession, theft, housebreaking, and just general aimlessness.  But the reader can't help feeling a certain tenderness toward this teenager and her raw emotions, her overall depression.  Small wonder that she continually grabs onto anyone or anything that interrupts her hopelessness.

There is a lot of stream of consciousness going on here, with the narrator frequently distracted by random thoughts.  The story and the main character were messier, more complicated and darker than I was expecting, especially with the colorful graffiti-like cover art.  I would have liked to know more about the family's background, their experience with racism as Korean immigrants,  There is some black humor but not enough to deflect the main character's overall depression.  I was expecting more from the ending, but there really wasn't any resolution.

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

June 18, 2020

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

Natalie Harper is a successful executive at a wine distribution company in northern California, until a horrendous tragedy upends her life.  She returns to San Francisco to care for her aging grandfather and try to figure out where her life is going.  On impulse, Natalie decides to quit her job (which she hates) and take over the family bookshop.  But the bookshop is in deep financial trouble, and she wonders if it is too late to rescue the store.

  

As I'm not a real fan of women's fiction or romance, I found the storyline somewhat predictable, as I pretty well figured out the rest of the story about 1/3 of the way through the book (who the love interest was, that Granddad was going to find buried treasure in the basement and save the bookshop, etc.).  There are too many coincidences that stretched credulity a little too far (a $12,000 military medal, a $19 million Tang dynasty vase, and a priceless set of original hand-colored Audubon bird books, all in the same building?  Which has frequent floods and earthquakes, yet all the artifacts are still in perfect condition?  The most famous children's author in America drops everything to do a reading for her little store?).  Unlike her previous novel (The Oysterville Sewing Circle) where the love interest shows up on the second page of the book, at least there was a little character development first.  This one really wasn't my style.

But if you are an avid romance reader or enjoy women's fiction, or want a happy ending where everything works out perfectly, you will enjoy Wiggs' latest novel, and to be fair, she is a very good writer, much better than many romance authors.  With all the upheaval and social unrest in the world right now, maybe a perfect happy ending isn't a bad thing.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in return for a review.

Cold Storage by David Koepp

June 17, 2020

Cold Storage by David Koepp

In 1987, two Pentagon operatives who specialize in neutralizing bioterrorism threats are sent to Australia with a bio-scientist.  Their mission is to investigate and neutralize a highly mutative organism capable of wiping out all life on the planet.  After one of the team dies freakishly, the sample they retrieve is buried deep in a little-used military base used for long-term storage in Atchison, KS.

Fast forward 32 years – Teacake and Naomi are two twenty-something security guards at the Atchison Storage Facility in Atchison, KS.  Teacake is an ex-con, Naomi is a single mom saving to go to veterinary college.  The storage facility is the same former military base where the government stashed things best forgotten, now converted to individual storage units for public use.  When the fungi escapes its containment unit, Roberto Diaz, one of the original operatives (now retired) is called out of retirement to stop the virus a second time.

Entertaining read with hints of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.  It gets a little confusing in the last 60 or so pages with the variety of characters coming together.  There are some pretty gross parts so it’s not a book to read on your lunch hour.

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

June 16, 2020

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

As the Civil War rages, slaves Hannie Gossett, her mother, and siblings are sent by their owner from Louisiana to his property in Texas, as a way to protect his assets.  But the relative sent to safeguard the slaves on their journey begins selling them off at the Texas towns they pass through.  Ten years after the end of the Civil War, Hannie still lives at the Gossetts’ Louisiana plantation, but as part of a group of sharecroppers who have worked to gain ownership of their land.  But the plantation owner has gone missing, and the sharecroppers fear that if he dies, his wife will burn the deeds to the sharecroppers’ property.  Hannie breaks into the main house, determined to find the deed, only to find that Mr. Gossett’s mixed race daughter Juneau Jane is there as well, searching for documents that will protect her and her mother (Mr. Gossett's mulatto "fancy woman").  Determined to track down Mr. Gossett or his business partner, Hannie disguises herself as a boy and travels with Gossett’s two daughters from Louisiana to Texas to try and locate one of the men, or at least find out what happened to Gossett.

Along the way, the girls discover a newspaper column called Lost Friends, which prints letters for people (mostly former slaves) seeking lost family members.  They begin to collect more stories from the people they meet on their quest, and Hannie vows to help as many of them as she can, while searching for her own lost family.

In a parallel story, Benny Silva takes a job as an English teacher in Augustine, Texas, the town founded by the Gossett family.  The school is woefully short of supplies, and she contacts Nathan Gossett, the heir to the Gossett house, about donating books from the Gossett library to the school.  Little do either of them suspect that they are opening up a long-sealed chapter of local history.

Like her previous novel (Before We Were Yours), Wingate shines a spotlight on a hidden or forgotten piece of history.  The newspaper excerpts printed between the chapters really humanize the true horror of slavery even among those who treated their slaves "well":  of men owning other people and selling them off with no more thought than they would their cattle, often being sold repeatedly; of the separation of families; of the lifelong desire and need to find those families again, with the search sometimes lasting over 40 years; and of the injustices that former slaves continued to suffer, even after freedom.

Moving and at times gut-wrenching, I highly recommend this historical novel to anyone who wants to learn more about unknown history and injustices that last to this day.