Julie's Review: The Accident

Author: Chris Pavone
Series: No
Publication Date: March 11, 2014
Publisher: Crown Publishing
Pages: 400
Obtained: publisher via netgalley
Genre: thriller
Rating: 4/5
Bottom Line: Insider look at publishing with a bit of espionage thrown in
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Summary: As dawn approaches in New York, literary agent Isabel Reed is turning the final pages of a mysterious, anonymous manuscript, racing through the explosive revelations about powerful people, as well as long-hidden secrets about her own past. In Copenhagen, veteran CIA operative Hayden Gray, determined that this sweeping story be buried, is suddenly staring down the barrel of an unexpected gun. And in Zurich, the author himself is hiding in a shadowy expat life, trying to atone for a lifetime’s worth of lies and betrayals with publication of The Accident, while always looking over his shoulder. Over the course of one long, desperate, increasingly perilous day, these lives collide as the book begins its dangerous march toward publication, toward saving or ruining careers and companies, placing everything at risk—and everyone in mortal peril. The rich cast of characters—in publishing and film, politics and espionage—are all forced to confront the consequences of their ambitions, the schisms between their ideal selves and the people they actually became. The action rockets around Europe and across America, with an intricate web of duplicities stretching back a quarter-century to a dark winding road in upstate New York, where the shocking truth about the accident itself is buried. ~crownpublishing.com

Review: You know those books where you can't really talk about the book without giving it away, yup you guessed it, The Accident is one of those books. Mr. Pavone definitely knows how to hook you in and keep you hooked.

The Accident gives the reader some insight in to how the publishing world works, with some espionage thrown in to make it even more intriguing. I highly doubt that every manuscript that lands across an agents or editors is a threat to their life. I do believe that there are some agents and editors who are looking for that manuscript to push them to the upper echelon or maybe rescue their career. There are a lot of characters and moving parts in the beginning of the book, but it becomes pretty clear who the "players" are even if you don't know the full picture.

Mr. Pavone has the gift of slowly revealing the pieces of the puzzle until the last piece is added and it all makes sense. It is a gifted storyteller than can make me gasp out loud when it all comes together. It is not the type of book where you get attached to the characters. It is a plot driven novel but that doesn't mean that the characters aren't developed, they are well-rounded. They have depth and layers to them. Plus you aren't always sure of their true intention which makes them even more interesting.

I enjoyed everything took place during a 24 hour period. It added to the intensity and urgency of the novel. For fans of thrillers, you won't want to miss The Accident.


This is the Hashtag Book for February. You can follow our discussion at #TheAccident on Twitter.





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Julie's Review: The Last Enchantments

Author: Charles Finch
Series: No
Publication Date: January 28, 2014
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Pages: 336
Obtained: publisher
Genre:  contemporary fiction
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line:Beautiful and lyrical novel about finding oneself during a crossroads in life
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Review: Oh how I loved The Last Enchantments. Oh how I wish I could experience it again for the first time! I've always been a bit fascinated with Oxford, so I was enthralled with the descriptions of the campus. It felt as if I could see the green grass and taste the lagers as the characters drank them. While Will is the main character and the novel was told from his perspective, the rest of the cast of characters are intriguing in their own right. Will is a spectacular breeding for an American but of course the Brits have more history and more money on their side. Most of them are privileged and Oxford is a stop-gap before they begin their professions. For Will, he just came off the Kerry campaign and is trying to figure out where he wants to go next in his life. Is politics for him? Should he be a professor? At Oxford he is studying the works of George Orwell. I should mention that when Will leaves for Oxford he's involved with the lovely, WASP-y Allison and notes it is only a year they will be apart. We all know that anything can happen in a year. Is Will self-involved? Yes but most 20 somethings are at this point in their lives.

The novel is told in reflection and of course there is always a chance to change the events in retrospect but I do feel that Will was baring his soul. I felt that he was being honest to his audience. Mr. Finch has a gift for prose. It was within the first page that I was hooked. I immediately fell for Will, Tom and even that crazy Anil. Will wore his heart/feelings on his sleeve with everyone he encountered. He wasn't without his faults. I found his obsession with Sophie to be a little much, especially as the novel went on.

What I found intriguing is how most of us go to college/university to expand our knowledge, get an education, get a job after school but what ends up happening is that we get involved in affairs of the heart and those take over the other pursuits. Mr. Finch captures that perfectly in The Last Enchantments. Sometimes writing a review for a book you loved is hard because you want to expound on all the reasons you loved it but they are inexplicably tied to the plot, which of course you don't want to reveal in your review.

I don't want to say this book is a coming of age because I reserve that for YA novels but it is a book about finding out who you are when your adult life is really just beginning. There are also some great quotes in there but they would take up too much space here.

If you are looking for a beautifully written novel about discovering who you are and your path in life, then I highly encourage you to pick up The Last Enchantments.


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Alice's Review: The Winter People

Author: Jennifer McMahon
Series: None
Publication Date: February 11, 2014
Publisher: Doubleday
Pages: 336
Obtained: Publisher via NetGalley
Genre:  Mystery, Thriller, Paranormal
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line: Wonderfully creepy
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Summary: West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter, Gertie. Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara's farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister, Fawn. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that suddenly proves perilous when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished without a trace. Searching for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked deeper into the mystery of Sara's fate, she discovers that she's not the only person who's desperately looking for someone that they've lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself. ~www.powells.com

 Review:  I don’t read stories about the occult.  I hate being scared.  I believe in ghosts but I don’t need to see one in confirm that belief.  When I picked up The Winter People, I didn’t know it was about the walking dead.  Had I know, I’m pretty sure I would have passed it up.

I was pulled into this story from the very first page.  I was engulfed in a mystery that was bizarre and brilliant.  This novel made me constantly question what was real and what lived in the dark corners of Ms. McMahon’s mind.  It was wonderful.  The story flows beautifully, jumping back and forth through time and characters with ease.  

I really enjoyed the characters with my favorites being Ruthie, her sister Fawn, and the heartbroken Katherine.  I think Ruthie was such a well-rounded girl.  It was great to see how she matured through the novel, how brave she became when there was nothing to do except be brave.  I loved how the sisters banded together to find answers.  I will always be amazed at what a person is willing to do for those they love.  They can be completely irrational, clinging to the smallest amount of hope.  Or they can take on the biggest challenges together and not give up until the truth is revealed.   

Katherine was wonderful as well.  She was a study in grief.  Her centric chapters left me sad and mournful of what she lost.   I felt her sorrow, her pain.  I loved that she channeled that angst in her art.  To me, she was the most authentic.  I felt the same way towards Sara Harrison.  Grief is an interesting emotion to write about, an author has to get it just right or else it comes across as unauthentic.  Ms. McMahon knows sorrow. 

This novel is straightforward.  Each chapter opens up the story a bit more, gradually feeding the reader information while building up tension until a masterful twist is exposed.   The Winter People was thoroughly creepy, and I couldn’t put it down.  And man, how many times did I wonder if something like this could be real.  It felt real.  Occasionally I read a novel that is so stinking good, I wish I was more eloquent in describing it.  I wish I had the words to convince you of the power of that story.  I take books I rate 5 very seriously and I searched and searched for something to question that rating.  I found nothing.  The Winter People is that good.

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Jenn's Review: The Cuckoo's Calling

Author: Robert Galbraith (Pseudonym), J.K. Rowling
Series: Cormoran Strike #1
Publication Date: April 30, 2013
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Pages: 455
Obtained: purchased
Genre:  mystery
Rating: 4.75
Bottom Line: a modern, classic English mystery
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Blurb:  A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Review:  This is a classic English detective novel in every sense of the phrase.  Rowling as Galbraith has taken it and modernized it beautifully.  ...and I found it hard to put down.

As with Harry Potter, the world created through the writing, though non-magical, is palpable.  You can't help but be pulled into the story.  But that is where the comparisons ends.  Galbraith is heavier and wordier; I even learned a few new words.  That said, however, it never seemed to be forced or cumbersome in any manner.  The prose are fluid, mellifluous and throughly entrancing.

Cormoran's trying hard to fit back into the world and every time he seems to almost have it together, it falls apart.  He is downtrodden, but not broken and it was easy to fall in with him.  Robin, on the other hand starts off a little fluffy but proves herself to be solid and resourceful.  I'm glad that she stands up to fiance about finding a job that she loves, even though it's not the pay or the ideal he holds.  Galbraith does a fabulous job of keeping Robin's relationship with Cormoran strictly platonic in this first novel, leaving room for it to grow but leaving the direction ambiguous.

The pacing is steady (it is not a thriller by any means) but never seemed sluggish.   The mystery itself doesn't seem very twisted, but appearances are deceiving.  The more Cormoran learns the more intriguing things become.  As the body count rises, you know Cormoran is on the correct trail, which is why the ending is so completely shocking. Galbraith leads you right up to the final reveal with three solid suspects. I thought I had it all figured out, but I didn't have a clue.

This is the beginnings of a beautiful series.  The next novel, The Silkworm, is due out in June and it's already on my wish list.

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Julie's Review: The Moon Sisters

Author: Therese Walsh
Series: No
Publication Date: March 4, 2014
Publisher: Crown Publishing
Pages: 336
Obtained: publisher
Genre:  contemporary fiction, mystical realism
Rating: 3.5/5
Bottom Line: Slow moving novel about how we define our selves and how that makes us define others
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Just get it at the library

Summary: This mesmerizing coming-of-age novel, with its sheen of near-magical realism, is a moving tale of family and the power of stories. After their mother's probable suicide, sisters Olivia and Jazz take steps to move on with their lives. Jazz, logical and forward-thinking, decides to get a new job, but spirited, strong-willed Olivia—who can see sounds, taste words, and smell sights—is determined to travel to the remote setting of their mother's unfinished novel to lay her spirit properly to rest. Already resentful of Olivia’s foolish quest and her family’s insistence upon her involvement, Jazz is further aggravated when they run into trouble along the way and Olivia latches to a worldly train-hopper who warns he shouldn’t be trusted. As they near their destination, the tension builds between the two sisters, each hiding something from the other, until they are finally forced to face everything between them and decide what is really important. ~powells.com  

Review: The Moon Sisters is a slow, character driven novel that centers around two sisters, Jazz and Olivia Moon. Jazz and Olivia couldn't be more different. Olivia is the dreamer and Jazz is the realist. OK, Jazz has a chip on her shoulder but as the story unfolds, it becomes evident why she has that chip. Olivia was the child her mother always wanted; Jazz was the child that cost her a lot in life. It was Jazz's plight that I connected to the most. Olivia drove me crazy. She definitely wasn't dealing with her grief in the healthiest way but given how she was coddled, I wouldn't expect her to.

Ms. Walsh slowly reveals things about each sister that makes you understand where both of them are coming from. Their mother was definitely bi-polar. You find this out by the letters she wrote her father and by the way both of her daughters detail her life. It was like everyone knew but no one wanted to acknowledge it or try to get her help. While it is pretty clear that their mom took her own life, Olivia refuses to believe it. She thinks it was an awful accident. She chooses to believe this because if she didn't she would be overcome with guilt. Both girls feel guilty but for very different reasons.

What Ms. Walsh does extremely well is the setting of the novel. I could feel myself walking through the woods with the group. I could feel myself trying to jump onto the train with Olivia. I could picture Hobbs and his odd coloration. I could feel the tension between Olivia and Jazz. Neither one of them understood each other or took the time to do that. They were very different and it wasn't until the end of the novel that they came to some sort of understanding. Ms. Walsh surrounded the Moon Sisters with some great secondary characters that helped to shed light on their relationship. It was also where the shoe dropped from the other foot, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

One thing that always irks me about sister novels is why they always have to be polar opposites? Sometimes being that different isn't so bad. I'd like someone to write a novel about sisters where they are similar enough to have conflict as well. Sometimes it is easier if you are polar opposite.


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Children's Corner: Bedtime is Canceled

Author: Cece Meng
Publication Date: November 6, 2012
Publisher: Clarion Books
Pages: 32
Obtained: purchased
Genre:  picture book

This is a cute book about what happens when two children's plans to cancel bedtime accidentally get taken as fact by the local paper.  Parents don't want to believe it, parental temper tantrums are thrown... and after a day without sleep the kids realize that though it may seem like a good, it doesn't really work in practice.

Aurélie Neyret's illustrations are lovely and tell so much more of the story than what's on the page.  This is one of those wonderful what-if books that make you giggle.  It's a fun bedtime read that reminds kiddos that bedtime really is a necessity.

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