Teaser Tuesdays: Never Go Back by Lee Child

Posted on March 25, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

never go back

Call me crazy, but I think this might be the sexiest Reacher novel yet. It’s early days, of course; I’ve only just begun. I had a long car trip alone up to a mountain bike race at some of my most favorite trails in Texas, and chose to start this latest Reacher book (narrowly edging out Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, which I think is up next). I am not disappointed. For one thing, I was thrilled to learn early on that Reacher has been recalled – he’s back in the army! This can only mean excitement…

My teaser for today:

Reacher led the way. Sullivan went next. The tall guy brought up the rear. They walked in single file, through the dog-legs, left and then right, to the cell door, which was unlocked and unbolted, because Reacher wasn’t in it. Reacher pulled it open and held it for the others. The tall guy smiled and took the door from him and gestured: after you. He was dumb, but not brain damaged.

Stay tuned; I don’t think this will take me long.

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did not finish: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (audio)

Posted on March 5, 2014 by pagesofjulia

gone girlI couldn’t do it, friends. This is a very well-known and much-loved novel of the last few years, and the word on the street is DON’T READ ANYTHING ABOUT IT before you read it! So I will say very little. Repeat: this is a spoiler-free, very short review.

There is a mystery. I did not read far enough to solve it. I am not very bothered by this. The reason I put it down so easily was: I didn’t like the characters. Possibly this is part of the trickiness of the book somehow; this book is famously tricky (I believe there is something about an unreliable narrator? but there are two narrators? I don’t know). But for me, the big failure was that I didn’t like these people so I couldn’t care about them enough to keep reading (listening) through the fact that they annoyed me very much. That’s all.

My audio version read by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne was fine. They read the characters as obnoxious people, which seems to have been right on point, so I guess they did their jobs.

No rating; I only made it about 1/5 of the way through, so I’ll leave it at that.

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book beginnings on Friday: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (audio)

Posted on February 28, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

gone girl

Please don’t shoot me. I am not in love with Gone Girl at its beginning. (Deep breaths.) This book has received SUCH enthusiasm – not least from a good friend of mine – as well as critical acclaim, that I worry at my hesitations. But I own them.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with.

Not much there; but let me say it was the second paragraph where I was first annoyed. So I called Liz and I said, Liz – how much time should I invest in this book that you loved and that I am thoroughly exasperated by? (This was 36 minutes in, via audiobook.) And she said, for stories with unreliable narrators I think you should hang in longer than average. Okay. I’m trying.

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movie: Jack Reacher (2012)

Posted on February 5, 2014 by pagesofjulia

To review: I love Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels (no matter how far-fetched); like many “Reacher Creatures,” I was upset to learn that Tom Cruise would be playing him on the big screen. Where Reacher is something like 6’6″ and a looming giant and blonde, Cruise is short-ish and dark-haired. Plus I don’t really like Tom Cruise all that much. Husband is with me on all counts.

therefore this is a little insulting

therefore this is a little insulting

For these reasons we had made a point of not watching this movie up to now; Husband turned it down as the free movie on an airplane last year. But then came a quiet night at home when his channel-surfing was making my teeth grind, and it was free via some sort of movie-playing widget on the television (this is not my area of expertise), so what the hell.

Jack Reacher is based on the Reacher novel One Shot, set in Philly, in which an ex-army guy named Barr is accused in an apparent open-and-shut case: six shots were fired from a sniper rifle in a parking garage, and five civilians lay dead. Barr won’t speak to the police except to ask for Jack Reacher. Retired army cop Reacher is impossible to find, but lucky for the cops, shows up on his own to look into the case. Teamed up with Barr’s defense attorney – despite being rather convinced of Barr’s guilt himself – Reacher investigates, and finds (naturally) that things are more complex than they appear. In fact, there is a conspiracy, something Reacher’s fans will be familiar with. For that matter, Reacher’s fans will recognize all the elements: intrigue – problems with authority – fistfights and gunfights and ex-military camaraderie – explosive final scenes.

I had few and minor quibbles, and my reading of One Shot was so long ago that I didn’t fuss over digressions from the original plot. And despite a slight antipathy for Tom Cruise, Husband and I were both able to sort of …let that go and get into the movie. In other words, I had some hesitations but ended up enjoying this movie more than expected. Reacher’s pithy wit translated well to the screen, and the suspense and action were there and pretty solid – in spite of a totally ridiculous car chase (I mean REALLY ridiculous. besides which, in the books, Reacher is a self-acknowledged poor driver and rarely does it). I especially appreciated the moment when the Marine recognizes Reacher from his shooting skills, and that scene does come from the book.

Conclusion: I had concerns going in, but I confess I enjoyed this film. Cruise was tolerable; the humor, wit, action and suspense were all there; the plot is not to be argued with (says this Reacher fan). Touche, Tom Cruise.

Rating: 7 shots fired.

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Snowblind by Christopher Golden

Posted on February 3, 2014 by pagesofjulia

A full-throttle paranormal thriller starring a variety of complex, likable characters.

snowblind

Coventry, Mass., was expecting a snowstorm, but nothing like the one that blows through the opening pages of Christopher Golden’s Snowblind. The novel begins with small-town residents managing their relationships, jobs and businesses, readying for the possibility of power outages and blocked roads. Just as readers are drawn into the lives of the diverse sympathetic characters, though, they’re ripped away from us–and something more terrifying (and more cognizant) than ice and wind is involved.

Fast forward a dozen years. The survivors of the first storm–men and women still mourning their loved ones–are faced with a disturbingly similar weather pattern headed their way. Coventry is still haunted by the unexplained deaths, and now the lost townspeople are coming back to try to warn the survivors of the returning danger. Families will have to pull together quickly to avoid a second tragedy.

A fast-paced, thoroughly engrossing supernatural thriller, Snowblind employs likable, multifaceted characters linked by their small-town connections and a tragic past. Golden’s writing is suspenseful and action-driven; it’s not ornate, but he still takes time to develop stories about characters’ relationships and backgrounds that will engage readers. The terror evoked is visceral and real and, along with a fairy-tale element and realistic backdrop, grips readers from the very first pages. Snowblind is a tale of trauma, individual responsibility and, ultimately, redemption.

This review originally ran in the January 28, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 6 snow plows.

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Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (audio)

Posted on January 24, 2014 by pagesofjulia

heart-shaped boxWell, NOS4A2 is a hard act to follow. Although of course, Joe Hill wrote that one second; I’m out of order.

Heart-Shaped Box is about an aging rock star. Judas Coyne is mid-fifties when we meet him; he’s a little melancholy, a little rough around the edges, a little broody over his ex-wife and two dead bandmates. His collection of the obscurely macabre makes him an easy mark for an online auction offering a ghost for sale; but when he buys the dead man’s suit – which is supposed to come with the dead man’s spirit – he gets more than he paid for. The ghost turns out to be no stranger to Jude, but the step-father of an ex-girlfriend he called Florida. She was just one in a string of much younger women who he calls by the states they hail from; his current live-in is Georgia, and it turns out that by buying the ghost, Jude has gotten her into a pickle, as well.

Judas (real name Justin) and Georgia (real name Marybeth) will battle the dead man together, and in so doing, they’ll have to confront some metaphorical ghosts as well: her youthful traumas, his lifelong ones, and his dying father he hasn’t seen in 30 years. Jude’s two dogs, big beautiful German shepherds named Angus and Bon, play a role as well. They travel from a New York farm to the southern homes of Florida, Georgia – and Jude himself, who has been trying to outrun Louisiana all his life. It’s no coincidence, I think, that all his state-named conquests come from south of the Mason-Dixon line.

There are many strengths in this book, and I can’t help but think of them in terms of Hill’s outstanding second novel and the work of his larger-than-life father (ahem), for better or worse. Like King, Hill excels at creating believable worlds: Jude’s heavy metal rock stardom, the goth chicks he dates, and the world of the dead. As in NOS4A2, the creepiness of the supernatural, the other, is both deliciously excruciating, and entirely real – fully wrought, finely detailed, rooted in our true greatest fears, and with a sense of style. I really liked his characters, too: complex and ambiguous but ultimately people we want to root for.

I did have a few concerns here and there. I worried that Hill might struggle to keep up the tension. When I’d already had my heart raised by several repeated near-deaths and checked to see that I was about 1/3 of the way through, I wondered. But it turned out I should never have doubted! Because not long after that came the moment – I was walking home from the train and stopped in my tracks in an “oh shit” moment where he racheted things up and oh, good, we’re back in the world of the man who wrote NOS4A2. And in hindsight I like the time we spent prior to that moment, too; it was all necessary to build up the background that paid off in the end, so my bad, Mr. Hill. Hats off.

Later I had a few moments of doubt when Georgia and Florida began to be conflated… I wondered if it wasn’t a little misogynistic to have these two young women (who each have a lot of personality and personal history to build them out) begin to merge into one. It was a plot point, and not an accident born of Hill’s inherent prejudice, which helps some. I’m a little ambivalent on that point.

But really, that’s searching for criticisms. This supernatural, psychological thriller rattled my bones and kept me rapt; and I loved the cultural references (there’s Stephen King again) and strong sense of place(s), which is another of my favorite things in novels. I’ve left the plot purposefully pretty blank here because I want you to enjoy it for yourself: if you love being frightened by a truly well-put-together feat of storytelling with great characters, you’ll love Heart-Shaped Box. Um, you should be okay with blood, too.

Rating: 8 swings of the razor blade.

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Maximum Shelf: The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

Posted on January 22, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on January 15, 2014.

weight of blood

“That Cheri Stoddard was found at all was the thing that set people on edge, even more so than the condition of her body.” So opens Laura McHugh’s delightfully and darkly disturbing debut novel, The Weight of Blood. The town of Henbane is agitated because it is so good at keepings its secrets–and bodies are so easy to hide in the twisted, wooded Ozark Mountains.

The story begins with the first-person perspective of 18-year-old Lucy Dane. Lucy has it pretty good: she has a reliable best friend, a loving relationship with her father, and neighbors who make up an extended family of sorts. And she’s just begun working in her uncle’s store, where she gets to rub elbows with the sexy Daniel. But Lucy is troubled by the disappearance of her sort-of friend Cheri, a developmentally disabled schoolmate whose freshly dead body was only recently discovered–a year after she went missing. She’s also still troubled by the unexplained disappearance of her mother, Lila, who walked out of the house carrying a handgun and nothing else when Lucy was a year old.

The perspective then shifts to that of Lila herself as a young woman, newcomer to the Danes’ hometown of Henbane. Henbane is almost a character unto itself, insular, suspicious and largely unmarked by passing time. For a fee, residents can avoid a “city burial” (embalmment and the involvement of the authorities) in favor of a private grave-digging service. And the local lawyer will advise you not to trust local police until you find out who’s related to whom. It is anything but a friendly destination for a damaged teenager like Lila, who immediately runs up against the Dane brothers: the older Crete, who runs several businesses including a farm and a store, and his little brother, Carl, who becomes her husband before she turns 19. Superstitions have her labeled a witch before she’s unpacked her few belongings.

Through Lila’s eyes, the reader will find out slightly more about her background than Lucy knows, but Lila works hard to remain a mystery to both the reader and Henbane locals, including Carl. The perspectives continue to alternate. While Lucy keeps the reader up to date on current goings-on, it is through Lila that we begin to learn the ugly secrets that Henbane keeps. Other characters, too, get occasional chapters told from their point of view (in omniscient third person; only Lila and Lucy get first-person treatment), and one of the strengths of The Weight of Blood is that its engaging, complex, fully wrought characters extend beyond its protagonists. Lucy’s best friend, Bess, and Bess’s mother, Gabby (who was, in turn, best friend to Lila); Carl and Crete; the love interest, Daniel; a surrogate grandmother; and a local drug dealer all get sensitive handling and character development. But it is the measured building of tension and the careful doling out of hints of evil that star, as Lucy’s coming-of-age experience brings the classic bildungsroman to meet the gritty thriller.

While helping Daniel clean out an old trailer belonging to her uncle, Lucy discovers a clue: a lost item that she knows used to belong to Cheri, because Lucy gave it to her. Next, Bess overhears a reference that she shouldn’t have. With Daniel’s cautious support, Lucy begins to look into Cheri’s death, and the matter of where she spent that unaccounted-for year. But, of course, in a town this small, where everyone recognizes headlights and knows where a particular truck might be heading, investigations are dangerous. Like her mother before her, Lucy is told outright that it would be risky to go to the police for help. And as she probes the question of Cheri’s fate, and finds it apparently linked to her mother’s, Lucy will be disturbed at how close her inquiries lead her to home.

Carl and Crete, the Dane brothers, are heir not only to the off-the-books grave-digging business, the combined local grocery store and restaurant, and various secrets, but also to mental illness and corruption. As its title suggests, The Weight of Blood is concerned with the strength of our bonds to our family, and the tension between biological ties of blood and the families we choose for ourselves. In a remarkably convincing portrayal of young adulthood, Lucy allows McHugh to explore themes of loyalty: where it’s owed, and to what extremes.

The atmosphere McHugh evokes in this masterful debut is wonderfully spooky, exemplifying Southern noir with a backwoods mountain twist and a matter-of-fact willingness to bury its dead out back and walk away. Taut pacing, lively suspense and atmosphere are the strongest points of a novel that also has an engaging plot and beautifully built, sympathetic characters to its credit. For fans of dark, suspenseful, well-structured thrillers, The Weight of Blood is a delicious and nail-biting treat.

Rating: 7 baby possums.

Come back tomorrow for my interview with McHugh!

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Teaser Tuesdays: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Posted on January 21, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

heart-shaped box

I am enjoying Joe Hill’s first novel, as read by Stephen Lang. And today I wanted to share with you a much longer teaser than usual, because I liked this passage so much. I wonder if I’m the only reader who cringed a little.

Jude was aware that he belonged to an increasingly small segment of the society, those who could not quite fathom the allure of the digital age. Jude did not want to be wired. He had spent four years wired on coke, a period of time in which everything seemed hyperaccelerated, as in one of those time-lapse movies, where a whole day and night pass in just a few seconds. Traffic reduced to lurid streaks of light. People transformed into blurred manikins, rushing jerkily here and there. Those four years now felt more like four bad crazy sleepless days to him, days that had begun with a New Year’s Eve hangover and ended at crowded smoky Christmas parties where he found himself surrounded by strangers trying to touch him and shrieking with inhuman laughter. He did not ever want to be wired again. He had tried to explain the way he felt to Danny once, about compulsive behavior and time rushing too fast and the internet and drugs. Danny had only lifted one of his slender, mobile eyebrows and stared at him in smirking confusion. Danny did not think coke and computers were anything alike. But Jude had seen the way people hunched over their screens, clicking the refresh button again and again, waiting for some crucial if meaningless hit of information, and he thought it was almost exactly the same.

Sound like anyone you know?

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book beginnings on Friday: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Posted on January 17, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

heart-shaped box

I’m sure you will recall that I was entranced by Joe Hill’s NOS4A2; so naturally I enter his debut novel with high hopes. It begins:

Jude had a private collection.

He had framed sketches of the Seven Dwarfs on the wall of his studio, in between his platinum records. John Wayne Gacy had drawn them while he was in jail and sent them to him. Gacy liked golden-age Disney almost as much as he liked molesting little kids; almost as much as he liked Jude’s albums.

I’d say that’s a fairly impactful few lines, considering 1) the mention of a well-known serial killer and 2) the implication that our man Jude is a famous musician of the creepy variety. As you might guess, the following paragraphs describe further items in his collection; and none are as benign as this first one, a series of Disney-themed sketches. I’m on board so far!

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Rosarito Beach by M.A. Lawson

Posted on January 9, 2014 by pagesofjulia

A sexy renegade DEA agent’s past resurfaces at the worst possible moment in a new series from (a barely disguised) Mike Lawson.

rosarito

Mike Lawson, creator of the Joe DeMarco thrillers (House Odds et al.), uses the pen name M. A. Lawson to launch a new series, Rosarito Beach, with a new protagonist: DEA agent Kay Hamilton. Hamilton brings a take-no-prisoners attitude to her investigations, and though it’s clear she makes a better field agent than supervisor, she’s assigned to lead a team in Southern California investigating Caesar Olivera, the boss of a major Mexican drug cartel. After arresting the kingpin’s little brother, Tito, Hamilton’s main concern becomes keeping him locked up. Even after Tito is transferred to the brig of a vast Marine base, however, Caesar’s army threatens.

Hamilton dislikes authority figures, enjoys a drink or four, picks fights with every other law enforcement agency in town and knows exactly how to use her good looks and hot body to her advantage. She follows her own personal code, pleased to be beholden to no one except herself, involved with her career and personal pursuits–mainly her sex life–until a mystery from her distant past resurfaces. This new addition to her short list of concerns reorders Hamilton’s priorities and drives her to actions, and crimes, she never thought possible. The DEA fights to keep Tito locked up, the cartel arms itself for action and Hamilton rejects protocol in an accelerating race toward the end game, which concludes with all the fireworks and upheaval a thriller fan craves.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the January 3, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 5 stiletto heels.

To expand a bit on my review, above: this thriller was suspenseful, had pace and momentum, and kept me interested and engaged. Its fault (and the reason my rating isn’t higher) relates to the caricatures of the characters. Hollywood-style, they were all beautiful, had smokin’-hot bods, and dressed like magazine spreads. Similarly, the hero’s coldly detached interest in sex without strings struck me as unrealistic and a little stereotyped – career-obsessed woman not interested in relationships but able to seduce her way into the most highly-guarded yadda yadda. There was a cartoon element to it, is what I’m saying. On the other hand, though, I stayed up late reading avidly to see what would happen next. So I may have rolled my eyes, but Lawson gets the win in the end.

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