Fiction by Gregg Olsen
Amazon Prime Kindle Fiction by Rainbow Rowell.
In a world like ours, but just a little more fairy-tale-ish, a young man called Adam drops his phone off a bridge... and someone retrieves it. There's someone who lives in the mud under there. Is she an enchanted girl? A mermaid? A troll? Adam starts to talk to her, and learns that maybe she is just a person, like himself.
This was a nice little story that I downloaded for free with Amazon Prime Reading. I enjoyed it but it was too short.
I also read recently by this author: The Attachments
Fiction by Kate Quinn
Audible Original Fiction by Wendy Walker
I also listened to recently by Audible Originals: Discordia
Fiction by Freida McFadden
Abby is a career woman who longs to be a mother but can’t get pregnant on her own. Monica is her assistant at work who offers to be a surrogate mother.
Sam is Abby’s husband… who Monica wants to steal. This last bit is pretty obvious from the beginning, which gives the reader a bad case of “Oh-No-I-Can’t-Look-Syndrome.” ** Sometimes I can get past that syndrome and still enjoy the story but when it's heavily laced with "Geez-Catch-A-Clue-Already Syndrome," **** it's just too much
This book was okay but I had a lot of trouble getting past the predictability of the Evil Monica. (Hence the strong desire for main character Abby to CATCH A CLUE already!) To be honest, I skipped about 200 pages and read the ending.
I also read by this author: Brain Damage
**Oh-No-I-Can't-Look Syndrome
(See also The Last Thing She Ever Did by Gregg Olsen)
That's when you know a main character is making a major error in judgement that's going to have huge and terrible consequences.
****Geez-Catch-A-Clue-Already Syndrome
(I'm making this one up right now but I'm sure I'll find more examples later.)
This is when the main character's stupidity is SO obvious that you can no longer identify with/make excuses for them.
Fiction by Catriona Ward
This was another book that I hated but I can’t explain why without spoilers. (See also: I’m thinking of ending things.)
The story starts out with a creepy man and his cat, and a missing girl that he might have abducted. Then the sister of the missing girl tries to find out for herself for sure if he is a kidnapper. Except they are all crazy: the man, the sister, even the cat! Everything in this story is crazy.
Fiction by Wendy Corsi Staub
Fiction by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
This story opens with Justin, a fourteen-year-old black kid, walking home from the convenience store, listening to his iPod. But then a pair of white police officers come rushing around the corner, yelling at him to freeze, and Justin instinctively reaches for his pocket to turn off the music. By the time the police realize that what the kid had reached for wasn't a gun, Justin has been shot twice, and it's obvious that he's not the suspect they were looking for.
Another innocent black man shot by white police officers! A tragedy. For the media and most of the general population, this is a prime example of racial profiling gone wrong, and as poor Justin lies in a coma, he is treated more as a Cause than a person.
For Riley Wilson, a young black woman, this story could be her big break in TV journalism. But she also feels the human side of things, seeing her own brother Shaun when she looks at Justin. But as for Jen Murphy, a white woman who has been best friend with Riley since childhood, all she can see is that her husband was the police officer involved in the shooting.
This was a good story that gave you a lot to think about, really showing both women's perspectives.
Fiction by Laura Dave
Nonfiction by Anne Faidman
Fiction by Stephen King
This wasn’t really a “Stephen King” type of book, by which I mean it’s not set in the real world with weird and dark things happening. I’d call it a straight fantasy story, with an alternate universe of the Narnia/ Middle Earth style. So if you like that type of story, you’d like this one. I loved it!
The audiobook read by Bronson Pinchot is very good; I highly recommend it.
I also read recently by this author: Billy Summers
Fiction by Freida McFadden
Fiction by Freida McFadden
Fiction by Iain Reid
I did not like this book.
Without spoilers, I can't explain why, but UGH. Apparently I'm not the only one. The reviews are mixed between those who say, "I hated it," and those who say, "You only hated it because you're stupid. If you were smart like me, you'd love it."
Here's an interesting quote on goodreads.com from reviewer Edward Lorn:
This book is a perfect example of negative reviews selling a book. Specifically Shelbs's and Kells's reviews. I had to see what all the fuss was about. So, yeah, the negative reviews of this book sold me. I paid money for this book based solely on negative reviews. Some authors need to hear that. They need to let thats**tsink in. Are Shelbs and Kells stupid for not getting this book? Nope.
At least he doesn't think we're stupid, to be fair. But still.
Fiction by Max Barry
In this story, the US has taken over Australia and the UK, and Big Business Capitalism rules in all USA countries. People are literally identified by their jobs, giving us characters with amusing names like John Nike, Haley McDonalds, and Nathan Exxon-Mobil.
Hence, "Jennifer Government" is a woman called Jennifer who works for the government. In this extreme-capitalist world, the government has very little power; for example, if a person is murdered (and of course in this story several folks will be murdered) then his or her surviving family members must pay for the investigation into the crime and monetarily punish the perpetrators.
This author seems to be trying to make a social commentary on the evils of capitalism, but the book is so hyperbolic that it doesn't quite do that job. It is still an interesting and fun story, however, although it's not without some problems.
I think this review on audible.com by Steven Giovanni sums it up well:
Perhaps Max Barry might think that he has written a brilliant social commentary disguised as a crummy adventure story. It is actually the reverse -- a brilliant action adventure story masquerading as a clumsy social protest.
Fiction by Nella Larsen
This was an interesting story that came to my attention because they just made a netflix movie of it.
In 1927 Irene Redfield is an upper-class Negro in New York City, the wife of a doctor and the mother of two young sons. But her comfortable life is disrupted when she unexpectedly sees Clare Kendry, whom she had known as a girl in Chicago. Clare is a beautiful light-skinned woman, and she has chosen to pass for white, marrying a white man who says awful things like, "I don't dislike Negros, I hate them. They give me the creeps, the black scrimy devils."
Literally, this guy says that, in front of Irene and Clare and another woman, ALL OF WHOM are black and he doesn't know it. Clare laughs it off but it's obvious she is hurt. As the story progresses, the reader can see how isolated Clare feels in her marriage, and how she may regret her choices.
This was a short novel but very emotionally moving.
