The Perfect Neighbors

Fiction by Sarah Pekkanan.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In this group of neighbor ladies: one is still in love with her ex-husband, one is slightly bored with her current husband, one is helping her husband run for political office, and one is concealing a terrible secret...

This was a fun read!


I also read by this author: Catching Air

Simon Vs the Homo Sapien's Agenda

Fiction by Becky Albertalli


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

So...this was a young adult novel about a teenage boy who is afraid to tell his parents he is gay, and he is also trying to find true love.

The voice felt really authentic and the story was interesting. I am a little troubled by novels for teens with sex in them though, straight or gay....

Killing Monica

Fiction by Candace Bushnell.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I've read several novels by Candace Bushnell (her most famous is Sex and the City, which was a great book), and they are usually fun reads, but this one was a little disjointed. It's about a chick-lit author who is tired of writing about her glam-girl character and wants to kill her off. Hmmm... et tu, Candace?

It gets a single thumbs-up for holding my attention and having a killer title though.

BTW my seventeen-year-old daughter saw this book and thought it might be about murdering that character from Friends. It's not.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Fiction by Agatha Christie.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I just read Agatha Christie's autobiography and she said this was her very first shot at a detective novel. It was rejected a few times and then finally published, gaining her a contract to write more books and not much money. She rather describes this book something she just dashed off and forgot about until they agreed to publish it, and sort of characterizes her other novels as books which she'd churn out with a few months' work when she needed a bit of cash.

This did not jibe with the intricately plotted stories I remembered reading, so I thought I'd look at her first book again with all that in mind.

I have to conclude that she was just being self-deprecating, or was in fact an incredible literary genius, or both. This book is still fabulous one hundred years later.

The Seventh Mother

Fiction by Sherri Wood Emmons.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Eleven-year-old Jenny moves from place to place while her dad finds seasonal jobs all over the country. Sometimes a woman joins them for a bit, giving a little love to motherless Jenny, but none of them seem to want to stay for long in the transient lifestyle Jenny's dad enjoys. Then Jenny and her dad meet Emma, and Jenny dares to hope that this "seventh mother" will be the one who stays...

This was a good character story that took some surprising twists. I definitely recommend it!


I also read by this author: Prayers and Lies.

Imagine Me Gone

Fiction by Adam Haslett.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

See all those little golden and black-and-white circles on the cover of this book? That means it's a Smart People Book. I've read a few of these, and some are better than others, but they often have a certain style that (I believe) is supposed to seem lofty and intellectual. So this novel was no exception; it had a few of the usual affectations of Smart People Books, things I'm supposed to be intellectual enough to roll with.

1. The story jumps around in time without giving you any indication in the chapter headings of when it is taking place. As a Smart Person, I am supposed to take my cues from the text and discover if this is the past or present we are discussing, and how much time has elapsed since the last part.
2.  Some parts of the story take place completely inside the mind of one of the characters. However, it is not necessary for the author to enlighten the Smart Reader about these things. It is up to him or her to simply figure out if events really happened or were just imagined.
3. Quotation marks are optional. Smart People do not need such ridiculous grammatical conventions to know when someone is talking. Smart People can tell from the context if a character is speaking aloud or silently ruminating or whatever.

Unfortunately, I am not enough of a Smart Person and I find all this business a little exhausting.

All this being said, this was an interesting novel, albeit extremely dark in nature, which is also characteristic of a Smart Person book. Have you ever heard of HAPPY book winning an award? I think not. Still, the characters were believable and I wanted to know what happened to them.

I'm going to give this a tentative thumbs-up, but it's on the verge of a half up half down.

The Talisman

Fiction by Stephen King and Peter Straub.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was a long fantasy story. I enjoyed it, although it had some difficult parts. It was not nearly as bleak as the Gunslinger, and good did finally triumph over evil.


I also read recently by this (or rather, one of these) author(s): The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon