False Witness by Karin Slaughter

I'm plugging away at the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge even though there's no way I'm going to finish it. False Witness by Karin Slaughter is a book that features a character with chronic pain AND the audiobook was available immediately for me on the Libby app when I was doing yet another road trip. Do we think Karin Slaughter is her real name or a pseudonym? 

In this thriller, Leigh and Calli are sisters. They are close as they both survived a childhood with their abusive mother. When they are young teens, they do something (sort of) bad 

(note: this is a morally grey area if you think what they did was bad and I honestly don't think it was, but I don't want to give away spoilers)

and they get away with it without any legal consequences. That is until years later when Leigh is a lawyer and Calli is a heroin addict and their past comes back to haunt them. Thriller things ensure.

Look, this is a good book. It's fast-paced and well-written. But maybe, just maybe, listening to a story about sisters who truly love one another and are devoted to each other was not the right choice for me at this exact moment in time. (If you're new around here, I have a tumultuous relationship with my sister, my mother died earlier this year, and so everything surrounding my family of origin is difficult.) ANYWAY. I found some scenes really hard to listen to. Really hard. There's graphic (GRAPHIC) depictions of sexual violence; violence violence, including guns; child abuse and neglect; pandemic stuff; and drug abuse. This is not for the faint of heart and I'm slowly coming to the realization that perhaps I *am* the faint of heart. 

 

4/5 stars, but be forewarned

Things I looked up:

Vince Dooley (Spring 2021 - Chapter 1) - an American college football coach. He was the head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs from 1964 to 1988, as well as the University of Georgia's (UGA) athletic director from 1979 to 2004.

viviparous (Spring 2021 - Chapter 4) - there are two definitions, one in zoology and one in botany

• (of an animal) bringing forth live young that have developed inside the body of the parent.
• (of a plant) reproducing from buds that form plantlets while still attached to the parent plant, or from seeds that germinate within the fruit. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

his hat in his hand (Spring 2021 - Chapter 10)

colorful hat on her head (Spring 2021 - Chapter 11)

his hat in his hands (Summer 2005)

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Are you the faint of heart? Do you read a lot of thrillers?

Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke

Sarah from the podcast Sarah's Bookshelves talked about Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke in her "Summer Circle Back" episode and I was sold. I am not always on the same page as Sarah about all books, but thought I'd give this one a try. 

Katherine Cole was found fleeing the scene of an exclusive private club after four powerful men were poisoned. She's on trial for their murders. But did she do it?

We follow five men in Katherine's life - her childhood friend, her lover, her father, a journalist, and her lawyer - as we investigate what really happened that evening. And what we learn is that no one knows the true Katherine.

I think this is a clever twist on how women are silenced in this world. This story could have been told from her perspective or her mother's perspective, but Cloke made the decision to use men as the device for framing Katherine's life. And it's an interesting way to do it, to be honest. They all have their own biases and frames about what happened and how she would act. 

It's super fast-paced and each of the POVs was distinct, so it was easy to switch from one voice to the next. 

I'd love to discuss the ending with people, too!

4.5/5 stars - A good, interesting mystery if you're into the more psychological side of things than the detective looking for clues.

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Line of note:

It was a superpower you had, choosing what to worry about. It felt like most of the time, you chose nothing. Worries came for me instead, dug themselves into my brain. (page 195)

Things I looked up:

"Great 8" animals of the Great Barrier Reef (page 12) - Giant clam, manta ray, Maori wrasse, clownfish, sharks, whales, turtles, potato cod

cockscomb plant whose flowers looked like brains (page 12) - Cockscomb cultivars have coral or brain-looking blooms that are often large and heavy so they must often be staked. They grow between 12 and 36 inches tall.

Celosia King Coral. Photo credit: Burpee

Hat mentions (why hats?):

tinfoil hat brigade

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Have you ever read a book by Nicci Cloke or her pseudonym Phoebe Locke? Do you like a good psychological thriller?

The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni

I first heard of The Puzzle Master from Catherine on Sarah's Bookshelves podcast. Catherine and I are pretty in sync (except for her obsession with mythological retellings), so I thought this might suit me. 

Mike Brink suffered a brain injury playing football that left him with an incomparable ability to create and solve puzzles.  He's just living his life with his dog Conundrum (Connie) when he's asked to go visit Jess Price, a woman in prison for murdering her boyfriend. Price's psychiatrist asks Mike if Mike can solve some of the puzzles Price is creating. And the next thing you know, we're in a more literary da Vinci Code. 

Look, call me basic. I don't care. You know what? I have fond memories of listening to the audiobook of The daVinci Code driving from Minnesota to Michigan and back. I liked this book. Did I actually understand what was going on? Not for most of it, no. LOL. Was I able to solve the puzzles? Absolutely not. But did I enjoy every page of it? YES. Yes, I did.  I'm going to read the sequel, too.

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

...it had been his father's truck, one of the few things he'd held on to after his death, and he couldn't bear to let it go. It broke down all the time, but Brink accepted the truck's flaws the way one accepts the weaknesses of a beloved old dog: with tolerance and a sense of the end, sad but inevitable, looming ahead. (page 18-19)

Everything about this passage made me sad.

He didn't trust her. Anyone who didn't allow dogs in her house had something wrong with her. (page 149)

Preach it. 

Things I looked up:

harmonic divisor number (page 32) 

To start, I have to explain harmonic numbers. The n-th harmonic number is the sum of the reciprocals of the first n natural numbers. Starting from n=1, the harmonic sequence is 1, 3/2, 11/6, 25/12,...

A harmonic divisor number is a positive integer whose divisors have a harmonic mean that is an integer. Consider the number 6. It's divisors are 1, 2, 3, and 6. To figure out the harmonic mean, you'd take 4 (the number of divisors) and divide by the reciprocals of each divisor. 

Since the result of 2 is an integer, 6 is a harmonic divisor number!

triangular number (page 32) - counts objects arranged in an equilateral triangle

Størmer number (page 32) - positive integer n for which the greatest prime factor of the number squared plus one is greater than or equal to 2n.

The first few Størmer numbers are:

1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, ...

So if we look at the number 5 for instance, if we square it and add one, we get 26. The prime factors of 26 are 1, 2, and 13. 13 is the largest and that's greater than 2 x 5, so it's a Størmer number. 

magic number in physics (page 32) - a number of nucleons (either protons or neutrons, separately) such that they are arranged into complete shells within the atomic nucleus. As a result, atomic nuclei with a "magic" number of protons or neutrons are much more stable than other nuclei. The seven most widely recognized magic numbers as of 2019 are 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126.

As this has veered off from math, I have no idea what this means. 

Mersenne Prime (page 38) - I knew this sounded familiar. I looked it up in this review. 

Bard's Fisher Center (page 136) - Performing arts theater in Dutchess County, New York with an odious design by Frank Gehry

kepi (page 206) - a French military cap with a flat top and horizontal brim

Lindau Gospels (page 257) - an illuminated manuscript in the Morgan Library in New York, which is important for its illuminated text, but still more so for its treasure binding, or metalwork covers, which are of different periods. 

Book of Hours (page 257) - Christian prayer books, which were used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages, and as a result, they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. 

Abraham Abulafia (page 257) - born in 1240, a major Jewish mystic, and the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah (I could not tell from the book if this was a real person or not!)

Ricardian contract (page 318) - as invented by Ian Grigg in 1996, is a method of recording a document as a contract at law, and linking it securely to other systems, such as accounting, for the contract as an issuance of value

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Brink picked up a photo and saw a portly man with a neat beard, one arm around a woman with a large-brimmed hat decorated with stuffed birds...(page 148)

They removed their overcoats and their hats and joined us at the table. (page 199)

***************

Was that too much math? Would you read a book like this? 

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

In my quest to find anything as great as An Elderly Woman is Up to No Good, I stumbled upon Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn which has the premise that four women have been assassins for an organization called The Museum for forty years, but they are targeted for assassination themselves and they have to figure out how to save their lives and their reputations. 

This book had a super slow start, to be honest. I feel like Raybourn could have spent more time developing the characters because I found all four of them to be sort interchangeable, but once I realized that it didn't really matter the difference between each woman, I just went with the flow and it became a fun thriller.

Don't get me wrong. This is no An Elderly Woman is Up to No Good, but they can't all be that amazing. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:
"She's too old to be a cougar. She's a saber-toothed tiger." (page 54)

I don't care for "jokes" about age and this one made me sort of sad.

That's the thing about being a sixty-year-old woman - no one notices you unless you want them to. That fact doesn't do your ego any favors, but in cases like this, it was damned handy. (page 55)

Right? I'm not in my 60s, but I learned that as soon as I turned 35, not a single person would ever pay me an iota of attention. That's fine with me!

"I'm a woman. Guilt is our birthright. Guilt if we want to be mothers, guilt if we take the Pill instead or choose to abort. Guilt if we stay home with our kids or guilt if we work. Guilt if we sleep with a man, guilt if we say no. Guilt if we're luck enough to survive for no good reason." (page 186)

I feel like this was a pretty succinct way of talking about the double-blind of womanhood. 

It was all beginning to feel a bit too easy, and I was a little relieved when we hit a snag. I'm not a pessimist, but all jobs have complications and it's better to get them out of the way early. (page 254)

Interesting! Do you feel this way? I actually feel like when things run smoothly it means I planned everything well!

Things I looked up:
...she realizes she will be watched to see if she makes a habit of going off piste. (page 176)

Taking place or situated away from prepared ski runs. I guess it's not surprising that I didn't know this turn of phrase.

...old glass carboy...(page 213) - a rigid container anywhere from 4 to 60 liters, used for transporting liquids and in-home fermentation of beverages

...blond hair swept back and held in place with a diamond clip in the shape of a parteiadler. (page 233) - eagle used to symbolize the Nazi party

flokati rug (page 266) - woven wool rug, shaggy in appearance, thick and soft

ikebana (page 346) - the art of beautifully arranging cut stems, leaves, and flowers in vases and other containers that evolved in Japan

Hat mentions (why hats?):
She set an upturned silk top hat at her feet, displaying the shredded scarlet silk lining and dropping in a few coins to give passersbys a hint. (page 142)

...closing the screen on her calico and its tiny top hat. (page 193)

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

I listened to the audiobook for Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera, narrated by January LaVoy and Will Damron over the course of three days. It was so good that I kept wanting to listen to it, so I took the dog for extra long walks and vacuumed the floors more than necessary.

Lucy returns to her Texas hometown for her grandmother's birthday party, even though everyone in the town thinks she killed her best friend Savvy five years ago. But there's a podcaster, the smug Ben Owens, who is currently airing a podcast about Savvy's death and Lucy says she'll help him, even if it reveals that she is the actual killer. 

The book alternates between scenes told from Lucy's point of view and scenes from the podcast. In the audiobook, the music choice for the podcast scenes was SPOT-ON. The first time I heard the music, I reached for my phone to fast-forward because I hate podcast music. LOL. 

If I had read this, I might have thought "perfectly fine thriller," but the audiobook really made this book for me. The narrators did such a fabulous job with all the voices for all the characters and I can't stress to you how perfect I though the music was. I feel like this is an example of an audiobook improving on the book.  I kept trying to find a few minutes here and there to listen to this. No notes. 

5/5 stars

Lines of note:

Sometimes you meet a girl who is just like your soulmate. Not in a romantic way, but in a friend way, which can almost be more intense. You could tell that Savvy and Lucy were in one of those intense friend soulmate relationships. (timestamp 1:34:09)

Bestest Friend and I joke a lot that it would be easier if we were lesbians because then we could have just gotten married and that would have made our lives a lot easier. Alas. I love and adore my husband, but if forced to pick him or Bestest Friend at knifepoint, I'm not sure either of them would be happy with the choice I would make.

She's one of those women who can do an effortless messy bun and I dislike that about her. (timestamp 5:51:51)

The way this narrator said this line made me guffaw. Yeah, how can some people look like that when they're barely put together?!

Hat mention (why hats?):

Large men in cowboy hats gawked openly at me. (timestamp 6:35:05)

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Do you have a book that you think is sheer perfection in audiobook format?

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

 

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell is a psychological thriller that casts doubt on every word you're reading on the page. Two women, Alix and Josie, meet at a club, both celebrating their forty-fifth birthdays. A few days later they meet again and Alix, a podcaster, can't resist making a podcast about Josie's turbulent life. Soon Josie is staying uninvited at Alix's house and we're given clues that things are not going to turn out well.

There are some legitimate criticisms of this book. There's not a lot of thought about mental illness in his book, it victim blames a child who is sexually abused, the ableism in the book is rampant (although realistic) and its depiction of female friendship as toxic is not the awesomest.

But I still find it compelling. I found the framing device of the podcast/Netflix documentary smart, the characters themselves were engrossing, and I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. Now, I do feel the need to say that I don't read a ton of thrillers, so maybe all of this is perfectly predictable to those of you who read these regularly, but I found twist after twist to be shocking. 

4.5/5 stars

Line of note:

She tries to make her face look soft, but it’s difficult because inside she feels all hard edges and spikes and darkness. (location 2413)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Had his high-vis vest on, holding his hard hat in his hand. (location 590)

Alix’s hair is under a hat, just one strand escaped, kicked across her forehead by the wind. (location 1170)

They’re casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts; they all have tattoos and one of them wears a beanie hat. (location 2102)

The girl in the beanie hat speaks. (location 2118)

Her hair is tucked inside a straw hat, also from Sainsbury’s, and she’s wearing red lipstick for the first time in her life, which makes her look even less like herself. (location 2770)

Things I looked up:

bottarga (location 63) - a delicacy made of salted, cured fish roe 

verrucas (location 2065) - a type of wart that affect the bottom of the feet

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

Birchie's enthusiasm for Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent was infectious and I was so excited when it came in to the library pretty quickly. 

Within the first couple of chapters, you're going to know if this book is for you. This recap has minor spoilers for the first chapter. Sally Diamond took her father literally when he told her to put him in the trash when he died and now she's in the center of a furor. There are things that come to light that Sally had no real say in, but do directly impact her life. And thus a mystery begins to unravel.

There are some challenging themes and scenes in this book (violence against women and children, including sexual, racism, ableism), so I do not think this book is for everyone. But. I thought it was readable and I didn't guess any of the twists! I think I have to come clean with you and admit that I am not great at figuring out twists in most circumstances, so maybe that's not the best selling point. I just thought the plot was riveting and well done. 

I also would like to say that while Sally does make some unusual decisions and she's portrayed as "strange" (sort of like Eleanor in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, only Sally isn't an alcoholic jerk, merely immature and unaware of social cues), I found myself nodding in agreement with most things Sally does and says. There was something about the way everyone reacted to Sally that sort of upset me and I think I'm just taking it personally because I am  somewhat a Sally. Fine. I'm strange. I'll own it. I don't think it was strange that she wore a red beret to a funeral, I don't think it's strange that she took her father's "jokes" as literal, and I don't think it's strange that Sally brings to earplugs to loud places, especially concerts and movie theaters.  But, you know. Go ahead and call her strange if you want to.

I liked this a lot. I'm snagging half a star because I felt personally attacked and some of the scenes were a bit too graphic for the likes of me, but if you like a twisty mystery with an unusual main character, this might work for you. 4.5/5 stars

Hat mentions (why hats?):

I counted 16 hat mentions, a lot of them having to do with winter gear (hat and gloves, hats with earflaps, etc.) and so many having to do with Sally's fashion choices. 

Tall and strong in a black coat with a jaunty red hat, at Thomas Diamond's funeral. (page 269) - I like a good use of the word jaunty. 

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney is a thriller in which a family meets at the matriarch's gothic house on an isolated island. One by one they start to die. Duhduhdunnnn. 

I liked it? I think? I mean, Feeney has a strange writing style in which she just randomly starts spouting philosophy in the middle of a scene in which something traumatic has happened, but it didn't really bother me too much. I was in it. Also, a lot of Goodreads reviews said that they guessed the ending, but I didn't. Maybe I'm just not good enough at foreshadowing or don't read enough thrillers. Ha. I was surprised! 

Also, the dog plays a surprisingly important role in the plot. This book is compared to The Guest List by Lucy Foley a lot (the covers are So. Similar. and so are the plots!), but I liked this one a lot more and I think a lot of it has to do with how great Poppins the Dog is. 

4/5 stars

Lines of note:
Families are like fingerprints; no two are the same, and they tend to leave their mark. The tapestry of my family has always had a few too many loose threads. (location 87)
An example of just random philosophizing. 

I wonder if other people look forward to seeing their families but dread it at the same time the way I always seem to. (location 156)
I feel seen.

Complaining is my sister’s not-so-secret superpower. She is a walking frown. (location 313)
I hope no one ever describes me this way!

Whenever I see my sisters, no matter how long it has been or how old they get, we always seem to regress to the versions of us we were as children. I suspect everybody time travels when reunited with their family. (location 436)
I describe my own reaction to being around my sister this same way. I will forever be a snotty 17-year-old around her.

My mother has always been of the belief that a cup of tea can solve almost anything. Bad day at the office? Have a cup of tea. Struggling to pay the bills? Have a cup of tea. Find out that your husband is cheating on you with a twenty-year-old harpist? Cup. Of. Tea. (location 1106)
Mostly I just want all of you to go have a listen to Great Big Sea's "Have a Cuppa Tea." We sing it almost daily in our house. 

“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Nana said when we were alone. 
“Even bad people?” I asked. 
“Everyone you know is both good and bad, it’s part of being human.”(location 1136)
I don't know if everyone deserves a second chance, to be honest. Maybe Nana is a nicer person than I am.

I sit on the floor, next to Poppins, just like I did when she was still a puppy. Dogs are much more comforting to be around than humans. (location 2666)
Ahem. I feel too seen by this book!

He looks up like a startled meerkat...(location 2846)
I always like to point out when people are described by animal metaphors. 

Hat mentions:

I’m wearing a fluffy bobble hat and one of Lily’s hand-me-down coats. (location 1827)

She was wearing a purple coat with a matching purple hat and gloves...(location 2808)

Then she stood up and removed her witch’s hat, black dress, and shoes before running toward the sea in just her underwear. (location 3364)

The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

I have no memory of how The Good Girl by Mary Kubica can on my radar.  But here we are. I have had it from the library for a good long while and finally got the "it's due in two days and you don't have any additional renewals" notice from the library, so I powered through it. 

Starting with the good news, my library copy was signed by the author!

I don't know who Vicki is, but I hope it brings Mary Kubica much joy to know that lots of other people besides Vicki are having some "happy reading."

In this book, Mia, the daughter of a prominent Chicago judge, is kidnapped by a guy named Colin. The book snaps up back and forth in time before and after her rescue, from several different perspectives including Colin, Mia, Mia's mother, and the investigating police detective. 

Hm. Well, I liked that the setting of the book was places I was familiar with. Janesville! Eau Claire! Chicago! Yay! (I did start to nitpick, though, because there is no exit off of I-90 that's going to have a completely deserted gas station, no matter how late it is. The truck traffic on that road is intense, even in the middle of cold weather season.) Much like with my reading of The Last Train to Key West, though, I thought this book could have been improved with a map. Regardless, yay for the setting!

Yay for the cat!

Boo for everything else? The mother who is kind of terrible? The sister who disappears about halfway through the book and never returns? The lack of police work (no gestures toward interviewing the boyfriend?)? The prolife rant in the middle of the book? The assumption made several times that "all women want to be mothers"? The "twist"?

Eh. 

You can skip this. 3/5 stars

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Lines of note:

She's a talented artist. I asked her once why she loved to draw, why it was something with which she was so enamored. She told me that she drew because it was the only way she could bring about change. She could turn geese to swans or a cloudy day to sun. It was a place where reality didn't have to exist. (page 62-63)

She tells me about her grandchildren. Two of them, a boy and a girl. The only name I catch is Zelda. What kind of stupid name is Zelda anyway? (page 69)

I ask what the heck a poetry slam is. I've never heard of it. I imagine works of Whitman and Yeats being thrown on the ground; that's not the case. The idea of listening to people recite their own poetry on stage, however, has me even more baffled. (page 91)

The weathermen warn us for days of the impending snowstorm that's about to arrive Thursday night. The grocery stores have run out of bottled water as people prepare to take shelter in their homes; my God, I think, it's winter, an annual certainty, not the atomic bomb. (page 224)

Thing I looked up:

Mowat-Wilson syndrome (page 144) - genetic disorder that affects many systems of the body. Symptoms may include intellectual disability, distinctive facial features, delayed development, and Hirschsprung disease. Other symptoms may include microcephaly, structural brain abnormalities, epilepsy, short statue, and defects of the heart, urinary tract, or genitalia. 

Hat mentions:

...in the canoe, with sun hats on, drinking wine around a fire. (page 180)

I wear my Sox hat. (page 260)

"Mia, your hat," I say, "your scarf," because it's so cold out here the very air will freeze her flesh. (page 307)

Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister has been all the rage on the interwebz, so who am I to resist being told what to read? In an interesting premise, Jen is witness to her son committing a murder and when she wakes up the next morning, she's gone backwards in time. The story is told as Jen goes further and further in the past, collecting details and clues about what happened to lead to that awful night. 

Look. I wanted to like this book. I don't read a lot of thrillers and I don't necessarily love to read "mom lit" that basically has a woman's life centered around motherhood. So what I'm saying is that all of what I'm about to say should be taken with a grain of salt.

This book was very snooze-inducing. Every time I'd read more than three pages, I'd find myself drifting off.  Jen was not interesting. The premise is GREAT, but the execution was not exciting.

So. Huh. I mean, read it if you like this sort of thing, I guess. 3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

"You all right? You look like shit," he says.
"Ah, married life. So romantic." (page 89)

I mean, I wake up EVERY morning with a spark for my husband. Doesn't everyone?

But knowing the future is worse than not knowing. Isn't it? (page 200)
This is such an interesting question. Would you want to know the future if you could? I'm not sure it would benefit me AT ALL!

He fiddles with Henry VIII's collar, the cat lying contentedly on his lap on the sofa...Three candles are lit along the windowsill. (page 212)
This just drew me out of the book so hard. How can you have a cat in the house and real candles with flames? I mean, CATS have unpredictable TAILS. And they are nosy and have WHISKERS. 

...rushing up the stairs with two coffees and a squash on a tray. (page 251)

I only know that squash is some sort of fruit drink in the world of the British because of Taskmaster! I really felt like a genius when I understood this sentence.

Some days, she supposes, are brighter than others, more memorable. Some days, even the great ones, like their wedding, fade away into history. (page 283)
It's really true, isn't it? We won't remember most days, but that makes the ones we do remember all the more special.

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

My husband recommended that I read The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward because, in the manner of Hollow Kingdom and Lessons in Chemistry, at least part of the book is told through the point of view of a house pet. He knew as soon as he said it that it would be enough for me to add it to my hold list at the library. I am nothing if not predictable. 

I'm going to call this book a thriller, but I'm not sure if that's the right description, really. Some reviewers call it a horror novel and I'm not sure I'd go that far, either. Maybe mystery? I don't know. Genre is hard. We are introduced to Ted, an eccentric man who lives at the end of Needless Street in a house with all the windows boarded up. Occasionally his daughter Lauren visits him and his cat Olivia. A neighbor moves next door and soon all four of their perspectives start to weave together to tell a story. But the thing is that none of these characters are really reliable. Ted seems to have some mental health issues, Lauren is a young child who seems to have undergone some trauma, the neighbor seems obsessed with Ted to an unhealthy degree, and the cat? Well, she's a cat. So we're trying to be good readers and figure out what's going on, but it's a real challenge.  And what is going on might surprise you.

I thought this book was pretty dark and it felt oppressive. The only time that really let up for a bit of humor was in Olivia's timeline because Olivia is an amazing born again cat with a lot of sass. I think my husband was correct and the addition of Olivia as a POV really made this book stand out in a way that it might have otherwise become just another dark story. The cat's POV was really strong and consistent and I Olivia is pretty great.  

In general, this was great. I might not recommend it for every reader because it's windy and confusing and you might not immediately know what's going on. It's also just pretty depressing. My husband and I discussed whether or not the ending was hopeful or not and let's just say that we do not agree and that it was pretty ambiguous.  4/5 stars

Lines of note:

As for me, Ted always calls me "you," or "kitten." But my name is Olivia. I have a thin slice of white down on my chest, which sets off my coal-black coat. My tail is long and slim like a wand. My ears are large with a wide swivel and a delicate point. They are very sensitive. My eyes are the shape of of almonds and green like cocktail olives. I think it's OK for me to say that I am beautiful. (page 21-22)

Olivia's voice is just as I imagine a cat to be.

The waiting room in empty and I settle happily on a chair. I like this kind of place, where you're in between one thing and another. Hallways, waiting rooms, lobbies and so on; rooms where nothing is actually supposed to happen. It relieves a lot of pressure and lets me think. (page 71-72)

I love nothing more than being alone in a waiting room for this very reason. It's clear I'm there for an appointment, so I have nothing else I should/could be doing. It feels freeing.  

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

Madam is Phoebe Wynne's debut novel.  Rose Christie is a young Classics teacher who is recruited to teach at Caldonbrae Hall, an exclusive boarding school for girls with an isolated location high on the Scottish cliffs. Things are weird from the moment Rose arrives at Caldonbrae, with its elitist and conservative views conflicting with her modern feminist views, and pretty soon Rose is enmeshed in a mysterious institution and can't find a way out. 

I thought this was creepy and propulsive and I spent most of the book trying to figure out how exactly Rose could get out of this place. I thought the Scottish setting was appropriately spooky, I liked how Wynne interspersed interstitial stories from mythology between chapters to show what the students would be learning. I was a wee bit annoyed by the fact that no one would tell Rose anything, but it was sort of integrated into the plot, so I got over that. The thing that gets this book dinged on a lot of Goodreads reviews is the sheer implausibility of the institution, the fact that this takes place in the 1990s, but reads like the 1890s, particularly in the curriculum.  I think, in light of what we've learned about Jeffrey Epstein and Jimmy Savile, it seems to me that abusive institutions exist and this is just a fictionalized account of what one may look like.

ANYWAY.

It was creepy. I didn't know what was going to happen. I liked the juxtaposition of Rose's home life and school life. I thought this was a solid read. 4/5 stars

Things I Looked Up:

Dagenham women (page 98) - Nearly 200 women walked out of a Ford plant in Dagenham, England in 1968. They were protesting unequal treatment and their strike led to widespread attention to inequities and led to important legislation on equal pay in the UK.

Spare Rib magazine (page 98) - Feminist UK magazine that ran from 1972-1993.

Section 28 (page 316) - A series of laws across Britain that prohibited the "promotion of homosexuality" by local authorities. It was in effect from 1988 to 2000 in Scotland and from 1988 to 2003 in England and Wales. It was a real blow to student support groups in schools in the UK.  Thanks, Margaret Thatcher. 

When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

When the Reckoning Comes is LaTanya McQueen's debut novel.  Mira, Jesse, and Celine were best friends in a segregated town. They were all poor, but Celine's advantage was that she was white and Mira's advantage was that she was smart. After an incident left Jesse outcast in town, Mira went away to college and never returned until Celine invited her to her wedding. The wedding is to be held at a renovated plantation and the mood is somber and tense from the very beginning.

This is really a novel examining the haunting history that surrounds most of land in the United States (and elsewhere, really).  Sure, there's a gripping thriller happening, but just when you've settled into the creepiness of the tale, McQueen includes a flashback to what the lives were like of the slaves on the plantation where the contemporary action is taking place. Those flashbacks jolt you back into an awareness that not all is right.  

McQueen did such an excellent job of setting the mood. It was crazy that I felt dread from the first scene when Mira is just grading papers at her desk.  And that tension never let up. 

But the characters of Celine and Jesse were just not well-developed enough for me to give an enthusiastic endorsement of the novel. It's short, just over 200 pages, and I actually think that McQueen could have added more pages to build on the story and character aspects of the novel and it would have been an excellent book. As is, it's an exciting debut and I'm excited for what she does next. 3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

What she'd tried to forget had always been there, this piece of her past, this history. Mira had tried, had spent a decade trying, but a person can't run away from who they are. Soon enough, what's been buried will rear itself again. (page 74)

I think this is so interesting. Our pasts shape us in ways that just can't be undone.

"Yet because of them you're having your wedding here. At a plantation, Celine"

"It hasn't been a plantation for over a hundred years, and it's not like my family owned slaves."

"What about its history? The suffering that built it. That's never forgotten. Isn't it always there?" (page 103)

This is the heart of it, isn't it? A good reminder that places like this should not be a place for celebratory occasions. 

"The building is still there but like a lot of things in town, there's only the ghost of what it was." (page 134)

When I drive through my hometown, the buildings just seem so sad and depleted. The population dwindles with each census and what was once a booming lumber town is now just a place people speed through to get somewhere else. 

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

 

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley is a closed door mystery in which nine friends go on vacation to a lodge in the Scottish Highlands to celebrate New Year's, a tradition they've upheld since their days at Oxford.  We know early on that one of the guests is murdered, but we spend the majority of the book delving into backstories and learning about the group's dynamics. We learn about who knows each other best, who's keeping secrets, and we also delve into the lives of the lodge's manager and caretaker.

There's a lot to like about this book.  Foley did a great job of scene setting. I could feel myself in the Highlands with this incredible glass structure as snow falls all around me. I felt the creepiness of the Icelandic guests and how inappropriate their arrival was. It was an immersive place.  I also felt like some of the character development, particularly of the women in the group, was also well done.  The characters of Katie, Miranda, and Heather were stand outs for me, although poor Samira is nothing more than a boring caricature of what a new mother is like. 

But there's also something forced about the book.  Referring to the murder victim as "the guest" for hundreds of pages just got an eyeroll from me.  The ending seemed rushed and I have a lot of issues with the charges placed against the murderer.  I wanted more about the fallout from the events of that New Year's Eve in Scotland.  

I think I'd recommend this book, but I wouldn't say it's the best mystery around.  It was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon on the couch, though.

Things I looked up:

What Katy Did - This is an 1872 children's book written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey under the pen name of Susan Coolidge. (page 13)

Cy Twombley - An American artist known for works of scribbling and graffiti. See below. (page 28)

Cluedo - This is what the Brits call the board game Clue. (page 38) 

Lines of note:

1. But that's the thing about old friends, isn't it? Sometimes they don't even realize that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don't even like each other anymore. (page 58)

If there's nothing this pandemic has taught me, it's that maybe I don't need to talk to all the people I was friends with in high school.

2. There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don't stop until they've found it. There are those who give up because they don't find it.  Boom or bust - all or nothing. And then, perhaps in the majority, there are those who settle. And I think we're the sensible ones. Because love doesn't always mean longevity. (page 148)

Is there anything sadder than this pronouncement about love?

The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan

It does feel weird to just write a regular book review on here without expressly saying that things are so topsy-turvy right now. As I'm writing this, I'm on day eleven of social distancing. I have not left the house except to walk/train the dog, go to the grocery store or dog park, or do yardwork. But this also means that I'm reading a lot. So, here's just another book review. 

 The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan is a pretty good thriller.  Set in an old manor in the English countryside, it tells us the story of the Holt family and their eponymous nanny.  Jocelyn is devastated when her adored nanny disappears one night.  But many years later, when Jo is forced to return back to her childhood home with her own daughter after both she and her mother become widowed, the nanny returns to town.  Is this just luck?  Or is there something sinister lurking in the background?

So, let's go back to NGS's trifecta of evaluation of novels: setting, characters, and plot.  I'm sure there are literature buff out there screaming about theme, point of view, metaphor, and other elements of a novel, but I'm just going to focus on these three because it seems like those are things that I pay attention to the most. 

This is a great modern Gothic, really. The tense, gloomy atmosphere of Holt Manor is the major driving force of the entire story. It's the basis for the relationship between the villagers and the Holts, the way the detective treats the woman as he interviews them, and the class dynamics that exist even among members of the Holt family themselves. It makes you want to avoid the pond. You wrap yourself into a snug blanket because the iciness of the setting makes you chilly.

The characters are sort of caricatures of themselves, what with the evil nanny, the woebegone aristocrat's child who tried to leave, but is forced back when life circumstance prevail, the pre-teen sulkiness, and the uptight elderly dowager.  But what prevents this novel from falling into a boring abyss of pre-packaged melange is that the characters interact in interesting, real ways. The grandmother allows her preteen granddaughter to put on her clothes and makeup while they bake cookies and watch videos on YouTube. Those images and scenes make the sort of typical character types stand out.  The details make the characters in a specific, important way.

The plot is a bit lackluster, to be honest. I rarely figure out mystery plots; I think I would be a horrible police detective.  In this case, I pretty much knew the ending about 2/3 of the way through, but the biggest mystery was whether or not Jo would figure it out.  I thought that Macmillan did a good job of building up the suspense about Jo's own detecting skills.

So, while I did not find this to be a perfect novel, I did find it to be something that transported me to another place during a time when I definitely needed to be transported somewhere else.