207 Book Talk

I am not much of a TV watcher, but occasionally I will decide to try out a show on Netflix, which is how I came across Virgin River. I certainly didn't love it, but it was something mindless to do for a few days while I wasn't feeling so great. Because I am much more interested in books than TV, I was interested when I learned it was based on a book series and bought the ebook of the first in the series, Virgin River . Yikes. First, I am glad I had credits and didn't actually pay for this book. Second, the writing was, to me, a perfect example of why some people refuse to read anything tagged as a "romance" novel. The writing was atrocious. The characters had no depth. The conversations were ridiculous. Who talks like this in the modern world that the novel is supposedly set in? I could not believe how gross some of the lines where, like Rick saying it "wasn't statutory until he was 18," with a shrug. The way Jack spoke to Mel when he wanted more tha...

I came across this short story collection while looking at books by Blake Crouch. These 6 short stories were written by some of the best SciFi authors, and perhaps authors in general, currently writing. Each is a standalone story, but they share a common future theme. I am reviewing the first three books in the collection in this review, and will review 4 through 6 separately.  Book 1: Ark  by Veronica Roth The first story in the collection is (so far) the one that felt like a beginning chapter to a much longer tale. It opens two weeks before the Earth is impacted by a huge asteroid. The asteroid impact is something the world has been aware of for a very long time before its impact, and people have been preparing in various ways. Most of the population has already left to head to another planet, but some scientists have stayed behind until the last possible moment to continue collecting and cataloging specimens before Earth is destroyed. Samantha is cataloging plant specimens ...

  The Last Town  is the final book in the Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines trilogy. It has been three weeks after Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke wakes up in Wayward Pines, Idaho, and here we are at the story's conclusion. A nomad sent beyond the fence over three years before is on his way back to town, and his return is sure to shake things up, but as he makes his way back, the town is on the verge of a breakdown (or a breakthrough, depending who you ask).  The residents that remove their chips to wander at night are free from surveillance, but that doesn't mean no one knows they are up to something. A murder pulls Ethan in two different directions. Who does he believe when push comes to show? David Pilcher, creator of the town and Ethan's new boss, or his former partner Kate Ballinger (née Hewson), who almost ripped his marriage in Seattle apart? Ethan has to decide, and quickly, as things rapidly deteriorate in Wayward Pines. Is it better to live a half life, or potenti...

  I read Things You Save in a Fire  to kick off the new year. I posted about it on Twitter, and the author shared the link to a bridge chapter between that story and this one. I read the bridge last night, and ended up wanting to start How to Walk Away  immediately afterward, so I did. Margaret Jacobsen is on the verge of getting everything she has ever wanted... a great job, the ideal fiancé, and all the other hallmarks of a perfect life. Then, after being talked into doing something she most certainly does not want to do, everything changes.  Katherine Center writes her characters to perfection, because it is evident Maggie's fiancé Chip is a jerk from the very start. Who forces someone to do something they are terrified of doing, just to show off? Ugh. He was just so smarmy and self-centered. (Side note - why wasn't he charged with some sort of crime for "borrowing" and flying a plane without a license?!)  Maggie has to rework her whole life, while those arou...

Wayward   is the second book in Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines trilogy. After surviving a fête, Ethan Burke is now sheriff of the town of Wayward Pines, Idaho. He had woken up there just two weeks before, on a case for the Secret Service trying to find two missing agents from the Boise office, and now he is "in charge" of this charming, Stepford-esque town.  David Pilcher's experiment to save the world is perhaps not going as well as he had planned. Many residents of Wayward Pines, population 461, struggle to go along with the status quo, pretending that their former lives no longer exist. Talking about the past is forbidden. There are cameras and microphones watching and listening to everything in town, so how can anyone find an escape, physically or mentally? Ethan struggles with the right choice. Is it more important to protect the town from what is outside the fence, or to protect them from the man who put them all there in the first place? Will his son ever have a ...

  We all know the saying "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." With that in mind, this review will be brief. All This Time   is coauthored by Mikki Daughtry and Rachael Lippincott, the writes behind Five Feet Apart  (which I did enjoy). The best thing I can say about All This Time  is that, at 238 pages, I only wasted a few hours of my day reading it.  Kyle has had the same girlfriend since middle school. The night of their high school graduation, he has a gift ready that he is sure will fix whatever is going wrong, because something is definitely bothering his girlfriend Kimberly. Unfortunately, before the night is over, they will be in a horrific car crash and Kyle will emerge with a traumatic brain injury and Kimberly will not survive.  SPOILERS AHEAD..... stop here if you don't want to read them. Let me rewrite that last sentence.... Unfortunately, before the night is over, they will be in a horrific car crash and Kyle wil...

  Dear Justyce  by Nic Stone is a follow up to her 2017 debut Dear Martin . Justice is back as a secondary character to Quan, the young man at the center of this story. If you haven't read  Dear Martin , you should. If you like audiobooks, it's one of the best I've ever listened to. How can two boys from the same neighborhood end up on such divergent paths? How much does your upbringing affect your choices? How does being a young African-American boy growing up in a country whose legal system is against you from the start fare compared to a young white boy who also gets in to trouble with the law?  Nic Stone gives readers a window in to these questions, and many more, with this incredible story. Quan is locked up again, this time facing a murder charge, when he begins exchanging letters with Justyce, who is now in his freshman year at Yale University. Quan considers the differences in where their lives have led them based on the choices they both made, and on the fac...

 I noticed when I added Believe Me  by J.P. Delaney to my currently reading shelf on Goodreads that it had a rating of 3.68. In the past, a lower score like this led me to shy away from a book unless I really wanted to read it, but I have learned that while I sometimes agree with other readers, there are often times that I just don't, and this ended up being one of them. The book opens with a scene, as it might be written in a movie script or play. This made me a bit nervous, but I quickly realized the whole book was not written in this style, and I was intrigued from the first pages.  Claire is a struggling actress from the UK trying to make it, without a green card, in New York City. To make ends meet, she works for a law firm to catch men willing to cheat on their wives. She doesn't feel great about it, but it gives her a chance to practice her acting and it helps pay the bills.  Enter Stella, wife of Patrick Fogler, a Columbia University professor. Claire is aske...

 First, in my defense, I had already started this book BEFORE I created the challenge for myself yesterday to only read books from certain TBR piles in my house and the CloudLibrary holds on my iPad. I didn't cheat! Now on to my review... A Good Girl's Guide to Murder   by Holly Jackson was a book that I heard about because I almost concurrently saw it on a friend's Goodreads profile and on the nominee's list for 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction. The friend reading it happens to be a co-worker, and she lent me the book. It sat here on a stack of TBR's for a week or two, and then yesterday as I was finalizing my Popsugar and ATY52 challenge lists, I realized I could use it to fulfill a prompt for both, and here we are. This is the story of a high school student, Pippa Fitz-Amobi, who decides to do her senior capstone project on the infamous murder-suicide of two students that had occurred in her hometown 5 years before. She never really believed S...

  I've decided that my reading for the next two weeks (after I finish the story I just started, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, and concurrent with some ebooks I have on loan; see below) will be chosen from these 4 floating book shelve stacks. This way, I have choices, but limit them to these options. It helps me stay focused, clear TBR piles, and stay on top of my reading challenge goals. Upper left (top to bottom): Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (I'll be honest, I am sort of dreading this one) Between Shades of Gray by Ruth Sepetys Untamed by Glennon Doyle Anxious People by Fredrik Backman Becoming by Michelle Obama Upper right  (top to bottom) : Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah Dear Justyce by Nic Stone The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks* Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Hurari In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin by Lindsey Hilsum Lower right: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger* The Last Song by Nic...

My finalized list for the 2021 Popsugar reading challenge. I am attempting both the regular and advanced prompts this year, and love that I can shrink my TBR pile so much when I finish. REGULAR 1. A book that published in 2021 📘  Every Last Fear 2. An Afrofuturist book 📙  Kindred 3. A book that has a heart, diamond, club, or spade on the cover 📕  The Silent Wife  ✔️ 4. A book by an author who shares your zodiac sign 📗  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 5. A dark academia book 📕  Ninth House 6. A book with a gem, mineral, or rock in the title 📘  The Nickel Boys 7. A book where the main character works at your current or dream job 📙  The Book of Two Ways 8. A book that has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 📘  Bel Canto 9. A book with a family tree 📙  Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family 10. A bestseller from the 1990s 📕  The Reader 11. A book about forgetting 📘  Recursion 12. A book you have se...

Just finalized my list for the ATY52 challenge! Around the Year in 52 Books 2021 Reading Challenge:   1. A book related to “In the Beginning...” 📕  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 2. A book by an author whose name doesn't contain the letters A, T or Y 📘  The Round House 3. A book related to the lyrics for the song "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music 📙  Concrete Rose 4. A book with a monochromatic cover 📗  Know My Name 5. A book by an author on USA Today's list of 100 Black Novelists You Should Read 📕  If Beale Street Could Talk 6. A love story 📘  The Notebook 7. A book that fits a prompt suggestion that didn't make the final list 📙  Untamed 8. A book set in a state, province, or country you have never visited 📗  Q is for Quarry 9. A book you associate with a specific season or time of year 📕  Winter Garden 10. A book with a female villain or criminal 📘  Little Fires Everywhere 11. A book to celebrate The Gr...

The Whisper Man  by Alex North came up as a recommendation for me on Goodreads. I checked out the Amazon preview of the book and I was intrigued enough to buy it. Before I got a chance to read it, I noticed it was a bargain book on Books-a-Million's website. That should have been my first clue that the 4.05 average the book has on Goodreads might be too good to be true. I have found in the past that recent titles in the bargain section of Books-a-Million are there for a reason. I just could not get in to this story. I am a quick reader, especially when I am interested in a story. Granted, there was a lot going on in the world this week that pulled my attention from reading, but when I enjoy a story I always find a way to make time to get plenty of reading done. Tom Kennedy and his young son Jake pack up and move to the town of Featherbank after the death of wife and mom Rebecca. Before they move, and immediately after they arrive, creepy things are happening. The story seemed like...

 Oof... I finally forced myself to finish reading Layla  by Colleen Hoover today. Before I say what I think (although I am sure that first sentence is a giveaway), I want to mention that I really liked her books Verity and It Ends With Us and I loved  Regretting You. I wasn't sure what to expect from Layla, because  Verity  was so different than her other two novels that I had already read. This one felt like she tried to take what worked in Verity  a step further and it just fell flat.  Layla  is the story of a couple, Leeds and Layla, and the circumstances of their initial meeting, their whirlwind romance, and a terrifying encounter that leaves them both irrevocably changed. Just how changed they are is slowly revealed during the trip they take back to the Kansas bed and breakfast where they first met.  I'll be the first to freely admit that paranormal is not my typical genre, but I have read and loved books that fall under this category se...

  I'll admit I got a late start in knowing that Blake Crouch is an amazing author. I had picked up a copy of Dark Matter  at a local bookstore because I liked the cover. I brought it home, put in on a shelf, and it languished in my TBR pile with several hundred other books. Last year I needed something to fit a reading challenge prompt and noticed Dark Matter  would be a fit, so I decided to read it. I was wary, as SciFi is not a genre I have ever been interested in, but holy crap, was it a good story.  Currently, I am waiting for  Recursion  to be returned to my local library so I can read it for a prompt this year (also, just because I want to read it. Have you checked out the Google Preview ? I was hooked on the first page!). Anyway, I was spending my yearly Christmas book gift certificate the other day and saw the name Blake Crouch as I was scanning the shelves, which is how I stumbled upon, and came to own, Pines .  I picked it up yesterday to do ...

  I have been a fan of Karin Slaughter 's since the beginning of her Grant County series back in 2001. Just like any author with a long time writing career, some books end up better than others, and The Silent Wife  is definitely one of those better books.  This is the tenth entry in Slaughter's Will Trent series, and lots of familiar characters are back in action. Will and his feisty partner Faith are called out to help investigate a murder that took place during a prison riot. During the course of their work, they meet with a prisoner that has information to offer. Will, Faith, and the other members of their GBI team are in for a shock when the prisoner assures them he has proof that Jeffrey Tolliver was a crooked cop. Readers unfamiliar with the storyline, take note that Jeffrey is the murdered husband of Will's girlfriend, and GBI medical examiner, Sara. This accusation is a doozy, and it sends them scrambling to find the truth. This storyline goes deep and just gets ...

Which new releases are you most looking forward to this year?  I have to be honest and say I haven't checked many lists to see what is coming up this year because I already have SO MANY books on my shelves and on my iPad waiting to be read that I am really trying not to add to the list. I know it's a losing proposition, but in the interest of space and my wallet I am trying to hold off on a deep dive in to what's coming up this year.  I do know about a few books I am looking forward to though. Here they are, in no particular order: Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas Out January 12, 2021 (from Goodreads) -  International phenomenon Angie Thomas revisits Garden Heights seventeen years before the events of  The Hate U Give in this searing and poignant exploration of Black boyhood and manhood. If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows ho...