Category: Book Reviews

Is it obvious I am cleaning out the books that have accumulated and hidden on my bookshelf? “Dead Aim”, published in 2003, this is a great page turner about a photo journalist who witnesses a crime beyond proportions while trying to photograph what appears to be a natural catastrophe. She and an unlikely person are paired together in a run for their lives as they discover more and more information that involves more people than just the average criminals.

“On the Run” puts a mother and daughter together in a run for their lives. It all ties back into the mother’s interesting, yet dangerous past, and takes them from a small southern farm, to the wild west and across the world. Once again, the main character witnesses something but the real crime is hidden somewhere beneath what is seen, so for the entirety of the book she and her daughter don’t exactly know what they are running from and towards. It keeps you guessing, as well as “Dead Aim”.

I finished this book in a few hours due to the short chapters. It is a good page turner set in the East Hamptons. It does not exactly have you guessing the entire book, until you get closer to the end and get a kick in the pants! It mixes up low income and wealthy in a community that could not survive without both and the interaction, trust and non-trusts, between the different classes of people. A good book club book.

Part of the Womens Murder Club, “The 5th Horseman” is probably the 3rd or 4th one of this series I have read. But it doesn’t matter if you read any of the previous novels to enjoy this one. It follows a crime committed and 4 somewhat unlikely friends whose lives in one way or another are touched by the crime, either personally or professionally. They manage to help solve the crime sometimes unbeknownest to each other and the puzzle pieces tend to fall together by the end of the novel. A fast-paced read and entertaining. The first book in the series is was made into a movie in 2003.

This summer I read 3 more Sophia Kinsella books: “Can you keep a Secret?”, “The Undomestic Goddess”, and the 4th “Shopaholic” book, “Shopaholic and Sister”. These books were just as enjoyable as the other 3 “Shopaholic” books, making me wish she had more. The writing style is exactly the same in all the books, the stories are similar but different, and seeing what type of predicaments the main characters get themselves into is hilarious.

A really, really good read…Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah. This book covers a child psychologist who is married to her profession, a mistake she made, and typical return to the hometown. However, it is rich in character development and very touching as a child that comes to the town from seemingly nowhere and how the town rallies around both the psychologist, who left the town feeling like an outcast and loner after high school, and the mature psychologist who has learned to accept herself.

Another book I read earlier in the year, Looking for Peyton Place by Barbara Delinsky, was an interesting look into the social impact that Grace Metalious had on both the steamy novel and the soap opera. It seemed a bit autobiographical, as apparently Grace Metalious was and still is a great inspiration to many an aspiring housewife/novelist. The book follows, and I feel I am repeating myself, a return to a hometown where the main character felt like an outcast and a loner so she left as soon as she could, but became extremely successful away from home. A tragedy occurs of some sort, she returns home and is constantly trying to fight the stereotyp of herself in her mind to become a fully-grown mature adult who accepts herself. Despite my sarcasm, the book was also very good and I would recommend both of these books for any avid reader.

Just after I read The Divide, I picked up “The Smoke Jumper” by Nicholas Evans. I has been sitting on my bookshelf for almost 5 years after I started to read The Loop and just couldn’t get into it. The Smoke Jumper was excellent. The setting was basically the same as the other books and centered around the western United States horse country, but the depth of the characters was tremendous and the story pulled you in so that you did not want to put the book down. I liked this one so much, I put it back up on the bookshelf as a “keeper”.

Another book club book, “10 Big Ones” by Janet Evanovich. I can’t remember what the 10 had to do with the book, but it is part of the Stephanie Plum series and was set in Philadelphia. Now I have read several of Janet’s books but I don’t particularly remember reading any in this series. They start out at “One for the Money” and now the 12th book will be out in June ’06. The book was a very quick read and a good escape for a few hours. Set in Philadelphia, it interested more than it probably would normally since I have just visited the city a few weeks earlier.

I picked up a book my daughter checked out of the library, as I was sitting in the car for several hours watching a softball game during cold weather. It was “Girl, 15, charming but insane” by Sue Limb. It reminded me of a mini “Shopaholic” or “Bridget Jones Diary” book so you really need to like and appreciate the British humor. It was absolutely delightful to read (it only took me a few hours), but it centered around a 15 year-old-girl whose parents were divorced but on friendly terms and the mess she gets herself into and out of.

“The Bonesetter’s Daughter” by Amy Tan was just as wonderful as all her other books. Of course, it has the typical Chinese daughter for a traditional Chinese mother. This mother lives in the US but how she got there is an intricate tale of living in a small village and how she finally arrived in the states. Highly recommended on my list and I passed this one on to my mother to read.

“Good in Bed” by Jennifer Weiner was a book that had the playful feel of the british “Shopaholic” books and was a very enjoyable read (except I felt like I couldn’t read it in public as I didn’t want people to think I was reading a sex therapy book!). This novel follows the life of a slightly overweight woman who cannot get over the fact that she weighs too much and lets it permeate every aspect of her thinking.

Most recently I read “The Mermaid Chair” by Sue Monk Kidd. She is somewhat of a local author, really just in the same state as I am, but it was rich in low country/barrier island setting that makes you want to go back and read Pat Conroy’s “The Water is Wide”. The character development was rich also, but to make it believable you have to believe in love at first site.

The book at the moment is “girlology” by Melisa Holmes, MD and Trish Hutchison, MD. Melisa’s daughter attends school with my daughter, so she was asked to speak to the parents of the 4th through 8th graders about the changes their children were going through at this time in their lives, both physically, emotionally and sexually. She brought a few of the books along and I bought one, thinking they were for parents of preteens. No, this book is for eleven year old girls and older but I decided to read it first so that if my daughter has any questions, she can ask me.

I’ve been busy reading through the Book Club books my mother gives me…Since The Coaches Daughter…It seems like that most of these books have a pathologist involved, so I am getting a bit tired of reading about autopsies…

Rebecca Wells,”Ya-Yas in Bloom”, interesting to read if you read the “Divine Secrets” but it jumped around from person to person and time to time that it could have gone on and on. However, nowhere as good as the “Divine Secrets.”

Karen Slaughter, “Indelible”, is a good page turner. I didn’t read the other two books of hers that included the same main characters, but it did not detract from knowing what was going on. I would like to go back and read “Blindsighted” and “Kisscut” though to read about their background.

Jilliane Hoffman, “Last Witness”, was a bit on the crass side, I would guess because the writer is a former Assistant State Attorney and she was used to working with street cops and investigators, and these people must have been like that. This was a great read though, and of course as predictable of an ending as the other books I have listed here.

Catherine Coulter, “Point Blank”, An FBI Thriller, is about her other FBI thriller books with the husband and wife team of Sherlock and Savich, but I didn’t realize that I had read a previous novel about them until I got about half-way through the book. So once again, this book stands alone or can be read along with a series. It was a good page turner also, set in West Virginia.

Nicholas Evans, “The Divide”, is the second book of Evans I have read, “The Horse Whisperer,” being the first. This book was very much like “The Horse Whisperer”, with hints of the west and horses and ranches, a horse “wreck” and a love story gone awry. I don’t know what I was expecting when I read this, but maybe something a bit different. It was an enjoyable read also.

I like to support local authors and saw this book at one of our few locally-owned book stores (I love to shop at The Open Book!). It is by Wandra Daniel McGowan.

I am no professional reviewer, but am an avid reader about a variety of subjects by a lot of different authors, but I am just going to put my general impressions here:

The book has 96 pages. It took me a little over an hour to read. The general storyline follows a tween’s perspective on life when her father gets fired from his job and he eventually becomes a coach to a basketball team at an “at-risk” high school. Even though the story covers some heavy subjects, my logical mind kept trying to link the dates from her father’s high school graduation to 2005. Since this was bothering me, I also noticed quite a few typos in the book (although I find those in most books I read!).

There are real photographs in the book, and my impression is that they were a bit hokey, as I think they were actually photos of the author’s family that she was trying to tie into the story. Also, the impression I got from reading the back panel is that it was based on a true story, but then the coach graduated from high school in 1991, went to college, got his masters and was working on his doctorate, has a 12 -year-old daughter and then he retires from working 8 years later. Since this is now 2005, that would mean the coach would be about 32 right now, and he retires when he is 40?

As I was reading, I did think that the book could make a good discussion for a Sunday school lesson, and this book is her first published material that she probably had to pay herself to have published. So if you want a quick read and want to support some local to South Carolina, then that would be the reason to get this book.