KLARA AND THE SUN, by Kazuo Ishiguro

   

Literature, Science Fiction -- 4 1/2 stars

In the future, children are kept from loneliness with the help of an AF, an Artificial Friend.  Klara is one of them--egoless, naive, watching the world pass by the window of the store where she is displayed.  Being chosen means she becomes part of the family, a caretaker for a young, ill girl.  Klara may not understand her new world, but she believes she knows how to save small Josie.  The sun keeps Klara alive. Surely, it can do the same for Josie if Klara asks. ----- In a world where power is all and artificial enhancements are thought to be the answer, the character of Klara is rendered with a tenderness that puts the human characters to shame.  The world that Mr. Ishiguro creates is not a completely solid creation; the reader is left to ferret out much of the situational meaning, much as Klara must.  It is a smart choice that pulls the reader inside Klara's world.   A haunting story of pure, selfless love narrated in a voice so innocent it hurts.  

PROJECT HAIL MARY, by Andy Weir

    

Science Fiction -- 5 stars

Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, wakes from a years long induced coma to find himself the only surviving member of a three person spaceship crew sent to a far galaxy to find out why our sun is dying and how to stop it.  But Ryland doesn't know that.  He doesn't even know his own name.  He does know he's not completely alone; he can see another space craft near by--one inhabited by a decidedly non-human entity, another sole space crew survivor from a planet whose troubles mirror earth's own.  The only way to save their planets is to work together.  It's going to be quite a partnership. ----- If you enjoyed Andy Weir's Martian, you will love Project Hail Mary.  Clever, imaginative, a lesson in acceptance, collaboration, and respect.  There is enough real science to keep the true SciFi nerd satisfied while the pair's common sense MacGuyver type problem solving makes sure the rest of us are not left behind.  Central to the story is their developing friendship. I particularly enjoyed the gentle sense of humor that evolved as they worked together, each with his own distinct personalities and talents, to solve their common crisis.  A multi-species space thriller with an ending that pulls all the right heart strings.  Loved it.

THE BONE FIRE, by S.D. Sykes

   

Mystery/Thriller -- 3 1/2 stars

Somershill Manor Mystery - Book 4

Oswald de Lacy attempts to keep his family safe during England's 1361 plague by accepting an offer to shelter in a friend's isolated castle.  The plague may be locked out, but they are not safe from murder.  With the castle gate tightly closed, the murderer must be hiding among them. ----- Ms. Sykes has created a believable historic setting and assembled a mixed bag of suspects, each completely viable, from the aristocracy to the castle's jester.  The investigation advances slowly in the beginning.  After all, interviewing everyone is the only crime fighting tool at Mr. de Lacy's disposal, and everyone seems to be lying about something.  It is satisfying to see a mystery solved using nothing but common sense.  An entertaining and quick read.  

MURDER AT TEAL'S POND, by David Bushman and Mark T. Givens

    

True Crime -- 2 1/2 stars

In 1908 Hazel Drew's body was found floating in Teal's Pond.  Her murder was never solved.  Over 100 years later, Mr. Bushman and Mr. Givens think they know the answer. ----- The subtitle to this book is Hazel Drew and the Mystery That Inspired Twin Peaks.  Having never watched Twin Peaks, I can't say if this claim is valid or not.  I will say that the two authors did a LOT of research for their book--maybe too much.  (Did I really need to know the population and distance from Albany for every township, tiny village, and speck on the map?)  Once I waded through that useless detritus, the story moved forward at a much better pace, though again, the authors let themselves get mired in more detail than was really necessary.  In the end, this is more a story of early 20th century hearsay reporting than one of crime solving.  Multiple uncoordinated investigations and political interference lead inevitably to a dead end.  The hypothesis put forward by Mr. Bushman and Mr. Givens is not a convincing ending to an unsolved mystery novel already overburdened by too many questionable "facts."

BEHELD, by Tarashea Nesbit

    

Historical Fiction -- 4 stars

This is the story of John Billington, America's first convicted murderer.   Told in the voices of two women--one a have, one a have not--the Plymouth colony faces the consequence of inequality and prejudice that breeds injustice in this nascent America. When one man holds the fate of your family in his hands, where do you turn?  What do you do? ----- Forget the picture of happy little Pilgrims all living together in God loving harmony.  This novel reminds us of the fate of the indentured servants who accompanied the Pilgrims on the Mayflower, and how the "godly" insured they were sentenced to second class citizenhood even after their indentured time had elapsed.   In Ms. Nesbit's well researched novel, she has created a vivid telling of a piece of history long left out of our childhood history lessons, one where the buckles on those Pilgrim hats don't look quite so shiny.  

REPRIEVE, by James Han Mattson

   

Mystery/Thriller -- 2 1/2 stars

In 1997, in Lincoln, Nebraska there is a place called the Quigley House, a nationally famous, full contact escape room house.  Make it through all five rooms without yelling "Reprieve," and you could win a substantial cash prize.  On April 27 a team of four young people make it into cell 5.  One of them isn't going to make it out. -----  Instead of a night of puzzle solving fun, the current popularity of escape room adventures is twisted into a macabre fight for survival.  I'll give James Han Mattson points for imagination, but I wouldn't want to spend Halloween at his house.  Mr. Mattson does a fine job of creating the atmosphere of Quigley House with just the right amount of increasing creepiness.  He makes sure the reader understands the team members by presenting well written back stories, though he never explains why Quigley House's owner is so taken with one of them.  Still, that adds to the off-kilter relationships the owner seems to forge with employees and friends alike.  It is disappointing that, once the team makes it into the cells, the well orchestrated character development is left on the cutting room floor. Who they are is forgotten.  The cells would seem to offer a chance for the characters to respond as individuals, rather than four people suddenly rendered generic and interchangeable.  Five rooms of gross-out and a purposeless addendum doom this story to the could-have-been bin.

THESE TOXIC THINGS, by Rachel Howzell Hall, narrated by Susan Dalian

    

Mystery/Thriller -- 2 1/2 stars

Audiobook Narration -- 2 1/2 stars

Book:  Mickie Lambert works for a company that creates digital scrapbooks.  She has just begun working on one for Nadia Denham, owner of a local junk shop, when Ms. Denham dies from what is originally called a suicide.  Mickie decides it's up to her to prove that conclusion wrong. ----- There is one word that comes to mind for this book:  busy.  There is so much going on, murder/suicide, secret notes left under Mickie's door, secrets Mickie discovers in her own family, new boyfriend, old boyfriend, gentrification, a wedding, a stranger watching from the shadows...  None of them are truly connected to the main story of Nadia Denham which makes for a disordered story that just made me tired trying to keep up.  Add to that the fact that the police appear absent from the Nadia investigation, (leaving a scrapbook maker as the main investigator?) while being wholly involved in Mickie's family secrets.  If this book were a painting, it would be a piece of Impressionism--lots of little dabs.  There is an interesting twist near the end, but again, why were the police uninvolved in its discovery?  Better editing, more focus, less extraneous threads would have made a much better story.

Narration:  I have run into Susan Dalian once before.  An easy voice to listen to with good inflection, but she has an odd pattern of splitting sentences in the middle for no apparent reason.  "Her best friend...pause, pause, pause...had just called three minutes ago." This style stopped the flow of an already disjointed book.

FIERCE LITTLE THING, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

    

Mystery/Thriller -- 3 stars

Five damaged teenagers meet at a commune called Home.  Some are abandoned by their parents, all--though none as much as Saskia--are in the thrall of Home's leader, Abraham.  Twenty years later, the five have scattered into lives disconnected from the memories of their time at the commune until they all begin to receive threatening letters.  "It's time to come Home.  All five of you.  Or else." ----- The mystery of why the five of them, one time best and only friends, chose to live their adult lives without any common contact is revealed in a carefully paced story that is as uncomfortable as it is understandable.  The complicated family lives of all the characters at Home are well written and make their arrival at Home seem like a common sense last resort even as the cracks begin to form in what they want to believe is their ideal choice.  The reveal of what connects and repulses the main five is somehow both expected and surprising.  Saskia's final solution is a welcome closing to a quiet book that avoids peaks and valleys by simply moving day to carefully calibrated day without theatrics. A mystery, minus the thrill.

THE JUDGE'S LIST, by John Grisham

    

Mystery/Thriller -- 3 stars

The Whistler - Book 2

Jeri Crosby's father was murdered twenty years ago, the crime never solved.  She has made it her life's work to find his killer.  She believes the guilty party is a Florida judge who she also believes is responsible for a number of murders in other states.  Jeri feels she finally has enough evidence to involve Lacy Stoltz, a state investigator charged with examining any suspected judicial malfeasance.  Lacy finds it hard to believe a popular sitting judge could be a serial killer, but the evidence suggests that Jeri could be right. ----- Mr. Grisham makes it clear from the first pages that the judge in question is, in fact, guilty.  This choice robs the reader of the tension and build to the "Aha!" moment that makes Mr. Grisham's judicial thrillers so popular.  Another choice, that to have Jeri Crosby conceal much of the evidence from her chosen investigator, slows the pace down to a crawl and becomes irritating by the halfway mark.  Unfortunately, Mr. Grisham makes a third choice that robs the reader of the climactic "Gotcha" moment.  The saving grace of this novel is the judge's diabolical planning that has kept his secret agenda hidden for so long, but that is not enough to raise this thriller above the simply average.  A disappointing outing for John Grisham.

APPLES NEVER FALL, by Liane Moriarty

    

Mystery/Thriller -- 2 1/2 stars

Stan and Joy have recently sold their tennis school and retired.  They are not settling into retirement gracefully.  When a bleeding Savannah shows up at their door one night claiming she is running from an abusive boyfriend, they take her in.  Stan and Joy's four adult children question their parents' decision, especially now that Savannah doesn't show any signs of planning to leave.  Then Joy disappears, and the family is divided over the question of Stan's involvement. ----- First, this is a family that puts on a good front for their friends and neighbors, but behind closed doors, they really don't like each other much.  I found their constant asides and verbal barbs uncomfortable to read.  Every family has its disagreements, but 472 pages of hurtful dialogue made it impossible to care about any of them.  The reveal at the end does nothing to soften the edges; instead it confirms that, even if  they had legitimate(?) reasons, they were already unlikable even as children.  One strong point, is how Ms. Moriarty creates characters who, despite sharing a common background, are as unlike as any literary strangers.  But, good writing will only take you so far.  It's hard to like a book where everyone in it is comfortable being unredeemable.  In the end, I'm not sure if the answer to Joy's disappearance was anticlimactic, or if I had just stopped caring.

THE MANNINGTREE WITCHES, by A.K. Blakemore

   

Historical Fiction -- 5 stars

In 1643, all is peaceful in Manningtree, England, a tiny coastal village nearly devoid of men who are all off fighting in another of the king's wars.  The overtly pious Matthew Hopkins takes over the local inn, and begins to listen to rumors about the women who are living independent of a man's guidance.  Rebecca West, a young woman lives alone with her mother and cares for an elderly matron whose cabin sits on the hill above the village. These three garner Mr. Hopkins' especial attention. And so the feeding frenzy begins. ----- This is definitely not just another witch trial novel.  Based on historical records, a self-published book written by the historically accurate Matthew Hopkins, and told in the voice of a girl named Rebecca West whose identity is plucked from the trial records, this is a novel that immerses you in the lives of those women caught up in the Puritanical effort to purge England of anyone not seen as sufficiently god-fearing.  It is a novel that grabs you and refuses to let go until you have smelled the resulting darkness. Written in language flavored with that of the post-Elizabethan period, Ms. Blakemore takes an interesting detour from the usual focus on the trials themselves passing them over with just a few pages.  Instead, she targets the actual investigations, physical examinations, and fomenting rumors, exposing a vindictiveness masquerading as holy ardor that brings a reality that resonates beyond the usual.