Tuesday Book Review on Thursday

 

Four-star Review for A Voice in the Dark (Benedict Hoffman and Helen Belle Book ) by Barbara Nickless

This psychological thriller was written well. The main characters of FBI agent Helen Belle and now-professor Benedict Hoffman were engaging. They’d previously worked together in a failed effort to prove the existence of The Midnight Man, and that he’d used video games to influence a teenager to kill. Now, they separately linked that case to a more recent murder of a family and torching of the family home by another teen boy. Both studied the effects of games on susceptible and easily-influenced youngsters. Once more they end up working together. With the current fears about AI so prevalent, this book can be a cautionary tale about what’s to come.

Tuesday Book Review

 

Four-star Review of God of the Woods by Liz Moore

In this novel that relates events from two different times when a boy, nicknamed Bear, and then his sister, Barbara, disappeared, was well-written. Moore handled the multiple POVs and timelines very well.  She fleshed out many of the characters. My only quibble was that I guessed from the beginning what happened to Bear and clues about Barbara also made it easy to guess how she disappeared. There were also several characters, who we came to know, but whose stories went nowhere. I know the area where the story took place, which helped me to picture the settings; those settings also helped set the atmosphere of the story. The campground where much of the story takes place, the nearby home of the fabulously wealthy family of the brother and sister, and the small towns and woods in the area were described very well.

Tuesday Book Review

Five-star review for The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

Lenni, who’s seventeen, and Margo, who’s eighty-three, meet in an arts and crafts class for seventy- and eighty-year-olds at a chronic disease hospital in Glasgow. Both are dying but they develop a friendship and share stories of their lives with their pictures. Lenni decides that, since their combined age is 100, they should create 100 paintings depicting their lives. Many others in the hospital support them, including the art teacher, others in the class, a friendly nurse, a helpful porter and probably most of all, Father Arthur, the hospital chaplain who is soon to retire. This lovely story of an age-bridging friendship that changes their attitudes toward dying. At Margo’s age, I also wonder why I remember certain events and people in my life more than others.

Tuesday Book Review on Wednesday

 

Five-star review for Where the Sea Lavender Grows by Kitty Johnson

 

A semisweet book about two sisters, Lilias and Ruth living in the countryside in England who take in a boy and his mother who were evacuated from London during WWII and the connection to a modern day young woman, Elise,  who is grieving the loss of her son and is restoring the house in North Suffolk where the sisters had lived. Each of the characters is lovingly written. The descriptions of the area pull the reader in. Add a bit of history, a touch of mystery, and even of architecture and you have a very good read. The back and forth in time wasn’t ever jarring. Definitely worth reading.

Tuesday Book Review on Wednesday

Four-star Review for Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

The every-day activities of a family at a cherry orchard in Michigan during the pandemic forms the basis for the mother to share the story of her life as an actress with her three grown daughters who are isolating with her and her husband. Her signature role was as Emily in “Our Town”, which led to a summer with an acting troupe at Tom Lake in Michigan and a romance with a young actor who became famous. She met her husband there, too, and his aunt and uncle who owned the cherry orchard. The writing style keeps the story interesting. The references to the stories of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as well as Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard fit the story well. Meryl Streep’s reading of the story added to my enjoyment of the audible version. 

Tuesday Book Review

 

Four-star Review for Death at Paradise Palms (The Retired Detectives Club book 2) by Steph Broadribb

When former British detectives living in a retirement community in Florida team up with an American former cop there are bound to be murders and crimes to be investigated, in this case the missing husband of a former actress, and they’re bound to do what the local cops can’t. But there’s a lot more to this than that premise. The growing attraction between Rick, the American, and Moira, one of the Brits, and the cracks in the marriage of the other two English, Lizzie and Philip, are well written side plots as is the character of the actress who enlists their help. Good characters and an interesting take on a now familiar scenario.

Tuesday Book Review

Four-star Review for Murder by Design: A Thriller (Edison Bixby Book 1)  by Lee Goldberg

Edison Bixby’s brain was damaged by a bullet to his head, so he has no control over what truths he tells people, but his injury hasn’t affected his ability to prove the relationship between man-made physical surroundings and a person’s actions. He might no longer be on the police force but has been called upon to assist the police. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a billionaire. A would-be actor, Wally Nash, is hired as his assistant with the express purpose of keeping a figurative muzzle on his often rude mouth. In this first of a two-book series, they tackle more than one case. The premise of this series is almost more interesting than the actual cases. Well-written story and characters told in first person with deft humor by the assistant. I’ll read the second in the series when it’s published.