Tuesday book review

 

Three-star Review for Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

 

Against a background of the aftermath of the Civil War in the Virginia-West Virginia area, this story is about a girl, her mother and the people they meet at an insane asylum where the mother, Eliza, is brought as a patient. With extended pieces of backstory and a superficial description of the mother’s recovery from trauma, We learn most of the story from the perspective of the girl, Cona Lee, who pretends to be her mother’s companion. The florid descriptions, some more lyrical and some filled with gory detail, , this book did not engage me as I expected it would.

Tuesday Book Review on Wednesday

 

Four-star Review for Closed Circles (Sandhamn Murders Book 2) by Viveca Sten

This early entry in the Sandhamn Murders mysteries wasn’t as engaging as other books by the author or especially the YA books she’s written with her daughter. The story begins when the deputy chairman of a Yacht Club, Oscar Juliander, is shot dead at the start of a regatta. All of the characters, including the police and other main characters, seem filled with angst about something or other and that clouds their thoughts. Still, I liked the characters and especially the setting on the islands of the archipelago not far from Stockholm, an area where the rich Swedish people go to summer.

 

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.