Blink
Malcolm Gladwell
2005
320 pages
Published by Back Bay Books

********************

FTC: I realize that I no longer need to tell you when I bought a book (as is the case for Blink), but honestly, you’ve got me paranoid.

********************

I was not a fan of the first Gladwell I tried…the audio version of The Tipping Point. It suffered in comparison to Freakonomics, which I listened to first, and loved. Blink was better, but it’s not going to change my world. However, I have it on good authority that What the Dog Saw seriously rocks. And when Other Jill says read, I listen. (Eventually. I have a bajillion other books I should concentrate on first.)

Blinkis about how we make decisions. Gladwell talks about thin slicing (making sense of situations based on the thinnest slice of experience) and snap decisions and the power of charisma and thinking outside of the box and facial expressions. He wants people to trust their judgment…experience gives us the ability to act instinctively, we just have to also be aware of things that will disrupt that judgment. However, if you don’t have experience with the situation, than it’s better if you take the time to think it out.

Remember way back when when I asked you all for questions to inspire me? Well, I think this is the last batch…

Care asked:

I have Blink – do you think I will like it? Why did you read it this?

I’m a poor judge of whether or not someone will like a book, but I’ll go out on a limb and say yes. And I actually read this book on the recommendation of my yoga instructor. She loves the books I recommend to her, so I decided to read something that she’d talked about, for a change.

Jenny asked:

How did you feel about Blink: Too much anecdotes & not enough Serious Facts, or just the right balance for a fun read? Are you now paranoid about making the wrong split-second decisions?

I thought it was a good balance, but yes, I am now paranoid. Actually, I have no faith in my gut response to anything, so I haven’t changed anything. But I did like how Gladwell avoids the word intuition.

Mornings in Jenin
Susan Abulhawa
February 2010
331 pages
Published by Bloomsbury

********************

FTC disclosure: I bought this book. But the copy I read is actually one that my mom bought to replace the copy that she stole and mailed to a friend. Okay, the stealing was an accident, so please don’t send the cops after her and make me bail my mommy out of jail.

********************

Israel has always been a golden child in the eyes of the US. However, it’s important to remember that there are two sides to every story. Mornings in Jenin is a fictional account of that other side, one that offers up a rebuttal to the idea that all Palestinians are fanatical suicide bombers. It humanizes Palestinians, which I think is something that the US press fails to do. But don’t worry…while the book does show the atrocities perpetrated upon the Palestinians by Israelis, it doesn’t make all Israelis out to be the monster under the bed. Rather, it’s a reminder that ordinary people can do both good and bad things, and often they are responding to the circumstances around them.

Publisher’s Comments:

Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family.

The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch’s bright grand-daughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship and first love and especially when she loses her adored father, who read to her daily as a young girl in the quiet of the early dawn. Through Amal we get the stories of her brothers, one who is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier and raised Jewish; the other who sacrifices everything for the Palestinian cause. Amal’s own dramatic story threads between the major Palestinian-Israeli clashes of three decades; it is one of love and loss, of childhood, marriage, and parenthood, and finally of the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.

Previously published in a hardcover edition with a limited run under the title The Scar of David, this powerful novel is now available in a fully revised, newly titled paperback edition. The deep and moving humanity of Mornings in Jenin forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining political conflicts of our lifetimes.

Although certainly grim and at times, brutal, this is a fantastic book. I got caught up in the lives of the Abulheja family…I didn’t even notice the changes in tense and point of view that bothered Aarti and Amanda. I highly recommend it as a counterpoint to the multitude of sympathetic information there is about Israel (and please know that I’m talking about the Israeli state here, rather than Israelis in general).

Also of interest:

• Susan Abulhawa contributed her recommendations for further reading on Palestine to Five Books.
• Be sure check out what Aarti at BookLust and Amanda at The Zen Leaf had to say.

Mockingjay
Suzanne Collins
August 2010
400 pages
Published by Scholastic

Yesterday I caved to the madness and downloaded Mockingjay onto my nook, then quickly devoured it. I did this mostly because I wanted to read the book before I read anything about it, but also because I wanted to know how it all ended. I’m not going to do a synopsis of the story, but rather a listing of some of my thoughts and reactions to the book (and yes, there are spoilers, so be warned):

*The writing was disappointing, but then I wasn’t rocked by the first two books, either.

*Katniss still bugs. Seriously. I so wanted her to morph into a kick-ass rebel leader, but instead, it was still all me, me, me and boo hoo hoo. Grow a spine, girl! Also, that vote you cast for the final Hunger Games? That was wrong (and it totally makes your attitude towards Gale hypocritical).

*Gale turned out to be a total wanker. Okay, not total, but his apparent disregard for human life was a complete turnoff, and I’ve turned in my Team Gale badge. Also, my Team Katniss and Team Haymitch badges. And I still wouldn’t be caught dead with a Team Peeta patch.

*Because Peeta turned out to be not all that great, either. Oh sure, it’s not his fault, but still…would you marry a guy who tried to kill you? Katniss is never going to speak to Gale again because he designed (but didn’t deploy) the bomb that killed Prim, but she’ll marry Peeta despite the fact that he called her a mutt and choked her. Girl needs some serious therapy. Oh wait, they tried…but she won’t talk.

*Lyme?? Seriously, there’s a character named Lyme??? I’d sue. Who wants people to be reminded of ticks and disease when they read about you?

*My feelings about this series have ended up being distressingly similar to my feelings about Twilight. Why did the heroine turn out to be such a complete ninny? Why couldn’t the author have given her some depth?

*And finally, why did Finnick have to die?!? I would’ve been much happier had Peeta and Gale disappeared in that final assault on the capital and Finnick and Annie were given the happily ever after.

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
Michael Perry
April 2009
368 pages
Published by HarperCollins

********************

FTC disclosure: I bought this for Calliope (my nook), because she needs regular feeding.

********************

I loved Population 485, which is a collection of essays about small town life. I tried Truck, but it just didn’t grab me. Still, I was looking for an excuse to read Perry’s latest, Coop, and when Kim and Andi announced Coop as their book of choice for their inaugural Book Club Sandwich, I was in! Especially since around that same time Perry was contributing daily reports to Shelf Awareness while he was on tour for Coop. Did anyone else see those? I thought it was a great series.

At first I found Coop to be a little disjointed, but about halfway through I realized what Perry was up to. While initially each chapter seemed like a series of sometimes unrelated essays, in reality each chapter is centered around a bigger issue. Like Death. Or Marriage. Or Parenthood. Or Religion. Perry talks about what is happening with his family (and a lot happens) during roughly the year that surrounds the birth of his second daughter. But he intersperses it with tales from his childhood, and lessons he learned from his parents and siblings. He talks about growing up on a farm as part of a huge family (his parents were foster parents to many, many kids), and the struggle to establish his own small farm (while still working as a writer). It’s good stuff, especially if you like to read about people reflecting on marriage/religion/parenthood/death while also trying to raise pigs and chickens.

The Subtle Body
Stefanie Syman
2010
292 pages
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

********************

FTC disclosure: Impulse buy.

********************

The subtle body describes a network of channels (nadis) and wheel-like vortices (chakras). These are invisible to the naked eye and even the microscope; the subtle body is distinct from the gross or physical body, though manipulating one necessarily affects the other. –p. 5

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating story. However, I think it was unnecessarily bogged down with minutiae (the author spent an entire page talking about the World’s Fair, which really had no bearing on the story) and at the same time, it glossed over certain things that would have enhanced my understanding (for example, what exactly is the difference between a guru, a swami, and a sri?). And I’m still confused about all of the different types of yoga.

Instead of telling the history of yoga in America, I think the author chose well-known and/or exotic figures and focused a chapter on each of these people. There was little attention given to the actual practice of yoga by the common people (that’s my term…I felt, at times, like I was reading The History of Yoga as Practiced by Famous People). Here’s a brief synopsis of each chapter to illustrate what I’m getting at:

Chapter 1: Brahma?: Ralph Waldo Emerson was into studying the East, and it influenced his writing. His poem Brahma reflects this influence, and some argue that it is a summary of Indian philosophy and yoga. There is a lot of description of the Bhagavad-Gita in this chapter, and it made my head spin. Also, I will confess that I totally bogged down and put the book down for about a month. After I picked it back up, it still took me about 3 or 4 chapters to really get into the writing.

Chapter 2: Thoreau’s Experiment: The author argues that Thoreau was the first American yogi. He might not have been going about it correctly, but he had good intentions.

Chapter 3: The Guru Arrives: Swami Vivekananda arrives in the US, and teaches classes on the nature of God, as well as yoga, at Green Acre, a spiritual retreat founded by Sara Chapman Bull and Sarah Jane Farmer. Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga was all about breathing and meditation…he considered it a “scientific method to quell the fluctuations of the mind and thereby see God.” –p. 55

Chapter 4: Swami Vivekananda’s Legacy: In a nutshell, Hatha Yoga (which teaches asanas, or poses) was bad. Raja Yoga was more mental, while the physicality of Hatha Yoga was frightening to many people. This idea of Hatha Yoga as unacceptable would linger for many years. There was also the idea that yoga in general was a fad that women embraced that led to instability and madness.

Chapter 5: The Making of an American Guru: Along comes Pierre Bernard, who is heavily involved in Tantric Yoga, and who also founds many clubs and studios that are all plagued by raids (the persistent idea that yoga is licentious led suspicious minds to often call the cops).

Chapter 6: Theos Bernard’s Spiritual Heroism: Theos was Pierre’s half-nephew, although the two weren’t especially close. Theos travelled to India, wrote his dissertation on yoga, and wrote a few popular books on yoga and his experiences in India (unfortunately, one of them was made up). Theos was bound and determined to popularize Hatha Yoga. Unfortunately, his marriage to a wealthy socialite made him tabloid fodder and ultimately hurt his cause.

Chapter 7: Margaret Woodrow Wilson “Turns Hindu”: For reals. The daughter of Woodrow Wilson actually moved to an ashram in India, where she spent her final years.

Chapter 8: Uncovering Reality in Hollywood: Aldous Huxley pops up in this chapter, along with Greta Garbo and Somerset Maugham. It’s yoga does Hollywood.

Chapter 9: Hatha Yoga on Sunset Boulevard: Still in Hollywood. Indra Devi shows up in town, and teaches Hatha Yoga to movie stars as a way to keep tone and trim. Gloria Swanson was a big fan. The author states that Devi made the word yoga “mean what will least offend her audience.” –p. 192

Chapter 10: Psychedelic Sages: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental Meditation. Or, the Beatles turn into hippies. Also, Timothy Leary turns on, tunes in and drops out. Or, skip the yoga, take drugs and whammo, instant oneness with god. Except then Leary’s buddy Richard Alpert traded in the drugs for yoga and became Ram Dass.

Chapter 11: How to Be a Guru without Really Trying: Yoga becomes “just another American pastime.” –p. 237 You know, kind of like aerobics. B.K.S. Iyengar becomes popular, as he emphasizes poses and praniyama (breathing). Meditation and chanting were strictly forbidden.

Chapter 12: Marshmallow Yoga: Once again, yoga and eastern spirituality comes under attack. There’s even mention of the Rajneeshpuram scandal, which occurred near the little podunk town that I lived in as a small child. Yoga devolves to marshmallow yoga, where “You sort of lie on the floor and exhale a whole lot and it’s good for puffy ladies.” –p. 267

Chapter 13: The New Penitents: And then we come to the final chapter, in which Bikram yoga is explained, and Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and Ashtanga yoga is introduced, and I pretty much ended just as confused as I started. Sure, I learned some stuff, but now there’s all this other stuff floating around in my brain, and I somehow ended up with just as many questions as when I started.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
First published July 1960
336 pages

A few weeks ago when I was stumped on where to start with all of the posts I needed to write, I asked if anyone had questions about the books I had recently read. And whaddya know, there were all sorts of questions about To Kill a Mockingbird. Which is good, because there are oodles of regular reviews on this book, and the last thing I wanted to do was a synopsis.

So today we’re doing Q&A about TKAM.

Care asked:

Did you have any preconceived ideas about TKAM? Did it hold up to expectations? How do you think Scout’s character grew and what most influenced this growth?

No, I can’t say that I had any preconceived notions, other than the fact that I will always visualize Gregory Peck as Atticus. I was surprised that it took so long to get to the trial, maybe because the trial always seems to be brought up in regards to the book, so I thought it would be a larger part of the book.

I think Scout begins to have more of a world view as the book progresses. In the beginning, she is a child, concerned with her own small world. As the events of the rape and trial begin to be known to Scout, while she might not completely understand everything that was happening, she was affected by them and her world begins to expand. She thinks of more than just herself.

A Bookshelf Monstrosity asked:

Was this your first time to read TKAM? If not, how did your perception/feelings towards the novel differ upon a second reading?

This was my second time reading TKAM, but I have no memories of the first experience, unfortunately. I have seen the movie more times that I can count, but that was a long time ago, too. So it really was like reading it for the first time, and I absolutely fell in love with the characters and the writing, particularly the voice of Scout.

Vasilly asked:

Was To Kill a Mockingbird a re-read? Why did you pick it up to read now? Can you give us a favorite passage?

I’ve already answered the first question, but I chose to read this book in July because it was the 50th anniversary of its publication. I’ve had a copy on my shelf for the past 3 years or so, so it’s been in the back of my mind for awhile now, and I finally succumbed to all the hype for the anniversary. I also read Scout, Atticus and Boo, which made for a great companion piece.

I’m terrible at noting passages in books, but much of what Scout had to say was a favorite. In particular, I love this quote:

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

Gwen asked:

Who do you think are the Boo Radleys of today? Were you able to read the book without picturing Gregory Peck? What other characters from literature will forever be linked to the actors that played them in your mind?

Good question about the Boo Radleys. I’m going to go beyond a person and answer in terms of groups. I think child predators and terrorism are two examples of the Boo Radleys of today. Yes, there are child predators and bad people in the world, but I hear parents who worry endlessly about letting their children out of their sight for fear that something bad will happen to them. Child predators are the bogeyman. So are germs.

And then there’s that whole threat of weapons of mass destruction that I’ll just compare to Boo Radley and leave it at that.

I already mentioned that it was impossible for me to read the book without picturing Gregory Peck as Atticus. As for other characters that are forever linked to actors? Tom Cruise as the Vampire Lestat (unfortunately). Lately, I try to avoid movies that are based on books, so I have no recent comparisons.

Helen asked:

What did you think of Boo Radley?

Poor Boo. I actually would’ve liked to hear his side of the story.

gautami tripathy asked:

Do you think To Kill a Mockingbird is still relevant? If yes, how and why?

Hell, yes. There is still racism, and even more so, there is still intolerance. I think TKAM teaches a valuable lesson about the dangers of drawing conclusions based on stereotypes and bias.

Veens asked:

…it is a classic and I have never read it. Do you think it is a book that should not be missed? I mean, there are a few classics that I have passed off because I could not read them, is this readable?

This is the most readable classic I’ve ever read (not that I’m a fan of the classics). But Scout is a kick in the pants, and she (and the book) absolutely shouldn’t be missed.

The Map of True Places
Brunonia Barry
May 2010
416 pages
Published by William Morrow

********************

I have FTC writer’s block, and can’t think of anything witty to say. So just know that I bought the damn book.

********************

Publisher’s Description:

Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats—a talent that earned her the nickname Trouble. She’s now a respected psychotherapist working with the world-famous Dr. Liz Mattei. She’s also about to marry one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors. But the suicide of Zee’s patient Lilly Braedon throws Zee into emotional chaos and takes her back to places she thought she’d left behind.

What starts as a brief visit home to Salem after Lilly’s funeral becomes the beginning of a larger journey for Zee. Her father, Finch, long ago diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, has been hiding how sick he really is. His longtime companion, Melville, has moved out, and it now falls to Zee to help her father through this difficult time. Their relationship, marked by half-truths and the untimely death of her mother, is strained and awkward.

Overwhelmed by her new role, and uncertain about her future, Zee destroys the existing map of her life and begins a new journey, one that will take her not only into her future but into her past as well. Like the sailors of old Salem who navigated by looking at the stars, Zee has to learn to find her way through uncharted waters to the place she will ultimately call home.

I always think of Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader as like The Time Traveler’s Wife. Not because the books are similar, but because you either love it, or you don’t. I happened to love both of those books (although Her Fearful Symmetry is a whole ‘nother story). So I was looking forward to The Map of True Places. And I enjoyed reading it, especially because this was a more straightforward story, without any weird reading of lace or unreliable narrators. Although there were some very unreliable parents. Unfortunately, I read it last month and it’s fading from memory.

Into Thin Air
Jon Krakauer
1997
333 pages
Published by Anchor Books

********************

FTC, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal: Do you really have any doubt as to how and where I acquired this one? It’s too old for an ARC, so you guessed it…I bought it.

********************

Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality. -p. 92

In 1996, journalist Jon Krakauer agreed to climb Mt. Everest on assignment for Outside Magazine, to write about the companies that guide climbers up the mountain. Outside shelled out $65,000 to secure a place for Krakauer with one such company, Adventure Consultants.

Krakauer originally wrote a lengthy article for Outside, but he was haunted by his experience with Mt. Everest, so he sought some sort of relief by expanding the article into this book. In Into Thin Air, Krakauer describes the long, arduous journey up the mountain, and the resulting tragic descent. It took something like a month to reach the summit (at 29,028 feet, the highest point in the world), as the team stayed at various camps on the way up the mountain to acclimatize to the increasing lack of oxygen. And while not all members of the team made it to the summit, Krakauer did. Unfortunately, after he reached the summit, a storm rolled in and many of the climbers who were behind him that day were trapped on their descent. Bad weather, bad decisions, oxygen deprivation and other factors all combined to result in tragedy…eight people from different expeditions died. Into Thin Air is Krakauer’s attempt to reconstruct what happened and make some sort of peace with the decisions that he made on that fateful day.

Krakauer includes this quote from Walt Unsworth’s book, Everest, which really sums up how I feel about mountain climbing after reading this book:

The American public has no inherent sympathy for mountain climbing, unlike the mountain countries of Europe, or the British, who had invented the sport. In those countries there was something akin to understanding, and though the man in the street might on the whole consider it a reckless risk of life, he acknowledged that it was something that had to be done. There was no such acceptance in America. -p. 139

I agree. There’s no acceptance here, either. This was a fascinating book, because it really solidified my dislike of a sport that seems so reckless, both in terms of people’s attitudes towards their bodies and their lives, and their disregard for the mountain itself. As much as I want to be open-minded and let people do as they please, my brain was screaming WHY throughout this book. I just don’t get why people feel the need to climb a mountain:

1. That records temps of 100 degrees BELOW 0. (Holy mother, that’s cold.)
2. Where you can’t breathe (which has resulted in tons (literally) of discarded oxygen canisters lying around).
3. Where many, many people lose their life, and are left where they die. This means should you choose to climb the mountain you will be walking by many of these dead bodies (that do not decompose). That gives me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. And if you don’t lose your life, chances are good that you will at least lose a toe or finger (or maybe even a nose or an arm) to frostbite. Or maybe you’ll be a victim of HAPE or HACE, in which the lack of oxygen does bad things to your lungs or your brain.
4. That costs tens of thousands of dollars to climb. The permit alone, for one person, in 1996, was $10,000.
5. That results in an every person for themselves mentality. As one climber stated, “Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality.” -p. 253

In the end, this book left me feeling appalled. It’s astounding to think of everything that is sacrificed (life, limbs, money, peace of mind for some of the survivors, the beauty and sanctity of the mountain) just so people can say they’ve conquered the tallest mountain in the world. Why do people feel the need to push themselves in the name of conquering nature?

And it’s not really the book or the author that is appalling…it’s the story. Because in the end, I was left feeling like Krakauer had come to similar conclusions. He’s received a lot of flak for telling this story, and I can totally sympathize with the family members who were outraged by the book. On the other hand, I think it’s a story with a very dramatic moral, one that’s worth reading.

Day for Night
Frederick Reiken
April 2010
336 pages
Published by Reagan Arthur Books

********************

Yo, FTC lackeys: Dawn very kindly shared her ARC with me. I suspect she wanted me to share in the mind-f^ck that is this book. And that’s my word, not hers, so don’t go sending the censors after her.

********************

I seem to be on a streak of reading books that leave me confuzzled.

This is a tale made up of interconnected stories…and they get even more interconnected as the tale progresses. It’s very skillfully done, too…at no time did I think “you have got to be kidding me” whenever a character reappeared later in the book in a time and place I never would’ve expected them.

However, I’ll be damned if I know how to explain it. It has allusions to cults, some of the characters are Holocaust survivors and others play in a rock band, it’s set in Utah and Florida and New Jersey and Israel and Poland and Lithuania, there are manatees, there’s a pet hyena, one character has a stroke, another is in a coma, and another has leukemia, and there is one character that goes by 50 bajillion names.

It’s the character of 50 bajillion names that (sort of) connects everything together. She may or may not be a fugitive (in a more serious way than the Foster Farm chickens were fugitives), and she often pops up in inexplicable ways. Kind of like Mighty Mouse…you know, here she comes to save the day. And I bet you weren’t expecting a post that mentions both Mighty Mouse and the Foster Farm chickens. And the Holocaust.

Okay, pop culture super-heroes aside, this is a great book, although I still have no idea what the author was getting at, beyond some weird interconnectedness shit (as in we’re all interconnected, not just the stories that make up this book). The stories were compelling (seriously, I couldn’t stop reading and I finished this in one day), the characters interesting, and the end baffling. I’m still wondering if the woman of 50 bajillion names was meant to be some sort of mystical equivalent of Mighty Mouse, and if Jonah (another character who seemed to keep popping up) was her predecessor.

And while I was googling for cover images, I stumbled across the meaning of the title. Day for night is a cinematographic technique in which night-time is created by the use of special lights. In other words, you’re creating the illusion of night-time. Hmmmmm.

And here are some other reviews, if you’d like to read more coherent posts:

• Beth Fish Reads
• Devourer of Books
• She Is Too Fond of Books
• The Book Lady’s Blog

The Scent of Rain and Lightning
Nancy Pickard
May 2010
336 pages
Published by Random House

********************

FTC blah, blah, blah: I purchased this on my nook.

********************

Synopsis (blatantly filched from the B&N website)

One beautiful summer afternoon, from her bedroom window on the second floor, Jody Linder is unnerved to see her three uncles parking their pickups in front of her parents’ house—or what she calls her parents’ house, even though Jay and Laurie Jo Linder have been gone almost all of Jody’s life. “What is this fearsome thing I see?” the young high school English teacher whispers, mimicking Shakespeare. Polished boots, pressed jeans, fresh white shirts, Stetsons—her uncles’ suspiciously clean visiting clothes are a disturbing sign.

The three bring shocking news: The man convicted of murdering Jody’s father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-six years since that stormy night when, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib, her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. Neither the protective embrace of Jody’s uncles nor the safe haven of her grandparents’ ranch could erase the pain caused by Billy Crosby on that catastrophic night.

Now Billy Crosby has been granted a new trial, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Collin, a lawyer who has spent most of his life trying to prove his father’s innocence. As Jody lives only a few doors down from the Crosbys, she knows that sooner or later she’ll come face-to-face with the man who she believes destroyed her family.

What she doesn’t expect are the heated exchanges with Collin. Having grown up practically side by side in this very small town, Jody and Collin have had a long history of carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. Now Jody discovers that underneath their antagonism is a shared sense of loss that no one else could possibly understand. As she revisits old wounds, startling revelations compel her to uncover the dangerous truth about her family’s tragic past.

This had some surprising twists at the end, too. I, for one, wasn’t expecting who the killer turned out to be. I think I suspected practically everyone else, which was kind of fun. My thoughts went something like this: “No way is it that guy, that’s too obvious.” “Hmm….nahhhh, couldn’t be.” “Wait, maybe it’s…no, that’s too obvious, too. I think.” “Whoa. Didn’t see that coming.” “Whoa. Or that.”

You get the picture. Despite the bloody ending, this was a fun read, and it’s actually a well written book, to boot. I’m not a big mystery fan, and this doesn’t feel like a typical mystery story.