The Killing Edge by Heather Graham....Oh brother.......

From Amazon:

Chloe Marin was lucky. She was just a teenager when a party at a Florida beachside mansion turned into a savage killing spree, and she was one of the few to survive. Bloody handwriting on the walls pointed to a cult whose rituals included human sacrifice. Chloe’s sketch of one of the killers linked two dead cult members found in the Everglades to the massacre, closing the case as far as the cops were concerned.

Ten years later Chloe works as a psychologist specializing in art therapy to help traumatized victims, and on the side she finds release in her passion for the martial arts. Police who hire her as a consultant know she’s a literal kick-ass advocate for victims who can’t always speak for themselves.

The current disappearance of a young swimsuit model ranks low on the cops’ priority list. Everyone assumes the girl has run off for some fun in the sun, instead of getting ready for a photo shoot. Everyone but Chloe, who suspects a killer is using the modeling agency to stalk his prey. When the ghost of the model appears, asking Chloe for help, she knows that she has to do everything she can.

When Chloe arrives late for an appointment at the modeling agency, she discovers a gruesome mass murder eerily similar to the one she witnessed a decade ago — and can’t help thinking that if she hadn’t run late, she would have been there when the killer arrived. Ten years ago she hadn’t been convinced the police had identified the real killers, and now she’s sure of it. The same evil mind is behind the current murders, and she’s afraid she’s the target — and terrified that she won’t be able to cheat death a third time.

With a description like the preceding, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that I thought this book was a murder/scary/things that go bump in the night type of book. Imagine my surprise when I started reading the eGalley of The Killing Edge by Heather Graham and discovered that there is a whole subset of the romance genre known as “romantic suspense”. Huh. Who knew???

This book is filled with the author’s idea of violent crime and malevolent suspense, with a healthy dose of all those cliché’s that make a romance book…well…a romance book. You know exactly what I’m talking about; the prickly and cynical, but secretly tortured anti-hero/hero, rugged and virile, often with an absurd eye color described as “steely gray” and a manly name; in this story, Luke Cane. Add to the mix, the spunky, but beautiful heroine, who, although she professes to loathe said hero, finds herself inexplicably drawn to him, like a moth to the flame.

“Luke reached across the table and touched her arm. She started, looking at his hand. It was large, with long fingers; maybe he should have been a guitarist or a pianist. His nails were clipped short, and they were clean. His palm felt callused; she imagined that when he wasn’t investigating someone, he indulged in some kind of manual labor. Building things, maybe. They were very masculine hands. She gritted her teeth again, wondering why his touch could send rivulets of fire streaking through her when she was absolutely convinced that she didn’t like the man.”

Gaaaccckkkk…….….

Where to begin? I know that people just love the whole romance genre. And I’m sure that nothing can make a romance novel better than a couple of scary bad guys and maybe a touch of gratuitous violence, but seriously? …..”rivulets of fire????!”

Gaaaacccckkkk…..

A bit of advice, if you put a paragraph like the aforementioned one anywhere in the story…it doesn’t matter how many dead bodies you sprinkle around, you’re still writing a romance novel. (And lots of loyal readers LOVE the genre,you'll sell loads of books and make scads of money--just don’t be deluded into thinking this is the next Philip Marlowe.)

I’m having way too much fun smacking this book around and my mother, (Remember our moms? They’re those voices we hear in our ears, whispering to us “If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all!”), well, my mom would not be happy with me. So I should stop, especially since I have to confess that I completely DNF’d this book. As in Did Not Finish. I gave it a shot. I even suspended my fifty-page rule, the one that says if I hate it during the first fifty pages, I’ll give it a pass. I decided to try for 75 pages, but sadly, I only made it to page 66. Then the delete button was pushed on the Sony Reader and I moved on. Maybe it got better. I never hung around for the ghost part. I wanted to, but I guess I never could get past the “rivulets of fire” bit.

My rating:

Review copy provided by those fine folks at Net Galley and its not their fault I thought the book was gacky. It’s a personal failing of my own.

Lucky 73: USS Pampanito's Unlikely Rescue of Allied POW's in WWII: Review

On September 12, 1944, the USS Pampanito, was part of a submarine “wolf pack” patrol along with the USS Growler and USS Sealion. Coming upon a convoy of ships, the Pampanito fired upon and sunk a transport ship, a tanker and badly damaged a third ship. When she moved back into the area of the original attack three days later, her crew found men clinging to makeshift rafts. After moving closer to the debris field, the crew of the sub realized the survivors were shouting in English. The Pampanito picked up 73 British and Australian survivors, and called in three other subs, the Sealion, the Barb and the Queenfish, to assist them with the rescue effort.

The survivors had been in the water for three days, clinging to debris from the sunken ships, having watched Japanese rescue ships pluck the Japanese survivors out of the water. Most of the POW’s were left behind to die. The Japanese could have requested safe passage for these transport ships, but this request was never made, nor were the ships marked in any way to indicate they were transporting prisoners of war.

The story of the attack and subsequent rescue is supplemented by the stories of the prisoner’s initial capture when Singapore fell to Japan in 1942. Such unimaginable hardships and abuse were endured by these POW’s as they were forced into slave labor building the infamous “Railway of Death” that connected Thailand and Burma. For almost two years, these men hacked through the jungle and leveled mountains to lay rails for their brutal captors, using the most rudimentary of tools. An estimated 12,000 British and Australian prisoners died from jungle disease, starvation, lack of medical care, abuse and overwork in the building of the Thai-Burma railroad. The transport ships were moving workers who had completed the railway to the copper mines in Japan.

It’s difficult to imagine what these men must have looked like when brought aboard the Pampanito. Two years of slave labor, no medical care, a handful of rice to eat each day, 18-20 hours a day of backbreaking labor, beatings and jungle diseases, added to three days and nights spent floating in the burning oil slicks left behind by the sinking ships.

The crew of the Pampanito documented the survivors stories, encouraging them to write them down, and writing them down for survivors who were too ill to do so themselves. This book is based on this treasure trove of writings, photos and the memories of all involved.

This book is not the kind of book one reads for entertainment; rather it’s an important story about courage and compassion. Even though the survivors know that they are in this situation because of the Pampanito, it is remarkable how grateful the POW’s are to the submarine crew.

“Perhaps the most valuable perspective in this debate is that of the survivors themselves—the victims of the Pampanito’s torpedoes. How did they feel about Pampanito’s actions? Of those who have commented on this issue, most do not hesitate to state outright that they understood why the submarines torpedoed the hellships and, it being wartime and the hellships being unmarked, that they believe the submarines were entirely justified in doing so. That the submarines returned to attempt rescue is proof enough that of their intentions and good will. Furthermore, many interpreted the subs’ actions not as an act of violence toward them, but as, ultimately, an act of liberation.”

I was drawn to this book because my neighbor, a really wonderful older man, served on a destroyer named the USS Hoel in the Pacific during WWII. Two hundred and fifty three men died when the ship sank, and another 15 died during the two days and nights they were in the water, awaiting rescue. My friend doesn’t say too much about it, but when I realize he was just out of high school when he survived this, I find it an amazing story. The story of the USS Pampanito was equally fascinating. An honest look into a difficult time, and courage, bravery, pride and compassion are all part of the story.

Lucky 73: USS Pampanito’s Unlikely Rescue of Allied POW’s in WWII is by no means a light and entertaining story. But it is an important story, one that, thanks to the author, Aldona Sendzikas, will not be lost to the world once that generation passes on.

My rating:

Review copy provided by NetGalley.

Horns by Joe Hill: Review

After another long night of anger and alcohol, Ig Perrish wakes to a pounding headache, and a pair of horns growing out of his temples. The second son of a “golden” family, reared in a life of comfort and privilege, Ig’s father is a famous musician, his mother a former showgirl and his older brother is a late-night television star. Ig met the love of his life, Merrin Williams while still a kid. He and Merrin had planned a whole life together, shared dreams, future hopes and magical moments. Merrin is brutally raped and murdered and for the past year, Ig has been the only suspect in the crime. Without the evidence to try and convict him, Ig has been found guilty in the eyes of his neighbors, friends and family and has been abandoned by everyone. Now that he has this new power…it’s time to find the real killer and give him what’s owed.

I’m not the kind of person who gets deeply philosophical or who seeks symbolism in a book. Quite the contrary, the symbolic crap usually annoys me. I suppose I’m too shallow, I just want to be entertained with a good story and maybe the occasional snicker….

“…He paused, twisting nervously at his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought.
“Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from,” he murmured at last, trying out a new proverb. “Although there may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this one matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement.”

Amen, Brother!

Every once in a while, a writer like Joe Hill and a book like Horns sneaks up on me, and smacks me upside the head. True to my shallow nature, I loved the book for the entertainment factor, but it also sucked me into some internal philosophical debate as well.

“…Satan turns up in a lot of other religions as the good guy. ….. He comes into the story to bamboozle the unworthy or tempt them into ruination, or at least out of their liquor. Even Christians can’t really decide what to do with him. I mean, think about it. Him and God are supposed to be at war with each other. But if God hates sin and Satan punishes the sinners, aren’t they working the same side of the street? Aren’t the judge and the executioner on the same team?….”

Huh. Blasphemous, ehh..probably, but it does make you think. What is evil? Is good ever really just evil disguised? And how often do we perceive of something being good that is really evil?

I still don’t know how Hill pulled it off, if I had to explain the book I’d be hard pressed to do have it make sense. But the author manages to tread that fine line between Wow! and Huh? quite nicely. His characterizations are strong, his protagonist earns our respect as well as our compassion, and his conflicts are convoluted and yet understandable.

Horns by Joe Hill, is a devilishly good read…(sorry—couldn’t resist--*Grin)

Review copy provided by Harper Collins

My rating:

Review: Making Toast

Amy Rosenblatt Solomon was only 38 years old when an undiagnosed and asymptomatic heart condition caused her to collapse and die. Amy’s father and mother, Roger and Ginny Rosenblatt moved into her family’s home to help her husband with their three small children. Roger has written a heartfelt memoir of the making of a new life and a new family after the loss of the central character.

Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt is dedicated to his daughter Amy. When Amy suddenly dies, she leaves a busy medical practice, a loving husband, three small children, friends, siblings and parents. Her sudden death illustrates for us all the fragility of life and is written as a joyful reminder of what love can accomplish.

I enjoyed reading about the interaction between the children and their grandparents. There was a lot of sadness, but it was often interspersed with humor that only children can guarantee. So…that being said, how big a jerk am I to not like the book? Yep…I’m a terrible person, just an awful excuse for a human being.

I sympathized with the family, I felt a lot of empathy for the pain and difficult situation they found themselves in, and yet I found the book really awkward to read. It contained too many names, and occasionally I would have to go back to figure out who was being mentioned. When I couldn't figure out who the author was talking about, it was usually okay, because it was often just a casual mention of a family friend or acquaintance, but I got tired of the names that, while personally important to the author and his family, really didn't add much to the story for the unfamiliar reader. I thought the way it was written, while mostly chronological, did go back and forth a bit too much and I was confused by the time-lines. And to me, it read much more like a personal journal of a grieving father. I felt like I was eavesdropping on family tragedy that was really none of my business. (I thought more editing would have been helpful.)

Okay…that took me a good three weeks to get the nerve to write. (Talk about kicking someone when they’re down…I’d probably be out beating up second graders for their lunch money soon…..)

As memoirs go, I'm sure the book will be a lovely remembrance for Amy's family to keep and cherish. For the unrelated reader though, it felt like looking through a scrapbook that belongs to a total stranger. We can be mildly interested, but ultimately uninvolved.

My rating:

Review copy provided by Ecco Publishing

Review: Letter to my Daughter

When Liz runs away from her Baton Rouge home on the eve of her fifteenth birthday, her guilt-ridden mother, Laura, writes her a letter about her own adolescence, hoping to give Liz insight into her mother as a woman who has enough of her own precarious history to understand her daughter. In her painfully candid confession, Laura reveals the reasons her parents sent her away to a strict Catholic boarding school, how her forbidden love affair with a boy from the wrong part of town who then left to fight in Vietnam ended in tragedy, and, finally, the meaning of the enigmatic tattoo she wears below her right hip. In recounting Laura’s story, Bishop brilliantly captures a very specific time and place as well as the incredibly universal themes of family, love, betrayal, and the anguish of adolescence. (Synopsis taken from back cover of Advance Reader Edition because I really can’t tell it any better, so why bother trying!)

Letter to my Daughter by George Bishop is a remarkable little novel. Written from the perspective of a mom worried about her own teen-aged daughter and desperate not to be anything like her mother, it’s really hard to imagine a male author hitting the mark as well as this book does. I spent some moments remembering the Nancy Drew books I read as a kid, where Nancy’s girlfriend is called George, and I convinced myself that George Bishop was a woman. (Even though the back of the book only refers to him as him or he.) I googled, and nope, as the book cover states, he is who he is. Hmmm…okay, now I’m convinced he grew up in a household with at least 5 sisters. This guy knows mother/daughter relationships in a way that’s almost spooky.

Of course its no secret that all mom’s want a close relationship with their daughters, and its not always something that we can attain. The line between mom and friend is a difficult one to straddle, and as mom’s we frequently keep so much of our pasts from our kids. It’s not because we think they are destined to repeat our mistakes, or even that we think they will or won’t learn from our mistakes. It’s more a desire to protect them from the things that can hurt them. When we expose the heartbreaking parts of our lives, the really painful things that we’ve either done or had done to us, will it help our kids understand we have empathy for them and open the lines of communication? Or will it merely make our kids look at us with a more jaundiced eye, make us lose stature in their eyes? I think these questions are ones that most parents grapple with at one point in time.

Letter to my Daughter doesn’t try to answer these big questions. Instead it gives us a personal peek into the life of a mother who is frantic with worry about her daughter and not sure how to help her.

“You never tell me, Liz, but I know. You’re fifteen, you’re a girl, so you hurt. It’s the fate of all girls, and it’s what in the end makes us women. Small consolation to you now, perhaps, but what else can a mother say? Things will be better. Things will be better. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, I promise.”

This book has a slightly ambiguous ending, but it really works for it. It’s a novel I’d wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, especially the moms and grandmas of teenaged girls, and to the girls themselves. Laura’s story might not be their mothers, but it shows that we all have stories, unspoken and unheard.

My rating:

(Quote taken from Advance Reader Edition and not checked against final copy for accuracy)

(Review copy provided by Random House Publishing Group)

Review: The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran

Johanna Moran’s debut novel, The Wives of Henry Oades is based on a legal case from late 1800’s. The author was inspired by a story she first learned of from her father who had studied the case as a law student.

The novel opens with Henry Oades accepting a position in Wellington, New Zealand in 1890. He arrives in Wellington with his wife and their small children. One night while he is away, Maori tribesman attack his family and their home is burned to the ground. The Maori take his wife, Margaret and their children and disappear into the wilds of New Zealand.

…”In the next instant the howling baby was wrenched from her arms and stuffed inside a grass sack. She fell on the sweating creature, clawing, drawing blood. He shoved her off. She staggered, knocking back Henry’s chair. Margaret shrieked, searing her throat. “Please, God! My baby!”…

Henry is frantic and tears off in search of them. He is badly injured in his attempt to find them, and during his recovery, other search parties are launched. Finding no sign, everyone believes them to be dead. Against all advice, he continues his search for years. Finally, heartbroken and unable to remain in New Zealand, he takes the first ship out of the country and immigrates to California. Henry begins a new life and remarries, only to have Margaret and his children show up at his door shortly after. They had managed to survive and escape their captors. The book is told primarily from the viewpoint of Henry’s two wives and is the story of a family facing criminal charges and persecution from an intolerant society.

I was a little…”meh”..about reading The Wives of Henry Oades. It had an interesting idea behind the story, but when it arrived, it had a romantic looking cover, with soft focus photography, flowers and a meadow. Now, I know I shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, but I’m thinking, “Hmm…this gives off the distinctly Romantic Mush vibe.” And I don’t like Romantic Mush. I opened it up to do a quick survey of the writing style and was just completely sucked in. Moran brings her people to life and gives the sense of time and place that is wonderful. The relationships between the main characters are fully formed and realistic. The narrow-minded townsfolk can seem almost over the top with their disapproval and the lengths that they go to in their personal attacks on the Oades family, but when we consider the era that the story unfolds in, it seems to be a viable response. Henry Oades is an admirable man, striving to do the best he can for everyone, his wives and children are good people, trapped by circumstance and facing adversity with grace.

This is a story of love, loss, courage, perseverance, adversity, kindness, character, pettiness and just about any other emotion you can think of. Johanna Moran has written a superb novel about impossible circumstances. As a reader, I look forward to many more novels by this wonderful new author.

(Quote taken from Advance Reader Edition and not checked against the final copy for accuracy)

My rating:

(Review based on an Advance Reader edition provided by Random House Publishing for review)

Review: One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

In the basement visa and passport office of an Indian Consulate office, nine very different people are trapped together after a massive earthquake strikes. Their situation is grim, the hallways are blocked with shaky debris on the precipice of total collapse, phones and electricity are out and there is a broken water pipe somewhere that is soaking through the walls and slowly pouring into the space where the survivors await rescue. Injured, with little in the way of food or safe water, the survivors begin to take out their fear and frustration on each other. To distract each other from their situation, it is suggested that they each take turns sharing “one amazing thing” from his or her life. In the recounting of each story, we learn more about each person; what brought them here and who they really are.

I really wanted to love One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This short little novel, (only a couple hundred pages) starts well. We are introduced to the characters; their struggles in the aftermath of the quake are realistic and well told. It seemed a bit of a stretch to me that these total strangers would agree to tell each other of the one thing in their lives that made them who they were, but since I’ve never had a building fall down above me during an earthquake, I’m willing to give the benefit of a doubt. The individual stories start off really well. The first story is excellent and contained the best lines in the book:

“When had it happened? Looking back, I could not point to one special time and say, There! That’s what is amazing. We can change completely and not recognize it. We think terrible events have made us into stone. But love slips in like a chisel—and suddenly it is an ax, breaking us into pieces from the inside.”

That’s a really beautiful bit of writing, isn’t it? So why the “meh” reaction to the book? I hated the end. Just loathed it. The book ends in one of those ambiguous ways that I suspect authors do because it allows us readers to come to our own conclusions. But I always sort of feel like I’ve been cheated when I read a book that ends this way. “C’mon”, I think, “you sucked me into these people’s lives, made me interested in people that you created and you didn’t bother to bring it to a conclusion??? Seriously??? If you’re gonna bother writing a book, for cryin’ out loud, finish the damn thing!!”

I know…I know….I’m cranky. And I shouldn’t be complaining about the author’s vision. It’s her baby after all, and I’m sure it turned out just the way the author and her editor wanted. The book is beautifully written, the stories are powerful and engaging. So if you’re not bothered by ambiguous endings…give it a read. Me? I probably should have gave it a pass.

My rating:

(Quote from an Advance Reading Copy and not checked against the final copy for accuracy... and I'm supposed to,I know I'm supposed to, I just don’t want to drive to the book store, pull the book off the shelf, find this page and check it, so... there you go...)

In my continuing effort to keep the fine folks at the FCC happy, I must disclose that this review is based on a book supplied from the publisher for review. While I may indeed, be capable of being bought off in exchange for a good review, I’m neither important enough or connected enough for anyone to offer me anything other than the Advance Reader Copy I received for review. And if I’m going sell off my integrity, it’s worth a whole lot more than a paperback copy of a “meh” book!