What I've Been Reading - April 2019


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My Favorites In April -
For years I have not touched any of the Bill O'Reilly books, because I detest modern politics and have no interest in reading about them.  However, while searching for books on Germany, I saw a review for his Killing Patton book where the reviewer, also not a fan of politics, highly recommended ignoring the authors politics, that the series is extremely factual and well written. 

 So with it almost being Easter, I started with Killing Jesus - and I'm glad I did.  I will definitely read more of them!  No politics at all.  None.  Just tons of well researched history on a variety of characters, presented in a short, interesting, way.

 Elizabeth Peters is my new Agatha Raisin. :-)

On Audio - 

Labeled A "Psychological Thriller"



That's a popular term for books these days.  I think it's often overused.  But in the case of The Silent Patient?  It's pretty much the perfect description. This is not a fast paced twisty turny action book.   It's a slow introspective mind bending mystery that you can't even be sure is a mystery.  It is definitely "a narrative which emphasizes the unstable or delusional psychological states of its characters". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller  

This book is SUPER hyped right now.  There's really no way it could live up to all that hype.  But it does indeed come close.  I didn't guess where this story was going until very near the end.  And I was impressed with how it got there.

A woman is in a mental hospital, accused of killing her husband.  She has not spoken since the crime.  A new psychotherapist comes along, seemingly obsessed with her case, and willing to break all the rules to get her to talk, interviewing her friends and family,  and introducing us to a variety of plausible alternatives to the crime.  

It's foul and coarse, but only in short bursts.   I was annoyed by parts of the story. But overall?  Overall I can't say too much, because you want to get to the end all on your own.  VERY well done Alex Michaelides.  I look forward to your next work.
If you read these posts regularly, you may remember that last month I was struggling with this book, but determined to finish it, believing that if the person who recommended it to me recommended it, it was worth reading.

 And I was right.  It was shortly after I wrote that I was struggling with it that the "WOWs" began.  And they kept coming.  This is a young adult book, and it has as many surprises as an Harlan Coben novel.  It is fantastic. I'm so glad I stuck with it!
https://amzn.to/2LAWPQq
Little Black Lies By Sharon Bolton 
I don't know what I was expecting from this book, but this was not it.  I was surprised when the narrator changed - we hear this story from three different perspectives.  The setting was unique, and that helped with the spell it cast over me, I'm sure.  This was a really good book.  Really, Really good.  Haunting is the best description I can come up with.
https://amzn.to/2DXwOEM
After hearing stories of his grandfather for years, when his mother was near death, William Oldfield questioned her about the contents his grandfathers locked trunk. With her admonition to tell the story accurately, he meticulously examined the records in the trunk, and then researched his grandfathers accomplishments, and presented them in this book. It's a fantastic history lesson, well told, in the style of a great lecturer. The book does read a bit more like a history lecture than a standard historical novel, but I enjoyed it nonetheless!


The Night Olivia Fell
I can't figure out exactly what I didn't like about this book..  It was predictable, but that's common when you read a lot of mysteries.  I didn't like any of the characters, but that doesn't always mean I don't like the story either...  It might just have been my mood when I read this.  That happens a lot.

The Immortalists
This came so highly recommended, but I couldn't read it.  The sections on Simon are very graphic, very, very graphic, gay porn.  I skipped, and skipped, and skipped..  and then realized I didn't like the book in general enough to make it worth reading. 
The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo
Another book I picked on recommendations from others, and I realized I need to pay more attention to who is recommending the books.  :-)  I like mysteries and historically based novels...  romance novels are really not my thing. She has seven husbands to hide the fact that she is gay.  Or in her case, bisexual, but her girlfriend is gay.  So basically, she sleeps with a LOT of people. That's what the book is about.  I think there was a great chapter or two here or there, but  it's just really a long book about how many people she sleeps with trying to hide her relationship with her gay lover.  Who she is also sleeping with. And there's a lot of details.  So a lot to skip over.  The "shocking twist" at the end, the reveal, was so over hyped and blown out of proportion that I was rolling my eyes, and not for the first time in this book.

 But the author has talent.  There are parts of this book SO well written.  If she writes something else,  (I think she has covered sex so thoroughly that hopefully she'll be ready to move on to a new subject....  ) I'd be very likely to read it.  
Not Her Daughter by Rea Frey
The fiction I read can generally be sorted into two categories - fiction based on plausible (even if  highly unlikely) real life situations, and fiction based on magical fantasy and fairy tales.

I do not like it when the two attempt to merge.  Not that this is a true merger - there are no fairy tales, wizards, or magical talking animals here. There's just a story where you cannot guess how it's going to all possibly work out to any sort of satisfying conclusion - and then you find out that the author didn't think that such a thing was necessary.  You have to apply some sort of fantastical magic to swallow the 3 page "ending", and you are not even given a talking bear to help you through.  I was not amused.

There is a lot to talk about here - a lot for a book club to discuss.  Perhaps the book club members could even actually finish writing the book, finding solutions for the various huge plot holes that were just left gaping or outright abandoned.

If you are looking for a book from the kidnappers perspective, I suggest What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross.  It's this same basic story, written with an actual ending and a view of the consequences.  Perhaps it's because I can still remember this book, years after reading it, that I was so disappointed in this one.   The set up and back story for this one was probably better, to be fair.  There was so much potential here.  But it feels like the book was only half written, and when a page count was reached, it was ended, no matter where the author was in the actual story.
Next Up On My TBR Pile:
I'm thinking something with a historical basis next..  maybe The Lost Girls Of Paris about women during WWII, by the author of Orphans Tale? Or Moloka'i - about a leper colony in Hawaii around 1890? Or maybe The Library Book by Susan Orlean, about the fire at the LA Public Library...

What I Am Looking Forward To In May:

A NEW DAVID MCCULLOUGH BOOK!!!


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