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Review: Hystera by Leora Skolkin-Smith

21 Mar

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This is a hard book for me to review, since my feelings about it are full of “almosts” and comparisons to other books.

I think it’s a better book than my feelings for it indicate, and I didn’t think it was at all a bad book. It just never quite clicked for me.

Summary via TLC Book Tours:

Set in the turbulent 1970s when Patty Hearst became Tanya the Revolutionary, Hystera is a timeless story of madness, yearning, and identity. After a fatal accident takes her father away, Lillian Weill blames herself for the family tragedy. Tripping through failed love affairs with men and doomed friendships, all Lilly wants is to be sheltered from reality. She retreats from the outside world into a world of delusion and the private terrors of a New York City Psychiatric Hospital. Unreachable behind her thick wall of fears, the world of hospital corridors and strangers become a vessel of faith. She is a foreigner there until her fellow patients release her from her isolation with the power of human intimacy. How do we know who we really are?  How do we find our true selves under the heavy burden of family and our pasts?  In an unpredictable portrait of mental illness, Hystera penetrates to the pulsing heart of the questions.

I think one of the strengths of Hystera was strong, beautiful, literary language. I don’t read for the language, I read for the story and the characters. The language put a barrier there for me. Some of this was probably deliberate, was a reflection of Lilly’s illness and an indication of the disconnect between her and her world.

I needed to either make an emotional connection with Lilly, to feel the pain of her illness, or I needed to get an intellectual engagement, to get an understanding of the path that led her to where she was and how she was going to get out.

I know this is possible from reading Last Night I Sang to the Monster (which was truly amazing), How I Made It to Eighteen: A Mostly True Story, and even Rowan the Strange, (which was a very different book).

And then we’re back to Hystera, which almost worked for me. I almost connected with Lilly. I almost understood her journey. I almost found her fellow patients interesting, in that I was interested while reading about each one, but when that page was done, I didn’t think of them again.

I wonder whether the time period was part of what got in my way as well, if I would have connected more with a modern setting, or one from when I was that age.

This was a different kind of mental illness than I’ve encountered, either in literature or in person. I can’t list the diagnosis, a sign of my lack of intellectual understanding of what was happening.

Still, it’s an important subject, and this might be the book that some readers connect with. If you appreciate well crafted language, you may well get much more from this book than I did.

I received this book for review via TLC Book Tours.  For other opinions of Hystera, visit the other tour stops:
TLC Book Tours

You can also check out Leora Skolkin-Smith’s Website and Facebook Page.

 
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Posted by on March 21, 2012 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole

17 Mar

Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Heather Poole had some great stories, and I’ll never look at flight attendants in quite the same way again.

Description via the Harper Collins website:

Flying the not-so-friendly skies…

In her more than fifteen years as an airline flight attendant, Heather Poole has seen it all. She’s witnessed all manner of bad behavior at 35,000 feet and knows what it takes for a traveler to become the most hated passenger onboard. She’s slept in flight attendant crashpads in “Crew Gardens,” Queens—sharing small bedrooms crammed with bunk beds with a parade of attractive women who come and go at all hours, prompting suspicious neighbors to jump to the very worst conclusions. She’s watched passengers and coworkers alike escorted off the planes by police. She can tell you why it’s a bad idea to fall for a pilot but can be a very good one (in her case) to date a business-class passenger. Heather knows everything about flying in a post-9/11 world—and she knows what goes on behind the scenes, things the passengers would never dream.

This book was a mixture of a behind the scenes look at the logistics of how a flight functions (I’m a sucker for that sort of thing), and personal stories from a young woman who splits her time between flying the world and living in an apartment with many other women.

I admit, I really had never thought about what an airplane looks like from the flight attendants viewpoint– how their schedules and responsibilities work, what the requirements are for life as a flight attendant. It isn’t something that would work for me, but I can see why it would appeal, why some people would put up with the challenges such a life presents.

The funniest bits come from dealing with the challenges of life as a flight attendant, rather than the time spent in flight. Certainly, there were some good in-the-air stories, and the author’s sense of humor permeates the book.

For the first half of the book, I really, really enjoyed hanging out with Heather Poole, and listening to her stories. I thought I’d love to have her work a flight I was on, that I’d enjoy talking to her. She just seemed so friendly!

As the book went on, she got a little cattier, and although I’m certain she would be entirely professional if she worked my flight, I’m far less certain we’d find anything to chat about.

That didn’t make her stories any less entertaining, and I continued to enjoy reading about celebrities, people (particularly pilots) she dated, and other flight attendants.

I’d recommend this as a fun read, with the possibility of learning a little along the way.

I received Cruising Attitude for review from William Morrow Paperbacks.  Thank you!

 
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Posted by on March 17, 2012 in books, reviews

 

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Review: Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint

11 Mar

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Eyes Like Leaves started out well, but the book bogged down for me by the end. It didn’t have the rich characters I expect from Charles de Lint, but it did have his usual beautiful writing.

Summary via Goodreads:

Summer magic is waning in the Green Isles, and the evil Icelord is encasing the lands in a permanent frost while coastal towns are pillaged by snake ships. Mounting one last defense against the onslaught, a mysterious old wizard instructs his inexperienced apprentice in the art of shape-changing. Mercilessly pursued by the Icelord’s army, this newfound mage gathers allies—a seemingly ordinary young woman and her protective adoptive family—and they flee north in a desperate race to awaken the Summerlord.

Time is running short for the Summerborn, especially when a treacherous family betrayal is discovered.

For the first half of the book, I was delighting in being in a genre that I used to love, but have visited very infrequently in the last twenty or so years. Wizards, living in a world that once was full of magic, but now is almost bare of it. Good fighting off evil for the sake of the world as a whole. Young people coming into their power. Very old people passing on the lessons they have learned.

Unfortunately, after I reached the halfway point, my joy in this beautifully written, new to me yet familiar world started to fade, and I began to realize I wanted more from my characters.

Certainly, there were the seeds of interesting characters. They had intriguing roles to play, hints of back stories with details to come… but I didn’t feel like I made the connections for these to be delivered.

As the story continued in interesting directions, I was less and less connected with the people that were being swept along.

The book was an epic tale of good and evil, with elements of the story and the setting that were familiar yet unique in how they were used.  It was a world that used to be ours, with more magic than we ever knew.

It’s a great story, beautifully told. I’m just greedy, wanting even more than that.

I received this book for review from Tachyon Publications.  Thank you!

 
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Posted by on March 11, 2012 in books, reviews

 

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Review: The Gap Year by Sarah Bird

05 Mar

With Book Club Notes (at the end)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh dear.

The characters and situations seemed so plausible that they have me looking at my daughter’s upcoming high school years with immense terror.

None the less, I very much enjoyed reading this book.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

From the widely praised author of The Yokota Officers Club and The Flamenco Academy, a novel as hilarious as it is heartbreaking about a single mom and her seventeen-year-old daughter learning how to let go in that precarious moment before college empties the nest.

In The Gap Year, told with perfect pitch from both points of view, we meet Cam Lightsey, lactation consultant extraordinaire, a divorcée still secretly carrying a torch for the ex who dumped her, a suburban misfit who’s given up her rebel dreams so her only child can get a good education.

We also learn the secrets of Aubrey Lightsey, tired of being the dutiful, grade-grubbing band geek, ready to explode from wanting her “real” life to begin, trying to figure out love with boys weaned on Internet porn.

When Aubrey meets Tyler Moldenhauer, football idol–sex god with a dangerous past, the fuse is lit. Late-bloomer Aubrey metastasizes into Cam’s worst silent, sullen teen nightmare, a girl with zero interest in college. Worse, on the sly Aubrey’s in touch with her father, who left when she was two to join a celebrity-ridden nutball cult.

As the novel unfolds—with humor, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and penetrating insights about love in the twenty-first century—the dreams of daughter, mother, and father chart an inevitable, but perhaps not fatal, collision . . .

The keys to this book were the characters, particularly the main mother daughter pair, and the intricate weaving of their stories.

I genuinely liked both Cam and Aubrey, even if I wanted to grab each of them and point out exactly what they were doing to screw up their lives. There were plenty of those times, but in almost every case, I understood where they were coming from. Cam wanted Aubrey to have a better life than she had, and was prepared to pave the path without quite connecting that Aubrey’s ideal situation could be different than her own. Aubrey wanted to break out and make her own decisions, but didn’t know how to go partway. When she rebelled, it was complete.

Both of them were fully well intentioned, as were all the secondary characters, some of which were even more screwed up than Aubrey and Cam. While there were a few tertiary characters this may not be true of, but other than the cult Aubrey’s dad is involved with, there are no real bad guys, just flawed human beings. That’s something I liked about the book.

The depth of the confusion between Cam and Aubrey is pointed out in their alternating chapters. Cam’s chapters are set in the book’s present; Aubrey’s are almost a year earlier. The author does an amazing job of interweaving the two narratives. I could see the situation as it is through Cam’s eyes, I saw how it got that way through Aubrey’s. Neither of them has a full understanding of the situation, and with the dual narration, it’s easy to see why.

All in all, this was an interesting and thought provoking read.

Book Club Notes

All of us enjoyed the book.  Some of us related to it more than the rest. I could see echoes of my own relationship with my daughter, others have children about ready to head for college.  Even those that didn’t feel a personal connection to the characters still appreciated the book.

We discussed the characters, the situations, and how real they seemed.  We talked about the construction of the story, and how that contributed to our understanding.  I think we all admired the writing.  We spent some time trying to nail down the setting.

All in all, it was a good discussion, and I’d recommend this book.

My book club won copies of this book via a TLC Book Tours Book Club giveaway.

 
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Posted by on March 5, 2012 in Book Club, books, M, reviews

 

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Review: The Garden Intrigue by Lauren Willig

17 Feb

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I love this series, and this book is an example of what Lauren Willig always does so well.

Summary via Lauren Willig’s website:

As Napoleon pursues his plans for the invasion of England, English operative Augustus Whittlesby gets wind of a top secret device, to be demonstrated over the course of a house party at Malmaison. The catch? The only way in is to join forces with that annoying American socialite, Emma Morris Delagardie, who has been commissioned to write a masque for the weekend’s entertainment. Even so, it should leave plenty of alone time with Augustus’ colleague (and goddess), Jane Wooliston, who has been tapped to play the heroine. Or so Augustus tells himself. In this complicated masque within a masque, nothing seems to go quite as scripted… especially Emma.

What the cover blurb (and description above) miss is the framing contemporary story line, which continues through the series. American graduate student Eloise is living in England researching spies in Napoleon’s time. She discovers that this is harder than she expects, gets tied up in some intrigue of her own, and along the way, finds her own romance, one that doesn’t wrap up quite as tidily as those in the spy stories she’s encountering in her research.

I admit that as of the last installment, I thought the contemporary storyline was getting pushed further and further into the shadow of the historical. As the historical stories were becoming even stronger, I didn’t exactly mind, but I was happy to see it back with some real oomph here. It had real relationship questions mixed in with an absolutely goofy movie set plot, and I found it delightful.  It’s a bit more chck-lit than romance, and Eloise is far from perfect, and all in all, it worked for me.

I didn’t like the historical story quite as well as the last few, but that’s a high standard to hold. Certainly, it still stands up well to the genre as a whole.

As is typical for a Lauren Willig heroine, Emma is not your run of the mill society miss, and isn’t afraid to stand out in society. Her links to the Bonaparte family put her in an situation of interest to the network of spies these books center around, but her flirty personality and interest in her late husband’s mechanical endeavors make her interesting to read about.

I wasn’t enamored with her love interest, but he didn’t pose a problem for me either. Between the fun and frivolity of the masque the two teamed up to put on, the excitement of the spy story, and the interesting historical details, I was well entertained.

I always appreciate Lauren Willig’s notes from her historical research– the most unlikely seeming characters and events turn out to be those pulled from the past.

The big question when reviewing book 9 of a series is whether this one is a good place to start reading. This book would be fine as a standalone, but the series is worth starting at the beginning, and watching the plot build and the characters come and go.

I read this book as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you to TLC and Dutton Adult books for providing my copy of the book and the chance to participate. For more thoughts on Garden Intrigue, check out the other tour stops:

TLC Book Tours

 
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Posted by on February 17, 2012 in books, reviews, tour

 

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Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

14 Feb

With Book Club Notes
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Summary via Veronica Roth’s website:

In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she’s chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she’s kept hidden from everyone because she’s been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her.

First and foremost, Divergent tells a darn good story! While reading it, I wasn’t worrying about potential weaknesses, I just wanted to keep going to see what happened next.

Divergent features a future society with a very rigorous structure. It’s an intriguing world, one that kept me thinking long after finishing the book.  I wanted to know how it came about, how it functioned, and where the books are going to take it.  That’s enough to set the book apart from the crowd, but not enough in and of itself to make the book compelling.

Luckily, the characters are enough.  Beatrice was a convincing as a teen needing to move from childhood to adulthood, a transition marked with a choice which cannot be undone. Beatrice chooses to break from her family to join another faction, one that demands courage above all else.

Relationships are key in Divergent, existing relationships and relationships that are formed in her new life. The characters (friends and otherwise) are an interesting bunch, each with their own approach, whether it be in Abnegation (her old faction) or Dauntless (her new one).

Watching her meet and evaluate the other teens looking to join this faction is full of information on Beatrice, the other newcomers, and what it means to be Dauntless.  Seeing Beatrice’s perception of her parents and their choices change as she learns more was a great way to watch Beatrice mature.

And then, there is the love interest.  He’s a worthy character, and the this aspect of the book is balanced well with everything else that is happening.

Midway into Divergent, Beatrice’s story becomes part of a much larger one, where her decisions will affect more than her own life.  The action picked up significantly at this point.  I’ll be interested to see where this goes in the next book,

I have two small caveats to my enjoyment of this book, things that I hesitate to label as flaws, at least at this time.

First, Divergent is unabashedly a YA book, written for that audience. Although it clearly made sense for the main character to be a teen, I’m not sure that’s true for some of the supporting characters, particularly those in leadership roles. More than that, as a not-so-young adult, I would have liked to see life from a different perspective, to see what it looked like from a more adult point of view. There were many aspects of the society, particularly of the logistics, that were invisible to the teen characters, where I would have liked to know more.

Related to that, there were clearly some holes in the world-building. As I said, the world is a highly intriguing one, and I’m not even sure I should mention this in a negative way. The gaps didn’t bother me at all while I was reading. It was only once I was done, and thinking over the book, that I started wondering more about why the society was structured the way it was. I actually came up with some very intriguing possibilities. If the author takes some of the clues she left and builds on them in future books, I’ll be more than satisfied with this aspect of the story.

Book Club Notes

I read Divergent for discussion with one of my book clubs, and I think it was a successful choice.  The club has a balance of people that read YA but not science fiction, those that read science fiction but not a lot of YA, those that don’t usually read either, and those of us that read from both of those genres, including where they overlap.

Everyone enjoyed the book.  Those with a background that includes more adult science fiction were bothered by the holes in the world-building, where it wasn’t an issue for others in the group.  I shared some of my speculation on why the holes may be deliberate, what I thought might be lurking behind them, but I’m not sure they were convinced.

We spent a good chunk of time on the factions– are they a complete set?  Are they sustainable?  Are the believable at all?  What were they like at the beginning, and how had they changed?  Which faction would you fall into?  Which would you like to be part of?

We also talked about violence in this book, and in YA fiction in general.  Added to some character chat, discussion of the author, and then of some material one club member found about how society is increasingly sorting itself, so that we only associate with those that are like us, and we had a very good discussion.

 
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Posted by on February 14, 2012 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Review: Defending Jacob by William Landay

03 Feb

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow.

This book works as a mystery, as a courtroom thriller, and as a family drama.

Summary via goodreads.com:

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.The writing was absolutely perfect to draw me in and deliver the story.

This story would have worked well simply as a mystery– a father trying to prove his son innocent of murdering another boy.

The courtroom aspects were a great added element. It was clear that William Landay understands how the system works, and he wove that into the book, adding an extra layer to the story.

What pushed this book to amazing, that will make a great read for a wide audience, is the family drama. What happens to a family with a child accused of doing something terrible– particularly when one parent believes it is possible, when long-buried secrets are unearthed, when every piece of the past is called into question. Andy Barber is absolutely convincing as a father prepared to stand behind his son, no matter what.

I’ve been debating how much more to say, but I think the rest is best discovered by reading. I’d recommend picking this one up and finding out for yourself.

I picked up this book for review at NCIBA.  Thank you to the publisher for providing it and to NCIBA for inviting us to attend.

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2012 in books, reviews

 

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Review: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

24 Jan

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Summary via Goodreads:

“The body you are wearing used to be mine.” So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.

My Top 10 Reasons for Liking The Rook:

10) It’s a good thriller, with secret agents, characters with questionable loyalties, and multiple action sequences. Myfanwy (she explains that it rhymes with Tiffany) can really kick butt!

9) The world building was very complete, and although the basic concept isn’t at all new (people among us with special powers, and a secret branch of government to deal with the problems among them), I did feel like this was a new approach.

8) Crazy cool bad guys. Having special powers helps make more than run of the mill evildoers.

7) The setup (Myfanwy waking up unaware of who she is, and making sense of the life her body had been living) was quite clever, and I felt it pulled together through the book.

6) The method of communicating Myfanwy’s back story worked well for the characters in the book and me as a reader.

5) I loved Myfanwy and I love the person that wakes up in Myfanwy’s body, trying to figure out who she is and what happened to her. And when you have someone that starts out as a blank slate, character growth is practically guaranteed!

4) The supporting characters were a great part of the book. Myfanwy’s assistant Ingrid was so unflappable, and reminded me of someone that I used to work with. The other members of the Checquy, their American counterparts, the people Myfanwy meets outside of work… they all contribute to the book.

3) Humor that made me laugh out loud because it popped up in the most unexpected places.

2) All the pieces came together into a darn good story.

1) Superheroes, acting like adults! Complete with politics, personalities, job conflicts, and (don’t forget) butt kicking! What’s not to like?

I really enjoyed reading this book, and hope there are more to come.

Thank you to Little, Brown for sending me this book for review.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2012 in books, reviews

 

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Review: Dreaming of Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly

20 Jan

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This was a cute piece of Jane Austen related fluff. I went into it looking for nothing more than that, and at first, I thought I wouldn’t be disappointed. And perhaps I shouldn’t have been disappointed in the last half, either.

Summary via Goodreads:

Fledgling illustrator and Darcy fanatic Kay Ashton settles in the seaside town of Lyme to finish her book, The Illustrated Mr. Darcy, when a film company arrives to make a new adaptation of Persuasion. Kay is soon falling for the handsome bad boy actor playing Captain Wentworth, but it’s the quiet screenwriter Adam Craig who has more in common with her beloved Mr. Darcy. Though still healing from a broken heart, Adam finds himself unexpectedly in love with Kay, but it will take more than good intentions to convince her that her real happy ending is with him.

Certainly, the Jane Austen references were lots of fun. Since the book revolved around the production of a movie version of Persuasion, those are the ones that I was expecting, but many more elements were borrowed from Emma, which I am immensely more fond of. These aspects are responsible for lifting the book from 3 to 3.5 stars, and were enough to leave me happy that I read the book.

I’m satisfied with the plot, which primarily needed to frame the Jane Austen references and the characters themselves.

My problems with Dreaming of Mr. Darcy are all in the characters, which are really what I read books like this for.

All of the characters were somewhat flatter than I’d like– not enough to be fatal to the book, but not well rounded enough for me to care what Gemma decides to do about her movie career, or to be surprised by the twist near the end (which I did see coming, there was no other reason for some of the material setting it up to be there).

But really, I just didn’t like Kay. Granted, many of her flaws were patterned after Emma, but Emma had a little more texture to her, and just never felt quite so clueless to me.

Kay is star struck, and when she meets the actor playing the object of her dreams, the fantasies fly. That’s not a problem, although the direction her fantasies went didn’t resonate with me. It’s where she goes with them that doesn’t work for me. If she’d pursued them with a real sense of laughing at herself while doing so, I could have loved her for it. But as it was (and I don’t want to give too much away)she just wasn’t my kind of heroine.

Beyond that, I never felt the chemistry between Adam and Kay. I liked him well enough, but just didn’t feel what he was feeling for her,in spite of being told it was happening.

I can see this book working much better for someone else, someone that values following your dreams, wherever they take you.

I received this book for review from the publisher.  Thank you, Sourcebooks!

 
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Posted by on January 20, 2012 in books, reviews

 

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Review: Wish Upon A Star by Sarah Morgan

14 Jan

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

The two novellas were both fast fun reads.

Summary via goodreads:

Love is in the air this Christmas!

Christy was hoping to skip Christmas this year. Her kids have other ideas – they’ve put their dad’s name at number one on their Christmas list. So it looks as if Christy will be hightailing it up to the Lake District to play happy families with her ex!

Snow-capped mountains and roaring log fires – Alessandro’s home is like walking into a Christmas card. Is it really safe for her to spend Christmas with her dreamy, funny – no! – entirely infuriating ex-hubby?

Miranda has completely the opposite problem. Being single and pregnant at Christmas was certainly not her wish come true. She doesn’t believe in miracles, but then resident hunk Jake sweeps her off her snow-covered shoes. Come Boxing Day dare she dream that Mr Sex-on-Legs might be for more than just Christmas?

The first was a romance within an on-the-rocks relationship, and (taken as fluff) it was very entertaining. A highly volatile couple, a precocious kid, and a heavy dose of wish fulfillment to top it off.

I admit, I was more interested in the characters in the second story. Jake was introduced in the first story, and this good looking guy (who is very in tune with women and what they want) is my kind of romance hero. I liked the wounded (but recovering) Miranda as well, and I enjoyed getting to know them as they got to know each other.

Both of these stories were perfect as novellas, which gave just enough time to get to know the characters and the situations, then have them resolve without unnecessarily complex obstacles. Whether in front of a winter fire or as an escape from a hot summer day, these winter stories are an enjoyable getaway.

I read this book as an electronic review copy via NetGalley.  Thank you to the publisher for allowing me access.

 
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Posted by on January 14, 2012 in books, reviews

 

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