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.

So, I start off 2012 with 12 books read:  4 paper books, 2 Nook books, and 6 audio books.

Here”s the summary!

Paper Books

1. The Gap Year by Sarah Bird
2. Dreaming of Mr. Darcy (Austen Addicts #2) by Victoria Connelly
3. The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
4. Gun Games (Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus #20) by Faye Kellerman

Nook Books

1. Divergent (Divergent #1) by Veronica Roth
2. Wish Upon a Star by Sarah Morgan

Audio Books

1. Crossed (Matched #2) by Ally Condie
2. Edge of Evil (Ali Reynolds #1) by J.A. Jance
3. Hot Rocks by Nora Roberts
4. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
5. A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #7) by Louise Penny
6. Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #6) by Louise Penny

I also have two books I didn’t finish.  One I checked out from the library as an e-book, and it expired before I finished reading it, largely because I was trying to finish the other DNF book before book club.  Since I didn’t want to do that, I listened to the two Louise Penny books instead, because they were really, really good.

This was an average month, quantity-wise, but it was amazing as far as quality.  My favorite book of the month was The Rook, followed closely by Ready Player One, but the two Louise Penny books could easily have taken than honor many other months, Divergent really impressed me, and I really liked The Gap Year.

I started getting back on track with reviews (beyond the 4 linked above, I have two more mini-reviews I wrote this month), but then backslid a bit.  I think February will be better.

How was your January?  What are you looking forward to in February?

• The Submission by Amy Waldman
• The Midwife’s Confession by Diane Chamberlain
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
• Allah, Liberty and Love: The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom by Irshad Manj
• The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Caroline Mackler
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
• The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings
• How to Eat a Cupcake by Meg Donohue
• The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Have you read any of these?  Discussed them with your book club?  Help me decide what to vote for!

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.

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!

• Matched (Matched #1) by Ally Condie
• The Scorch Trials (Maze Runner #2) by James Dashner
  The Death Cure (Maze Runner #3) by James Dashner
• In a Heartbeat by Loretta Ellsworth
• Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg
• Where She Went (If I Stay #2) by Gayle Forman
• Pies & Prejudice (The Mother-Daughter Book Club #4) by Heather Vogel Frederick
• Stormbreaker (Alex Rider #1) by Anthony Horowitz
• Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe *reviewed on this blog*
• Aurelia (Aurelia #1) by Anne Osterlund
• The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus #2) by Rick Riordan
• The Time-Traveling Fashionista by Bianca Turetsky

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.

Summary via goodreads.com:

LAPD lieutenant detective Decker and his wife, Rina, have willingly welcomed fifteen-year-old Gabriel Whitman, the son of a troubled former friend, into their home. While the enigmatic teen seems to be adapting easily, Decker knows only too well the secrets adolescents keep—witnessed by the tragic suicide of another teen, Gregory Hesse, a student at Bell and Wakefield, one of the city’s most exclusive prep schools.

Gregory’s mother, Wendy, refuses to believe her son shot himself and convinces Decker to look deeper. What he finds disturbs him. The gun used in the tragedy was stolen—evidence that propels him to launch a full investigation with his trusted team, Sergeant Marge Dunn and Detective Scott Oliver. But the case becomes darkly complicated by the suicide of another Bell and Wakefield student—a death that leads them to uncover an especially nasty group of rich and privileged students with a predilection for guns and violence. Decker thought he understood kids, yet the closer he and his team get to the truth, the clearer it becomes that he knows very little about them, including his own charge, Gabe. The son of a gangster and an absent parent, the boy has had a life filled with too much free time, too many unexplained absences, and too little adult supervision.

Before it’s over, the case and all its terrifying ramifications will take Decker and his detectives down a dark alley of twisted allegiances and unholy alliances, culminating at a heart-stopping point of no return

I’ve been a fan of this series for many, many years. As sometimes happens with long-running series, I’ve lost track of it a bit. When I started reading this book, I was surprised at all that has happened since I last visited Peter Decker, Rina Lazarus and family. I checked and saw that I’ve missed two books, which I need to go back and fill in.

I’m impressed at how Faye Kellerman keeps shifting the focus of the series to keep it fresh,while still remaining true to the characters. There’s only so much character growth any one or two characters can reasonably have! Over the course of 20 books, the focus has gone from religious, professional, personal, and family. She’s looked at other family members (most memorably, Decker’s daughter, who is also a police officer). Here, the focus is on a foster child, one that came to live with the family in one of the books that I missed.

I really liked Gabriel, who was simultaneously very, very young (when it comes to his love life) and much, much older (when it comes to his music, and to knowledge of the seamy side of the world.) He’s Romeo to a very naive Juliet. He manages to stumble into a situation that Decker is investigating, and it’s a good thing he has the skills to navigate some very risky waters.

I found the look into the lives of the privileged teens he crosses paths with to be terrifying.  I’m not looking forward to my daughter starting high school next year, even if her world will be fairly different.

The mystery itself is good, but not outstanding. What I enjoyed was the quick visit with all the characters I know so well, and getting to know a few more even better.

There is no need to have read the full list of previous books in the series to enjoy this one. I haven’t read Hangman, the previous book, but suspect the context from that one might be nice, and there are clearly spoilers here for the events there. I’ll go back and read it anyway.

I received Gun Games for review from the publisher.  Thank you, Harper Collins.

I accepted each of these books for review, and read and enjoyed them, for the most part. Then I sat with open tabs for months, trying to figure out how to write the reviews. I’ve now lost the details of the individual stories and writers in my brain, so I thought I’d set down a few overall thoughts on each and call it a day.

Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Kelly Link

I picked up this book because I’m intrigued by Steampunk, and would like to know more about it. I love the look, I find the concept fascinating.

After reading the stories in this anthology, I’m still a little puzzled about how Steampunk plays out. In general, I enjoyed them, I’m just not certain they all met my image of what Steampunk is.

Steampunk meets the Wild West seems like an interesting variant– the same time period but another location. Steampunk meets ancient prophets and Steampunk meets the Faery world seemed like an interesting something else (I loved the Faery Story, it was one of my favorites in the book).

I think I need to look up a definitive Steampunk work, and base my genre impressions off of that instead.

Some better reviews of this collection:

• Dear Author
• Bookhounds
• Popcorn Reads
• Bart’s Bookshelf

The Urban Fantasy Anthology edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale

It’s hard to rate an anthology. I always go in expecting to skip over some stories as being not for me, so if you leave those out, what remains is at about 4 stars for me.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to review this for the 6 months since I read it, and have finally given up. If I couldn’t figure out what to say before, I’m not going to now.

Overall, I enjoyed my reading. Unfortunately for me, the stories I enjoyed most were by authors I already know and enjoy, so I didn’t add to my list of people to try as much as I’d hoped.

More than confirming that I’m a big fan of Charles de Lint, Peter S. Beagle, and Neil Gaiman, among others, it confirmed that I’m a big fan of the subset of Urban Fantasy they describe as Mythic Fiction, and I that I have mixed opinions on Paranormal Romance. I’d never heard of Noir Fantasy before, and I don’t think I’ll make an effort to find more (although I did enjoy a few of the stories in that section as well).

I’ll recommend this for some good writing, and a chance to try out a collection of styles and authors underneath the Urban Fantasy umbrella.

Some other reviews:

• Sniffly Kitty
• Neth Space
• Bookhounds

I’m sorry for the lack of detailed reviews on both of these books!