It’s book review time! I only managed 6 books this month…mostly because I started several and then set them aside and they were just lame and not worth my time! So many lame ones! If you can imagine they would have been rated less than zero stars! Read on to see my reviews of the books I actually did finish………………………
What We’ve Lost is Nothing by: Rachel Louise Snyder– Yawn! Good grief this book was supposed to be about a mass robbing of all the houses on one street in a suburb of Chicago called Oak Park. Let me cut right to it…no one was injured, some stuff was stolen, the hoodlums are never caught and basically all of the neighbors become paranoid and suspicious of everyone. This author wanted the reader to think deeply about race issues, diversity and cultural differences. This book was all lecture and no action. I take that back…the last 25 pages have some decent action, but none of it actually brings anything to closure. The book ends abruptly with no decent conclusion. I have no choice but to give this 0 stars.
My Oxford Year by: Julia Whelan– I’d seen this book discussed on several blogs I follow as well as reviewed in a number of “summer reading lists”, so I thought I’d give it a try. Our main character, Ella, a Rhodes Scholar, is spending a year in Oxford, England studying literature. The plot line moves along as you might expect “chick lit” to do…girl moves far away, girl meets quirky new friends, girl meets hot guy….BUT then it takes a turn you won’t expect. I can’t say anything more about the story line, but this book took me by surprise. The cover and description don’t do this one justice and it’s not as “chick lit” as you might thing, instead having a lot more depth than imagined. 4 stars
Baby Teeth by: Zoje Stage– Oh my! This one is a doozy! Kind of a modern take on the bad seed. The stage is set when Suzettes, daughter, Hanna, starts to show disturbing behavior at home. For example she replaces the medicine in her mothers pills with flour and pretends to be possessed, all in a play to make mommy go away so she can just be with daddy. But the crux of the problem is that she only behaves like this for her mother. The father never sees any of it and therefore begins to wonder what might be going on with his wife. I’m sure I made this plot sound rather boring, but it’s anything but! I flew through this book, finishing it in just 2 days. It’s one of those “can’t put it down” (unless it’s time to feed the kids….again! LOL!). Anyway add this fast paced thriller to your “to be read” pile, you won’t regret it. 4 stars
Believe Me by J.P. Delaney– I loved this authors previous book “The Girl Before Me” and couldn’t wait to read this one. BUT…this book was a total train wreck! I like twists and turns but the twists and turns made no sense and I simply couldn’t follow the storyline. I hated every character and the use of the dark, morbid poetry was way over the top and terribly distracting. The screenplay style of recounting conversations was bizarre. There is nothing I liked about this book, It was a total miss for me. 0 stars
Goodbye Paris by Anstey Harris– I wanted to like this one. The cover is adorable and I’d read several really great reviews…BUT…I found it just “ok”. The main character has been carrying on with a married man for EIGHT years! And surprise, surprise he doesn’t leave his wife as he keeps saying he will. The main character is annoying and weak. There were a number of times I wished I could reach into the book and smack her around! It didn’t help that the main character is a creator and restorer of violins…a topic I found dull. The ending was “meh”…I just couldn’t get into this one. 1 star
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See– I was surprised I liked this book as much as I did. I thought the setting, rural China in the 80’s-90’s, would turn me off. However, it turns out that I was fascinated by the villages and the tribes, mostly because I couldn’t believe that some of the rituals described in the story were still practiced well into the 90’s and some are still done today! We’re talking animal sacrifice (nothing too graphic here) and infanticide (trigger warning on this one…yikes!). It was shocking and yet for the people of the villages, a part of everyday life. This story follows a young un-wed Chinese girl who abandons her daughter at an orphonage. We see how life treats her over a period of about 25 years. Sprinkled throughout are little tid bits of info on her daughter after she was adopted by an American couple. A big part of the book is the history and ritutal of tea. The harvesting of the leaves, the selling to survive and the drinking as custom. Honestly I thought I’d be bored by this, but the author does a great job of educating without boring. I think this book needed one more chapter…as I thought the ending was rather abrupt. I like things wrapped up a bit more than this. But all in all a surprising 4 stars
That’s is for August! In case you missed any of my previous review check out my book review page!
