The Guest Room

The Guest Room, the latest novel by Chris Bohjalian was recently sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Arriving in stores and online on January 5, 2016, this book is a must-read.

Telling the stories of Richard, the reluctant host of the Worst Bachelor Party Ever and Alexandra, a stripper at the party, the book provides a compelling, raw, no-holds-barred look inside the human/sex trafficking industry.

The story is realistic and unsettling and the writing is quietly beautiful. Once again Bohjalian proves that he is more than capable of creating multi-faceted characters with unique voices. The ending is sad but hopeful.  I'm not going to lie - I teared up a little.

As usual, I don't want to risk giving away any spoilers, so I just can't give much story detail in this review - all I can say is that it's one of the best books I've read this year.

The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter

When I was 20, my friends and I went through a mob movie phase. We watched all the Godfathers, Goodfellas, Scarface... all of those great, classic gangster flicks. Back then, I probably would have liked  The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter if for no other reason than that it was an inside look at what my friends and I were watching onscreen.

Co-written by Linda Scarpa and Linda Rosencrance, The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter is billed as the true story of what it's like to grow up with a mob hit man for a dad. The events detailed in the book were compelling, but unfortunately, the writing was not. At all.

Linda Scarpa says she doesn't want this book be a pity party for her, but it really comes off as one. Now, I wasn't raised by a hit man - I had a normal, suburban upbringing with normal, unconnected parents, but I have to say, I'm a bit disturbed by how disconnected Scarpa is from the things her father, Greg Scarpa, aka The Grim Reaper, was responsible for. It must be very difficult to know that your father is a terrible person but telling us repeatedly what a great dad he was when he wasn't out murdering people is a little off-putting. There doesn't seem to be much compassion or remorse (not that I think Scarpa should feel remorse exactly for things she wasn't responsible for) for her father's victims. She says she feels bad for the families of those he murdered, but at the same time, she recounts a time when she tried to cheer her dad up after he gunned down the wrong person by telling him to not feel so bad because after all, that guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. the thing Scarpa seems most saddened by is that she no longer has the luxurious life she was brought up to believe she deserved.

I was annoyed throughout the entire book. Half of my annoyance came from the absolutely abysmal writing (seriously, did anyone even try to polish this thing up? And if so... how bad was the original?) and the other half came from the whining tone and constant excuses from Scarpa and her awful mother. 

I don't recommend this one for anyone. There have got to be far better books on what it's like to be part of a mob family out there. 

Avenue of Mysteries

You can’t really rush through a John Irving book. There’s so much detail and so much richness to his storytelling that you really have to take your time or you’ll miss so much. And that’s why this review is so, so, so very late. I received an advance copy of Avenue of Mysteries from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Typically I like to have the review up on the day the book publishes, but for this book I just had to take my time.

I’ll start by saying that this isn’t Irving’s best book. The well-developed settings and characters typical of Irving are there, but there's a flatness to the story as a whole that disappointed me. That said, even a flat book by John Irving is a good book. It’s just not a great book. It’s three stars where I expected five.

Avenue of Mysteries is the story of Juan Diego Guerrero, a writer who seems equally transfixed by events from his past and the correct dosages of his betablockers and Viagra. The story is told half in the present, half in the past, in a way I’ve always thought of as inside out. There’s no straightforward, chronological order to the telling - we flip back and forth from the present to the past without warning. At times the story is confusing and repetitive because of the almost heavy-handed foreshadowing used in the scenes set in the past. By the time events happen, we’re almost tired of hearing about them - at times it seems Irving was tired of writing of them too. We are teased about what happened to Lupe, Juan Diego’s sister, throughout the entire book. And then when we finally found out, the scene feels glossed over, the details hazy. The entire novel has an almost dreamlike quality, which I suppose was deliberate and supposed to reflect the dreamlike state Juan Diego seems to be in throughout the story.

I’d recommend this one for existing fans of Irving and his style of story-telling, but I wouldn’t recommend it as anyone’s introduction to him for fear it would put them off and they’d end up missing out on his other, better novels.

Shopaholic To The Rescue

The Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. The books tell the fun, yet often cringeworthy adventures of Becky Bloomwood, The Girl With Impulse Control Issues.
Becky loves to shop and hates to face up to the financial messes her addiction to consumption causes. Repeatedly. Becky is often irresponsible, sometimes delusional and yet, somehow, always irresistable.

The first three books in the series, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan and Shopaholic Ties the Knot, are fun, quick, fluffy reads that I find myself going back to over and over again when I feel stressed and want something to take my mind off things. After the third book though, things started to go downhill in the series.

Kinsella (a pseudonym for the always entertaining Madeleine Wickham) decided sometime in the last decade or so that even though Becky's life was pretty well wrapped up in a nice, neat bow by the end of Shopaholic Ties the Knot, people would want to keep reading about her adventures. The problem with this decision is that, well, you can only read about a person growing up for so long before you want to throw the book across the room and yell, "Enough already!"

In each book Becky has some sort of epiphany about her behavior, her shallowness, her relentless need to consume  and you cheer for her. Finally! She's grown a clue! And then! A new book comes out and it turns out that, no, Becky hasn't learned a damned thing. She's just found a new mental loophole to justify why this time whatever bad decisions she's made are ok. Until it comes time to grow up yet again.

By the time Shopaholic To The Stars came out, I was beyond ready to call it quits on this series. I couldn't imagine how it was possible to drag yet another book out of this girl's life. And yet, because I am just that masochistic, I read it. Note: I didn't purchase it - I stopped purchasing these books somewhere along volume 5. But I tend to be one of those people who has to see a thing through to the end. So, much as I might dislike that these books are still, endlessly being published, I have to read them.

Shopaholic To The Stars was a massive disappointment. The book was full of book 1 Becky at her worst. And then it ended with a cliffhanger! Dammit! So of course I knew I was going to have to read Shopaholic To The Rescue as soon as I could. And I knew I was going to HATE it.

Imagine my surprise when I didn't. Hate it, that is.

Shopaholic To The Rescue was adorable. Becky at her best. And I might just be getting suckered here, who knows, maybe there'll be 8 more books and I'll be right back here in a couple of years... I don't think so though. I think this was it. I hope so because if it is, it will have almost redeemed the series for me.

I hesitate to give any substantive details of the story in case anyone hasn't read the previous 7 novels in the series. If you haven't, I highly recommend that you read books 1-3, skip book 4 (ugh - such a mistake that one was), then read book 5, skip 6 and then skim 7 and finish off with Shopaholic To The Rescue. Trust me, it will be better that way.

November Wrap-Up and December TBR

Slacker slacker slacker. That's me.

It suddenly struck me today that it's already December 3 and I still hadn't posted my November wrap up OR my December To Be Read lists so here we go with a combined post.

November was kind of hectic for me. Between holiday preparation, a busy workload at my day job and a little traveling (not to mention a fabulous ice storm that knocked out our power for 3 days...) I have barely had time to read, let alone write about reading.

Still, I did manage to get a little bit accomplished.

I finished off the Anne of Green Gables series. I'm so glad I took the time to re-read these books. They are such gentle, peaceful reads. I have to say, the final book in the series, Rilla Of Ingleside, is possibly one of the better books I've read about World War I. I'm a little surprised that this one isn't taught in schools alongside the WWI history unit.  There's lots of detail and it really brings the events of the war, the different battles, the effect it had on the folks back home, etc, into focus without getting mundane or boring.

Along with the Anne books, I worked my way a little way down on my stack of books for review. This month I had the pleasure of reading Now That She's Gone, by Gregg Olsen as well as Coal River by Ellen Marie Wiseman.  Now That She's Gone was ok - I think I would have enjoyed it more had I read the first book in the series (imagine that!) and Coal River was great, even if the ending was a little... implausible.

I also read some Rainbow Rowell: Fan Girl (not such a fan) and Landline (loved it) to be exact. I still can't quite put my finger on what it is that keeps me from just going nuts over Rowell like so many of my fellow bloggers, but there's just something...

For December my plan is to just get to the end of this year in one piece! I had originally set a goal for myself this year of reading 150 books. Well, that's not going to happen. According to my tracker on Goodreads, I'm 98 books. Given that I have a full time job, a side business (I dye yarn! check it out here!), a social life and this blog... I'm calling it good if I get to 100 for the year.

Now that I'm done with the Anne books, I've started on the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. If you've never read them and have only seen the movie, I highly recommend you check them out. They're fantastic, silly, wonderful little books that are great distractions from the heaviness that day-to-day life can bring.

I'm determined to finish up Avenue of Mysteries in the next week or so. This latest work by John Irving was given to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, I didn't get it until the day before it published (11/3) so I'm a little late with my thoughts on it. I'm liking the book a lot... that's all I can really say for now.

At the library the other night I couldn't help but pick up the latest in the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. Sigh. All I can really say about this guilty pleasure book is that, as much as I enjoyed the first few books in the series, please stop writing them Ms. Kinsella. For the love of god. Please. Stop. Writing. These. Books. I started off loving Becky Bloomwood and now I'm just so disgusted by her inability to achieve real, lasting maturity that I could scream. And yet I can't quit reading these awful crack books!  I'm about a quarter of the way through Shopaholic To The Rescue and I just want my life back.

I've got big plans to read a few more books for review (and even get the reviews published on time this month!) and a few more new releases picked up at my local library. Last but not least, I've started on the Mark of the Lion trilogy by Francine Rivers. These books are Christian Fiction classics that have somehow been recommended to me several times (if you knew me in real life, you'd know how funny it is to see me reading Christian Fiction). The first book is good so far. Some of the history is suspect, but the overall view of ancient Roman culture is right up my alley.