January 2019 Book Review!

Are you comfortable?  Good!  January handed me quite a bit of waiting time and I like to fill that empty space with reading, which means I have seven books to talk about today.

Did I ever tell you how I wanted to be a librarian when I was in elementary school?  I was such a bookworm and my hometown library was so quiet and peaceful.  It even had a koi pond with a little waterfall in the solarium-like reading area.  I thought it would be the most perfect job.  And then I decided to enter the high stress wonderful world of taxation.  For some reason, I was thinking about this when the girls and I were at the library a couple of weeks ago.


First up for the month . . .



While this book has a good heart, the writing just wasn't up to par in my opinion.  I view books like Southernmost as "high level."  There's not much in the way of character development, and characters seem to make odd/rash decisions without much thought behind them, leaving the reader to think, Why would the character do that?  This is quite simply a quick read with a good message.

Asher, a small town preacher from Tennessee, is outcast from his church after he welcomes a gay couple into his congregation.  At the same time, his marriage falls apart and fearing the loss of his son through a custody battle, he kidnaps the boy and flees to Key West in search of his estranged gay brother.  Yeah, there's a lot going on this book.  There's the positive message of accepting others without judgement but I couldn't quite understand why certain events happened as there wasn't enough background thought given to satisfy me.

I'm the type of reader who craves detail and I read this book right after The Flamethrowers, a book with a TON of detail.  It was hard for me to not compare the writing styles of these two authors.  I think Southernmost is a perfect example of losing something in the process of trying to tell a story quickly.    

Of course, my desire to return to Key West is at an all time high after reading this.





I wanted to love this book.  I really did.  I have this weird thing for post-apocalyptic plots and Year One seemed right up my alley.  At first.  A deadly virus spreads quickly, wiping out half of the world's population, but there are those who are immune and band together to survive.  I was reading the second or third chapter when the fantasy stuff kicked in which left me muttering phrases such as "Come on!" and "NOOOOOOO!"  So, yeah, not a fan at all.

Like I've said before and I'm sure I'll say many, many times later, fantasy needs to be written a certain way or I just can't stand reading it.  Unfortunately, the fantasy here was just not well written and really overall, I wasn't a fan of the author's writing.  The dialogue didn't come across as realistic and there were several conversations involving multiple characters and I couldn't easily determine who was saying what.  Also, some of the action writing was missing detail and it was hard to follow what exactly was happening.

With that said, I did place the second book in this series on hold.  These are quick reads and I want to see if the author offers any explanation into the magickal stuff she's thrown into Year One.  It really just doesn't make any sense here.  Some people had magickal powers before the virus spread and those powers strengthened afterwards.  Others did not have these powers prior to the virus, but are now faeries, wizards, seers and they don't seem to question how or why.  It left me with a lot of unanswered questions.





I thought Something in the Water was pretty good.  I enjoyed the author's writing style and how she keeps the reader interested.  A young couple honeymooning in Bora Bora finds something in the water during a diving expedition.  The decisions they make cannot be reversed and will change their lives forever.  So, yes, questionable, could this really happen type questions will enter your mind but just keep reading.  The ending wasn't a total shocker; I felt like you could see it coming.  If you're looking for a thriller that won't take up too much of your time, check this one out.





This is a short book, a novella really, describing Japan after it cuts itself off from the rest of the world after a massive disaster.  We see life through Yoshiro and his great-grandson, Mumei.  In this new world, the elderly live forever while the young age at a rapid pace.  This was an interesting read with a dystopian feel to it.  It's described as humorous but the humor was lost on me.  Admittedly, I did like how every day was a national holiday celebrating something.  Just like we have National Pizza Pie day on February 9th.  I want to say that there's no real plot, but there sort of is and if I say it, I'll be giving it away.  It's a really quick book to read so you don't need that suspense to keep you interested.  I will comment that after I read the last paragraph in the book, I said, "Oh."





Soooo I have mixed feelings on this one.  Sabrina arrives to her 30th birthday dinner at a restaurant in NYC and finds the five people from her dinner list waiting at a table for her.  You know what I'm talking about here.  The five people, alive or dead, you would invite to dinner if you could.  On one hand, the concept was unique but, unfortunately, on the other hand, I don't think the author had a strong enough storyline to keep readers completely invested.  There is a plot twist and I was patting myself on the back for guessing that one.  

I always say that if a book is well written, it doesn't need to have a 'what's going to happen next' plot.  The Dinner List isn't poorly written but it did not have that pull for me.  Fortunately, it's an easy and quick read so that helped in motivating me to finish it.  I don't know if this was the author's intent or not, but I found the ending to be incredibly sad.





I have my sister-in-law to thank for this one.  If you enjoy history and true crime, I highly suggest you check out Killers of the Flower Moon.  We all know how the American Indians had their homelands taken from them by the US government.  They were forced to move to certain areas deemed undesirable by settlers.  In an interesting twist, members of the Osage Nation discovered oil under the land in Oklahoma they were allocated by the government.  Without giving that away, they worked into their agreement with the government that the rights to their land could only be obtained through inheritance.

In the early 1920s, the Osage were the richest people per capita in the world due to the oil on their lands.  They lived in large houses, owned multiple cars and even employed servants.  During this time, many Osage died under mysterious circumstances.  And then there were outright murders, and anyone who attempted to solve those murders disappeared or suffered the same fate.  Finally, the FBI stepped in and while at the time it appeared the people behind these murders had been properly arrested, the circle was actually much wider and callous than anyone realized.

I'll stop here before I summarize everything in the book but I want to add how I was blown away by this piece of US history that seems to have been buried.  





I find myself fascinated by stories of Detroit and its history, and I don't know if that's a product of having family who live there or simply due to the interesting nature of the city itself.  Detroit: An American Autopsy is written by a journalist who grew up in Detroit and returns to work for a local newspaper.  Quite often books like this tend to have portions that are dry and maybe a bit boring.  There was none of that here.  LeDuff does an excellent job of tying in his own family's journey with the history of Detroit and what the city had become about 10 years ago.  This is personal, detailed, emotional and unsettling.  I would highly recommend it to anyone.

I've mentioned before how I view my grandparents' story as a Detroit success, which unfortunately was lost to others later in their journey due to the economy.  My Papaw and Mamaw migrated from Kentucky in the early 1970s on the heels of my great aunt and uncle, and my grandfather found work in a Chrysler plant.  He remained there until retirement, at which point he was able to collect a pension.  They lived a comfortable life, purchasing a home in the suburbs, owning two vehicles (American made, of course.)  My grandfather always had stories about his time working for an American automobile plant in the city.  For example, a guy drives a foreign car to work and finds it destroyed in the parking lot at the end of this shift.  Long story short, I found quite a bit of familiarity in LeDuff's book.    


To see a list of all the books I read in 2018, click here.


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