Book: Good Girl Bad Blood

 Book: Good Girl Bad Blood

Author: Holly Jackson

Pages: 416

This is my 11th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Pip is not a detective anymore.  With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcase about the murder case they solved together last year.  The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her.  But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing.  Jamie Reynolds has disappeared, on the very same night the town hosted a memorial for the 6th year anniversary of the deaths of Andie Bell and Sal Singh.  The police won't do anything about it.  And if they won't look for Jamie then Pip will, uncovering more of her town's dark secrets along the way....and this time everyone is listening.  But will she find him before it's too late?

This was an okay book.  I watched "A Good Girl's Guide to Murder" on TV and it was cute, so I decided to try the second book in the series.  It passed the time but that is about it.  I did listen to it, and I have gotten this particular narrator on so many books, and I really don't like her style.  She is a whisper reader.  That might have had a little to do with how I felt about the book, but not much.  It was a bit far fetched.  Pip was an okay character for awhile, but she just fell apart at the end.  I don't think I  will read any more.

Stars: 3

Book: Deadpool Graphic Novel - Book 2

 Book: Deadpool Graphic Novel - Book 2

Author: Daniel Way

Pages: 472

This is my 10th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Deadpool wants to be 2 things in life: a pirate and an X-Man.  So after a stint on the high seas, he decides to make the X-Men love him by assassinating the father of one of their students?  Then 'Pool pays a visit to a certain wisecracking wall-crawler's friendly neighborhood - or is it?  Deadpool doesn't play second banana to anyboyd, especially not Spider-Man!  But Wade had better deal if he wants to survive the threat of Hit-Monkey.  When Dr. Bong clones the Secret Avengers, Deadpool must fight alonside the real deals - and try not to shoot the wrong guys!  Plus: When Wade targets a Vegas club owner, he draws the ire of The House: a super-suited security guard with a secret history with the Merc with a Mouth!  And finally, a bunch of good Draculas hire Deadpool to fight a bunch of bad Draculas.

This was another great graphic novel.  I read the first volume that was lying around our house because Deadpool is my favorite anti-hero.  I like Daniel Way's take on the character so I went on the hunt for the second volume and it was hard to find.  I love the story line and of course Deadpool is hilarious.  Art is fantastic.  I do read a fair number of graphic novels during the year, but I not many Marvel.  But Deadpool is the exception.

Stars: 4

Book: Here One Moment

 Book: Here One Moment

Author: Liane Moriarty

Pages: 512

This is my 9th read for the year

What Amazon says:

The plane is jam-packed.  Every seat is taken.  So of course the flight is delayed.  Flight attendant Allegra Patel likes her job - she's generally happy with her life, even if she can't figure out why she hooks up with a man she barely speaks to - but today is her twenty-eighth birthday.  She can think of plenty of things she'd rather be doing than placating a bunch of grumpy passengers.  There's the well-dressed man in seat 4C who is compulsively checking his watch, desperate not to miss his 11 year old daughter's musical.  Further back, a mother of two is frantically trying to keep her toddler entertained and her infant son quiet.  How did she ever think being a stay-at-home mom would be easier than being a lawyer?  Ethan is lost in thought; he's flying back from his first funeral.  A young couple has just gotten married; she's still wearing her wedding dress.  An emergency room nurse is looking forward to traveling the world once she retires in a few years, it's going to be so much fun!  If they ever get off the tarmac...Suddenly a woman non of them know stands up.  She makes predictions about how and when everyone on board will die.  Some dismiss her.  Others will do everything they can to make sure her prophecies do not come to pass.  All of them will be forever changed.  How would you live your life if you thought you knew how it would end?  Would you love who you love or try ot love someone else?  Would you stay married?  Would you stop drinking?  Would you call up your ex-best friend you haven't spoken to in years?  Would you quit your job?

This was a pretty good book.  I listened to it, and I have to say I am glad I did.  I think hearing the different characters voices (and the cool Australian accent) made all the difference.  I streamed through it during a painting project.  There is good character developement and you spend a long time wondering if the predictions are going to come true as you learn more and more about the main characters and the woman who made the predictions.  Loved the epilogue.  I did find it could have been a little bit shorter - there was a lot of detail about the lives of all the characters that added some to the story, but just seemd to be filling pages more than really moving the story along.  Overall - a good read.

Stars: 4

Book: Orbital

 Book: Orbital

Author: Samantha Harvey

Pages: 200

This is my 8th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Orbital snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space.  Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonatus - from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan -have lef ttheir lives behind to travel at the speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.  We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude.  Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet.  Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprsingly intimate. 

This was a pretty interesting book.  First - the cover is beautiful.  It is a very small book and a very quick read.  I read it in a day.  There is no plot and took me a bit to realize this was going to be the whole book.  It is more of a stream of consciousness about view of the earth from space and what the astronauts saw happening as they circled it again and again.  For a book like that - it could have been even shorted - maybe around 100-150 pages.  After awhile it seemed repetative.  That being said - there were some beautiful sentences and take aways from the book that I am glad I read it.

Stars: 3.5

Book: The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society

 Book: The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society

Author: Mary Anne Shaffer

Pages: 290

This is my 7th read for the year

What Amazon says:

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject.  Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernesy, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb.  As Juliet and her new correspondend exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is.  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - born as a spru-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island - boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, lterature lovers all.  Juliet beings a remarkable correspondence with the society's members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives.  Captivated by their stories, she sets saild for Guernesy, and what she finds will change her forever.

This was a pretty good book.  I might be a little gernous giving it 4 stars - it is more like a 3.5.  I did like the characters and the sweet town of Guernsey.  I could pictures the cute houses and the gathering of the Literary Society.  I did not like that the entire book was written in the style of letters back and forth between characters.  I felt that I couldn't really get into the story that way - it was choppy at best.  I also did not love the main character - Juliet.  She was fine, but some of the thing she did seemed way out there.  Adopting a little girl who she didn't know within a few weeks of being on the island?  And falling for a guy where the letters were just not giving any indication of their strong feelings at all.

anway - it was fine.  Cute story.  

Stars: 4

Book: Troublemaker

 Book: Troublemaker

Author: Leah Remini

Pages: 272

This is my 6th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Leah Remini has never been the type of hold her tongue.  That willingness to speak her mind, stand her ground, and rattle the occasional cage has enabled this tough-talking girl from Brooklyn to forge an enduring and successful career in Hollywood.  But being a troublemaker has come at a cost.  That was never more evidet than in 2013, when Remini loudly and publicly broke with the Church of Scientology.  Now, in this memoir, the former King of Queens star opens up about that experience for the first time, revealing the in-depth details of her painful split with the church and its controversial practices.  Indocrinated into the church as a child while living with her mother and sister in New York, Remini eventually moved to Los Angeles, where her dreams of becoming an actress and advancing Scientology's causes grew increasingly intertwined.  As an adult, she found th success she'd worked so hard for, and with it a prominent place in the hierarchy of celebrity Scientologists alongside people such as Tom Cruise, Scientology's most high-profile adherent.  Remini spent time directly with Cruise and was included among the guests at his 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes.  But when she bean to raise questions about some of the church's actions, she found herself a target.  In the end, she was declared by the church to be a threat to their organization and therefore a "Suppressive Person" and as a result all of her fellow parishioners - including members of her own family - were told to disconnect from her.  Forever.

This was a pretty good book.  I watched King of Queens, and while I found her character...."alot" - I still enjoyed the show over the years.  This book is almost 9 years old, and she has been out of scientology for over a decade, but I had no idea she was a scientologist or what all she and her family went through over the years.  Learning a bit about the inner workings of this so called church was interesting.  I would say the hardest part was that Leah seems to be know to be quiet difficult and she does a lot of complaining in this book that seemed a bit over the top.  I am sure I am being too harsh a judge.  She was in this church for 30 years and gave them a lot of time and money, so she has a right to be angry.  It just seemed to be a bit much.  OVerall, though - glad I read it.

Stars: 3

Book: The Briar Club

 Book: The Briar Club

Author: Kate Quinn

Pages: 432

This is my 5th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Washington, DC, 1950.  Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a donw-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation's capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences.  But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman's daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women's baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy's Red Scare.  Grace's weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun teac become a healing  balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own.  When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

This was a great book.  I read it in a few short days  - finding all kinds of time to keep reading instead of doing anything else.  The characters are well developed and I loved that each character got their own chapter so we learned their backstory and how they came to be at the boarding house.  Grace was my favorite character - how she took a so-so situation and turned it into a home bringing every character (even Arlene in the end) into the fold of what it is to be in a found family.  The story flowed nicely, and the ending wasn't all that surprising, but that didn't take away from anything.  And I liked the long author's note at the end where she explains where she got the inspriation throughout history for her characters.  Another great Kate Quinn read.

Stars: 5