Book: Roxy

 Book: Roxy

Author: Neal Shusterman

Pages: 384

This is my 88th read for the year

What Amazon Says:  

The freeway is coming.  It will cut the neighborhood in two.  Construction has already started, pushing toward this corridor of condemned houses and creacked concrete with the momentum of the inevitable.  Yet there you are, in the 5th house on the lieft, fighting for your life.  Remey, I.  The victim of the bet between 2 manufactured gods: the seductive and lethal Roxy (Oxycontine), who is at the top of her game, and the smart, high-achieving Addison (Adderall), who is tired of being the helpful one, and longs for a more dangerous, less wholesome image.  The wager - a contest to see who can bring their mark to "The Party" first - is a race to the bottom of a rave that has raged since the beginning of time.  And you are only human, dazzled by the lights and music.  Drawn by what the drugs offer - tempted to take that step past helpful to harmful - and the troubled places that lie beyond.  But there are 2 I. Rameys - Issac, a soccer player thrown into Roxy's orbit by a bad fall and a bad doctor and Ivy, his older sister, whose increasing frustration with her untreated ADHD leads her to renew her acquaintance with Addy.  Which one are you?

This was a great book.  I am a big fan of Shusterman - most of his books are hits for me.  This once was clever, and kept me on my toes trying to figure out what drug he was speaking of - giving them human names and lives.  It is well written, and had me turning the pages to find out where the story was going.  Ending is tragic, but a solid read.  Glad I got to this one.

Stars: 4.5

Book: A Far Flung Life

 Book: A Far Flung Life

Author: ML Stedman

Pages: 448

This is my 87th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

When we do something that can't be undone or mended, how do we go on living?  How do we find out North Star when there is no right answer?  This is a sweeping and epic story of a family, a tragedy, and the aftermath that reverberates for decades.  Remote Western Australia, 1958: here for generations, the MacBrides have lives on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean and arid land.  On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo.  In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered.  And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling, and leads another to give up evertying for the sake of an innocent child.  Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide.  The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duy, sacrifice and happiness.  Can a fleeting momen unravel a whole life, mar it indelibly and irrevocably?  Can compassion, resilience and forgiveness allow us to come to terms with our human imperfections?

This book was fine.  It wasn't really for me.  I should have looked at the warnings before I picked it up, because I probably would have skipped it.  It starts out strong - the accident, the baby, another unexpected death.  Then it just got....blah.  It was slow and depressing.  Not as good as The Light Between Oceans.

Stars: 3

Book: Horse

 Book: Horse

Author: Geraldine Brookes

Pages: 464

This is my 86th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Kentucky, 1850.  An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South.  When the nation erupts in a civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union.  On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.  New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a 19th century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.  Washington DC, 2019.  Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, aNigerian-American art historina, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse - one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.  Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

Stars: 3.5

Book: Everyone In This Bank Is A Thief

 Book: Everyone In This Bank is a Thief

Author: Benjamin Stevenson

Pages: 368

This is my 85th read for the year

What Amazon Says:  

I've spent the last few years solving murders.  But a bank heist is a new one, even for me.  I've never been a hostage before.  The doors are chained shut.  No one in or out.  Which means that when someone in the bank is mudered, everyone is a suspect.  The bank roober, the manager, the security guard, the kid, the film producer, the priest, the receptionist, the patient, the caergiver, me.  Turns out, more than one person planned to rob the bank today.  You can steal more from a bank than just money.

This is my 4th Benjamin Stevenson book, and it was just as enjoyable as the others.  I like his books, his main character - Ernie - and the snarky commentary that always appears in his writing.  He is a good writer, and I like his mysteries.  Good character development.  This book lost a half a star for me only because I didn't love the direction he took Erine for a bit in this book, but he redeemed it with the ending.

Stars: 4.5

Book: Murder at the Church Picnic

 Book: Murder at the Church Picnic

Author: Denise Jaden

Pages: 359

This is my 84th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Mallory Beck never imagined she'd be Honeysuckle Grove's next amateur slueth.  After all, she was more at home with a muffin tin than a magnifying glass.  But when a casserole delivery to a grieving family leads to her unexpctedly solving her first murder, Mallory realizes life in her quiet little town isn't as peaceful as it seems.  What was supposed to be a simple contribution to the church picnic potluck quickly spirals into a deadly mystery, involving a sarcastic teenager, a charming cop with green eyes, and a cat with an uncanny knack for sniffing out trouble.  Can Mallory uncover the truth before the picnic turns into a full-blown crime scene?  It's a race against time in this cozy culinary caper!

This was a great little book.  I found it because for a reading challenge I needed a book with a picnic basket on the front - which was harder to find than I realized.  But I stumbled upon this book and it was a gem!  It is well written, and a good mystery, and some good characters.  This is a second book in a series - and while it was fine to read it without reading the first, it might have helped a little bit with background on the characters.  But only a little.  Author did a good job not adding too much to this book to make it impossible to follow if you don't read in order.

Stars: 4

Book Piranesi

 Book: Piranesi

Author: Susanna Clarke

Pages: 272

This is my 83rd read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls lined with thousands upon thousands of statues.  Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; and waves thunder up staircases, while rooms are flooded in an instant.  But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself.  He lives to explore the house.  There is one other person in the house - a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowlege.  But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

This was an interesting book.  I read Susanna's tome "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (and watched the show which helped clear some things up), so I was interested to read another one of her books. Thankfully this one was a lot shorter.  It is an interesting tale, and even with its short length, it took some concentration to follow the story to the end.  This is not a skimmable book.  The world Piranesi has built is an interesting one but also one that was hard to understand his love for at the same time.  I kind of knew where it was going after while, but it became clearer near the end.

Stars: 4

Book: Rain Before Rainbows

 Book: Rain Before Rainbows

Author: Smriti Prasadam-Halls

Pages: 32

This is my 82nd read for the year

What Amazon Says: 

In this heartfelt story about courage, change, and moving on, a girl and her companion fox travel together away from a sorrowful past, through challenging and stormy times, toward color and light and life.  Along the way they find friends to guide and support them, and when the new day dawns, it is full of promise.  With gorgeous, richly realized illustrations and immense hope at its heart, Rain Before Rainbows holds out a ray of sunshine for anyone looking for light.

Cute book I read for a reading challenge.

Stars:4