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Book Review: Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares (Series, #5)
Summary:
The Septembers are all 29 years old now and spread out all over the globe. Bee is expending her energy biking up and down the hills of San Francisco while Eric works as a lawyer. Carmen has a recurring role on a tv show filming in NYC and is engaged to Jones, an ABC producer. Lena teaches art at RISD and lives a quiet life in her studio apartment, except for the one day a week she practices Greek with an elderly woman. Tibby took off to Australia with Brian months ago, and everyone else is in limbo waiting for her to get back. They all feel a bit disconnected until Tibby sends Bee, Carmen, and Lena tickets to come to Greece for a reunion. What they find when they arrive is not what anyone expected.
Review:
You guys. You guys. This book shattered me. I am not a crier, and I actually had tears fall while reading this book. I read it in one day. I could not put it down. As someone who grew up with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I found the sudden jump forward in age (we used to be about the same age, and now they are older than me) a bit disconcerting and unexpected, but nowhere near as unexpected as the rest of the book.
I complained to anyone who would listen at the beginning that I hated it. That I hated what Brashares was doing, and omg why would she do this. But as the story progressed, she swept me along, and suddenly I realized that yes this is tougher by far than the earlier books. It’s not the light girl power read the first or even the second one was. But it shouldn’t be. They’re 29. They’re older. Their problems should be bigger and more adult, and the lessons here hurt more to read because they’re tougher ones to learn. It’s precisely the direction the books should have taken. The girls change and, dare I say it, actually grow the fuck up unlike a certain other foursome that have a tv show.
I won’t tell you what made the book so powerful, because that’d spoil it. But I will tell you, my fellow fans, to push past the first quarter of the book where you’re angry and want to throw it across the room in a Carmen-like rage. Give Brashares the chance she earned with the first three to gradually show you what she’s doing. It’s an emotional journey that’s well worth taken. Fans might be frustrated at first, but those who stick it out and love the series for what it really is will love this entry. I don’t doubt it at all. Plus, Brashares hinted that there might be still more to come.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Netgalley
Previous Books in Series
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
Book Review: Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown
Summary:
This collection gathers 34 contemporary Mexican short stories featuring fantasy, scifi, and literary, clearly a wide range.
Review:
For me this collection was very hit and miss, and alas even the hits weren’t that wonderful. Part of the issue is there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind the order in which the tales are presented. It feels as if 34 completely random stories were selected with the only thing they have in common being Mexican authors. I generally prefer a short story collection to have a more universal theme or play upon similar tropes, but there is none of that here. The stories range from young boys hunting iguanas to figuring out how to dispose of a body to a trophy wife on vacation in Las Vegas to a pact with the devil. It was a bit of an exhausting collection to read. That said, I’d like to highlight a couple of my favorites that kept the read from being an entirely troublesome experience.
“Hunting Iguanas” by Hernan Lara Zavala both gives a glimpse into country Mexican life, which isn’t something we get to encounter very much, and provides commentary on colonization.
“Lions” by Bernardo Fernandez was particularly delightful for an animal rights activist to read. In a time of budget cuts the less attractive animals of the zoo are let loose in the city park and gradually take over. Delightfully tongue-in-cheek.
“The Nahual Offering” by Carmen Rioja features a disturbingly prophetic dream by a tribal woman. It is a great example of the beautifully grotesque.
You can see, though, that I was only able to pick out three short stories from a collection of 34 to highlight as particularly enjoyable to me. The collection simply lacks a universality of theme or talent.
Overall this collection is an interesting peek into contemporary Mexican writing, although it does seem the editors could have done a better job in selecting what to include. Recommended to those with a marked interest in modern Mexican writing.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: LibraryThing EarlyReviewers
Book Review: The Child Who by Simon Lelic
Summary:
A gruesome murder has thrown a British county up-in-arms, and Leo Curtice finds himself the attorney randomly assigned to defend the murderer–a 12 year old boy who killed and sexually assaulted an 11 year old girl. He finds himself seeking to understand what would make a 12 year old kill and finding more empathy for the boy than those around him think is allowable. Meanwhile, threats start coming in against his own family, including his 15 year old daughter.
Review:
This is a ripped from the headlines style novel that falls far short of others in its genre. Apparently, Britain has a real problem with child murderers. The thing is, though, when you’re writing a ripped from the headlines type story, your fictional version needs to bring something to the table that the real life stories and newspaper articles can’t or don’t. 
It’s also problematic when you google about child murderers in Britain and the stories that come up are far more fascinating than the novel you just read. Stories like Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, two ten year olds who tortured and murdered a two year old. Or Mary Bell an eleven year old who killed and tortured other children without remorse. In contrast our story here is about a twelve year old boy who hits on an eleven year old, is rebuffed, and proceeds to knock her down, bludgeon her, and assault her with a stick. Horrible? Yes. But with far more motive than two ten year olds abducting and killing a two year old. See the difference? The true to life stories push us to question and understand human development and behavior. The fake one seems rather easily written off as a vicious twelve year old who can’t handle the word no from a girl he likes. It’s as if the author was trying to play off of a phenomenon in Britain but missed the crux of what makes it so fascinating. Twelve is hardly a youth in the way that ten is.
Then there is the whole side-plot about Curtice’s daughter. From the beginning of the book you think she was murdered eventually somehow in some connection with the case. Wanting to find out how this occurred is what keeps the reader interested and the plot moving in spite of the problems addressed earlier. This, though, is ultimately a red herring of a plot point. The daughter was a runaway. Yes, the father didn’t know it at first, but she just ran away because of all the stress from the case. That’s it. As a reader, it felt like Lelic played a dirty trick on me, and I really didn’t like that.
Ultimately, Lelic tried to write a ripped from the headlines style story akin to Room
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Netgalley
Book Review: The Egyptian by Layton Green (Series, #2)
Summary:
Dominic Grey, previously a government worker and before that a champion jiu-jitsu fighter, is now working for Professor Viktor Radek on private detective cases frequently involving religious mysteries and the occult. His first case seems straight-forward enough–retrieve a vial stolen from a biomedical company in Egypt. But there’s more to this biomedical company than meets the eye, and Dominic soon finds himself racing around the globe from New Jersey to Bulgaria to Cairo in an attempt to unravel a mystery involving what just might be the elixir of life.
Review:
This follow-up to The Summoner (review) lives up to the excitement and global noir feel of the original without retracing the same steps. This holds promise for the series as a whole as one issue in writing serial detective novels is keeping everything fresh for the reader.
Green has either traveled the world extensively or done a ton of research, as his writing shows an intimate knowledge of the various areas of the world Dominic’s work takes him that is only evidenced by those who have been there. It is easy to tell when a writer intimately knows the setting they are speaking of, and this is clear in Green’s work. This lends an extra edge of excitement to the work.
Dominic’s character develops at a believable rate in this entry of the series. Who he is at the core is still the same, but his work and his encounters with a variety of people lead him to question himself, his life, and his intentions. I also appreciated that instead of pulling a 007 and moving on to the next woman without thinking much of his love interest from the first book, Nya, Dominic struggles with his emotions about the women he sleeps with. He is certainly no saint when it comes to the opposite sex, but the way he deals with women strikes a believable middle.
Unfortunately, Viktor does not feature as prominently this time around, and he also appears to be on a bit of a downward slope in his fondness for absinthe. I hope his character will be addressed more fully in the next entry in the series.
Two of the new characters added this time around are particularly enjoyable–Veronica (the love interest) and Jax (an international mercenary). I actually fell for Jax much harder than I’ve fallen for Dominic. He is from small town America with no ties to family, completely confident in the most rural corners of the world. He’s brassy, witty, and clearly has a bit of a good streak buried in him somewhere. I think both the ladies and the men reading the series will enjoy his presence, and I hope he’ll pop up in later entries (or even get his own spin-off series). Veronica is enjoyable for different reasons. She’s a career woman starting to question where her life is heading and falls for the guy she can’t have. It may seem cliche, but that sort of thing happens all the time in real life. She’s sympathetic without being pathetic. Also, personally, I found her a lot more enjoyable than Nya. She’s more assertive with Dominic; let’s just leave it at that. ;-)
The writing style itself still struggles in places on the sentence level. Sometimes Green tries too hard to sound philosophical, and it comes across as forced. Similarly, some paragraphs lean a bit too heavily on showing, not telling. The instances of this occurring are fewer than in the previous book, though, and it is obvious that Green is working hard on improving his craft. Personally, I did not find that these instances distracted me from the exciting plot at all.
Overall, The Egyptian is a fast-paced, unpredictable detective mystery, perfect for those looking for a light-weight, page-turner for their evenings or the beach.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Free kindle copy from the author in exchange for review
Buy It
Note: The Egyptian and The Summoner are on sale for 99 cents for this release weekend only (August 27th and 28th)
Previous Books in Series:
The Summoner, review
Book Review: The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
Summary:
In classic noir style, Higashino tells the tale of a mathematician, Ishigami, and a physicist, Yukawa, facing off utilizing only their brilliant minds in a quest to save someone they each love from a life of tragedy. Simultaneously a story of love and betrayal amped up with academia and set against the quintessential backdrop of gritty Japanese city streets–not to mention a lunch box restaurant.
Review:
I fully admit that I put myself in to win this book purely because it’s Japanese literature, and I’m trying to expand my reading horizons to include more non-western lit. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to see so many classic noir elements present in this modern day detective mystery. Noir is one of my favorite genres and adding in the touches of Japan gave it a really fun twist.
It takes a bit for the story to get going and to get into Higashino’s writing style. The sentences lean toward shorter in length than I’m used to. Once I became used to the length difference though I really got into the different type of flow shorter sentences give to a piece of writing. Naturally, this could partly be due to it being a work in translation, but good translators try to give foreign language readers a sense of the original author’s style. I hope the translator succeeded in this regard, because this different style helped give this noir story an extra push in uniqueness.
The mystery itself is nearly impossible to completely solve before the final solution is revealed. The final solution also contains some serious betrayal and an emotional scene that reminded me a bit of some Japanese cinema I’ve seen. So intensely shocking and gritty and occurring in the very last few moments of the story. It moves the story up from a fun way to pass the time to a memorable tale.
The pacing is a bit off, however. Intensity speeds up and slows down repeatedly making it difficult to be totally sucked into the story. A few edits would probably solve this problem leaving the same basic tale but without any unnecessary diatribes. Some may not find the pacing variety as distracting as I did, however.
This Japanese noir piece is artfully pulled off and leaves the reader guessing to the very end. I recommend it to noir and Japanese literature fans alike.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Won from EarlyReviewers via LibraryThing
Book Review: My Abandonment by Peter Rock
Summary:
Thirteen-year-old Caroline lives in Forest Park with her father. They have to be very quiet and careful because regular folk don’t understand why they want to live like they do. They even have to keep away from the other men that live in the park too. Caroline doesn’t mind this way of life. In fact, she prefers it. She likes being out in nature and learning everything she can from her father and from encyclopedias and library books. She even doesn’t mind fasting on Fridays. You get used to it. One day though, she makes a mistake. Will it change her and her father’s way of life forever?
Review:
What makes this book is the surprise, which I refuse to give away in my review. At first, I admit, I was a bit bored with the story. It felt like a less-interesting version of Room, only with a boy instead of a girl and the pair living set off from society willfully. When the twist came I was frankly shocked, and it set my mind reeling about the whole story. To this moment I cannot stop thinking and re-thinking about Caroline’s life. How her raising affected her and whether or not this is a bad thing.
I do think that Rock takes a bit too long to reveal the twist. I was losing patience for a solid while before it came around. Perhaps more clues should have been dropped earlier on or something to keep the reader guessing that perhaps not everything is as it seems in Caroline’s life. Additionally, the writing style in the first few chapters is an odd mix of intelligent and irritatingly simple. It is Caroline speaking, but she’s also an intelligent 13. This whole facade is dropped within a few chapters, so I see no reason to start the book out in that manner. It was a bit off-putting.
Overall, however, it does turn out to be a unique story. More importantly, it leaves the reader questioning what she thinks she knows about the world and alternative ways of living. I recommend it to fans of contemporary literature featuring a twist.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Length: 225 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Purchased
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Movie Review: The Tourist (2010)
Summary:
The Scotland Yard is watching Elise Ward in the hopes that her ex-boyfriend, Alexander, who owes millions of pounds of back taxes, will contact her. They get their chance when he does, telling her to come to Venice and choose a random tourist of his height and build to trick the cops into thinking is him. The cops don’t fall for it, but unfortunately the mobster Alexander stole billions of pounds from does.
Review:
I’ve been a fan of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp since I can remember, so that pretty much is the entire reason why I went to go see this film. Unfortunately, I have to say, Angelina and Johnny are starting to show their age. For a film largely based on youth-filled action and passion, this is a bit distracting. Although I enjoyed the old-fashioned storyline, I think I would have enjoyed it better with younger casting. I’m not ageist, but when a storyline is so youthfully oriented, the casting should match.
The storyline itself is thoroughly engaging and refreshing. It’s a romcom in the style of Cary Grant classics like Bringing Up Baby. There’s a bunch of slightly over the top but still believable action. It doesn’t rely on idiocy of the main characters or klutziness to move the story along. It’s over-the-top enough to be engaging and escapist, but still believable instead of laughable.
There are enough plot twists to keep it engaging, and the cinematography strikes the proper balance between clear action-filled shots, quieter romantic scenes, and the more technical scenes of Scotland Yard observing the whole situation.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable film that unfortunately suffers from miscasting. Hopefully romcoms coming out of Hollywood will continue moving in this direction anyway.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: I saw this in theaters.
Book Review: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Summary:
Anna Oliphant’s dad totally sold out and started writing crappy books that for some reason became incredibly popular. Now he’s insisting that she spend her senior year at a boarding school–School of America in Paris. Anna knows she should be enjoying her year abroad, after all, it is Paris! But she can’t help but miss her friends and family at home. She slowly starts to find her own new circle of friends and discover the wonderful things in Paris…..and to realize that she may be falling for one of her friends. A boy who is decidedly off-limits for multiple reasons.
Review:
Perkins takes a typical YA storyline–teenage girl sent away to boarding school, complete with teen angst–and puts just the right amount of her own twists and flavors in it to make for a delightful, unique read. I enjoyed this as an adult, but I’m sure 15 year old me would have been in love with it, re-reading it, and sighing over the main interest St. Clair.
The setting of Paris is delightful. Perkins captures the binary of excitement and trepidation at being in another country for the first time enough so that Anna is realistic but not annoying. Similarly, all of the characters act like actual human beings. They are neither perfect nor evil. They are simply doing their best to figure out how to function in the world. I appreciated this, and I’d imagine teen readers would too. Similarly, Perkins describes Paris in such a way that I wanted to move there instantaneously myself if for no other reason than the descriptions of the bread and eating meals in cemeteries. This is what it should be to be young. Angst combined with first-time glorious experiences.
Perkins manages to be both subtly funny:
“Huh?” I have such a way with words. I should write epic poetry or jingles for cat food commercials. (Location 1054-1058)
And perfectly capture what it is to be an adolescent female:
It makes me dizzy. It smells like freshly scrubbed boy. It smells like him. (Location 3100-3104
This is what an ideal YA book should be. Realistic about what young people face, but also about who young people are. Holding out hope that they can become good people, and they can learn and grow and overcome their mistakes. I highly recommend it to teen girls, as well as to adult women who still enjoy YA.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Movie Review: Saw (2004)
Summary:
Two men wake to find themselves chained on opposite sides of a worn-down, underground bathroom, the newest victims of Jigsaw. Jigsaw doesn’t actually commit murder himself, but instead puts people into situations where they have to make horrible choices in an attempt to save their own life. These men are told the only way out is for one of them to kill the other, and as their time limit ticks on greater amounts of information are revealed about the men’s lives and Jigsaw’s previous victims.
Review:
My very first comment as the end credits rolled was, “Holy crap, I can see why this became a franchise.” The story is sufficiently complex to hold interest. Jigsaw is incredibly creepy as he uses a voice distorted puppet to communicate to his victims. Puppets are always creepy. Bottom line. I love the concept of a serial kidnapper/torturer doing so presumably to teach people a lesson as opposed to just really enjoying gore.
Speaking of gore, it definitely exists in the film, but the most gut-wrenching moments take place just off-screen. Apparently this was re-edited as the original cut showed those moments on-screen, and the MPAA required the cuts for it to receive an R rating. Personally, I think given their low budget, it works better letting the audience’s imagination fill in the worst moments.
Also, Losties will be pleased to know that Michael Emerson, aka creeptastic Ben, has a rather significant role in the film. I loved his acting so much in Lost, and his work here is just as good. I may have squealed a bit every time he showed up on screen. One casting negative, though, is Cary Elwes, who plays one of the men locked in the bathroom, has the worst fake American accent ever. He repeatedly slips in and out of it. I have no idea why they didn’t either just let him be British or hire an American actor for the part. Very odd.
Overall, this horror movie primarily gives viewers chills from the whole idea of such a situation far more so than gore. If horror movies are your thing, you definitely need to give the Saw franchise a shot. It became a franchise for a reason.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
Book Review: Room by Emma Donoghue
Summary:
Most of the time it’s just Jack and Ma in Room. Jack likes watching shows on the planets on the television, but Ma only lets him watch two a day. She says his brain will turn to mush if he watches it too much. So instead they have phys ed where they run track in a smile around the bed or Jack plays trampoline while Ma calls out his moves. Sometimes Ma reads to Jack or they lay in the sun that comes in through the skylight. All day things are good in Room. But every night Old Nick comes, and Jack has to stay in Wardrobe while Old Nick spends time with Ma. Ma doesn’t like it when Old Nick comes. Neither does Jack. Jack’s whole life Ma has told him only they are real, and everything on television and in books is just stories. But one day she tells him those were lies. And now she’s unlying. Because they have to escape soon to Outside. Outside Room.
Review:
This is a mind-blowingly powerful book. I totally devoured it. It was impossible to put it down. Told entirely from the perspective of 5 year old Jack who was born in Room, it puts an incredibly heart-wrenching and revealing look into what has unfortunately been all over the news in recent years. Cases of women kidnapped and then locked up to be used by their kidnappers as, essentially, sex slaves. These cases often result in the births of children, and although stories have been told from the woman’s point of view, I am unaware of any others that tell them from the child’s point of view.
I have no idea how Donoghue was able to sound so completely like an actual 5 year old, but not just a 5 year old. A 5 year old going through such a unique and painful situation. From the very first page, I entirely believed that I was listening to what was going on inside Jack’s head. That means sometimes there are a few paragraphs about playing, and how Jeep and Remote Control play and fight with each other. But it also reveals what incredible insight children can have into life. That children are in fact little people and should be respected as such. For example, at one point Jack says:
I have to remember they’re real, they’re actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they’re all really in Outside. I’m not there, though, me and Ma, we’re the only ones not there. Are we still real? (Location 1257-1261)
Jack is simultaneously childlike and insightful, and that lends a powerfully unique touch to a tale of evil inflicted on others. I honestly cannot think of anyone I would not recommend this book to, except perhaps someone for whom the events in it might be triggering. Beyond that, everyone should have the experience of reading it.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
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Opinions of a Wolf 