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Showing posts from February, 2017

Never Let You Go

Lindsey Nash was young when she met and fell in love with Andrew; getting married after only six months. What started off as a great relationship slowly turned sour and ended with Lindsey escaping with their young daughter in the middle of the night. It's been eleven years and now her ex-husband is out of jail. Lindsey feels as if she's being watched. Her boyfriend is put in danger, her home is broken into and her daughter is being followed. And Lindsey truly believes there's only one person capable of scaring her like this - Andrew.  This page-turner had some pretty good twists. The characters and situations were believable and makes you wonder what truly goes on in other people's minds. Andrew made me so angry during their relationship! I felt so bad for Lindsey; her anguish was palpable.  4/5.

So Much Love

Catherine Reindeer vanishes without a trace after work. Now everyone in the small town is left with unanswered questions, worst-case scenarios and tiny shreds of hope. While being held prisoner Catherine remembers the poems of a local female poet who had been murdered decades earlier. After being held for months against her will it's only after she suffers a devastating loss that she finds the power to make an escape. We learn how this affects not only those closest to her but also acquaintances of Catherine's. We learn how her quiet strength and determination allow her to start to live her life again although it's different from the life she loved and lived before. The first chapter started off great! The book seemed so promising but sadly it kept going downhill after that first chapter and the book isn't something that's going to be memorable for me. Maybe too many points-of-view. 3/5.

Everyone We've Been

Ever since Addison Sullivan has been in an accident, she's been having a hard time concentrating, a hard time sleeping, and she starts talking to a boy that no one else can see. She's worried she's going crazy. She doesn't feel as though she can talk to her parents or her brother, so in order to understand what's going on she visits a local medical facility that promises to help with memory. As she's leaving the clinic she finds out this wasn't her first visit - she's already had certain memories erased. Addison had a boy erased from her memory. Now she's determined to figure out who he was and what happened that she felt like her only option was to have him erased from her life. This was a quick and easy read. It switches between before Addison was in the accident and after. I liked getting glimpses of how things were before. I thought when she started seeing someone no one else could it was going to go a completely different way than it did, but th

The Most Dangerous Thing

Sixteen-year-old Sydney is secretly fighting a battle against depression. She has a fog that settles around her that makes it hard to be around people, make eye contact and even get out of bed in the morning. Her outgoing older sister Abby is planning to do a version of The Vagina Monologues for school.  Sydney hates to talk or even think about sex, so she basically wants to crawl in a hole and not go to school that day. And now her classmate Paul has started sending her texts and pictures. Sydney doesn't understand why someone would like her, and she's even more nervous about her own feelings. Despite being uncomfortable about sex and relationships, with the help of her family, friends and her therapist, she takes small steps out of her comfort zone to learn about what she calls the most dangerous thing about sex - female desire. This was a quick and easy read. The whole book flowed well and had great characters. I could relate to Sydney and was definitely rooting for her! S

Human Acts

A young boy named Dong-ho is one of many who have been killed in the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea. Interconnected chapters tell the stories of the victims and the bereaved - Dong-ho's best friend who has also been killed; Dong-ho's mother; an editor struggling against censorship; a prisoner; a factory worker. Each one of these people are suffering from their own traumatic memories. This is a fictional account of the 1980 Gwangju uprising. It is told in six chapters from six different points-of-view. I did not like how the first chapter was written. The second chapter was pretty good. I didn't make it all the way through the third chapter. I found this book jumped around too much and I wasn't interested enough to figure out what was going on. It was tedious and a chore to read.  DNF @ 44%. 1/5.

Swimming Lessons

Ingrid Coleman has been writing letters to her husband, Gil, and sticking them inside books he has collected over the years. In those letters she writes about the truth of their marriage; her side of the story. And after she's written her final letter she disappears, leaving behind Gil and their two daughters, Nan and Flora. After many years have passed, Gil is looking outside a bookshop window when he spots Ingrid outside, but she's gone by the time he gets outside and to make matters worse he takes a bad fall. Their youngest daughter Flora returns home to look after her father and to hopefully get some answers about her mother; little does she know that the answers to her questions are stuck between the pages of the books surrounding her. This book is character driven. But sadly I found these characters and their lives boring. It goes back and forth to how Gil and Ingrid met, their early days together and the course of their marriage to the Coleman's lives without Ingri

My Last Continent

Deb Gardner feels at home when she's at the end of the world. She does her research on the penguins that live there and enjoys the solitude the continent has to offer. Then one day Deb finds her world shifting like the icebergs around her when she meets Keller Sullivan, a dishwasher eager to learn all he can about the penguins Deb is studying. Soon they're spending as much time together as they can before returning to their separate lives up North. With a new research season beginning Deb will be travelling and playing tour guide to the passengers on board the small ship that will take them to their destination. Deb can hardly wait to see Keller again, but he never shows up. Shortly into the journey, Deb learns that Keller is on board the Australis, a massive cruise liner that she can see not far off in the distance from the ship she's on. Deb knows that cruise liner shouldn't be coming this way, and soon the ship receives an emergency signal from the Australis - they

Making Bad Choices

Cassie Michaels has just lost her mother to cancer. Now she has to leave her friends, her aunt Daisy and sunny California behind to finish her last semester of high school in cold Colorado. She's moving in with her father, her step-mother, her half-brother and her step-brother Culter. Cassie hates Culter, she's hated him since they were kids. But he doesn't hate her, never has. In fact, Culter is in love with Cassie. And Cassie soon finds herself falling in love with Culter. I thought the writing was strong - things never got boring, it had the right amount of smut, the romance wasn't over the top. I liked how true friends stuck together no matter what. The high school drama and cliques felt real and made me happy those days are over for me. 4/5.

Three Years with the Rat

After spending many years drifting between school and go-nowhere jobs, a young man is drawn back to the city where he grew up which is where his older sister, Grace, is living. Grace is a promising graduate student in psychophysics, she has a boyfriend who absolutely adores her and a small group of caring friends - friends that welcome "Little Brother" with open arms. Not long after arriving in the city it becomes clear that something is off with his sister. She flies into sudden rages, usually directed at her boyfriend who also happens to be her fellow researcher. When Grace disappears and her boyfriend shortly afterwards, the narrator makes a discovery while cleaning out their apartment - a box big enough to crawl inside, a lab rat, and a note that reads 'this is the only way back for us.' He then embarks on a quest to find out what happened to his sister, a pursuit that forces him to question both time and space. Honestly, I'm not sure how to put in words what

In Too Deep

Gina's husband Rick leaves the house to buy a newspaper, but he never makes it back home. It's been four months without Rick when Gina receives a phone call confirming reservations he made before he disappeared. She had no idea he planned a getaway to a nice hotel and assumes it's for their anniversary. She takes it as a sign that she should go. Not only does Gina believe it will bring her closer to Rick, in her delusional state she thinks Rick may even be there. She drags along her reluctant teenage daughter Hannah. But instead of enjoying the spa treatments and time away from home, they're both put in unimaginable danger. It was slow going at first but the more I read the more I had to know what happened to Rick. I'm not very good at guessing the outcome of a book, but I saw this one coming a mile away. For me it didn't really take anything away from the book - it was still interesting, still held my attention and I did like the characters and their drama.