Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Part 1 of 2

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Part 1 of 2 by Sylvain Runberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a hard novel to adapt to a little graphic novel because SO MUCH happens. For that reason, I'm more of a fan of the novel. They did a pretty good just stuffing the major events into the comic version, but I felt that a lot of the whys were missing for the character's actions.

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Review: Freefall

Freefall by Jessica Barry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Typical contemporary mystery about a young woman whose handsome fiance isn't what she thinks. Chapters alternate between Allison and her mother. Fast and easy read!

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Review: The Long Call

The Long Call by Ann Cleeves
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A new series by Ann Cleeves? Yay! I'm already a fan of Detective Matthew and I hope he gets his own television series, too!

Typical Scottish/Irish/English police mystery here, and I loved it. The scenery is almost a person, which I love, and the characters of these little towns just come to live with Cleeves writing them.

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Review: The Light Over London

The Light Over London by Julia Kelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fast and easy WWII fiction--perfect for beginning my summer! Cara, a freshly divorced antiques dealer, finds an old diary from WWII with enough facts to try to track down who wrote it. The diary tells the story of Louise, a young woman who falls in love during the war with a pilot. Louise is one tough cookie herself, in the Ack-Ack Command and trying to shoot down German planes over England. Of course, their stories collide, there's a bit of heartache and romance, and the mystery is solved satisfactorily at the end. Love these kind of historical mysteries about World War 2, and publishers know that I'm not the only person who does. They keep churning them out! I'm wondering if the same will happen in the future with Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan??

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Review: Satellite

Satellite by Nick Lake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I flew through this YA novel about a young man and two friends who are born on the space station. Now they are teens and their bodies are finally ready to come "home" to Earth, even though they have never been there. This is such an introspective look at young Leo, and I really gravitated toward (see what I did there?) his story. Sure, I didn't quite believe all the space stuff, but, hey, I'm not an astronaut and have no idea what is and is not possible nowadays. We do need to get our butts back out in space again though--this novel is a bit dystopian, but not really, since we've got the water and overcrowding issues going on already. Loved Leo's relationships with his grandpa and mother, as well as his barely touched on coming-to-terms with his sexuality. Suspend belief with this one and enjoy the ride.

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Review: Kaddish.com

Kaddish.com by Nathan Englander
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I appreciated learning more about the Jewish faith as I read this novel, but I didn't get any humor and had to reach to find some of the satire. Perhaps I needed to know more about Orthodox Jews to get the humor? Sure, there's a glass dildo involved in the novel, but it didn't make me smirk or laugh. Just not my type of book, I guess.

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Review: Queenie

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Loved this novel about a young Jamaican-American woman trying to live her successful life in NYC! Queenie has the degree and a good job, but when her boyfriend decides they need "a break," she doesn't handle it very well. But, like most people, she has baggage, and it all comes to light when she starts making poor choices (mainly about sex, not eating, and relationships). There are some Bridget Jones moments in this novel--you want to reach into the book and psycho-analyze Queenie for her, but, thankfully, she makes the huge decision to be the first in her family to go to therapy and she gets some help. There are some graphic sex scenes (warning for you prudish readers), but I thought it was a great depiction of a 26-year-old woman coming of age.

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Review: Once Upon a River

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Too slow going for me, but I didn't love The Thirteenth Tale either.

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Review: When Elephants Fly

When Elephants Fly by Nancy Richardson Fischer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book REALLY needs a different cover. It looks like a middle grade fluffy animal read, but it's not. Lily is dealing with some heavy issues--her mom was schizophrenic and she knows that statistically she has a great chance of having the illness, too. And so Lily tries to eliminate stress and make easy choices and to do everything to limit her brain from flipping the switch to mental illness. But life happens.

Plenty of elephant stuff in this book, like a middle grade animal story, and I really doubt how Lily is entrusted with some of the stuff she is in this novel with no formal training. But, hey, it's fiction.

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Review: Belly Up

Belly Up by Eva Darrows
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is one of those problem novels about pregnancy. I'm never a fan of them, but I know there are some teenagers who eat this stuff up, so this is one I would purchase for a high school library or a YA section. Just about every kind of diversity is thrown into this novel--it almost reads like a sensitivity reader went through and added every possible type. Would teens think it seemed that way? Probably not. To me, some of it just didn't flow--it seemed added in after the book was written. But it does show that teenage pregnancy isn't the end of your life if you have a good support system, good friends, etc.

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Review: The Test

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

British citizenship test gone wrong in a not-so-future world. Just a tiny novella, so it's a quick read that you can knock out in one sitting. I was a bit bored by the sections of the manual and the rules for conducting the test.

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Review: The Dreamers

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Okay read about people falling asleep and not waking up, but not dying. This one is better in print than audio. Even in print, the disconnected stories take too long to come together and it feels like the plot is going nowhere in the first half of the book.

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Review: Daisy Jones & The Six

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yep, I googled Daisy Jones and the Six to see if they were a real band back in the 1970s. Um, no. And then I felt stupid. But that means this is a good "fake" memoir, right? This is a book written for audio--each character has its own narrator, and, if you look through the list of narrators, you have some great ones!

Billy is the lead singer of the Six, who gives us the drink in order to focus on loving his family and leading his rock band to stardom. Daisy Jones is the beautiful teen singer who grows up too early, abuses too many drugs, and sleeps with too many old men on the way to the top. The rest of the characters are mainly there to tell the stories of Daisy and Billy, but you'll quickly figure out their personalities, too.

This audiobook goes quickly--it's easy to be engrossed in what seems like a tell-all band memoir. Sure didn't feel like fiction to me! It felt like the typical band struggle to make it big, and still stay true to their roots without falling victim to stardom.

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Review: The Saints of the Lost and Found

The Saints of the Lost and Found by Toni McGee Causey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I met this author at an author event at a library conference and she sold me on her novel. I don't usually read many independent or small house published books, but reading this reminds me why I should. It's a darn good paranormal mystery romance, and, as a former English teacher, I really feel like Causey is a better writer of the genre than most. Yes, the main character "sees losses" of people and can hunt down murderers and dead bodies. But the adjectives and sentence structure is what kept me going while reading this. There was a little bit too much relationship angst for my liking, but I know sometimes that goes with the genre. I never said to myself, "this book needs more editing," like I do sometimes with small press titles.

Do you like paranormal mysteries/romances or crime novels? Try this author.

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Review: The Girl He Used to Know

The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Trigger warning - NYC on Sept. 11

What a freaking heart-jerker of a novel! I always hate books with librarians as characters (I usually feel like there's some pandering to an audience in them), but I fell in love with awkward Annika. She's a student at the University of Illinois when she meets Jonathan at chess club. She's definately on the spectrum, and a difficult woman to get to know, let alone love. The two of them part ways and find each other again years later on the streets of Chicago.

You really root for these two young people and hope that they figure out our their relationship and find happiness with each other. I laughed AND cried while listening to this audio, which doesn't happen often for me. It just seems like such a real story of anxiety and love and autism. I loved it.

The two narrators fit the characters perfectly, and even when they voiced each other, it sounded realistic.

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