Hush Hush

Hush Hush

Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

Simon & Schuster, 2009

400 pages [advanced reading copy]

This is my second Barnes & Noble First Look reading club book in a row. (I just signed up for my third one!) Hush Hush is a Young Adult paranomal romance novel to be released October 13. New author Becca Fitzpatrick says it took her five years to write. In fact, the original title was Eclipse, but another very well-known YA book by that same name was published first, so she had to change it.

Hush Hush focuses on Nora Grey, a level-headed (some might say "goody two-shoes") sixteen year-old living on a farm in Maine who seems destined for an Ivy League education and an easy life. But Nora's world is far from perfect; her father was mysteriously murdered sometime in the last year, and her mother's demanding job requires a lot of time away from home. This demands a certain independence on the part of Nora, and she lives up to everyone's expectations. At least, until Patch comes along.

Patch is the black-wearing, pool-playing, motorcycle-driving bad boy who ends up as Nora's lab partner in science class. At first, Nora doesn't appreciate the sudden change of lab partner (previously, that position was held by her best friend, Vee) and Patch doesn't want to cooperate on the latest class assignment. They have a strange aversion-attraction to each other. Patch seems to know everything about Nora, but is tight-lipped about his past -- as if he has something to hide. But what?

Nora begins having unsetting "visions": a man wearing a ski mask, falling from an amusement part ride, a break-in at her house . . . but nothing actually happens. She thinks someone is following her, so one day she and Vee swap outerwear - and Vee gets attacked. Later, her arch-enemy is attacked, shortly after she and Nora have had a public argument. Who would do something like this? Vee blames Patch. But Nora, well, she's not sure.

Vee is a loud-mouthed, in-your-face character who is in Yang to Nora's Yin. The dialogue involving Vee is often funny and clever. But Vee is more than a sidekick - more than comic relief. She warns Nora away from Patch, but at the same time finds herself drawn to a boy who may well be involved in a crime that took place at his old school in Portland. 

There are "demons" in this book, but this is primarily a book about angels: fallen angels, guardian angels, avenging angels, and Nephilim characters will be revealed. I don't think I'm saying too much here given the cover art. There's plenty of action, and a little romance (rated PG, of course . . . I mean, it's a YA novel). I was so engaged, I stayed up until 4:00 AM to finish the book, and bit off all my nails in the process. 

A YA book wouldn't be a YA book without a snobby cheerleader type, and Hush Hush does indeed have one of those. It also has clueless parents, teachers who are trying to be cool, and other mysterious characters whose actions foreshadow their appearance in future books. A sequel to Hush Hush is already in the works. Titled Crescendo, it's set to be released sometime next Fall. I'm guessing there will be lots of teenage girls - and some older girls, also - who'll be eagerly anticipating its release, because I think Hush Hush is going to do for angels what Twilight did for vampires.  

Rating: 4.25 stars - great effort from this first-time author.

Under This Unbroken Sky

Under This Unbroken Sky

Author: Shandi Mitchell

Harper Books, 2009

348 pages [uncorrected proof version]

I'm so excited because I just read a book that hasn't been published yet! Thanks to Barnes and Noble's First Look Book Club, I was one of several people who received a free book from B&N and participated in an online discussion. I'm so glad I did, because this turned out to be a real treat. 

You know I like historical fiction, so this is right up my alley. The year is 1938, the place is a rural area in a Canadian prairie province. A family of immigrants from the Ukraine, including brother Teodor and his wife Maria and their kids, and sister Anna and her husband Stefan and their kids, are "sharing" a homestead. Teodor comes home from jail for stealing grain from his last homestead (hard to explain but it was a really stupid law to start with, and he paid the price). Since he's been in jail he's no longer eligible to homestead, so he arranges for his sister to get some land in her name, with the idea that she will eventually sign everything over to him. Obviously this is a sort of hint that it's not going to happen, right? 

They say blood is thicker than water. But is it? See, here's the problem. Anna's husband Stefan is a real jerk. Years ago, she was a beautiful, untamed, ambitious girl and he was a dashing, brave military officer. But over time, Stefan has become a loser and an abusive drunk. If not for Teodor and Maria, the farm would completely fall apart and they would all starve. Years of abuse have stolen Anna's youth and beauty, and she now suffers from a mental illness. In fact, most of the characters in the novel seem to suffer from some sort of mental illness or at least have a character flaw of some sort or a physical imperfection.  Stefan and Anna's daughter, Lesya, has a club foot and their son, Petro, is showing early signs of becoming an abuser like his father. One of Teodor and Maria's daughters has delusions of grandeur, and another is obsessed with the bread at church being called the body of Christ. 

Still, there is something completely captivating about the book and characters. Apparently, the author got the idea for the story while researching some of her own ancestors. That in itself is interesting to me . . . it was one of the things that drew me to Lalita Tademy's Cane River several years ago. This was another book that I found very difficult to stop reading late at night when I knew I should go to sleep. I just wanted to read one more chapter, to find out what was going to happen to the characters. Would the good guys win? Would the bad guys wind up paying? We always expect that to happen, don't we? 

This is what's known as an ARC or advanced reading copy. That means it's not necessarily the final - the publisher still may decide to make changes. So I'm not sure how the published book will be when it comes out. But the first chapter of this version opens with a description of a family photo and foreshadowing that in just a few years' time, two of the people in the photo will be dead.

One of the dead didn't surprise me, but the other one did. Actually, I was infuriated at the death of this other person, so I deducted a star (hey, I can do that) from my review. Why did this bother me so? Because the manner of death did not align with the character I came to know in the book. I will leave it at that, because I don't want to spoil.

Despite this one issue, it really is a very good book, and I really do think it has potential. I'm really excited that I was one of the first to read it!

Rating: 4 stars. Good writing and quite captivating for a first novel.

Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

Penguin Books, 2006

331 pages

Quite possibly I'm the last American woman to read this book. Subtitled One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, my initial reaction upon hearing about it was to want to barf. After all, it was about a WASP-y rich female from New York who was going through a divorce and (shock!) a sort of mid-life crisis. The whole concept seemed so . . . self-indulgent. But several of my friends kept bugging me to read it (you know who you are!) so I finally gave in. 

The book is cleverly divided into 108 chapters (3 sections of 36 "tales"). There's a reason for that, but you'll have to read it in the preface. The first section takes place in Rome, where the author experiences four months of food hedonism. OMG, the talk of food will leave your stomach growling. She obviously had a blast. Her attempts to learn (and translate) Italian are hysterical - especially this one "scene" involving a football fan in a stadium. I laughed almost all the way through this section.

India is next. She goes here to detox (so to speak) from all the excesses of Italy. Her time is spent at the ashram of her unnamed Guru. The strict life (up at 3AM for prayers and chanting; menial tasks and manual labor; living in silence) is the exact opposite of her experiences in Rome. Her quest is to know God. I thought this part would be really boring, but once I got through the first few chapters, it was fine. The Texan cowboy character (among several at the ashram) is a total hoot.

From India, she travels to Bali in Indonesia. She considered this to be her destiny, as she was once told (in a previous visit) by an old Balinese medicine man that she would eventually come back there and study with him. Her descriptions of Bali, the culture, and her often funny stories of the medicine man and other local people, were good enough for me to read aloud to S, who lived in Indonesia back in the 1990s. ("Um hum," she'd say knowingly.) The downside (?) to the Indonesia section is that here, the author takes a lover, and for at least a couple of chapters we're forced to read all about her sex life, which I was not particularly interested in. That part was seriously self-indulgent.

So the author got some sort of huge cash advance before she even wrote the book because she already has an established writing career. She probably would not start out her sentences with the word "so." Despite this, and despite a few pukey moments of the aforementioned self-indulgence, Eat, Pray, Love was decent enough for me to finish. It might be a good summer read for all you female readers out there (maybe some males, but I doubt it) who are looking for something a little different. Yes, I'm leaving out all kinds of stuff, like the whole new age-y growth experience thing. But I've been through that myself, so it's no big thing to me.

Rating: 4 stars.

Woman With Birthmark

Woman With Birthmark

Author: Håkan Nesser (translated from Swedish by Laurie Thompson)

Pantheon Books, 2009 (originally published in Sweden in 1996)

335 pages

Two books ago, I entered the world of Swedish mystery novels, and never quite managed to leave it. I found Woman With Birthmark while looking for books like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on Amazon.com several weeks ago, and decided to borrow it from my local library. I was the first person to check out the brand new book, which was written by an award-winning author of several books featuring the character known as Inspector Van Veeteren. 

Van Veeteren works in a city called Maardam, which is a fictional city -- but based on the other place and character names, seems to be somewhere in The Netherlands. Nesser writes with a strong sense of place, which gives this book a very European flavor.

In the opening section of Woman With Birthmark, a young woman is dealing with her mother's last wish: the elder woman had confessed something to her daughter just before she died, and implored her to do something about it. Next comes a series of bizarre murders as three men are killed under very similar circumstances. Van Veeteren and his colleagues at the police department find a connection with the dead men, who were all in the same military unit in 1965. It becomes a question of motive: what happened in 1965 that would cause someone to murder these men thirty years later?

Nesser provides us little insights into several of the characters, including the title character and the Inspector, but also Biederman, the last of the intended victims. Biederman is a despicable character. His growing paranoia is nearly comical at times. 

Van Veeteren is a dull, middle-aged, divorced father (I forget the details, such as whether he has one or two children, but he doesn't seem like a candidate for father of the year or anything.) Don't get me wrong - it's not that I don't like him - rather, that I just didn't feel anything for him. He has a new "girlfriend" - a psychologist who, upon hearing of the murders, tells him that the murderer is a woman. Then suddenly, a witness comes forward and sure enough, the suspect is a female . . . a mysterious woman with a birthmark. To my memory, there was only one reference to the birthmark in the book . . . I could be wrong, or perhaps it was a translation thing. Or perhaps it was meant to be that way.

I didn't enjoy this book very much, yet for some reason I kept reading it. I have no idea why. It took way too long. I still have one more Swedish mystery book on my shelf, but I think I'm going to read something else next.

Rating: 3.5 stars. OK, but not impressed.

The Gargoyle

The Gargoyle

Author: Andrew Davidson

Canongate, 2009 (UK paperback version)

499 pages

After I finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I made several trips to Barnes & Noble, Borders, and my local library looking for my next book. While I found lots of interesting candidates, none was as interesting as a book I had just received in the mail from across the Big Pond. I got my paperback copy of The Gargoyle from Amazon.co.uk, which even with international shipping, cost me less than a hardcover, currently the only version available here at home. As soon as I opened the box (which took a mere 5 days to get to me after I placed my order), The Gargoyle called to me like a siren. I knew it would be my next book.

Ironically, it's not so much about gargoyles as it is . . . love. Yet it's not a Romance novel. Actually, it's quite difficult to place this book into a genre. OK, so maybe there are Romance elements, but also Historical, Contemporary, and even Fantasy. It's a magical book, featuring some of the most unlikely and yet memorable characters to come along in a really long time. The main character (now that I'm thinking back, does he even have a name? The book is told in first person. Honestly, I cannot remember if he is named) is a former porn star and producer of blue movies who, in the opening chapter, is badly burned in a car accident. The description of the accident and of the resulting burn treatment is not for the faint of heart. But hang in there, I promise . . . it will be worth it.

The story really takes off when the "other" main character is introduced. Marianne Engel is a successful sculptress (she sculpts gargoyle-like creatures) who bounces into our storyteller's hospital room one day and begins to mesmerize him with tales of their long ago life and love. Long ago, as in the fourteenth century. Of course, at the time they meet in the present day, Marianne is also a "guest" in the hospital . . . in the psych ward. But our main character is fascinated by his visitor, who tells amazing, timeless stories of her life in medieval Germany but also of other times and places: Italy, Japan, Iceland, England. How is it possible that this woman tells such realistic stories? Or that she speaks fluent German, Latin, Italian, and Japanese? Could it be that she really is seven hundred years old? (And hey, I promise you, there are no vampires in this book.)

The secondary characters are equally well-developed, like the Japanese physical therapist who works with our main character; Marianne Engel's manager; and a dog named Bougatsa (after the Greek pastry). While love is the major "theme" of the book ("Love is as strong as death, and hard as hell" graces the front cover of my paperback), there are other themes, like good vs. evil, head vs. heart, duty vs. destiny, faith vs. logic, etc. Dante's Inferno plays a role - ironic, since the main character is a burn victim. I'm sure there's lots of other stuff I could point out here, but it would be better for you to just read the book.

I enjoyed The Gargoyle so much that I read it slowly on purpose. Why? Because I didn't want it to end. And neither will you. Go get it now. 

Rating: 5 stars  . . . YES! 5 stars!!! 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Stieg Larsson

Translated from Swedish by: Reg Keeland

Maclehose Press, 2005 (English translation 2008)

533 pages

This could very well be the greatest mystery novel ever written. Did that get your attention? I hope so, because I want everyone I know to read this amazing book. It's so . . . different . . . and extremely well-written. [To get an idea of what some "real" critics think, check out this short video from Amazon.com.]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a multi-layered, formula-busting motorcycle ride of a book that was given to me by my Swedish friend "K" last summer on my last working day in Vienna. (I had not heard of the book or the author at the time, but "K" told me that it was a phenomenal success in Sweden, but had only recently been translated into English.) Released in the USA in late September of last year, it became an immediate bestseller here and even today is #250 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Not bad at all for a Swedish mystery novel - especially considering it's been on the list for seven months now!

In Sweden, the title of the book was "Men Who Hate Women" . . . I really don't want to give too many spoilers out, but yes, there are a couple of those in this book. Fortunately, the book isn't so much about them as it is the other characters: Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist who was recently convicted of libel against a billionaire businessman. Lisbeth Salander is a top-notch investigator with some strange behaviors and several secrets. Mikael and Lisbeth make quite a team, but there are several interesting secondary characters, as well, such as Henrik Vanger, the octogenarian CEO of a prominent Swedish corporation, who longs to know the truth behind the disappearance of his favorite niece back in 1966. And that is the biggest mystery to be solved in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Or is it?

Things started out kind of slow, but for some reason I hung in there, and I'm really glad I did. There were so many twists and turns, so many interesting characters. There is definitely something very European - maybe Swedish, specifically - about the book. Certainly there is an aspect of the characters, the settings and locales that's very different from the usual "American" mystery novel. Some people call it "Scandinavian noir." 

Larsson's frequent references to other mystery writers (including Agatha Christie, Sue Grafton, and Sara Parestky) and formulae ("locked-room mystery") reveals him to be one who read his share of mystery novels. I say "read" in past-tense because sadly (and also ironically), Larsson died not long after delivering the manuscripts of this book and two others to his publisher. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or "Men Who Hate Women") was supposed to be the first of up to ten books in a series. Three books were complete. The second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire is not yet available in the USA, but can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk - it's supposed to be even better than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I've already ordered it. 

I have to warn you that there are a couple of violent scenes. OK, you were warned. Now, go read the book. If you are over 21. 

Rating: 4.75 stars.

Made from Scratch

Made from Scratch

Author: Jenna Woginrich

Storey Publishing, 2008

184 pages

This cute little book is part memoir, part advice on being more self-sufficient through farming, or as the subtitle states: Discovering the pleasures of a handmade life. Hey, I like that, even though I typically choose to spend my "free" time doing other things - like reading. Yet, this book was worth my time. I was entertained, inspired, and I even learned some stuff. 

You might wonder why I would even read a book like this to start with. Well, I read an article in Mother Earth News magazine by the author, who happens to be a young graphic designer by day and homesteader/blogger by night and weekend. Cold Antler Farm blog is as adorable as it is informative. But wait, this is supposed to be about the book.

Truth is, I haven't read all of it yet. But I'm reviewing it now, because this one is a keeper that I want to savor and re-read. That's right, folks, this one is going back to the library, but will be replaced with a permanent version for my library. I'll read Jenna's tales of chickens and dogs and Angora rabbits; her advice on country cooking and country living; and peruse the resources in the aptly-named Research, Son! section. Jenna just makes farming seem so cool.

Rating: 4.5 stars, so far.