Review #7: Lookaway, Lookaway, by Wilton Barnhardt

This was a weird book. I mean, a lot of so-called Southern literature is weird - that's why I love it so - but even by those standards, this was a weird book. 

Jerene Jarivs Johnston is old money Charlotte. Jerene's brother is the stereotypical boozy washed up novelist, found most afternoons at the bar at the club sipping his bourbon neat, her sister Dillard is a near shut-in, and her husband Duke is a failed politician, his career having been derailed by Jerene herself when she uncovered Duke's propensity for bedding younger women. Her children are equally a mess: Bo is a minister who isn't sure he believes, Annie is the perpetually single eldest daughter, Joshua is the closeted gay son with a fetish for bad boy thugs, and Jerilyn, the last and only hope, who reluctantly married her high school sweetheart and then shot him one night after dinner.

That cast of characters is ripe for a juicy peach of a Southern Gothic story, but I found myself losing interest often. Boss gets mad when I say this because he says that I shouldn't have to like the characters to like the book, but I disagree. You have to like at least someone in the story, or else, what's the point? Who do you root for? This is my problem with Gillian Flynn, too. All of her characters are just such awful people that I can't be bothered to care about their journeys. And the same can be said of Lookaway, Lookaway. I honestly didn't care about any of them.

I think Jerene was supposed to be one of those old Southern society ladies, the ones who are born in to their privilege and understand that it's a thorny crown. They despair that the old ways are disappearing and that Kids These Days can't be bothered. I think we were supposed to feel sympathy for her. But I couldn't get over the fact that everyone appeared to be a caricature of their characters. From the white privileged gay southern son who is so closeted he can only be turned on by black gang member thugs to the old maid daughter who is too smart for any man to love her, from the drunken failed author always dressed in seersucker to the dottering husband who loves to play dress up in Confederate clothes, the characters felt amateur and oblivious. 

The Amazon synopsis tells me that this was a Krikus Review Best Book of 2013, but it reads as though it was written in the early 90s, and I don't remember what else came out in 2013, but if this was one of the best, I'm not sure I want to read what else was written that year.

Review #6: High Noon, by Nora Roberts

I do this thing where I keep a running list of my book titles in my drafts folder, so when I have downtime, or when the inspiration strikes, I can go back and write my reviews. I'm very undisciplined in my review-writing, as evidenced by the fact that it's May July and I'm reviewing stuff I read in January. Anyway, I was going down the list and saw the title High Noon and had to look it up on Amazon. Usually the cover sparks a memory. It did not. So I read the synopsis, which did spark a memory, but also reminded me that the entire time I was reading this, I was pretty sure I had read it before, but yet could never quite remember for sure.

Anyway, on to the synopsis. Lt. Phoebe MacNamara is the Savannah Police Department's hostage negotiator. When she is tasked with talking a suicidal bartender down from the ledge on St. Patrick's Day, the mysteriously wealthy bar owner is very intrigued. Duncan pursues her, much to Phoebe's surprise. After all, who would want a single mom with a precocious young daughter, an agoraphobic mother, and a crumbling Savannah estate? But want her he does, and they set out to have a good old fashioned romance, only to have it threatened by danger coming from within her own department. And just when they think they've solved all of those problems, a new one crops up, and this one threatens Duncan's own family and friends, and Phoebe has to save the day again.

It's classic Nora Roberts: a strong and stubborn female protagonist, an equally strong and stubborn (and not at all commitment-phobic) male counterpart, danger, a parental figure, people who depend on our heroine to save the day, and a semblance of family. Think about it. All her books - even when she writes as J.D. Robb - follow that same basic structure, and while that does tend to get old, there is something comforting in knowing that at the end of the day, the heroine's going to kick some ass, take some names, and get the guy. 

Review #5: Truly, Madly, Guilty, by Liane Moriarty

Liane Moriarty is a favorite around here, and I remember reading, but not reviewing (I think that was the year I dropped the ball), The Husband's Secret and really enjoying it. Boss read it just before me, so I had someone to chat with about it. And while I haven't gotten around to Big Little Lies yet, everyone seems to love it. So it made sense to pick up anything by Moriarty in hardback for $1 at a yard sale.

And it was...okay.

At the center of the book is an event that happened at a Sunday afternoon barbecue and each principal player's feelings of guilt and responsibility towards that event, as well as their feelings of guilt and responsibility towards the people in their lives. Sam and Clementine, a young married couple with two adorable little girls, are the quintessential harried parents. Sam was recently promoted, yet feels like he's wasting his time and talent in the corporate world. Clementine, a classical musician, suffers from audition anxiety and, truth be told, a little bit of mommy regret. Their lives are messy, their house messier, and they can never seem to find a complete pair of shoes. Erika, Clementine's best friend, and her husband are quite the opposite: they are child-free (although apparently not by choice), mess free, and both struggle with the shadows of their childhood. Erika's mom is clearly mentally ill, and her hoarding tendencies are just the tip of the iceberg. Tiffany and Vid, Erika's next door neighbors, are introduced to the story by hosting a spontaneous afternoon barbecue, and it is at their house where the "incident" takes place.

Moriarty has cornered the market on the flash forward / flash backward style where a mystery is introduced at the beginning and the reader doesn't find out what the mystery is, let alone the resolution, until three quarters of the way through. And while this worked for The Husband's Secret, I'm not so sure it worked here. Additionally - and I realize I'm going against the grain here - I wasn't all that enamored of any of the characters. Truth be told, of the main six, the only two I liked were Tiffany and Vid. And perhaps Erika's husband, but he was so dull that I can't remember his name. Lots of reviews that I have read talk about Erika and Clementine's friendship and how it's a great example of adult female relationships, but honestly, I'd rather not have friends than have a friendship like that.

Truly Madly Guilty didn't put me off Liane Moriarty - I have a review of Three Wishes coming up (eventually) - but I don't know as it was worth the hype, and if Big Little Lies is anything like this, I'm not sure I'm going to rush out to read it.

Review #4: Anyone But You, by Jennifer Crusie

Oh Jennifer. You're so fluffy and light and fun and innocuous. Sometimes, that's just what a girl needs.

Nina Askew has just moved in to her new apartment on the second floor of a three flat building. She's left her dolt of an ex-husband, and she's forty and fabulous. Well, fabulous on the outside, but as any woman of a certain age knows, sometimes it's hard to be fabulous on the inside. But Nina's giving it the old college try, and even goes so far as to set out to get herself a puppy, something her ex would never allow.

Turns out, though, that dogs pick their owners, not the other way around, and Nina comes home with Fred. Fred is overweight, gassy, smelly, and has a tendency to fall off the fire escape. Which puts Nina in the direct path of her downstairs neighbor, a gorgeous doctor named Alex. Alex is smart. Alex is funny. Alex is kind. Alex likes Nina. But Alex is ten years younger than Nina.

Of course, there are some misunderstandings, and Alex has some of his own demons to fight. But this is a Jennifer Crusie novel, so you know there's going to be a happy ending.

Review #3: A Land More Kind Than Home, by Wiley Cash

The library bookstore is my secret addiction. I don't get to go often (at least, not in my county, what with the powers that be cutting library hours to a ridiculous degree), but when I do go, I load up. And I would say that of the books I pick up, I have about a 50% success rate. I donate the rest back, which results in a vicious circle where I've been known to re-buy previous rejects. (Yeah, I know.) Anyway, of that 50% success rate, about half of those are guilty pleasure romance novels that are easily read but easily forgotten, and the other half are knock it out of the park fantastic finds. A Land More Kind than Home is one of the latter.

Set in the shadows of the North Carolina mountains in the mid-1980s, the novel is told from three different first-person perspectives: a nine-year-old boy, the town's midwife, and the middle aged county sheriff. It shouldn't work, but it does, and it does so beautifully. Each narrator has a different thread of the same story, and Cash deftly weaves the tale together, sometimes veering off in to the past, but never in a rambling way (I'm looking at you, Richard Russo). Cash allows the climax of the story to begin in the sheriff's voice, and then at the last minute, smoothly hands it over to the young boy, simultaneously softening the blow of the novel's penultimate scene and devastating the reader even more than had the reader witnessed it from the sheriff's perspective.

I want to be careful what I say about the story, because I fear that even a summary will give too many things away, and this is a novel you need to just immerse yourself in and let the words, and the story, wash over you. This is a tale of a small southern town, its residents ripped apart by a young boy's needless death, a nefarious and shady preacher man, a sheriff haunted by twenty-year-old grief, and an old man left with nothing but a second chance. I would compare Cash to Tom Franklin (Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter) or John Hart (The Last Child), and A Land More Kind Than Home is a powerful addition to Southern literature.

I've heard it said before that those who don't learn from the past are bound to repeat it, and I just don't know what I think about that. I figure I don't have too much use for it. The past will just weigh on you if you spend too much time remembering.

Review #2: The Haunting of Josie, by Kay Hooper

I hate it when I read the blurb about a book and I think it's going to be one thing, but then it turns out to be totally different, and totally dull.

According to the back cover, The Haunting of Josie is about a young woman spending a year in a secluded cabin, untangling the threads of a mystery that killed a man she loved. She's unprepared for her sexy and dashing neighbor Marc Westbrook, and doesn't really need the distraction of the tall, dark, and handsome man-next-door, but soon she'll have no choice but to trust him. 

So I go in to this thinking that Josie's got some terrible secret or bad guy that's haunting her, that she lost her first love, that Marc's going to be in danger, that terrible truths are going to come out and Marc and Josie are going to have to rescue each other and live happily ever after together the end.

That's not what happened. The novel opens with a cat. Correction: the novel opens with the cat's point of view. Yeah. Okay, whatever, I can go along with that. But then there's a ghost and a mysterious key that the cat keeps moving around, and an old murder mystery that I really didn't care about at all, and Josie's secret wasn't all that salacious or dangerous, and the damn cat keeps showing up. But the haunting is really the weirdest part. It's Marc's great-great-great uncle or some such nonsense, a writer who committed suicide but was really murdered (I think - I can't remember), but he looks just like Marc. And he likes to appear to Josie when she's half dressed. It's creepy and not in a chills up your spine cause it's cold and dark outside way, but creepy in the way that the guy at the end of the bar might want to stare at you while you shower way.

And then the stupid cat shows back up and we close out with the cat's point of view again.

The whole thing felt weird and disjointed, and frankly, pretty dated, which is surprising since I think it's only about ten years old. Definitely not Hooper's strongest effort.

Disclaimer: this was an audio book, but I don't think it would be any better in print.

Review #1: Turbo Twenty-Three, by Janet Evanovich

Note: Spoilers abound.

Are there really spoilers in a Stephanie Plum book, though? I mean, we know that Lula is going to wear outrageous outfits, that Grandma is going to do something wacky, that Mrs. Plum is going to drink a little bit of Four Roses in her iced tea glass, and that Stephanie is going to have some near-death experiences.

In installment 23 (are we really up to that number?), we open with Stephanie and Morelli’s relationship status upgraded to engaged to be engaged. Apparently, Joe had some sort of medical thing in the last book which made him feel especially domestic for a short while. Stephanie’s on the hunt for Larry Virgil, who is out on bond for stealing an eighteen-wheeler full of bourbon, and she and Lula catch him stealing another eighteen-wheeler, only this time, it’s full of ice cream and a dead guy covered in chocolate sauce. So, you know, a typical day in Trenton.

In the meantime, Ranger needs Stephanie to go undercover at the ice cream plant, which is sort of related to the stolen truck full of ice cream and dead guy. The B stories this time include Grandma getting engaged to a biker bartender in one of the more delightful Grandma side-stories, and Lula and Randy Briggs (the short guy) filming themselves in their birthday suits wandering about Trenton for an audition tape for “Naked and Afraid”. Think about that visual for just a few seconds.

But what you really need to know, is that Stephanie sleeps with Ranger. At the Contemporary Resort at Disney World. Twice. While wearing Tinkerbell underwear.

The last few Stephanie books have felt pretty formulaic, and they have been, but they’re still fun, and I’m still reading them. Plus, you know, Ranger. It’s hard to give him up.