Finished: The Pact (Bolton) Six best friends, the cream of the crop academically at their private school in Oxford, are about to receive their A-level scores, hopefully propelling them on to Oxford University and other similar institutions, when their lives are all upended due to a stupid and dangerous dare which ends in the death of a woman and her two young daughters. Felix, Xavier, Daniel, Talitha , Amber and Megan are all wealthy, entitled teenagers who give very little thought to anyone but themselves. Correction...all of them are wealthy but Megan. Megan, not wealthy and being raised by just her mother, is at the private school on scholarship because she's the smartest one of them all. The dare is for the last member of the six (yes, five of them have already done it before) to take the wheel of a car as they all pile in, and then drive the wrong way down the M40 motorway for two exits. Miraculously, in their first five joyrides, no one had been close to being hurt. In this one, with the meek, Daniel at the wheel, a tragic accident occurs which causes the mother of the two girls to drive off the road trying to avoid them, her car exploding into flames, killing all three of them inside. As the six friends panic and then regroup, they are trying to figure out what to do to save their own hides. Megan, who unbeknownst to the others, has actually failed her A-levels and is reeling anyway, says that she will take the blame and say she was driving and do whatever prison time is assigned if they will all stay in touch with her and each owe her a favor of her choosing when she gets out. She also makes them sign a note stating they all took equal responsibility in the accident and she takes a picture of them all holding it. They all thought she'd get just a few years for accidental manslaughter, and out on good behavior sooner than that. None of them expected Megan to be charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison, not getting out until twenty years had been served. Once out, twenty years later, Megan descends upon the lives of her five former friends, none of whom visited her or wrote back to her a single day in twenty years. She holds the old written confession and picture as a threat over their heads, demanding outrageous actions from them all as her "favors".  There are a couple of surprise twists at the end. This was an unputdownable book! I had to know what happened next after each chapter! :-)

 Finished: For the Throne (Whitten) The sequel to For the Wolf, I was greatly looking forward to this book, but was not nearly as crazy about it as I was the first book. For the Wolf was the story of royal twin sisters born in the kingdom of Valleyda who both had destinies to fulfill being the first and second born daughters. Neverah (Neve) is the first born twin, so is marked to be the next queen. Redarys (Red) is the second born daughter and is marked to be sacrificed to the wolf who is one with the magical Wilderwood forest. By the end of For the Wolf, Red and Eammon (the wolf whose really a man infused with the Wilderwood) have fallen in love and are battling together with their powers from the Wilderwood to save the trees that are mysteriously disappearing. Neve, who has unfortunately put her trust in an evil priestess to try and get Red back, is helping those who want the five kings to return, i.e., the kings who went down under to the Shadowlands and gave their souls for power, only to become Shadow Monsters. So, Neve and Red are at cross purposes, working against each other without knowing it. At the end of that book, Eammon and Red manage to save the Wilderwood, but as they are doing so, Neve finally sees Red and believes that Red is going to die if Neve doesn't become one with the Shadowlands that are trying to destroy the Wilderwood. Throughout both books, each of the sisters cares desperately about the other one being safe and back home, and will sacrifice nearly anything to make that happen. The second book, For the Throne is Neve's story. It's the story of how she ends up in the Shadowlands with only a single being that she knew from up above, Solmir. Solmir is one of the kings who'd gone down to the Shadowlands to garnish more power, but then wanted to find a way for all the kings to come back to Valleyda. He worked with the evil priestess and took over the body of Arrick, good friend to Neve and Red, to trick Neve into helping. At the end of the first book, Neve realizes that Solmir has killed Arrick to take over his body, and now in the second book, this is the person she's trapped with in the Shadowlands. It is apparently her destiny to become the Shadow Queen. She just wants to get back home. Solmir swears to her that he can get her home, and that he's just trying to get the evil kings, now shadow monsters, to come back through to the real world so that he can kill them and do away with their evil once and for all. What he doesn't tell her is that she is going to be the vessel that all their powers will flow into as they are physically killed, and that to completely wipe them out, he'll have to turn around and kill Neve. The problem is, Solmir has fallen in love with Neve, and in the process of their adventure to make all this happen, Neve falls in love with him as well. Meanwhile, in the Wilderwood, we see bits of Red and Eammon's story as Red fights to get to a Heart Tree which she believes will bring Neve back to her from the Shadowlands. When it works, and the sisters come face to face and embrace, it doesn't go as Red planned. Neve chooses to go back to the Shadowlands to finish her battle against the kings/monsters with Solmir. We end up with another huge climax in this book, but it wasn't as compelling for me because I honestly didn't care as much about Neve or Solmir as I did Red and Eammon in the first book. I'm still glad I read it though, and happy with the outcome of the story! :-) 

 Finished: One Italian Summer (Serle) A very moving book about a thirty year old woman who goes into an emotional tailspin when she loses her mother, who is her everything. Katy is happily married to Eric, but she has counted on her mother her entire life for advice, companionship, wisdom, how to everything from cooking to party planning to interior design. An only child, Katy and her mother are extremely close. So, when her mother dies after a lengthy illness, Katy decides to go on the final trip they had planned together to Positano, Italy, her mother's dream spot. Her mother, Carol, had spent time there before meeting her father, and it had been the most magical place and magical time of her life. Carol had planned the entire itinerary (of course) and planned to show Katy around and tell her about all her memories. Katy, in her tailspin, tells her husband before she goes that she's not even sure she wants to be married to him any more. It's only been five years, but Katy is suddenly questioning everything. When she gets to Positano, she falls in love with the town, the beauty, and mostly the feeling she gets of how the old world has come crashing into her life. She is enamored, but still heavily grieving. She meets a very charming man, Adam, who is there to possibly buy the Poseidon Hotel, the family owned hotel her mother had fallen in love with, and where she is staying. They have a pretty instant chemistry, but Katy does have Eric on her mind and still isn't sure where her marriage is going. As Katy begins to explore, with plans to follow her mother's itinerary, she can't believe it when she comes face to face with her own mother...her mother thirty years ago, when she herself was thirty!! Katy can't believe it, but it is definitely Carol and Katy is mesmerized. They become friends quickly as Katy gets to know this incarnation of her mother. As different facts come to light about Carol and her future desires, and as Katy grows closer to both Carol and Adam, things come to an emotional head and take a very surprising turn. In the end, Katy at last figures out who she wants to be as a woman and realizes she actually CAN do that and make a path forward for herself without her mother there to guide her. Is that path with Eric or Adam? It's a great story and beautifully written! 

 Finished: Abigail Adams: The President's Lady (Kelly) Loved reading this biography about Abigail Adams that was written in the 1960's and looks so similar to one I read when I was young. I remember doing a book report on Abigail Adams and this very well could have been the book I read. :-) Obviously a super easy read now, but a good general history from the time Abigail Smith was a girl, until the time she married and had a family with John Adams, through the America Revolution, and then, of course, as the 1st lady to the second president of the United States of America. It was definitely an interesting read! :-)

Finished: The Night Watchman (Erdrich) This year's Pulitzer Prize winner, and a beautiful book about the Turtle Mountain community of the Chippewa Tribe in North Dakota in the year 1953. They live on the land that the government promised them when Native Americans were forced to live on reservations, and live on very little of the money they were promised by the government. Most are in poverty, but they still find a way to live and still steal your heart reading about their daily lives and spirituality. The story is based on letters written and left behind by the author's Chippewa grandfather. The night watchman in this story is Thomas, a middle-aged man who is one of the few with a steady paying job at the jewel factory, where most of the workers are female Chippewa, hired due to their superior dexterity over men. They work making tiny holes in tiny jewels all day long, for not even a dollar an hour. When Thomas, who is the spokesperson for the community, is made aware of a bill that is going to be voted on in the senate pertaining to the Turtle Creek community, he rallies the troops to go to Washington D.C. and try and stop the bill. The bill is all about the government doing the Chippewa a "favor" and breaking ties with them so they can stand on their own two feet. However, what it truly is is an attempt to terminate the deal that was struck with their Chippewa ancestors so the government can have the land. Along with Thomas and his family, the story follows Patrice (Pixie) a nineteen year old young woman who works diligently at the jewel factory. She's pretty and smart and brings in the money for her mother, Zhaanat and her brother, Pokey. We follow her as she takes a week off to go to Minneapolis to try and find her older sister, Vera, who went there with the man she was going to marry. Vera's story turns out to be a sad one of the horrible exploitation of women from reservations who travel to the big city. Patrice almost falls into the same trap, but Wood Mountain, the young Chippewa boxer who is in love with her from afar, comes to find her and insists that they go home. They don't find Vera, but they do find her baby, who Wood Mountain immediately makes a bond with! They take him home and it eases Zaahnet's heart just a bit. Vera is alive, and we get snippets of her story, and thankfully she does end up back at home to be reunited with her baby at the end of the story. Many of the characters have visions of their ancestors or have near out of body experiences in nature which is fascinating. From Thomas, to Patrice, to Wood Mountain, to Vera, to Zhannat, to Juggie, to Valentine, to Doris, to Roderick, to Biboon, to Millile and more, there are just so many characters who make a huge impression as you read their bits, and I think they'll stay with me awhile. :-)