Finished: Our Missing Hearts (Ng) A powerful, heartbreaking, but necessary, book! It is beautifully written and is about the very real danger of how a community can begin to ignore the oppression of and discrimination against members of their own community who happen to be "different" from them. The story is centered around Ethan Gardner and Margaret Miu, a Caucasian man and Chinese American woman who fall in love, move in together and have a child they nickname Bird. They happen to be living in an America that has recently passed the PACT act...Preserving American Culture and Traditions. The passing of this law is brought about by the growing instability of America's economy which has incited discord and violence. The leaders of America decide that China is to blame because they have a better economy, are raising prices, beating America, etc. etc. For this reason, Asian people become targets of violence and prejudice. Margaret is aware of what is going on because both of her parents have been murdered by strangers, just because of what they look like. However, when she meets Ethan, who is a linguistics professor at Harvard, and they begin to have a more fortunate income, unlike the majority of Americans, who are still struggling in long lines for food and other products, Margaret is able to put that knowledge aside and concentrate on their baby to be. During her pregnancy, Margaret writes poetry. She's a talented writer and finds a way to put her feelings about being pregnant and what other mothers must feel like into words. She writes a poem called All Our Missing Hearts, which becomes the cornerstone of the book she publishes. When Bird is born, both parents are thrilled. They are loving, caring parents who do their very best for him. In the meantime, the government has implemented a plan that gives authorities the ability to take a person's child from them, for the very slimmest of reasons, and "relocate" them to another family. Ethan and Margaret are aware of what is going on, but like everyone else, they must struggle between keeping their own family safe, or speaking up when an injustice is committed. When Bird is nine, the anti-PACT movement has become much larger and more vocal as people insist that the missing children be reunited with their parents. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Margaret, her poem, All Our Missing Hearts, is used by the dissidents as their slogan. They begin painting red hears on public property and put up flyers demanding that their missing hearts, aka, their children, be brought home. The government now has Margaret on a list, and she and Ethan feel it's only a matter of time before they come and remove Bird from their home. They make the difficult decision for Margaret to exit their lives and go to another city...and...to burn everything that had belonged to Margaret, especially her poems, so Ethan can claim that he completely supports the PACT and has cut his wife and Bird's mother out of their lives. It is utterly heartbreaking. :-(  Bird and his mother were so very close and one day she's just gone from his life. His father refuses to speak of her and tells Bird that they must forget about her. Of course, he still loves her, but Bird looks more like his mother than his father, and he's terrified that Bird will be persecuted in some way. Because a "known dissident and author of their slogan" was his wife, things take a downturn for Ethan and Bird. Ethan loses his job as a professor and can only work as a librarian shelving books day and night. Bird is relentlessly bullied at school, and has only one friend...a girl named Sadie, who happens to be a child who has been relocated because her parents were in extreme and vocal opposition of the PACT. She wants nothing more than to find her parents and be reunited, but she is powerless to do so. When Bird is twelve and Margaret has been gone for three years without a single communication, Bird receives a cryptic letter in the mail from his mother. Bird figures out the hidden meaning behind his mother's letter and decides to go searching for her in New York City. I'm not going to go into any more detail about whether they reunite, and what Margaret has actually been doing all that time, but the entire situation is emotional in so many ways. I encourage everyone to read this excellent book and absorb these characters and situations for yourselves. Not a book to pass up! 

 Finished: Long Shadows (Baldacci) Book #7 in the Memory Man series. The memory man is Amos Decker, a former NFL player (albeit briefly) turned detective, turned invaluable asset to the FBI. Amos suffered a serious head injury which ended his NFL career just a few games in. The injury left him with synesthesia and hyperthymesia. The hyperthymesia means that Amos now has a picture perfect memory, never forgetting a thing that he sees, no matter how small the detail. Unfortunately, this includes the horrific murder scene of his wife and young daughter ten years before. Now, having helped the FBI solve several cases, with his young journalist turned FBI agent partner, Alex, Amos finds himself on his own as Alex has moved to New York to finish her career there. When Amos is assigned a new partner, Freddie White, a feisty single mom who fights hard to work her way up the FBI ladder, he reluctantly goes with her to Florida to solve the murder of a popular judge. As usual, with lots of twists and turns, Amos figures out whodunnit, with some very capable help from Freddie. Suspects include her ex-husband, her security guard lover, a possessive man she dated, and even her neighbors. There's also a Slovakian element to the story! And, by the end of the book, after everything is wrapped up, Amos has gained a very high respect for  Freddie, and vice versa. They've even become friends as well as partners. I can see Freddie definitely being around for more crimes to solve. And, don't worry....Alex is around just a bit. Amos calls her a few times for info in this story and they are as close as ever. :-) I enjoy the series because I do like Amos Decker, and the stories are usually pretty good. 

 Finished: Mad Honey (Picoult and Boylan) A very good book about two teenagers, Lily and Asher, who fall in love when she moves to his small town. Both have been raised by single moms who escaped extremely abusive husbands. Both moms have tried to protect their children all their lives by keeping them away from their fathers. Asher's mom, Olivia, has moved back to the quaint New Hampshire town, back to her old family farm, where her father was a beekeeper. She now takes just as much care of the bees and sells the carefully curated honey and various honey products. Lily's mom, Ava, is a national park ranger who has taken a job in this remote town so she and her daughter can start over. Lily and Asher are just 18, but very much in love. They "get" each other...especially their like circumstances of having no father in their lives. They do go through a couple of fights, and sometimes Asher shows a temper that Olivia worries about. She worries that he may have inherited his father's abusive nature. When Lily and Asher have a big fight, and Lily won't speak to him to the point of missing several days of school, Asher is beside himself and constantly texts and calls her. When he gets no response, he finally goes over to her house, only to find her dead at the foot of the stairs. Or, at least, that's his story. Soon, Asher is arrested and put on trial for Lily's murder. That's when the story really shows it's twists and turns. We hear the story from Olivia's viewpoint, and from Lily's viewpoint. We meet both of the horrible fathers, as well as a couple of best friends, an old flame of Olivia's from her high school days, who happens to be the police chief in town now, and we meet a trans teen trying desperately to hang on to the secret they are afraid that no one would understand. I don't want to give away any spoilers. This book is good though! Jodi Picoult always tells a good story, and she does so just as well with her co-author. The characters are very well developed and you can't help but grow attached to them! :-)

 Finished: Rock Paper Scissors (Feeney) Another good book and jaw-dropping twist that I, again, didn't see coming! Amelia and Adam are married, but their marriage is very, very rocky. They've decided to go from their home in London up to a remote vacation rental in the highlands of Scotland for a weekend. For both of them, it is a last ditch attempt to either save or give up on their marriage. Adam is a screenwriter and spends more time at his writing than he does with Amelia. He's found a certain niche of turning popular books into movies, but always been disappointed that his own manuscript title Rock Paper Scissors has never been picked up by a studio. Amelia works at a local shelter for dogs, and loves her job and their dog, Bob. Naturally, as they arrive at the remote, nearly snowed in Scottish location, things are already a bit eerie and strange things start happening...beginning with the power going out. The story is told between alternating chapters by Amelia and Adam, each sharing their version of the crumbling marriage. In between chapters, there are also heartbreaking letters written to Adam each year on their anniversary that she has never sent. They follow the traditional gifts each year, but grow to not putting much thought into their gifts. Once they arrive at their rental, we also start getting chapters from Robin, the older woman who lives in the tiny shack on the grounds, and seemingly the caretaker. Things escalate when Amelia and Adam survive the frigid and creepy first night, but at first light, Bob is nowhere to be found. They look and call for him everywhere. They finally decide they'll have to trudge through the snow to visit the shack they had noticed, because, of course, there is no phone signal in the area. No one answers at the shack, but they know someone is in there. They decide to leave and get authorities to come back and help them look for Bob...but after digging their car out of the snow, they see that all four of their tires have been slashed. From here, things pick up and I'm going to leave this recap here. :-) It's another good book that left me gobsmacked by the twist! 

 Finished: Daisy Darker (Feeney) A very good book, and the first one in a long, long time that had a twist I didn't see coming at all! Daisy Darker was born with a broken heart. That's her first line in the book as she narrates her story. She's the daughter of Frank, an orchestra conductor, and Nancy, an actress who gave up acting to have children. They are already the parents of two daughters, Rose and Lilly, when Daisy is born. She's born with a serious heart defect, and despite surgery, they are told that she probably won't live past the age of twelve. Both Frank and Nancy are awful parents, but particularly awful to Daisy. They end up divorced and Frank travels the world with his orchestra, rarely seeing anyone in the family. Nancy shows favoritism to Lilly, but it very critical of all the girls. She is truly more concerned with herself than her children. When Rose and Lilly are sent off to boarding school, Daisy isn't even allowed to go when she's old enough. She's never allowed to attend school at all and simply teaches herself how to read using Nana's immense library. The only solace that Daisy finds as she grows older is spending time with her Nana (Frank's mother). Nana lives on a tiny island in the only house on the island...an old gothic house named Seaglass. Every day, twice a day, when the tide comes in, the island is unapproachable except by boat. When the tide is out, you can walk across to the beach along the coast. Daisy is Nana's favorite of the girls because she is kind and loving and curious. Rose and Lilly are both very self-centered and mean-girlish. They each do things to little Daisy when she's a baby, like wishing her dead or putting a live rat in her bassinet. Rose does grow up to be a veterinarian, but remains unmarried. She seems to prefer animals over people. Lilly was so spoiled by her mother (and her father) she was never told no and never made to get a job. She gets pregnant as a teenager and has a daughter, Trixie, but still does not work. She just mooches off of Nancy and Frank, and at times, Nana. As our story opens, Daisy is now 29. Rose and Lilly are both in their 30's and Trixie is 15. The entire family is about to gather at Seaglass for Nana's 80th birthday. Daisy is nervous because the family really hasn't been all together in years. What's more, Nana had a fortune teller read her fortune and she told her that she would die when she turned 80. By the way, you can see that Daisy lived past the age of twelve! As it turns out, we find out later, at her last hospital appointment, the last time her heart just stopped, the doctor told her mother that there was a surgery they could do that would fix her heart. However, for whatever reason, her mother refused to have it done and never told Daisy there was new hope. It's as if she really just wanted Daisy to die. :-( Everyone converges at Seaglass for Nana's birthday, and thankfully, they all make it across before the tide comes in...even Frank, who you never know if and when he will show up. There are many awkward moments as the family falls into old patterns. Nothing is more awkward, though, than when Nana decides to go ahead and tell the entire family what is in her will. As it turns out, she leaves nothing to Frank or Nancy or Rose or Lilly. She's generous with Daisy, but what Daisy had really hoped for was to be left Seaglass. It had been her sanctuary so often for her entire life. Nana leaves Seaglass to Trixie, knowing that she'll have plenty of years to love it as much as she has. Needless to say this doesn't sit well with anyone in the family. When a young man named Conor, who is Rose's age, shows up by boat, Nana welcomes him with open arms. The rest of the family has various reactions, as nearly all of the girls had had crushes on him when they were younger. Conor had been ignored and abused by his father at a young age, after his mother died. Nana had taken him in whenever he needed and even paid for his father to go to rehab. He's got a history with each family member, so it's fitting that he is there for Nana's 80th. Then...the evening changes dramatically and people start dying!!! Nana is the first one to be found dead in the kitchen! With each death, there is an old VCR videotape full of old family movies left for the rest of the family to watch. Everyone is shocked and upset at Nana's death, and Nina decides to take Conor's boat across the water to alert the police. When she comes back in and says the boat is gone and the rope was cut, the family realizes they are in for a long, scary night. One by one, the family starts to die as we go back and forth between the murders, and the past, as we see the family movies unfold. I'm not saying anymore. :-) It's a book that should not be spoiled, but it was a really good one! So much so that I'm going to read another Alice Feeney book next! 

 Finished: Waypoints: My Scottish Journey (Heughan) A touching memoir written by actor, Sam Heughan, who opens up about his childhood, and then, the long road to becoming a successful actor. The book alternates between personal chapters about his early life and the current journey he is physically tackling as he dictates notes to himself that will become this book. The journey...the 96 mile West Highland Way a challenging walking trail that leads from Milngavie, Scotland to Fort William, which sits hear the highest mountain in the UK, Ben Nevis. At the end of the five day, 96 mile trek, exhausted, but determined, Sam climbs Ben Nevis. The entire feat is quite impressive, but more impressive is the heartfelt rendering of Sam's personal journey from his father leaving the family when he was 18 months old, to his mother successfully raising two sons on her own, to the struggles of becoming a working actor, to finally realizing the success of recent years. The writing is lovely and humorous and serious and entertaining. Loved it! 

 Finished: Fire and Blood (Martin) A very good, and typical George R.R. Martin book chronicling the beginnings of the Targaryen family in his fictional Westeros set 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, a major character in The Game of Thrones books. The book starts with Aegon the Conquerer, the Targaryen king who united the Seven Kingdoms after his fiery conquest with his dragons. King Aegon is the 1st of the Aegons, but certainly not the last. In this wordy book, with many, many, many names, we follow the lineage of Aegon down through the years as it gets to the crucial war that led to the beginning of the end of the Targaryen dynasty...the war known as the Dance of Dragons. At this point, the king is Viserys Targaryen. He and his wife, Aemma, have only one child, a daughter named Rhaenyra. When Aemma dies in childbirth and people start to question the succession of the throne with no son as an heir, Viserys declares that Rhaenyra will be his heir. He has all the families of the kingdom "bend the knee", swearing oaths to support Rhaenyra as the first queen upon his eventual passing. A bit of a conundrum occurs when Viserys remarries, the young Alicent Hightower, who proceeds to give him three sons and a daughter. Of course, the firstborn is Aegon II and talk by many soon turns to Rhaenyra being passed over as the heir by her half-brother, Aegon II. Talk by many people, but not Viserys. He always insists that Rhaenyra is his heir and that oaths were sworn. Rhaenyra has three sons with her first husband before marrying Daemon, her father's brother, and giving birth to two more sons, the first one naturally named Aegon, or Aegon III. When Viserys eventually dies, when Aegon II is 23 years old, Aegon II claims the throne, and of course, is challenged by Rhaenyra in the bloody Dance of Dragons war, where nearly all of the children and grandchildren of Viserys parish. We DO know that a Targaryen king named Aegon succeeds Viserys, but which Aegon will it be?? I really enjoyed reading this book, especially since I'm in the middle of watching the series and wanted to learn more about all the characters. :-) 

 Finished: The Winners (Backman) This is the final book in the Bear Town trilogy, and Bear Town is one of my favorite books in recent years. The characters just grab your heart and don't let it go through the entire series. They are flawed and messy, but also so deserving of love. The entire story is about a remote town called Bear Town, a town that centers around the hockey club for the youth. It is also the story of it's bitter rival from Hed, the next town over. But, it's about so much more than hockey. In the first book, when the former "best player ever to come out of Bear Town, who also made it into the NHL", Peter Andersson, moves his family back to town so he can take over coaching the team, the relationships all intensify, and the hockey team excels until...Peter's teenage daughter, Maya, is assaulted by the star player of the team. Events unfold that alter everyone's history and the team's success. Things in Bear Town seem as if they'll never be the same again. There are many characters I loved in Bear Town, but the one who stayed with me the most was Benji, the right hand man of the star player both on and off the ice. He's a character with an incredible conscience and a huge heart, but has an innate toughness from a very hard childhood. No one wants to cross him on the ice. He's one of my favorite literary characters, which is a big deal for me. :-) He's got a few demons that come to light at the end of the first book, and continue on through the second book. By the end of the second book, he's quit hockey and left town, and his three older sisters, to go and "roam". Maya also leaves town by the end of the second book as she heads off to college. So, The Winners starts with the death of a fairly major character who is instrumental in many of the townspeople's lives...particularly in Benji's life and in Peter's. She's very much like a second mother to Benji and becomes a tell-it-like-it-is friend to Peter. With her passing, the entire town mourns, and both Benji and Maya travel back to Bear Town for her funeral. Hockey in Bear Town is thriving again, but some of the favorites from last season's team have had to move on in various ways. The author foreshadows the death of another beloved character throughout the book, and of course, my hugest fear is that it will be Benji. I'm not going to give it away here, but I will say that the death was heartbreaking, no matter who it was, and was completely indicative of how this particular person would have sacrificed him/herself. :::sobs::: Before the tragic death, though, Maya and Benji and Bobo and Amat and Ana, who had all grown close in the previous books, are able to spend some quality time together and it's magical to witness. The writing of Fredrik Backman, who also wrote A Man Called Ove and Anxious People, among others, is outstanding as usual. He knows how to get to the heart of each character and each story and make the reader love, ache and particularly, relate. I just wish there was more to come about the people from Bear Town, but he says that story is now done. Here's a favorite passage of mine from The Winners. 

"In a crisis we instinctively seek out the only thing that really matters, even in our sleep: the breath of others, a pulse for our own to keep time with. Every now and then their dad gently puts one hand on his sons' and daughter's backs, one at a time, to make sure they're still breathing. There's no good reason to suspect that they aren't, but there's nothing reasonable about being a parent. The only thing everyone said when he was about to become a father was: 'Don't worry.' What a meaningless thing to say. There's an immensity of love that bursts from your chest the first time you hear your child cry, every emotion you've ever felt is amplified to the point of absurdity, children open the floodgates inside us, upward as well as down. You've never felt so happy, and never felt so scared. Don't say 'don't worry' to someone in that position. You can't love someone like this without worrying about everything, forever."

Sigh, I will miss this series and these characters so much! 

 Finished: The House Across the Lake (Sager) A good page turner! Casey Fletcher is a successful actress, both on Broadway and in a few films. She is currently staying at their family lake house in Vermont by orders of her mother, an even more famous Broadway actress, who insisted that she go there to dry out. She'd started becoming dependent on alcohol after her husband, Len, had died the year before by drowning in the lake! So much so that she'd started a matinee performance drunk and passed out on the stage within the first few minutes. Fired from the show, and with very few friends, she does go to the lake house, but she definitely doesn't stop her drinking. There are only five big lake houses on Lake Greene, most that have been in families for generations. Casey can't help but think about her wonderful marriage to Len, how they were a perfect match, and how he died at the lake. While she drowns her sorrows, she sits on the back porch overlooking the lake and realizes that the newly renovated house directly across the lake is currently occupied by its new owners, Katherine and Tom Royce. Katherine is a famous model, and stunningly beautiful. Tom has created his own software company and appears to be very controlling of Katherine. As Casey gazes out to the lake, she's sees a body floating face down!! She rushes down to her motor boat and gets there as quickly as she can. She realizes that its Katherine, who she's never met. She jumps in and turns her over and she appears to be quite dead, blue and not breathing. As Casey begins to swim with her towards the boat, Katherine suddenly starts coughing and spitting water. Casey takes Katherine home and warms her up and the two talk and begin to become fast friends. Katherine is super appreciative that Casey saved her life, and she also opens up a bit about her struggling marriage. In the days that follow, Casey begins to spy on Tom and Katherine with binoculars and she comes to the conclusion that she thinks Tom is somehow responsible for Katherine almost drowning...even though Katherine says she was just out for a swim, but then became exhausted and cramped up and couldn't go on. Meanwhile, a good looking stranger, Boone, moves into the house right next to Casey's. He's a friend of the owners and they're letting him stay there while he, in return, does some repairs around the house. Soon enough, suspicions begin to turn to reality, as Tom's behavior across the lake becomes stranger and stranger, and Katherine appears to be more and more frightened. Meanwhile,  Casey continues to drink herself into oblivion every day. When it comes to light that three other women have disappeared near the lake in the last few years, Casey realizes there is a serial killer around. Nothing is as it seems and there are some pretty surprising reveals. At a point, Casey doesn't even know if she can trust Boone, who she has become friends with. When Katherine appears to go missing, Boone is the one who calls a detective friend of his who, it turns out, he used to work with on the force. The actual truth of what has happened to Katherine requires a bit of suspension of belief, but it's definitely an ending I've never read before. :-)

 Finished: The Love of My Life (Walsh) A very good book about a couple whose blissful marriage almost implodes when a secret she has kept since she was nineteen comes to light. Emma is a marine scientist who would love nothing more than to find the new species of crab. Her husband, Leo, is an obituary writer for a prestigious newspaper. They've been happily married for five years and have a three year old daughter, Ruby, who is the light of their world. Emma has just finished chemo for breast cancer and they nervously await her latest scan results. They are both very aware of how fragile life can be. As obituary writers often do for aging stars (apparently), Leo decides to start getting all his facts straight about Emma's college years because he wants to write her the most beautiful obituary he can if it becomes necessary. In digging through some old papers, he starts to find facts that are completely inconsistent with what he has always known about Emma's college and career. He wonders why she would have ever felt the need to lie to him. He's already feeling a bit upset about it when they finally go for the doctor appointment. It's good news! There is no more sign of Emma's cancer. Leo and Emma can celebrate, but the lies keep pestering him. When Leo comes across a journal entry of Emma's that says "You're the father of my child", he flips out. Is she saying that Ruby is not his?? Then, when he realizes the man is someone he knows, he doubly flips out. But, the secret is much more complicated than he thinks. I don't want to give it away because it turns out to be a pretty good twist. You definitely root for Leo and Emma to stay together and repair their marriage by the end of the book. A good read! :-)