Finished: The Midnight Library (Haig) When a despondent Nora Seed attempts to take her own life, she finds herself in the midnight library, a place where she wavers between life and death, with a guide to help her choose any book she wants to see what her life could have been (and still could be) if she'd made a simple different choice at any one turn. What if she'd kept up with swimming for her dad and made the Olympics? What if she'd stayed in the band with her brother and become a famous singer? What if she had married the man who she'd broken off her engagement with? This is a very well written book about reexamining the choices you've made in life, your regrets, your "could-have-beens", and finding out that maybe, just maybe, you were on the right path all along. A bit predictable, with shades of It's A Wonderful Life, but an uplifting read when you see that there is always someone whose life you may have affected without even knowing it and that loving yourself goes a long way towards creating a happy life for yourself. :-) 

 Finished: My Sister's Keeper (Picoult) An exceptionally beautiful and heartbreaking story about a couple who decides to have a third child, picking the IVF embryo that is an exact match to their two year old daughter who is diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of leukemia. Years later, when that baby, Anna, is 13 and her ill sister, Kate, is 16, and after Anna has been through numerous medical donation procedures for her sister, Anna brings a lawsuit against her parents to sue them for the right to make her own decisions about donating a kidney to Kate. Kate is finally out of hope when it comes to her cancer treatments, and to make matters worse, her kidneys are failing and she doesn't have long to live. What follows is the beautifully written, emotionally wrenching viewpoint of each party involved: Sara, the mother of both girls; Brian, the father of both girls; Jesse, the older brother of both girls who is spiraling out of control because when tested years ago, he was the one who wasn't able to save his baby sister; Kate, the dying sister; Anna, the donor sister; Campbell, the attorney Anna hires; and Laura, the guardian ad litem assigned to Anna. You will feel as conflicted as Anna does, feel as fiercely as Sara does, feel as protective as Brian does, and feel as hopeless as Jesse does at different times during the story. Just when all is said and done and the trial has been decided, and Anna confides in her lawyer about what she'd really like to do now, one of the biggest shocking endings I've ever read in a book happens and decides everything for everyone. I truly believe my mouth hung open as I read the remaining pages of the book after the shocking event. It's a story that will stay with me for a long time. I'm so thankful I never had to make any of the decisions the members of this family had to make! Thank you to my dear friend Marla for gifting me with this book! :-) 

Finished: Walk the Wire (Baldacci) The next in the Memory Man series which has FBI partners Amos Decker and Alex Jamison heading to North Dakota to investigate a murder in a small fracking town. The two is torn between two powerful families and situated right next to a U.S. military facility. All sorts of characters become suspects, but the game is really upped when  Decker is stalked one night and nearly killed while investigating. To the rescue? Another one of Baldacci's characters with a book series of his own, Will Robie. Will Robie is basically a trained assassin who can get himself out of most any situation. You know if Will Robie is sent in, then it must be serious. It was lots of fun reading this book with  Decker and Robie brought together in one Baldacci book. Though, as busy as December was, I only picked the book up every few days, so the reading was a bit disjointed, but still another clever who-dunnit! :-) 

 Finished: Leave The World Behind (Alam) I haven't read a book this quickly in a long time! This is a page-turning story of a couple, Amanda and Clay, and their children, Archie, 15, and  Rosie, 13, who head out to a remote rental on Long Island for a week long vacation. ***  Warning: This entire blog post will be spoilers, so if you want to read this book, then don't read this. *** The house is lovely, but so remote that there is very low cell service. Despite that, they have a great first day and seem to be a typical family. The first night there, however, they are greeted by unexpected visitors...the owners of the house! A couple in their sixties, Ruth and George, have fled to their second home, because the power has gone completely out in New York City, where they have a 14th floor apartment. Amanda and Clay are shaken to have the couple come to their door so late, and then actually want to stay in their own basement guest room, but they can tell that something strange is happening because Amanda received four "this is not a test" alerts on her cell phone before all the service went completely down. The television channels are all showing just a blue screen, so the young family, and the older couple, though wary of each other, realize they must make this new arrangement work. After a restless night's sleep, the next day Clay leaves to drive into the nearest small town to see if there is any news, but promptly gets lost on all the small roads. Archie and Rosie head to the nearby woods to explore, and Amanda, Ruth and George make small talk trying to get acquainted. That's when it happens...the horrific sound that nearly shatters the window glass and leaves them all squatting on the ground. A sound none of them have ever heard before....like a sonic boom, only 10 fold. The author lets the reader know in various small asides what the characters don't know: some cities have been flooded and people are dying; Ruth and George's elevator man is trapped in the elevator and will suffocate; and the government has sent a super-secret airplane to intercept what they see as a threat off the east coast of the U.S., hence the booming noise. As Amanda, Clay, Archie, Rosie, Ruth and George all have their various reactions, they also try to maintain some semblance of normalcy. In the dark as to what is happening, though, their panic rises bit by bit. When Archie comes down with a fever, and then his teeth begin just falling out, hysteria sets in and they decide they must get him to a doctor! Rosie has disappeared though. Clay and George leave to take Archie to the doctor in the nearest town while Amanda and Ruth search for Rosie. They don't know that she's simply gone off on another trek into the woods to see if she can find the other vacation home she'd seen yesterday before the boom threw them all off. George decides to stop at the only neighbor he knows before heading to the town, but that neighbor, Danny, receives him rather coldly. He is also going through the unnerving weirdness and has a young wife and 4 year old daughter who are frightened. The author lets us know: little does Danny know, but his own wife's teeth will begin falling out soon. Ack!!! As Amanda falls into a further panic unable to find Rosie, she and Ruth begin to snap at each other. Meanwhile, Rosie finds the house and sees that no one is inside. The author lets us know: the owners of the house are stuck in San Diego, unable to get a flight because there are no flights any more AND the mother will never see that house again because she will die in a medical tent set up at the San Diego airport! :-O !! Rosie breaks into the house and finds batteries, flashlights, canned food, and loads her backpack up. She is proud that she has found something that will help out her gang since they never listen to her suggestions. She heads back to the vacation house and THAT IS THE END OF THE BOOK!!! We never find out exactly what is happening in the country or the world, but we are left to wonder how long before worse happens to them all and if anyone will survive whatever is going on! This is a really well written book and I honestly find myself wanting to know more...maybe a sequel?? It's also very scary, especially in these current times, to realize something like this could really happen. 

 Finished: The Vanishing Half (Bennett) Twin sisters Stella and Desiree Vignes have grown up in the small town of Mallard, Louisiana...a town specifically designed by a "light" black man to be a community for "light" only black families. When the twins are sixteen, they run away to New Orleans to try and make new lives for themselves. When Stella finds work as a secretary passing as a white woman, it is the beginning of the end of the close relationship the sisters have always shared. Stella falls in love with and marries her white boss and leaves for California without so much as a goodbye to Desiree. From there, we witness the two different lives of the sisters, but also how they come back together briefly many years later. Desiree stays away from Mallard and her mother long enough to marry a very dark black man and have an even blacker daughter. When she flees her abusive marriage and heads home to Mallard, the entire town is shocked when beautiful Desiree Vignes comes back to live with her mother, with a "dark" daughter in tow. The little girl, Jude, is never accepted by the other children at school, but she finds solace in track and field. In high school she is offered a track and field scholarship to a college in California, and she sets off leaving her own mother and Mallard for good. Desiree, who was the twin who always WANTED to escape Mallard, ends up living there and working in the local diner until decades later when her mother dies. Meanwhile, Jude falls in love and to make extra money, works for a catering company that caters to the rich. She's fired from her job when she drops and shatters a bottle of wine on the floor at a posh party when the hostess of the party finally comes downstairs and Jude sees that she is the spitting image of her mother. It must be her Aunt Stella, who her mother talked of often and, mad as she was at her for leaving, longed to one day see again. Jude is fired by her boss on the spot, but is determined to see if this beautiful woman is, in fact, her aunt. If she is, then she is married to a handsome, rich white man and has her own beautiful, blonde-haired, violet-eyed, sixteen year old daughter, Kennedy, who seems quite the diva....Jude's cousin, if it's true. We finally then get Stella's story and how she lived in constant fear of being found out...so much so that when a black family tries to move into her neighborhood, she's one of the most vocal, speaking out that they can't let any of  "those" people start moving into their neighborhood. Of course, eventually the black family moves in, and Stella becomes friend with the wife, but is ashamed to be seen with her by the other women. Meanwhile, she's so closed off to her own daughter, who longs to know more about her mother, that she doesn't realize she's raising a nightmarish daughter who is going to act out  just to get her attention. When Jude finally finds Kennedy again, Kennedy has dropped out of college and is acting in a show in a local theater. Jude insinuates herself into Kennedy's life by getting a job at the theater, hoping that she'll see Stella one evening if she comes to watch Kennedy. Stella finally shows at one of Kennedy's last shows and Jude confronts her during the intermission...insisting that they are related. Stella freaks out and leaves. She can't have her husband or daughter finding out she's been lying all these years. When Jude and Kennedy have an argument a few days later, Kennedy says something very mean to Jude and Jude, in return, blurts out that Kennedy's mother is her black mother's twin sister. This sets a great journey of discovery in motion for Kennedy, who actually reacts differently than you think she might. She just wants to know if it's true and know about her mother's family. Her mother, though, keeps denying it. Kennedy goes off for a couple of years, traveling the world, trying to find herself. Panicking when she can't get a hold of Kennedy, Stella actually, desperately, heads to Mallard to see if maybe Kennedy has gone there. She has a bittersweet reunion with her own mother, who now has Alzheimer's and acts as if Stella is just home from work, as if she'd never left. The reunion between Stella and Desiree, however, is fraught with much more emotion. Angry at first, Desiree doesn't want Stella anywhere near her, but Stella begs for her forgiveness, and the sisters spend a few days completely wrapped up in each other as if they'd never been apart. Stella must leave and go back to her white life, though, and once again leaves without telling Desiree goodbye. She arrives home only to hear from Kennedy who wants to come home. Stella goes to pick up Kennedy at the airport, and as they embrace, she tells her to get in the car and she'll tell her everything she wants to know...and she does. They just agree to never tell Kennedy's father. Finally, though, Kennedy has the closeness with her mother that she'd missed all her life...and she now understands the fear her mother was living in. Jude, who is still in love with her longtime beau, is now living her dream of going to medical school. When Desiree and Stella's mother finally passes away, Desiree is free to leave Mallard for good and moves to Houston to start her own new life. This is a very moving, well written story which makes me want to investigate more of what this author has written! 

 Finished: Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other (Heughan & McTavish) What a funny, informative and heartwarming book chronicling the road trip around Scotland that Outlander stars Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish took. They took to the road in a camper, taking themselves on an adventure to learn about the history of several different Scottish clans, various wars between clans, visiting iconic battle sites, and even exploring the history of whisky, all while careening around in their camper, or a tandem bike, or a motorcycle with a side car, or a rowboat, etc. They bantered back and forth the entire time, but also shared some very poignant moments together, each one also opening up and sharing a bit about his private life and what his early years of the acting business were like. They are a likable pair and the book was such a fun read. :-) 

Finished: Verity (Hoover) Oh my! This was a creepy, thriller story that ended a bit differently than I thought it would! Near broke and struggling with personal issues, writer Lowen Ashleigh is hired by the husband of best-selling thriller author, Verity Crawford, to finish writing her last three books in her series after Verity is left critically injured in an automobile accident. Jeremy appears to be everything Lowen could want in a man, except he's married to his unresponsive wife who is cared for by a nurse upstairs in their mansion, paid for by Verity's successful writing career. Lowen agrees to finish the books, mainly because the paycheck is huge. When she packs her bag to spend a few days at the mansion, going through Verity's notes and outlines, what she finds instead is a chilling autobiographic manuscript written by Verity, ending just days before her recent accident. As it turns out, Jeremy has suffered more than just the tragic loss of his wife as he knew her. In the past six months he's also suffered the tragic death of one of his eight year old twin daughters, due to a peanut allergy and the tragic death of the other twin daughter in a boating accident. He's left with just himself and his five year old son, living in the house with the semi-comatose Verity. As Lowen reads a different chapter of the manuscript each night, she dives more and more into the nightmare of Verity's psychotic mind...how obsessed she was with her husband loving her more than anyone else...how she tried to abort her twins with a hanger...how she didn't love her daughters but was jealous of them....how she thought for certain that one twin daughter was responsible for giving her sister the fatal peanuts at a sleepover...how she purposely took her remaining daughter out in a canoe and tipped it over, letting her drown without helping her. It's honestly horrific! So, you do end up rooting for Lowen and Jeremy to fall in love. But when Lowen starts seeing Verity up and moving around, without proof for Jeremy to believe her, things start to really get crazy. What a book! I spent the second half of the book convinced that it was Jeremy who had written the manuscript to implicate Verity because HE was really the one who did all the evil things...but that wasn't the big twist at the end. Definitely one of those books that was hard to put down, but also incredibly creepy! 

The Evening and The Morning (Follett) The prequel to one of my favorite books, The Pillars of the Earth, this was a lovely book, with wonderful characters and vividly described towns, churches and homes of the Dark Ages, as Viking attacks on England were quite rampant and women were clearly at the mercy of men, and the poor even more so at the mercy of the rich and ennobled. The story starts in 997, about 140 years before the start of Pillars, and centers on three main characters, Edgar the intelligent young boat builder, Aldred the godly young Prior and the beautiful, smart Lady Ragna, and how they survive one power hungry family, the Ealdorman of Shiring, Wilwulf, and his loathsome step-brothers, Wigelm and Wynstan. Their lives are forever intertwined after a Viking raid on Edgar's small village leaves his father dead and his boat-building business in ruins. He and his mother and two brothers must go inland and begin farming to keep from starving. Meanwhile, young Lady Ragna from Normandy becomes smitten with the older Ealdorman Wilwulf when he comes to ask her father to quit allowing the Vikings to moor their ships off his coastline. Wilwulf becomes equally smitten with Ragna, and she soon makes the journey to England where they are married, happily so for awhile. When it comes to light that Wilwulf had actually been married and "set aside" his other wife and son so that he may marry Ragna, she is devastated. And, although she gives him three sons in quick succession, he soon finds another younger woman to spend his nights with. Aldred is a good man who is a prior at Shiring and wants only to keep his holy vows, as he's also a monk, and to grow the church according to God. Every step of the way he is thwarted by the conniving and deceptive Bishop Wynstan, the oldest of the step-brothers. Wynstan is determined not to lose any control over Shiring to his brother's new wife, but she proves a formidable foe. Ragna, Aldred and Edgar all face setbacks and devastating losses due to Wynstan's manipulations and lies, but they have also become friends who stand up for each other and share the common goal of seeing Wynstan pay for his crimes. In the end, justice is served, but not until after many years of harassment. Towards the end of the book, we realize that the bridge that Edgar had helped build in the town of Dreng's Ferry actually became the "king's bridge" and thus, the name of Dreng's Ferry was changed to Kingsbridge, which is the town at the center of the story in Pillars. After many ups and down, and 900 pages worth of other characters, things finally turn out positively for all three protagonists and I would say that all of the evil people get their due. Another great book by Follett! Now, I hope he writes one that is in between this one and Pillars! 

Finished: Anxious People (Backman) A very moving book by an author I really like, who wrote both Beartown and A Man Called Ove. In this story, a group of people who are viewing an apartment for sale, a first time bankrobber, at risk of losing a custody battle, who only wants to steal enough money for one month's rent, and a father and son police officer team of the small town they all live in, are strangers who all come together in the most unlikely and poignant of ways. When the bankrobber realizes the bank to be robbed is a cashless bank with no money, the police are alerted and the bankrobber dashes across the street and barges in on the apartment viewing, gun in  hand. I really came to love each of these imperfect characters, including the bankrobber, as they went through this ordeal together, opening up to each other about life, marriage, worries and hopes. So many of the characters connected in ways we didn't know when we started the story. At the center of a couple of the character's stories was the bridge that could be seen from the apartment balcony where ten years before, a man who'd lost all his money in the real estate market crash, unable to provide for his family or keep his home, took his own life by jumping off the bridge....AFTER begging a steel-hearted bank manager for a loan and being turned down. That bank manager carried a letter from the man in her purse for ten years, feeling responsible for his death. Of course, she is one of the people looking at the apartment! I love the way all the characters are tied together either in the past, or in the future, as they develop unbreakable bonds. Great story! :-) 

 Finished: Here Is The Beehive (Crossan) Beautifully written book with stunning, unique prose and a gut-wrenching story that makes the book very hard to put down. Married mother of two and attorney, Ana, meets married father of three, Connor, when he walks into her office for some legal work. They begin a three year love affair that sends Ana spiraling, always wondering if Connor will leave his wife for her, while she slowly destroys her own marriage and puts her own desires ahead of her two very young children. We are meant to have compassion for Ana, I believe, but I simply cannot muster up feelings for a character who is so thoughtlessly ruining her family. And, there is absolutely nothing wrong with or unlikable about either of the spouses, Rebecca and Paul. As the story begins, Ana finds out that one of her clients has died in an accident and she needs to call the bereaved wife. Of course, that client is Connor and Ana is devastated. The rest of the story deals with Ana and her pain and her memories, her conversations with Connor, and her present, where she actually goes to meet Rebecca to attend to legal duties, but really to see what Connor's life was like and see if there is any hint of her there in his office. I can't imagine myself ever cheering for a character who so selfishly destroys his or her family, and that's ok. I will say that this is a beautifully written book, though, and Ana is an extremely raw character!