Finished: Sometimes I Lie (Feeney) Oh my gosh, Alice Feeney never disappoints!! What a twisty, surprise around every corner thriller! I don't even want to do a recap because I don't want to give away any spoilers. Needless to say, she got me good! I'm just going to put the blurb from Amazon here:

"My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me:

1. I’m in a coma.
2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie.

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?"

I've already read several of her books, and look forward to reading more! Great page-turning reads!! 

 Finished: Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance (Lang) I'm so glad I finally read this book, which has been on my list for far too long! I loved it! It was written so beautifully and thoughtfully and believably. It's the story of Weylyn Grey, a young boy who is born in a blizzard, whose parents die when he's in kindergarten, who then becomes lost in the woods and raised by wolves in the forest. He appears to be one with nature and one with all the animals, and very protective of the wolves, as they are of him. When he's 11 years old, he meets Mary, who has just turned 11 and lost her mother to illness. She doesn't "connect" with her father, though her father is completely distraught when she runs away to the woods. She meets Weylyn, and the wolves, and lives with them for several weeks. Mary forges an unbreakable bond with Weylyn, and also with the wolves. After a few weeks, when one of the wolves is shot by a farmer among his herd of animals, Mary is found and reunited with her father. Weylyn is so distraught over the wolf's death, that he can't move, and he is taken to child protectives services. Weylyn is adopted by a preacher, his wife, and four daughters. Though, the only two people who get to know and love Weylyn are the preacher and the "misfit" daughter of the bunch, Lydia. As Weylyn moves through life, he is always fascinated with each new experience and he is very intelligent. He doesn't understand when people tease him. He also has the incredible ability to control the weather. When he gets angry or sad, a rainstorm or blizzard will occur. Control isn't really the right word, since the events are really controlled by his emotions, which as we all know, are very hard to control. When he appears to stop a tornado that is headed right for their town, the news is all about the "wolf boy who stopped the tornado and saved the town". Weylyn isn't really sure how he did it, but he stood right in its path and seemed to just absorb it. Each event like that takes energy from Weylyn. He also realizes that where he lives, storms always follow, so he decides to become a hermit to protect the people he loves. The story is just lovely as we go to different times in Weylyn's life and read about each of the interactions with the handful of people he grows close to. He searches for Mary for a long time, but I won't give the details of that. It's a story that warms the heart, though. He also reconnects with Lydia and her young family when he's older, and those times are a treasure. I really didn't want the story to end! It kept me turning pages until the very end, and it will truly resonate with me for a long time. 

 Finished: A Game of Lies (Mackintosh) The second book in a series about the investigations of Welsh Detective Constable Ffion Morgan. I really enjoyed the first one and this one was just as good! In the same small town of Cwm Coed, contestants have gathered for a reality survival who in theshow in  Welsh mountains. There are only a handful of them and they are each eager to outsurvive the other for the large money payout for the only survivor. When the first episode airs, everyone is watching the show, including the reluctant Ffion. There is a huge twist and shock to the contestants right off the bat. The smarmy show producer informs them on live television that this is not about survival at all....but about who can figure out everyone's dark secret before they figure out theirs. The secrets, ranging from bigamy, crossdressing, stealing school money, infidelity and more are each secrets that could ruin the life of the contestant back home if discovered. The secrets are kept in a locked, steel box. Each show there will be an accusation against someone whose secret a player thinks they know. If they are right, that person is eliminated. If they are wrong, the accuser must sit in the confession shack where items from there worst fears (spiders, snakes, water, etc.) will be piped in for three minutes. If they don't last, they will be eliminated. Needless to say, there is chaos in the camp when the cameras aren't rolling and a distraught contestant has gone missing. Enter Ffion to investigate what has happened and try to find him in the rough Welsh terrain. Also enter British Detective Leo Brady, who worked with Ffion to uncover the murder in the first book, and mayybbbbbe became a love interest? After acting on their feelings while the first investigation was going on, it was ambiguous at the end whether they would continue. We find out that Ffion, who has massive trouble showing her feelings, did not last in the relationship and bolted. She hasn't spoken to Leo in almost two years. And now, in he walks as the assigned lead investigator! I love reading about how each of them is so awkward and unsure, but still obviously have feelings for each other. We get to know a new detective named, Georgina (George), who Ffion finds annoying and cold, but ends up being anything but those things as she helps with the case. We get to know each of the contestants, the producer, the only camera man, the only assistant and the only security guard as well. And, we get to know all the secrets and see those families reacting! When the producer is found murdered in his editing room, the missing person investigation now expands to include a murder investigation. Everyone is a suspect! It's a fun story, reading how Ffion, Leo and George solve the crimes and reading about how everyone was impacted by their secret afterwards upon returnig home. And, especially seeing where the Ffion and Leo relationship stands at the end of the book! I will wait a bit, but definitely be reading the third installment. :-)

 Finished: Nobody's Fool (Coben) I will always read the next new Harlan Coben book, but this one was very slow to get started for me. It's the story of Sami Kierce, an ex-police officer who lost his partner, and lover, Nicole, a fellow police officer at the hands of an evil man who has been behind bars for 20 years. Sami is now happily married to Molly with a baby son, Henry. Sami teaches criminal investigation at a local night school and has quite an array of super-sleuthing characters in his class. When a woman walks into the back of the room during one of his classes, Sami can see immediately that it is Anna, a woman he met in Spain when he was 18 and on "holiday".  After a whirlwind romance, where Sami and Anna fell hard for each other, Sami wakes up one morning to find Anna covered in blood and dead next to him in bed. Sami reports it immediately to the police, who go with him right away to the hotel room, but the room is perfectly clean and there is no sign of Anna. His father advises him to get on an airplane back to the U.S. right away, and he does. Sami has been wracked with guilt all these years not knowing what happened to Anna, and wondering if he may have been responsible for her death. In the time that has passed, he has become a detective on the police force, put away various bad criminals, lost his aforementioned partner in a tragic killing, left the police force, married Molly and become father to Henry. When the woman, who he is certain is Anna, walks into his classroom, and immediately flees when he sees her, Sami starts down the path of tracking her down. This leads to a rather convoluted story about Victoria Bellmont, a local heiress to a fortune, who disappeared after a New Year's Eve party over twenty years before when she was just 17years old. She was never found or heard from again, and her family has been distraught ever since. When Sami finds out that Anna and Victoria are, in fact, the same person, he is determined to find out what happened to Victoria, how she became Anna, and how she could possibly be alive as either Anna or Victoria after all these years. Oh, and the man who killed Nicole has just been release from prison, and vehemently proclaims his innocence, so of course that story has to be thrown into the mix. A pretty good page-turner, once it got going, but just a few too many tangents for me in this Harlan Coben book. He's still my favorite crime author though. :-) 

Finished: My Friends by Fredrik Backman. It took me a bit to warm up to this book, but when I did, I couldn't put it down, and as usual with Fredrik Backman's books, I fell in love with every single imperfect character. He has a way of making you feel exactly what that character must be feeling and rooting for them. They all have their flaws, and do things that are questionable, but never with malice in their hearts and never anything to hurt someone. In this story, the friends are 14 year olds, each with a troubled home life, either physically or mentally. They are often bullied at school and feel like they have only each other to rely on. Every day they meet down on a pier in their fishing town and talk, and joke, and dream and goof around with each other. Ted, Joar, Kimkim and Ali. Every day as it gets to be dusk and time to go home, as they get to the parting point in their neighborhoods, each one shouts "Tomorrow!". It's their way of saying goodbye and their promise to each other that they will always be there the next day. Kimkim is the artist of the group and has a notebook full of drawings. When Joar sees an article for an art contest with prize money in the newspaper, he insists that Kimkim draw something and enter it in the contest. He just knows that he'll win. Kimkim doesn't have the confidence in himself that his friends do, and certainly not the support of his parents at home who just want him to excel and be "normal". As the deadline approaches, Kimkim finally draws a picture of the long pier that is their sanctuary, with the huge ocean all around it. He calls it "The One of the Sea". However, it's really the one about his friends, because if you look very closely, you'll see three tiny figures sitting on the pier. 

Twenty-five years later, the painting has become one of the most famous in the world and Kimkim is a renowned artist. In another city, several train rides away, Louisa is a child who has grown up in the foster care system. She has just turned eighteen, and is an aspiring artist. Of course, her favorite painting is "The One of the Sea". When she sees that it is to be auctioned off at a high end auction, she makes her way there and ends up on a journey she never dreamed she could have. Honestly, the story is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. Every single person she meets along the way gets her closer to each one of the old friends, whether in the flesh or in spirit, and by the end of her journey she is literally and figuratively one of them. She's finally got a family to belong to. Just such a good, good book!! 

 Finished: James by Percival Everett

Pulitzer Prize winning novel, James, is an excellent piece of literature! It's been awhile since I've read such significant prose in this story of heartbreak, hopefulness, and the absolute travesty of slavery; the aberration and audacity that some people believed it was their right to own another human being. The book is the re-telling of the story of Huck Finn and the slave, Jim from the viewpoint of Jim or James, as he thinks of himself. James can read and write and speak in complete, coherent and intelligent sentences! But, he doesn't ever in front of white people. He would be beaten and/or hanged for less. Any outward dialogue in the book by James is the cowering, obedient language of "yessa masta" and "I'se goes, suh", etc. However, all of James' inner thoughts, of which we blessedly hear alot, are deeply thoughtful and meaningful soliloquies and introspections, as he tries desperately to formulate a plan to get back to his wife and child, and escape to freedom. And, he remains loyal to and protective of Huck along the way, setting a prime example of the decency with which to treat a fellow human. There is a shocking surprise toward the end that is such a perspective-changer. And, the ending was intentionally left part hopeful and a bigger part trepidatious, forcing any reader to truly examine the horror of slavery in the real world, and not the fictional one, if they hadn't already in the previous pages. 

 Finished: Beautiful Ugly (Alice Feeney) I've enjoyed many of Feeney's books, and this one was certainly page-turning, but had too shocking a twist for me at the end. Grady Green is a struggling author who is married to investigative reporter, Abby. They'd fallen for each other quickly and have been married for several years and, to Abby, they seem in a rut. She's not sure that Grady even loves her anymore, seemingly loving his books and their characters more. One evening when Abby is late coming home from work, as often happened in her line of work, she gets a call from Grady in her car and he's a bit annoyed that she's not home with him right now when he's expecting a call any minute to let him know if his latest book made it to the New York Times Best Seller list. She apologizes, says she's on her way home with his favorite, fish and chips, and tells him to hang up in case they're trying to call him right now. He does get the call and his book does make it on the list! Grady calls Abby back with the good news and she can hear his voice beaming with happiness. She tells him she's just down the road from the house but then he hears the screeching of tires. Abby tells him that there's a woman laying in the road in front of her that looks like she's been hit by a car. She must go and see if she's ok. Grady begs her not to get out of the car for her own safety, but she tells him she'll leave the phone on but she must go and check on her. Abby never comes back to the phone, and her red overcoat is found washed up on the shore of the beach their neighborhood bluff overlooks. A year later, Grady is down and out. Abby was never found and the mystery hasn't been solved. He hasn't been able to write anything at all, and his agent, Kitty, who was Abby's godmother, is getting worried about him. She calls him in for a meeting and offers him the keys to a cabin on a remote Scottish island where another author, more famous than he, had gone to write his string of successful books. From there on out, the story turns a bit creepy. All the folks on the island are strange...there is no communication with the mainland...there are only 25 residents of the island....they all have walkie talkies to stay in touch with each other...and to make matters worse, Grady keeps thinking he's seeing Abby in her red coat every time he turns around. The story unfolds as we find out the weird but tragic history of the Isle of Amberley, the stories of most of the unusual inhabitants of the island, and finally, what actually happened to Abby! It's a pretty good book, but as I said, I wasn't fond of the twist at the end. 

 Finished: Night Watch (Jane Anne Phillips) This year's beautifully written Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction takes us to the backwoods of West Virginia, right after the Civil War. ConaLee is a 12 year old girl who has become responsible for the upkeep of the house and caring for her three younger step-siblings ever since a man who calls himself Papa invades their home. ConaLee's mother, Eliza, is really married to her true love, and ConaLee's father, Ephraim Connolly, who has gone off to fight for the cause of the North in the war. He manages to stay in touch until he is severely injured, barely surviving a horrific head injury, but forgetting who he is and everything about his life. The kind doctor that makes sure he lives is named Dr. O'Shea, and when Ephraim is well enough, he's intregal in helping with and encouraging other victims of the war. Seeing what a good person he is, Dr. O'Shea says he'd be honored if Ephraim takes his name, John O'Shea, and then recommends him to a highly rated asylum, established by an honorable doctor, and still run by that doctor's honorable nephew, Dr. Story. Eliza and ConaLee live just down the ridge from Ephraim's adoptive mother, Dearblah, who has become like a mother to Eliza and grandmother to ConaLee. Despite the fact that Dearblah has an incredible sixth sense and medicinal abilities, she's no match for the interloper who takes over Eliza's home, raping her at will, impregnating her with three children, and treating ConaLee like a slave. Eliza has become mute and nearly unresponsive, which has left ConaLee responsible for the house and also very vulnerable, as she ages. Thankfully the interloper doesn't ever sexually abuse ConaLee. He does tire of the whole situation eventually. He is very greedy and truly wants whatever "class" and money the homestead can bring him. He ends up making ConaLee pawn off all her younger siblings on neighbor people who have sadly lost children in the war, and he sells the house and everything Eliza owns to go off and hobknob with and/or con the richer class. He takes ConaLee and the still mute Eliza to within walking distance of the nearest asylum, dressing Eliza in some stolen fine clothing and instructing ConaLee to tell them she is her mother's nurse, and that her charge is a genteel lady. ConaLee doesn't realize that she is also being dropped off permanently. When she and her mother finally make it to the asylum door, the sun has set and they bang on the door. Answered by a tall and stern looking man known as the Night Watch, he takes pity on them and receives them into the asylum despite not having the authority to do so. Eliza improves drastically under the care of the kind Dr. Story, and the book unfolds in such lovely prose as we get to know the characters and all their relationshiops and stories. I'll not be spoiling the ending of this book, but will only say that characters like ConaLee, Dearblah, the Night Watch, Weed (the young orphan taken in by the cook), Dr. Story and Eliza herself are all compelling and I really rooted for them all to have happy endings amidst a few surprises! 

 Finished: The Sequel (Jean Hanff Korelitz) The Sequel is, well, a sequel...to the book The Plot. I loved that first book, and it ended up having several twists and turns with the wife of plagerizing author, Jake Bonner, coming out on top. But...was Anna Williams-Bonner a nice person? No! It turns out she was literally the murderous and insane subject of the book that Jake had claimed as his own (which had actually been written by a deceased former student of Jake's, who never sent his book to anyone before he died). Anna ended up being the sister of that former student, and she ended his life when she found out his book was going to be about her former years, when she murdered her own daughter, assumed her identity, and then murdered her own parents. Yes, insane! Anyway, at the end of The Plot, Jake is no more...done in by his beloved wife, Anna. In The Sequel, Anna goes on to write her own extremely successful best-seller, Afterward, her life story as she wants to tell it. Then, when she's at her highest of highs, Anna starts getting cryptic messages about HER book, the same kind she sent to Jake when he claimed her brother's book as his. Someone is tormenting her...telling her they know who she really is and all about the horrific things she did, including killing her own daughter. I won't spoil the ending, but the book takes a few too many turns for me this time before revealing who is responsible for the messages. And, the winner in the end is disappointing to me. I'd still read another sequel related to The Plot if Korelitz wrote one, though. :-)

 Finished: Onyx Storm (Yarros) The third installment in what used to be the Empyrean trilogy by Rebecca Yarros, is now the third of five books, so there was no nicely wrapped up ending to the series. Not that I mind, since I love the books, but waiting to read the next one is hard! At the end of the second book, Violet Sorrengail discovered that her love, Xaden, had given in to the evil Venin just to save her. When she sees his eyes with an ever so small red ring around the iris, she knows that he's fighting it, but spends most of this book trying to figure out a way to rid him of his Venin poison. The couple is as in love as they always were, but each spends so much time sacrificing themselves for the other that I wonder if they will really end up happy at the end of the series. Greater things are happening worldwide than Xaden's slow Venin decline. Many of the professors who Violet once trusted have ended up being on the side of the Venin, the darkweilders. And, many of her allies, including her mother, who Violet counted on, have perished. There's a war coming between the Venin and what is left of the handful of loyal dragon riders. The story does delve into the ellusive "seventh" dragons...the very rare seventh species of dragon, who have the same incredible abilities that Violet's second dragon, Andarna, possesses. And of course, the one of a kind older dragon, Tairn, is again prominent in the story. With the war looming, despite Violet's superior signet power, the wielding of lightening, the book rushes to the end with several things hanging in the balance, especially the mystery of what last happens between Violet and Venin-turning Xaden before she wakes up to find him missing. Can't wait for the next book!