Finished: Dear Debbie (Freida McFadden) A twisty, turny thriller! Debbie is a wife and mother and advice columnist of the town newspaper. She's also a bit pyschotic, which we find out soon enough. She's happily married to Connor with two daughters in high school. We immediately get to read one of her archive "Dear Debbie" column questions, and her advice basically recommends that the wife either leave her husband...or murder him. Of course, that bit of advice was never actually printed, but it definitely came out of Debbie's mind. Anyone who crosses her or especially her children and her husband, end up either expired or set up for something like porn on their computer or set up to be accused of some crime! From the neighbor who "steals" the magazine shoot Debbie was going to have in her own garden, to the boss who refuses to give her husband a promotion, to the creepy soccer coach of her youngest daughter, to the smarmy boyfriend of her oldest daughter, no one is safe from Debbie's wrath. We finally hear about her past and why she is the way she is, but a couple of very suprising twists end up being the coup d'etat of her entire story! A definite page turner! :-) 

Finished: The Women (Kristin Hannah) An excellent, powerful book covering the life of Frankie McGrath, a young nurse who enlisted and went to Vietnam to help, and came back, like any other surviving nurse who served, with the scars and nightmares of the war etched on her heart and mind, to a family who told people she was abroad to study because they were ashamed that their daughter would even dream of enlisting in the military. I grew up in the 1960's and 70's, and can vividly recall the drafting of teenaged boys to be sent off to fight in what seemed to be, in my young eyes, this never-ending battle of so much death and destruction. I hated the war, but never once felt anything but admiration for the "boys" who went and served, and the lucky ones that actually made it home. I was almost 15 years old when the troops started coming home in 1973. Of course, my idyllic teenaged world continued on with me mostly oblivious to the actual impact that the war had on our troops, on their families, on their lives. I didn't even grasp the thought that there must be medical doctors and nurses who frantically fought to keep the soldiers alive until I was in my thirties. The Women is an incredibly vivid book about Frankie, and the other fellow nurses she grows close to, and the relationships they have and don't have amidst the war, and the lives they save and the lives they cannot, and the shattered young men they send home if they are lucky, but never quite whole again. I'm so, so glad I read this book! Kristin Hannah had so many references and conversations with people who had direct experience in the war and her book is a reflection of that. I do really like the summary that Amazon has about the book, so will include that below. This book will stay with me forever. 

"Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets―and becomes one of―the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era."

 Finished: The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz) What a truly good book, but oh so heartbreaking for many characters! The title never grabbed me enough want to read it, even though it has been on my to read Pulitzer Prize list for awhile. I'm so very glad I finally read it. Oscar Wao is Dominican, with a long line of family from the Dominican Republic, now living in the "ghetto" of New Jersey with his tough-as-nails, native Dominican mother, Beli, and his rebellious sister, Lila. He is sweet, naive and terribly overweight. He has dreams of writing an epic tale and becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkein, whose Lord of the Rings books he absolutely worships. The only dream that ever seems to top that one, is his dream to find love with a woman, but with his stature and looks, no woman will give Oscar a second glance, much less have a conversation with him. I was fascinated with the extensive notes in the book which explained every Dominican reference in detail. And...I was chagrined at never having absorbed a single bit of the history of the Dominican people living under the horrific rule of a merciless dictator. The book explores Oscar's life, and his sister's unconditional love for him, and the heartbreak they both endure as they make what appear to be the worst decisions in their love lives (or lack thereof for Oscar) and suffer the consequences. The chapters on every character are fascinating! When the book goes back in time to the history of Beli's parents, once respected medical people in the Dominican Republic, their lives are reduced to rubble by the dictator because her father tries to hide his beautiful older daughter from the lascivious man. Beli, her parents' last daughter, is actually born into the world with a father who will die in prison and a mother who dies soon after her birth. She is eventually found and raised by her grandmother and defies everyone and everything as she grows into the tough, unyielding woman she becomes. She loves only her children, Lila and Oscar, and moves to the United States to keep them safe, and to keep them under her thumb as best that she can. Until I read Beli's chapters, I could not understand how unrelenting she was, but oh my God, what a tragic family history. There are many references to the fuku, a curse that the famliy believes has haunted their family for generations. Everything is blamed on the fuku, and everyone is apparently, eventually impacted by it. Oscar's story is told by his college roommate, Junior, who was the love of Lila's life and would do anything for her, including rooming with and "keeping an eye" on the naive Oscar. Of course, Junior also has a pension for cheating on Lila, despite his adoration of her, and their relationship does not last. The book, though, is told with Junior's voice. He guides us through the relationships he has with both Lila and Oscar, and the love and respect he grows to feel for Oscar as a brother and a man. Oscar does eventually have a a couple of meaningful relationships with women, who see Oscar for who he is, but neither of them last and Oscar is plunged back into loneliness. As the title says, Oscar's life is brief but wonderous, and I don't want to give away any more details! I'm richer for having read his story, though, and those of his family members. A great book! 

 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.