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!