Finished: Then She Was Gone (Jewell) Another page-turner about a fifteen year old girl, Ellie, who goes missing on her way to the library one day. There is no single word of her until ten years later when some evidence comes to light. In the meantime, her mother, father, older brother and older sister have all been shattered by her loss and her parents divorce. We hear the story from the viewpoints of several different characters, and as the horror of what happened unfolds, the seemingly coincidental relationship between Ellie's mother and a new man she has met takes you hurdling forward until you know yourself exactly every aspect of what happened to Ellie and how every character is involved. 

 Finished: The Gifted School (Holsinger) A book I simply could not put down because I just had to see who made it into the gifted school lol. The story of four mothers, best friends, who met eleven years earlier in an infant swimming class when their children were babies. Now, the children are all fifth-graders of varying talents and closeness and the mothers remain close friends. A new academy for gifted children, grades 6-8 for the lower school and 9-12 for the upper school is opening in Crystal, Colorado and only 1000 spots will be available for all the students in the four surrounding counties. The competition will be fierce and will also show us exactly what our mothers (their spouses) and the children are all made of, and if their relationships will survive at all after the competition to be granted entry to the school ends. To be honest, out of all the parents, there is only one who I like....who isn't some kind of helicoptering or over-achieving or living-vicariously-through parent. She's the mother of twin boys, and her ex-husband, their father, is a piece of competitive work. There is only one child I like in the entire bunch too...oh wait...no there isn't. Not a single child is unaffected by their entitlement. They talk about other school children when with each other; they are jealous and lie about their sibling (i.e. the twin boys); they are so self-involved that they don't understand how the consequences of their actions could harm other people. Mind you, these are still just fifth-graders we are talking about. Sometimes I feel like they were written a bit too old...as if they're in their teens. However, maybe the times have just changed that much! Anyway, there is one little boy I do like from the poorest county, Atik, whose mother cleans the houses of two of the four best friends. He is brilliant and eager and kind and talented. I'm so happy that he makes it into the school As for the shenanigans that some of the parents get into, well, they are jaw-dropping and you'll just have to read like I did to see whose friendships survive and who gets into the school after all is said and done...other than Atik, of course. :-)

 Finished: The Four Winds (Hannah) The story of how a farming family in the panhandle of Texas battles to make it through the Dust Bowl years of the early 1930's. Elsa Wolcott is a 25 year old, well-to-do, oldest daughter of parents who feel that she'll never have a future as a wife and mother. Unmarried at her age, they've given up on her. To finally stand up for herself, Elsa sleeps with the first young man who shows and interest in her and become pregnant. Her family disowns her, drives her to the Martinelli farm, and dumps her on their doorstep to be married. It takes awhile, but the Martinelli matriarch, Rose, finally comes to love and respect Elsa. While the farm is a thriving wheat producer, the family is happy and doing well. Elsa and her husband, Rafe, have two children, Loreda and Anthony. Rafe is never really happy, though, as he had been planning to go to college and see the world before he was forced into marriage and to stay on the farm with this parents and new wife. When the first year of the  Dust Bowl hits and devastates all the farm crops with its lack of rain and winds of dust storms, the destruction is more than Rafe can handle and he leaves his wife and children to head to California. His parents, Elsa and the children are all devastated. They remain on the farm, with Rose and her husband, Tony, refusing to leave the land, and Elsa right there with them, having come to love the land as her own, as much as her new Martinelli parents. They suffer unthinkable hardship in the next couple of years, but when 7 year old Anthony falls very ill and nearly dies from dust pneumonia, the doctor advises Elsa to get him to a climate where he can breathe more easily after he recovers enough to travel. This is when the true heartbreaking adventure begins. Tony and Rose still refuse to leave their land, so Elsa sets off in the old jalopy of a truck with her two children, very little money, very little food and very few belongings to cross the country to find a better life for her children in California. Little does she know she's heading into even worse conditions. People fleeing the Dust Bowl disaster and arriving from Texas, Oklahoma and other states were unwelcome and disdained by most native Californians. They were allowed to live nowhere but in makeshift tent cities. They begged for whatever work they could get, mostly surviving by picking cotton during cotton season. The migrant children, if they attended school, were ostracized by the other children. Medical care was denied. People were starving and dying. Elsa barely squeaked by with Loreda and Anthony, until the straw the broke the camel's back finally descended upon them...a terrible flood in the tent city that washed away all of their belongings and money except for the truck, which they were barely able to save (along with their own lives). By this time they have met "communist" union organizer, Jack, who Elsa has steered them very clear of. She wants no part of organizing against the rich landowners who are paying her barely enough to survive as a cotton picker. As conditions continue to deteriorate, as the cowardly landowners produce less cotton, and therefore pay the migrants even less, Elsa finally falls into step with Jack and realizes the only way to fight the injustice is to speak up and protest. Elsa and Jack realize they are in love, and for the first time in her life, Elsa is told that she's beautiful and strong and desired. The migrants, led by Jack and Elsa, are on the verge of having a successful second day of striking by sitting down in all the cotton fields in the area when Elsa is shot by one of the landowner's security guards. She passes away able to tell her children and Jack how she feels about them and vice versa. It's such a tragic moment. :-( Her last words to Jack are begging him to take her children back to Tony and Rosa in Texas, and he does. The book closes four years later when Loreda, now 18, is about to be the first Martinelli to head off to college. The farm has survived the Dust Bowl years and is a thriving wheat supplier again. Loreda says goodbye to her mom at the family cemetery and turns to follow the dreams her mom always wanted her to follow. A very good book, but wow did it smack me in the face with timeliness as I couldn't help but think about all the children at the borders who have been torn from their parents...people fleeing horrible situations, looking for a better life for this families. 

 Finished: The Survivors (Harper) A literal page-turner...the story of a 30 year old man who takes his wife and baby back to the beach town on Tasmania where he grew up to visit his parents, bringing back the memories of an accidental tragedy that happened 12 years before that has burdened him with guilt. Of course, the day after he's back in town, another tragedy occurs, bringing both the past and the relationships of everyone involved, past and present, right back into the limelight. A book that keeps you guessing who could be the perpetrator, and more importantly, one that smacks you in the face with the male objectification of women, starting at an early age and seemingly condoned unwittingly as "normal teenage boy" behavior. Not going to give away the plot line on this one. This is the third book I've read by Jane Harper and I've really enjoyed them all. :-) 

 Finished: What Could Be Saved (Schwarz) This the intricate story of a family who is ripped apart when the eight year old son and brother is kidnapped while the family lives in Bangkok, as the father, Robert, who secretly works for the government, is assigned a project that involves subverting North Vietnamese progress by identifying native boys that may be working as spies. While the wife and children have no idea what the father does for a living, their somewhat idyllic life in Asia moves forward as the wife, Genevieve, hosts and attends the required work parties every weekend, and the children attend school and extracurricular activities. All of the American households have Thai housekeepers, cooks and drivers who do all the manual work. The book goes back and forth in time between 1972, when little Philip Preston is kidnapped to 2019 when his youngest sister, Laura, then seven and now in her fifties, receives a phone call from a woman in Thailand telling her that her brother is alive and has been living there for decades and he now needs to come home. Laura whose father dies a few years after Philip's kidnapping and whose formidable mother is now suffering from dementia, calls her older sister, Beatrice, who was twelve at the time of the kidnapping. Bea, always taking responsibility as the oldest, refuses to believe this person could be Philip so doesn't agree to go with Laura to bring him home. Laura goes on her own, and sure enough, the man she meets is definitely her brother! We flash back to their childhood and the relationships between the siblings, and between each of the children and their parents, and between the parents themselves. All of them have their flaws, but they are, in the end, just a normal family, each taking some guilt for the disappearance of Philip, even though none are to blame. (Well, I do kind of blame the inattentive mother.) The compelling story delves into each character's feelings, their motivations for taking the actions they do, and of course, into the mystery of how and why Philip disappeared, and how far and wide everyone searched for Philip before giving up. As a reader, I was sad for all the years the sisters lost with their brother, and for all the heartache the parents suffered. As Philip ends up telling Laura, though, he went through some horrific times, but came out of them living a meditative life with a group of people led by a teacher who he grew to respect and love. He truly thought his family had been contacted and refused to pay a ransom for him (a lie he was told by an evil woman), and he ended up living an alternative life....not the happy family life Laura had imagined they should have had, but still he had lived his life. A very good read that will stay with me for a bit! 

Here's a bit of a review from Sarah McCraw Crow from BookPage that put into better words what I was feeling: 

As the novel opens, 54-year-old Laura Preston is treading water. Her art plateaued years ago, and she’s in a stagnant relationship with a lawyer named Edward. She doesn’t get along with her disapproving sister, Bea, and their mother, Genevieve, is slipping away to dementia. When Laura gets a call from a stranger who says her long-lost brother, Philip, has been found, she impulsively buys a ticket to Bangkok and sets off to find him.

This sounds like a setup for a suspense novel, and What Could Be Saved does offer suspenseful moments and surprising reversals. But two other elements make this novel uniquely satisfying: the portraits of each Preston family member, and the novel’s depiction of the unintended consequences of late 20th-century Americans abroad.

In Bangkok, Laura connects with the man who might be Philip, and from there, the narrative slips back to 1972, where it rotates through the perspectives of mother Genevieve; father Robert; young Laura and Philip; and Noi, a homesick Thai servant to the Prestons. Through their stories, readers learn what brought the Preston family to Bangkok, how the Vietnam War has spilled into other countries and the truth behind Philip’s disappearance. As the story shifts back and forth in time, the present-day Laura warily tries to make sense of Philip’s new presence, unearthing further truths about her family.

 Finished: Olive Kitteridge (Strout) Pulitzer Prize winning book compiled of several short stories about the people in a coastal community in Maine, with the main character, Olive Kitteridge, either the center of the story, or on the periphery of every one else's story. A retired school teacher, Olive taught most of the young adult people who now populate the town. Her husband, Henry, is a retired pharmacist, and their grown son, Christopher, has married and moved away. Olive doesn't understand, or take responsibility for the strained relationship  between mother and son. With an abrupt and stern nature, most people in the town tolerate Olive, but try to give her a wide berth. It took me a month to read this book because it wasn't one that compelled me to keep turning the pages. Just when I was getting to know the few people in a story, then another story would come along and I'd never read more about the people I'd just become interested in. I think this is why I've never been huge on short story compilations. The prose is lovely, and I could often identify with the emotions of Olive or other characters, but I'd rather read a single, fleshed out story from beginning to end. Still, each short story was a good lesson in human emotions, actions and consequences. 

 Finished: Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Kawaguchi) A lovely book about a coffee shop where you can go back in time to relive a moment with someone for a few minutes. There are very strict rules to be followed, such as: you must sit in a particular chair in the coffee shop and cannot leave the chair during your visit; nothing you say or do will change the future, so don't expect that; and most importantly, you must be done before your cup of coffee gets cold, so your time to say or do what you want to do is very limited. The story focuses on a few main characters as we see their stories, read their histories and see why they choose to go back in time. Most involve regret...regret of not telling someone how much you loved them when they decided to end a relationship; regret of avoiding a sibling for years, only to have that sibling die in an accident; regret of not knowing how your spouse truly felt before Alzheimer's set in; and regret of never seeing the baby you have chosen to give birth to, even though carrying her to full term will mean your certain death. All stories woven together with just a few characters, and done so in both a heart wrenching and uplifting way. Good book! 

 Finished: The Glass Hotel (St. John Mandel) Another page-turning book, and totally not what I thought it was going to be. The story begins with Vincent, a young woman working hard in the world to get by, who accepts the proposition of the uber rich investment planner, Jonathan Alkaitis, to pretend to be his wife. I really don't know how to describe the book, so I'm going to be lazy and use the recap from Amazon. :-) It was a gripping story, not only about Vincent and Jonathan, but also about her relationship with her step-brother and Jonathan's relationships with a few of his clients who he considers friends, but has no problem betraying. Amazon recap below. 

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis's billion-dollar business is really nothing more than a game of smoke and mirrors. When his scheme collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

 
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

 Finished: The Push (Audrain) This book was so intense that I finished it in a day. The terrifying story of a young woman who gives birth to her first child, a daughter, and doesn't bond with her right away...or ever. Blythe has a history of her own horrific mother and grandmother and feels certain she is also most likely not cut out to be a mother, but her husband, Fox, convinces her she'll be a wonderful mother. When baby Violet is born, there is no connection, but as it turns out, it's not due to Blythe. Very early on in her life, Violet shows sociopathic tendencies, but only Blythe sees it. Fox is blind to anything that Violet may do wrong. As the years continue on, it becomes clear that Violet is definitely a little sociopath, as she becomes responsible for two horrific tragedies involving younger children, one her own one-year old brother when she is just six. Fox and his family think that Blythe is the crazy one when she tries to convince them that Violet pushed Sam's stroller into oncoming traffic. Blythe even comes to doubt herself...did she really see the push? But, she knows that when she gave birth to Sam, she bonded instantly with him, so she knows for certain she's capable of  having the maternal bond that a mother has with a child. Eventually, Blythe and Fox's marriage crumbles after the tragedy, and he has an affair with his assistant and begins a life with her. Violet splits her time between Blythe and Fox, but she always detests having to go to her mother's. She adores her father and wants to spend all her time there. By the time Violet is 13, she's got a new little brother from her father and Gemma (the assistant), and they've become a seemingly happy family. Blythe seeks out Gemma to actually warn her about her own daughter, to watch her around Jet (the new brother). Gemma takes her husband's word that Blythe was the crazy one and that Violet wasn't responsible for the previous accidents. Blythe goes so far as to watch their family through the front window one night, and Violet sees her. As Violet stands with her hand on Jet's shoulder, she looks at Blythe with her cold, blank stare and makes a pushing motion to Blythe, indicating that she did in fact push Sam into the traffic. Blythe again tries to warn Gemma, but she hangs up on her. Eventually she learns to let go of the responsibility and get on with her life. A year and a half later, she gets a hysterical call from Gemma...something has happened to Jet. THAT'S THE END OF THE BOOK! omg, this was such a page-turner, even if the material is so disturbing. We get to read a bit about Blythe's mother's history and her grandmother's history, and finally about how Blythe's mother left her when she was only 11, never to come back. Thankfully, an amazing neighbor lady named Mrs. Ellington becomes a surrogate mother for Blythe, cultivating a relationship that lasts a lifetime. Unfortunately, Mrs. Ellington isn't around when Blythe is going through the worst time of her life and has not a single person to believe her or support her. Heartbreaking, but very good book! 

 Finished: The Last Kingdom (Cornwell) The first book in a series of thirteen about a ten year old Saxon boy, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who goes with his father to face the Vikings attacking their land, and watches as the ferocious leader of the Danes, Ragnar, kills his father in the great battle loss. When the young boy runs to try and kill Ragnar with his wooden sword, Ragnar is so impressed with his bravery that he takes him and raises him as his own son, as a Viking and a Paegan. Uhtred lives with Ragnar and his family for years and loves them as his own. Not until he's in his late teens, and Ragnar and most of his family is killed by a rival Dane leader does Uhtred find his only choice to be to make his way to Wessex, the last remaining English stronghold that has not been defeated by the Danes. This is where Uhtred begins his love/hate relationship of service to King Alfred (as in the Great). Torn between his Sussex birthright and roots, and his deep love for his Danish family and his Paegan beliefs, Uhtred spends years as a warrior meant to fight against the Danes for King Alfred, all the while staying in touch with his "brother", Ragnar the Younger, Ragnar's oldest son. The book is very good and goes into so much more detail than the television show on which it's based. This first book ends long before the ending of the last season of the show I watched, so I don't know if I'll continue reading the series, but I think I probably will. :-)