I’ve read a lot of Cynthia Voigt’s books, so I was excited to see she had a new novel out for kids. MISTER MAX is about a young boy living at the turn of the century. His parents have boarded a ship for India, but have disappeared, leaving Max to fend for himself with a little help from his grandmother. While Max is only about twelve, his parents are actors, and he uses their techniques and costumes to pass himself off as an adult and makes a business for himself as a detective. Max has several mysteries to solve, with the underlying one being: where are his parents??
There were some things I loved about this book. I almost always enjoy books set in the past. Max was definitely a spunky and resourceful young man. I kept reading to see how things would come out.
Other things I was not so keen about in this book were that it felt long (looks like 400 pages for paper copy), the mysteries were pretty straight-forward (though they are for kids), and there was no final resolution (apparently, this is the start of a series/trilogy). It’s hard for me to say what age to recommend this story for. Content-wise, I would say about ages 9-11, but reading stamina/level wise, I’d say more like 11-13.
Voigt is a wonderful writer and this shines throughout the story. I laughed out loud at some parts. I will most probably read the next installment because I’d like to see how Max’s story turns out.
Recently, Mr. Dean sent me an email and asked if I’d like to read and review his book, a supernatural thriller. I said yes as I was in the mood for a thriller/mystery read. In A DOOR UNLOCKED, a home invasion goes wrong when the bad guy kills the homeowner, rapes the wife, and abducts their eight year old daughter. Vanessa Fitzgerald makes it her mission to find her daughter and bring the perpetrator to justice. However, Vanessa has some help from beyond – when unconscious (e.g. in a coma), she can hear and communicate with her recently deceased husband. He gives her guidance in finding and saving their young daughter, Lydia.
This book reminded me a bit of a Mary Higgins Clark mystery. It read quickly and focused on a heroine who was bent but not broken, and very determined to find her daughter. I wish that the storyline had not included rape and molestation (which I don’t like to read), but they did occur mostly “off stage” so to speak (there wasn’t a graphic, violent, drawn out scene to read). I kept reading to make sure that there was a happy ending!
At less than 300 pages, I finished this book in a few sittings.
Thanks, Mr. Dean, for sending me a download of your novel!
Just in time for Halloween! Dan Newman’s THE CLEARING is a suspenseful story within a story. In 1976 four boys were playing the swamps and woods of St. Lucia when one of them dies. The others decide to keep the events surrounding his death secret and instead blame it on island superstition: the monster Bolum. Time passes and while lives are irreparably changed by the child’s death, life does go on.
Fast forward forty years to present day, and our hero, Nate, is returning to the island to put old ghosts to rest. However, in doing so, Nate opens up old wounds and upsets the precarious balance of society on the island. Soon he is being followed and attacked by scary men wielding sacrificed animals and vials of blood. Someone is trying to hush up the events of that night and will stop at nothing to keep Nate and anyone who helps him quiet.
I enjoyed reading this novel which read quickly and was rather thrilling. At the end things tied up pretty neatly, and I felt that Newman expounded the final conclusions a bit too much (just in case someone couldn’t figure it out on their own, I guess); however, all in all, I enjoyed this light read and kept going to the end. A little fantastic – yes. A good read for the Halloween season – yes!
I got mine as an ARC from Net Galley (Exhibit A Publishers) – thanks!
I saw MARIE ANTOINETTE, SERIAL KILLER at the YA session at BEA but quite frankly, I walked past it. Marie Antoinette – serial killer?? It sounded rather absurd, plus the cover had a costumed girl with blood on her – ick (just a note here: looks like the blood didn’t make it to the final cover). However, when they were doing the session, they mentioned it as a good example of the “mash up” genre: part mystery, part historical fiction, part horror, part supernatural, part contemporary. The speaker recommended it, so I immediately slipped back to the table and grabbed a (free) copy. I have to say – I really enjoyed reading it!
MARIE ANTOINETTE, SERIAL KILLER starts with high schooler Colette Iselin preparing for a class trip to France. She is struggling with her parents recent break up and the family’s new, strained, financial situation. She can’t wait to get away with her (rather mindless and not very nice) friends, to explore the place where her family has its roots. Colette’s school group has barely gotten their feet on terra firma when they hear about a serial killer running loose – beheading victims, all of whom are from long-standing French/Parisian families. Colette sees a costumed young woman and realizes she is seeing Marie Antoinette’s ghost. As you might guess, Colette realizes she may be the next victim and needs to figure out the how and why of the murders in order to stop them. Along the way she is helped by their friendly teen tour guide (insert romance!), and she comes to realize that perhaps she has been spending too much time focusing on the things that don’t matter and less time on the things that do.
All in all, this was an enjoyable read and cleverly plotted. I’m a big fan of all things French, so I love reading about people strolling through Paris and seeing the places I love.
I am happy today to be part of the TRAVELS IN ELYSIUM blog tour!
TRAVELS IN ELYSIUM is the story of Nicholas Pedrosa, a college student who gets the chance of a lifetime: working on an archaeological dig in Greece. Nico jumps at the opportunity and soon finds himself on the island of Santorini with a host of characters and personalities, all engaged in unearthing what appears to be a city (or civilization) destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Nico doesn’t know too much about his colleagues, though, and right from the start some unsettling things happen. Another young worker has been killed on the site in an accident (or was it perhaps not an accident?). Villagers swear they are seeing ghosts. Nicholas himself sees eerie moving lights at night. And, behind it all, is the somewhat enigmatic and intense Marcus Huxley, the leader of the dig with whom Nico has a love/hate relationship. What are they uncovering? And, is it just possible that they could be making the discovery of a lifetime – that they have found the lost city of Atlantis?
I enjoyed reading this (somewhat lengthy at 500+ pages) book! It is part history, part mystery, and part metaphysical thriller. I found it could be read on two levels: the top story of Nico and his experiences, and the allegory to Plato’s theories of Atlantis and reality. Metaphor plays a big role in this novel, as does allegory. Caves play a role, as does light, and the concept of reality and perception and creating your own reality. To be honest, I wasn’t intimately familiar with Plato’s writings (though I certainly knew who he was), and this book made me read a lot about him online. The more I read, the more information I found that fit this story line. Really, I thought the interplay was quite brilliant.
The end of the book makes you stop, think, and then re-read. I won’t give it away, but it is the final connection to Plato’s works.
I think this book would be great for book groups because there is a lot to discuss!
William Azuski was born in the United Kingdom, and is of British and Yugoslav descent. Travelling widely through the Mediterranean since childhood, his frequent sojourns in Greece included several months on Santorini in the 1970s, an experience that provided firsthand experience for this exceptional novel’s local setting. Writing as William Miles Johnson, Azuski is also author of the critically-acclaimed The Rose-Tinted Menagerie, an Observer Book of the Year (nonfiction), and Making a Killing, an end of the world satire, both titles recently republished by Iridescent.
(William at work)
Thank you to Nikki for my review copy and making me part of this blog tour!
This past spring, a longtime friend suggested that I read THE BOY FROM REACTOR 4. I found it for my kindle on Amazon at a great price. THE BOY FROM REACTOR 4 is a suspenseful, action-packed mystery/thriller, which takes the reader from the US to Russia and deals with espionage, murder, and the effects of the Chernobyl disaster.
Nadia Tesler is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, living in NYC. She is contacted by a man who says he knew her deceased father, and she agrees to meet with him. To her horror, he is shot while they are greeting each other and he whispers a somewhat garbled message to her before dying. Nadia takes off a quest to discover what he meant, find a formula worth $10 million, and find out the truth about her family and their legacy. Travelling from the US to the heart of Russia and into Siberia and the Aleutian Islands, this novel’s setting serves as a parallel to the emotions of the criminals and the bleak life for many of the people she meets and comes to know in this book. Action packed and thrilling, the action moves at a non-stop pace right until the last page.
I really enjoyed this novel! I like a good crime/mystery, and this one was easy to read and hard to put down! I’m glad my friend recommended it to me. I would love to see it as a movie, too.
Check out this clip I found on You Tube with the author discussing the novel:
I grabbed this book on a whim off Net Galley. If you read me you know I love YA and I have a special spot in my reader’s heart for stories that take place in boarding schools. I’m rather critical of these story lines since I’ve worked in independent schools since the 80’s, and quite honestly, if the administrators were as clueless/useless/evil/unavailable as they usually are portrayed, well, they’d all have gone out of business long ago! I was prepared to not really like this book – to be honest the title put me off – so I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed reading it!
PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, which is the first in a series, starts with protagonist Anne Dowling getting expelled from her toney Manhattan private school for (accidentally) setting a fire. She is shipped off to a New England boarding school in the Boston suburbs where her first order of business is to rearrange the pecking order and get herself to the top of the social hierarchy. Anne’s a tough nut to crack – she’s feisty, tough, and fearless. At the same time, though, she’s sincere and has integrity (which is more that can be said about some other characters). She quickly forms her friends and enemies. Then her roommate goes missing and is found murdered. Anne seems to care more than the administration does about finding Isabella’s killer, so she starts her own “investigation” to figure out how and why Isabella was killed.
I’m a tad embarrassed to admit it, but I couldn’t put this book down. I thought the mystery was cleverly plotted and I liked the character of Anne. I often laughed out loud at her sarcasm and humor. I would have absolutely loved this book when I was in high school. I think Ms. Taylor did well with her independent school portrayal, and I wonder if she maybe attended a school very like Wheatley in real life!
I’m looking forward to the next book in this series which will be out in 2014.
Thanks, Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for my copy.
I had been reading about Chris Bohjalian’s THE LIGHT IN THE RUINS all over the blogosphere, so I was more than thrilled to score a copy through Net Galley. This is a touching and beautifully written novel that leaves the reader thinking about the characters long after it is over.
THE LIGHT IN THE RUINS takes place in Italy and moves between 1943 and 1955. During WWII, the Rosati family live quietly in their villa. They are a remnant of Italy’s nobleman past and are faring better than the peasants in the area. Caught in the crossfires of the war, they must support and welcome Nazi soldiers into their home; at the same time they must aid and assist partisans in their area. The war is turning and the Germans are getting desperate, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t do their utmost to destroy all they can in their path. The marchese and marchesa are a middle-aged couple. One son is away at war and his wife and two young children are living in the villa with them. Their second son is working as an archeologist. Their eighteen year old daughter Christina lives at the villa, too. Soon she finds herself falling in love for the first time – with a Nazi officer. At the same time, partisans are living in the hills and using the property, including ancient Etruscan tombs, as hideouts. The events converge into a riveting and tragic ultimatum.
Meanwhile, ten years later in 1955, a murder occurs in Rome. It soon becomes apparent that someone is stalking the surviving members of the Rosati family and killing them. Of the police detectives assigned to the case, one is the tough and intrepid Serafina – the first female police officer in her department and a surviving partisan from WWII. Serafina is horribly scarred from the war, in more ways than one. Her involvement with the Rosati case opens up old wounds and memories.
The story is written as switching between 1943/44 and 1955. As it progresses, we hear the full story of WWII for the family, and its tragic events. We follow the events of the murders and try to figure out the murderer. I could not put this book down!
I just loved this book. I found it so well-written and it evoked such strong images of the Tuscan countryside, along with such emotion. The word that comes to mind is heart-breaking. I couldn’t stop thinking about the story and its characters afterwards.
I also loved the choice of title. The “light in the ruins” can be the light in the Etruscan tombs where they hid, or the light that shined through in the aftermath of the devastation of WWII. Or it can be that small light that shined within those who were most damaged by the events of the war.
Brilliant! Buy it! Borrow it! But whatever you do – read it!
Thanks to Doubleday Books and Net Galley for my copy!
If you read me, you know I enjoy historical cozy mysteries and the “Gaslight Mysteries” featuring turn of the century, NYC midwife Sarah Brandt. The latest has recently been published and I bought it with a gift card I received from my friend as a birthday gift.
While I think it’s best to read this series in order, one can read them individually. In this installment, Sarah learns that a woman has arrived at the mission, looking for little Catherine and she fears that she will lose the child she has grown to love as her own. However, the woman soon turns up murdered and Sarah and Malloy need to protect Catherine while figuring out exactly who wants her and why. Sarah’s parents get in on the action and help to solve the mystery. At the end – finally! – Sarah and Malloy are together (which has been coming and hinted at for a looong time).
This was an enjoyable and easy read. The only beef I had with it was the amount of surprising personality changes among the characters, especially with Sarah’s parents. At one point, the characters were all looking at each “in surprise” so often that even I was confused how quickly the about-faces had occurred! However, the changes had to happen in order for the plot to move forward and for Sarah and Malloy to get together.
If you have followed this series, I think you’ll like this one!
It seems that RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA is all over the blogosphere these days, so I requested it from the library. There were a ton of holds already ahead of me. When it didn’t materialize after a month, I purchased it for my kindle. I had heard a lot about this book and it didn’t disappoint me!
In RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA, high powered attorney Kate Baron gets a phone call from her daughter’s private school that there’s been an incident of cheating and her daughter is being suspended. When she reaches the school, her daughter Amelia is dead, apparently having committed suicide by jumping off the roof. “Sorry” is written on the wall near where Amelia was. Then Kate receives a text: “She didn’t jump”. Thus begins Kate’s journey into discovering who her daughter really was – her secrets, her desires, her inner self. Kate harbors a lot of guilt for being a working single mom, and she seeks to prove that Amelia did not commit suicide and she did not plagiarize. The more she digs, the more she finds, and that makes her rethink all that she thought she knew.
This story is told in present day tense (Kate’s voice) and then through flashback (Amelia’s voice), texts, blog posts, and emails. Even though it jumped around a lot chronologically, I liked that way of telling the story.
There were some of elements in this story that did NOT work for me (SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!). For instance, this principal at Grace Hall had a lot of spare time on his hands (having worked in independent schools for over twenty years I can tell you that spare time for a headmaster is rare!). Also, no one questioned the writing on the wall at first. And Amelia didn’t think it odd that Ben got her private cell number supposedly from Princeton since they would be attending a summer session there (strangers, but both attending, and Princeton just gives it out?). Kate, supposedly brilliant, was the last to figure out who Amelia’s father was (I figured it out before she did – lol). And that English teacher?? Can we say: quick way to lose your job?
But – overlooking these things – I found this novel to be compelling and thought-provoking, suspenseful and exciting. I could hardly put it down because I wanted to know what happened. My only sadness was that it started with Amelia’s death and I knew she wasn’t coming back. Having the book in her voice and getting to know her made for a poignant reading experience.
Here’s a book trailer I found on You Tube for this book — also found on the Amazon page — it’s interesting and thought-provoking!!
Beth's Book-Nook Blog 