The Ruin - Dervla McTiernan

This may sound like it should be obvious, but I'm realizing that I have the same taste in TV shows and books.  I've been loving slow burn European detective crime shows on Netflix recently and turns out that genre really translates well to paper.  I know this sub-genre of thrillers isn't for everyone, but I have a soft spot for slow burn procedural novels.  I've also found, in my experience, that American procedural novels are usually higher stakes and more dramatic overall than the European novels.  I'm assuming that is just a difference in reader tastes in the different continents and I'm sure that isn't a hard and fast rule for every novel, but it is a trend that I've come across. 

The Ruin is set in Galway, Ireland and is the first book in the Cormac Reilly series.  The novel starts 20 years in the past where Reilly gets called out to a house in the middle of nowhere.  There, he finds two children (brother and sister) with their mother dead upstairs.  Twenty years later, the brother is found dead and DI Reilly is given the chance to re-investigate the mother's death 20 years prior.  The novel jumps point of view between DI Reilly and the girlfriend of the dead brother, Aisling. They are each investigating separately and occasionally run into each other.  

Can I just say again how much I love a good slow burn police procedural.  And slow burn doesn't equal boring.  Following the logical steps from one interview to another, chasing down leads, and crossing suspects off the list when their alibi checks out aren't boring things to read about (at least to me). 

My favorite part of this novel is the way in which the two investigations are shown.  We are following different points of view - Aisling trying to figure out what happened to her boyfriend, and DI Reilly trying to find the truth of what happened 20 years ago.  There are two mysteries and, after that much time has passed, they may or may not be connected.  Aisling is a surgeon, so her POV is less procedural and her thought patterns are much more fluid and aren't as rigid.  DI Reilly, however, is a good investigator and very methodical in his search for the truth.  I think the different POV can help break up the monotony that procedural thrillers can sometimes have.  

Another part of the novel that was done well is the interpersonal conflicts and office politics of the police station.  DI Reilly is new in town and somewhat looked down upon so despite his many years of service, he isn't exactly viewed in a good light at his new position.  He is assigned cold cases and generally seems to be the office black sheep.  There is one younger detective that will socialize with Reilly and gives him the inside scoop on the office gossip.  I find that in a lot of novels and TV shows, the narrative focuses on just the lone wolf detective or maybe a small team of investigators that work really well together.  Of course, in reality, every job has interoffice spats and cliques and this is just one more way McTiernan deepens the setting and characters.

The one part of the novel I wasn't a huge fan of was Aisling.  I just didn't connect to her as a character and seemed like she was just a blank pawn for other people to use in their investigation.  She does gain agency toward the end of the novel, which I appreciated.  Looking back, it is obvious that she is a shell of a person because she is grieving the loss of her boyfriend, and those scenes when it is her POV and she is alone in their apartment and she is completely at a loss of what to do know where very visceral.  However, then in her interactions with other characters and even with her own investigation, it doesn't seem like she has much substance to her.  I get what McTiernan was going for but it just didn't land for me.  

Finally, the reveal at the end was a bit of a miss for me.  It logically made sense and the investigation leading up to the reveal was sound but it just wasn't the ending I was hoping for.  It just wasn't as satisfying as I wish it was.  I thought it did a good job of tying some plot points together and it was definitely earned but I wish a few more plot points would have come together for the ending.  

Overall, I found this to be an excellent police procedural set in atmospheric Galway, Ireland.  Dual POV following the investigation of two deaths 20 years apart.  Good balance between the investigation and outside story lines so the novel never gets too bogged down in the minutia of the investigations.  The book stuck the landing, but was a little wobbly for my liking and I wish it would have wrapped up a few more plot threads in with the reveal at the end.

Also, the audio-book is narrated by Aoife McMahon, Irish actress and narrator.  Would highly recommend listening if you really want to be immersed in the Irish setting.

380 pages

Educated - Tara Westover

Alright, let's get this out of the way first.  I don't generally like non-fiction books.  I find them to lean heavily on the 'this is true, isn't that crazy?!' factor and so the actual writing usually lands flat for me.  I even have tried reading a few true-crime books to see if I could ease into non-fiction by leaning heavily on my love for thrillers and crime dramas.  I know there are a lot of great non-fiction books out there, but I really think I'm just not the reader for them.  My mom, however, loves non-fiction.  In fact, when I first heard about Educated, my first thought was "that sounds like a book mom would read" and I put it away in my mind to get her for Mother's Day/birthday/Christmas.  However, the more I heard about it and just how incredible of a story it was, I was increasingly intrigued.  Getting an Audible subscription really pushed me over the edge to finally give it a try because if I didn't like it, as I was somewhat expecting not to, then I could just return the book and get my credit back to use for a fiction book.

I loved this book.

I listen to my audio books in the car driving my dog to and from doggie daycare twice a week, so I normally go a few days between 'reading' the audio books.  For this one, however, I was listening to it on my phone in my house.  I would put it on when I made dinner, would play it outside when I was gardening, I would try to get it in any time I had a decent chunk of time to listen.  The story, combined with Westover's writing style was the perfect match for me.

Educated is Tara Westover's journey from rural Idaho and her parents who didn't believe in doctors or the school system to Harvard and Cambridge.  What I thought was going to be a story of someone who grew up in a sheltered and religious homeschooling environment expanding her horizons turned into one of the best stories of survival, personal growth, and basically cult deprogramming.  The aspect I loved the most about the book was how Westover just lays out her story as simple facts about how she grew up.  She doesn't often pass judgement on her parents for their beliefs or their actions.  As the reader, there were times when I was in pure disbelief about how her parents could do (or not do) certain things.  A gruesome injury was treated with natural remedies at home instead of the emergency room, for example.  But since Westover grew up in that culture from the time she was born, she presents it as that is how things were done.  We do get some tension from outside point of view such as Westover's grandparents disagreeing with how they were being raised, but nothing too drastic. 

What I think made this book different from other memoirs that I've attempted to read over the years is that Westover goes about her story telling in a very deliberate manner.  She tells the story chronologically from when she was young all the way through her college career.  The first half of the book is her recounting tales from her childhood - many of which were funny and charming and really gave a sense that she loved growing up the way she did.  She seems to have fond memories of playing with her siblings on their farm and exploring the mountains and woods on their property.  As Westover grows up, the stories gradually become darker and worrisome.  It feels like not only does she remember or understand more as she grows older, but also that her parents (father, specifically) start really ramping up the survivalist panic of preparing for the end of the world or the government to come knocking.  The tension is slowly but continually cranked up, injuries or repercussions of actions get increasingly severe, and the family starts to fracture as the children grow up and start making their own choices. This increasing tension was great at encouraging the reader to keep going we think on one hand that there isn't any way it could get worse than what just happened but we know it will probably get worse.  And it does.  My goodness, it gets so much worse than I would have imagined. 

Another aspect in which Educated really raised the bar for memoirs is the emotion that Westover shows throughout the book.  In other memoirs I've started, they almost feel clinical.  Like the author is just relaying a string of facts about what happened.  Seeing Westover start to challenge her belief system, at first internally, but then also externally later was extremely compelling.  The struggles with mental health and trying to find her place between these two worlds - her family home and academia - was fantastic yet heartbreaking to read.  While in college, she slowly started to realize the extent to which her education growing up was unorthodox and she works hard to reconcile her childhood with what she's learning. She wants to have both - have her family and her education - and for a while, she does manage it.  However, the two become increasingly at odds and Westover is often forced to choose between them. 

One aspect I would have liked more of is her adjusting initially to her time in University.  I felt like the front side of the book where we got her childhood and growing up, which is absolutely necessary.  But once she got to college, I would have liked more of a sense on what that culture shock was like.  We do get some examples, but they felt a bit too glazed over for my liking. Growing up, she wasn't completely cut off from society or anything.  They still went into town for certain things, but any college student leaving home for the first time is going to have some growing pains trying to figure out the dining hall, laundry machines, or library system. 

Trigger warning: abuse.  
The physical and emotional abuse Westover suffers throughout the book by different people in her life is hard to read but reading her rationale of it and having her explain it away so many times is heartbreaking. As someone who grew up being taught that domestic violence was not okay, reading the extent to what Westover went through combined with the reactions by her family members was infuriating.  It is easy to look at Westover's situation and judge.  Judge her parents, her family, or even her religion as being the cause of trauma or problems in her life.  However, Westover presents her story in a way that doesn't pass judgement or blame entirely on one side.  Instead, she tries to deal with the abuse in her own ways that evolve over the course of the book.  The abuse become the catalyst to Westover making the most dramatic change to her life at the end of the book.

Overall, a compelling read of one girl's incredible journey away from everything she knows in order to learn more about the outside world.  The structure of the memoir really enhances the reading experience by slowly increasing tension, expanding the world, and giving depth to the eventual hard decisions that need to be made at the end.

For a non-reader of non-fiction, this memoir hooked me from the beginning right through to the end and I'm still in awe at a few stories Westover shares in the book.

Also, for the record, my mom loved it as well.

334 pages

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn is quickly becoming one of those authors (along with Stephen King and Michael Crichton) who I will read every book she writes no matter what the plot is.  I read Gone Girl when it was just starting to gain popularity, watched the HBO limited series of Sharp Objects (the book is on my list to read down the line), and when I found out about Dark Places, I immediately jumped in. Dark Places centers around Libby Day who, 25 years prior, saw her mother and sisters be murdered and testified that her brother, Ben, was the murderer.  In the present day, Libby becomes involved with a local true crime group that is convinced her brother is innocent. Libby slowly begins to question her memory of the night her family died and starts unraveling the truth of what happened.

My favorite thing about this novel, and all of Gillian Flynn's novels, is the unlikable and unreliable narrator. More specifically, the unlikable and complicated female protagonist that, I feel, is much needed.  Unlikable female characters, in my experience, are few and far between and I find them so much more interesting to read than the standard, bland female narrator.  This sort of narrator has been trendy since Gone Girl really blew up in popularity and an offshoot of this - what I like to call 'troubled girl on transportation' books - have been making the rounds in recent years.  In Dark Places, Libby is introduced to us as a girl with a very dark and troubled past.  However, she doesn't come across as struggling to get by with any sort of PTSD or other ramifications of the murders.  She just comes across as a b*tch.  She is callous, dismissive of those who are trying to help, condescending, and overall just a jerk.  She even forgets to feed her cat and doesn't really feel that bad about it!  But Flynn manages to show us the cracks just beneath the surface where we can see the broken human that Libby is.  These cracks, this potential for character growth and development, are what kept me reading.  If Libby was just a jerk without any depth or other characteristics, then I don't think I would have finished this book.  And by the end, while she does change, she doesn't change much.  Instead, I feel like it was a much more realistic look at how, after decades of acting and feeling one way, changing those habits can be hard.

Another thing about this novel that I really liked, but I know is a turn-off for some people is that this story is told not only from different points of view, but from two different time lines.  The story jumps between Libby today, her brother Ben 25 years ago, and their mother 25 years ago. I think Flynn pulls this off fantastically.  She ends each section on enough of a cliff hanger so I couldn't wait to get back to this story line, but not so much of a cliff hanger that I was skipping ahead.  Each thread of the story was interesting and provided depth and context for the other threads.  We also got to see the same event from different perspectives, which was really interesting and I felt helped develop a depth to the characters that I'm not sure we would have gotten otherwise.  The current time and the timelines in the past are all heading toward that important night, so the tension is slowly cranked up at the end of each chapter as we switch perspectives. 

My least favorite thing about this novel was the ending.  More specifically, how quickly the ending wrapped up.  *I'm going to do my best here to not have any spoilers, so this might get a bit vague*  The question "what really happened the night of the murders" was answered, so that's always good in a murder mystery.  However, the answer didn't feel earned.  The whole book is about Libby and this group of murder-enthusiasts investigating what really happened that night 25 years ago.  I was expecting the solution to be something that was discovered during research or when interviewing people from the past.  But instead, it felt like pure dumb luck.  They were on the right path, but just cut the line and wrapped the book up real quick.  It honestly felt like there were about 5-7 chapters missing that would have solidified the solution for what happened that night.  It sort of felt like they just threw a dart at list of suspects, went to visit that suspect, and it just so happens that they had all the answers!  How convenient.  I think the actual solution was fine, I just wish the journey there was a bit more developed at the end.

As a final note, as I've been writing up this review a few months after finishing the book, I realized there was an undercurrent through most of the novel.  There were multiple situations that had the reader and characters asking what something being 'the truth' really meant.  Libby testified that her brother was the one who killed their family and for most people, testifying in court would mean that is the truth.  However, the group of amateur murder investigators are sure that Libby's truth isn't correct, that her brother is innocent.  For a long time, Libby holds on to the argument that they weren't there, she was, and she saw what she saw.  But slowly, as more evidence is gathered, she starts to question what she has held on to years as 'the truth'.  A similar thread runs between Ben and their mother.  Ben gets into a situation at school and a rumor is started in the town.  Ben knows the truth of what happened, but his mother is being bombarded with townspeople telling her that the rumor is the truth.  I think this overall theme of what it means when something is 'true' and how those of us who weren't there can either dismiss or hold on to what we believe happened is a really powerful message.

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

Another win from Gillian Flynn.  Damaged, unreliable narrator hunting down the truth to what happened to her family.  Told with flashbacks and alternating points of view. Overall a good murder investigation that really digs into what finding 'the truth' really means. 

Apparently, this was made into a movie in 2015 staring Charlize Theron.

349 pages