The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt

You should read this book.  Seriously.  This book is freaking fantastic.  To be completely honest, I finished reading this book about 10 months ago and the only thing I can remember is how much I liked it.  This is the story of two brothers who are hired guns in the Wild West  and it is pretty much exactly what you think.  Lots of gun play, lots of tension, lots of horses.   What makes this story different, however, is that one of the brothers is having an internal conflict and is

My favorite part of this book is the amount of snarky-ness in it.  I grew up watching Clint Eastwood westerns and was really expecting this book to be that kind of dry, serious, very tense read.  However, there were more than a few times that I laughed out loud at a line or situation.  The humor did a good job of breaking the tension that slowly builds as the story progresses.  The relationship between the brothers is crafted tremendously well.  I usually have a fear when a story has two strong lead characters that it will be hard to follow or that I will have a problem being immersed in the story because the characters seem to be trying to one-up each other.  This was not the case in this story.  I found that each brother had a strong, but different personality.  One was definitely the protagonist of the story and I found that wonderfully helpful when it came to following the plot of the novel.  The two characters felt like brothers in the way they bantered and picked on each other and I found this aspect of the novel to be the most well-crafted.

The part of the book I liked the least is a bit difficult to explain without going into spoilers.  But, in general, there's a part in the book that delves into chemical science.  I just didn't find that aspect of the story at all believable.  Now, I didn't bother to do any research and investigate if that sort of technology would have actually been available back then so I can't say if it is factually inaccurate.  But what I can say is that it sort of abruptly appears in the story and I found that it didn't quite fit in the world that deWitt had created.  I feel like it fit in the plot alright.  I understood why it was there and there needed to be some sort of extra stuff revealed toward the end, but I'm not sure if the chemical stuff was the right choice.  

The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt

A fun, a-typical, Western full of adventure, gun play, and snark.

325 pages

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

Why yes, it has been over a year since I last updated this blog.  I did finish two books in that time (only two! My middle school self would be ashamed) but I never got around to updating this with the reviews.  So here’s the first one: Gone Girl.

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

I would like to point out, first, that I finished this book before the movie came out and, second, that I have not seen the movie.  I’ve been horribly disappointed so many times by movie adaptations of books that I have stopped going to see them.  It seems no matter how much I temper my expectations it just never seems to help and I regret wasting 10.00 and two hours of my time. 

                But I digress…

I would characterize Gone Girl as a mystery-thriller.  On the day of Amy and Nick Dunne’s 5^th anniversary, Amy goes missing.  From the state the house was left in, possibly abducted.  And, as all we TV crime drama watchers know, the husband is always the prime suspect.  As the investigation unfolds in the small town in Missouri, the reader sees the happy façade of a young couple slowly crack and crumble.  But, the question remains, where is Amy?

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It was a fast paced read for me and I couldn’t put it down.  It was just the book to get me back into wanting to read when I hadn’t touched a book in months.  The narrative switches point of view between Amy and Nick, which is a style I’ve always been a fan of.  In respect to this novel, I don’t think it would have been nearly as exciting as interesting if it wasn’t for the point of view changing.  The first half of the novel is set in the present in Nick’s chapters but in the past in Amy’s part.  The couple’s history is recounted through Amy’s chapters – from them meeting, falling in love, and their elegant life before moving to the Midwest.  When Amy’s story catches up with Nick’s in the present, about half way through, that’s where the twist in the plot occurs and the second half of the story is filled with tension as the reader follows the two parallel story lines.  The back and forth narrative structure really helps build this tension and keep the reader turning pages until the end.

The one thing I disliked about this novel was the ending.  Without going into too much detail (as this is a spoiler-free space) it felt like a deadline was approaching and Flynn needed to get the story wrapped up as quickly as possible.  In the last 20 pages or so, it felt like Flynn was getting all her little ducks in a row and then slapped a big bow on top and called it done.  I found it unsatisfying and felt like the ending didn’t do justice to the journey the characters had been on since page 1.  I would have preferred a sort of cliff hanger ending.  About 20 pages before the end there’s a huge plot event (this is real hard to describe without going into spoilers) and everything after that is just filler and lining the ducks up.  I would have preferred it if right after the big event, the story ended.  The relationships between all the characters in the novel are so complex and messy, it would have felt right to just leave the future up in the air and let the reader speculate.

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

A fast paced mystery thriller that will have you questioning how much you know about the people around you

415 pages

Divergent - Veronica Roth

First book of 2014 done within the first two weeks, a pretty good start to stay on track for the rest of the year.

This first book is Divergent by Veronica Roth, a dystopian novel about 16 year old Beatrice finding her place in the world.  In this world, society has been split into five different factions, each one with a core value that its people live by.  Each year, the 16 year olds of all factions decide what faction they will live with for their adult lives.  Some choose to stay in their home factions, while others choose a different path. 

One of the things I liked most about this book is the consistent dynamic between the different factions.  The five faction values are honesty, selflessness, bravery, intelligence, and peacefulness.  While the different factions live in different areas of the city, the children all go to school together until they reach 16 years old.  While in school, it seemed like the factions were more like cliques in the school.  However, once the teens chose which factions they would go with and the initiation began, the characters still stayed true, in one way or another, to their faction's belief system.  This made the many characters easier to distinguish from one another as well as give a sort of interpersonal hurdle for Beatrice to overcome.  While this is a dystopian novel and there are bigger problems in the world than just teenage drama, the tension between factions kept the book, for me, from getting too serious and kept it away from feeling like a long training montage portion of an action movie.  Also, it speaks to a deeper theme of the book that, no matter what your reasons are for leaving home, you always carry your past with you.  There were times in the book where Beatrice (who grew up in the selflessness faction) would have a gut reaction to a situation and would often say what she was feeling without thinking first and the other teens would make comments about how that is typical of someone from her faction to think that way.  And Beatrice makes those generalizations as well about other factions.  Overall, I found the faction basis of this world in this story to be interesting and was glad to see that it was, at later points in the book, used to further the plot and wasn't just used to insert clique drama into a dystopian world. 

Over all, I really enjoyed this book and it was a quick read.  However, I had a hard time moving past the point that this book felt extremely similar to the Hunger Games series.  I found myself drawing similarities between the two in the following ways:

1: Both are dystopian teen fiction set in a future United States
2: Both separate what is left of society into divisible sections with a clear explanation as to what each section of society is responsible for
3: Both feature a female protagonist who leaves her home and learns to fight
4: Both see the protagonist go from the underdog to the leader
5: Both have extensive use of technology that the protagonist has to fight against in order to survive

There were other similarities that jumped up in specific scenes, but the above five are the main ones that stuck with me and that I can mention without spoiling much.  This isn't to say that Divergent is just a copy of The Hunger Games, they discuss different themes and explore different aspects of their respective dystopian landscapes, but the similarities are there and they were just a little too distracting for my tastes.  And this could be because I just finished the second Hunger Games book about a month ago and haven't read anything in between.  I also thought maybe these are just the themes of the genre of dystopian fiction and this is a relatively new and trendy genre at the moment so it is getting a lot of attention.  I'm sure the same sort of general parallels could be drawn between two science fiction books or two detective fiction books.  It was just, for me, in this particular reading, the similarities were a bit distracting and took away from my immersion in the story.


Divergent - Veronica Roth

A fast paced, dystopian teen novel that holds your attention throughout the story.

487 pages

Rating: 4/5.  Everything I wanted from a dystopian teen novel with a few extra themes for thought that I didn't expect.

The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl - Belle de Jour

This book isn't exactly what you think it'll be.  I mean, it is the diary of a London call girl, detailing events in her personal and professional life.  But it is not erotica.  I'll admit, I thought this book was going to be along the same lines as 50 Shades of Gray, as in publicly acceptable erotic fiction with just enough plot to give it some backbone and keep it off the 'adult' shelves.  It soon became apparent that while there are explicit descriptions of equipment (both plastic and flesh) it was presented in a very factual way and wasn't overly, hardly at all actually, romanticized.  This makes sense, looking back on the premise of the book.  It is just a day at the office for Belle, so these encounters aren't particularly special.  The details get a little more steamy when it comes to her personal life, but still nothing too scandalous.  

This book is a memoir of an actual call girl who, from what I've gathered from Google, has moved on to being a full time author and speaker about sexy-time related topics.  While still working as a call girl, Belle started a blog and used it as a sort of diary, writing about her personal life, work life, and anything else that seemed worth writing about.  The blog was highly popular and a book deal was made.  There are six books in the series and the series has been made into a TV series that is actually how I heard about the books.  The series is pretty good, but they stepped up the sex content a bunch, which isn't surprising. 

Putting aside my initial confusion regarding the lack of steamy sex scenes I was expecting, I actually liked Intimate Adventures quite a lot.  I thought the characters were well done and I didn't have a hard time distinguishing between them, even though she would only use the first letter of their first name, which got confusing at times.  Belle was especially well developed, as can be expected.  There wasn't a whole lot of first person explanation of who she is as a person, which I liked.  The reader is pretty much just left to grab on to tidbits here and there about Belle's past and her personality.  Belle is sharp and funny and her voice is always present, even in the most mundane of circumstances.  The secondary characters aren't as well developed, but that's to be expected.  I think I just needed more scenes with them and Belle together to really get to know these other characters but I guess that's what books 2-6 are for.

At the beginning of the book, I thought that maybe I'd accidentally picked up the second book in the series because it seemed like I was missing some essential information.  There was missing back story to these characters and their relation to Belle, missing information that did eventually come through, but for about the first third of the book, every few entries, I was left with a feeling that I'd missed something important.  Also, I found the sparse diary entries a little off-putting.  I know that this is a memoir and mostly taken directly from Belle's original blog, but I wanted more.  There were times where there was a sudden shift in a relationship or some other big life event that I could tell happened in the time between entries, but that continuity issue never quite sat right.  I think my slight annoyance with this part is because I'm used to reading fiction where we would see whatever family drama unfold as it happens, or we would get a long, detailed diary entry.  Where as this memoir-diary style was very much dropping information into the readers' laps and then backing away and leaving the readers to put together these little puzzle pieces of information.  I'm not sure if this is just the way Belle writes or if she did it this way so as to not be super obvious about her identity.  In any case, it took some getting used to, but by about half way though, I was so wrapped up in the characters and developing relationships that the sparse diary entries stopped bothering me.

All my little nit picks aside, I thought this was a fun read.  It was something different than what I normally read, but I enjoyed trying something new.  It reads quick, is entertaining, and would be a perfect summer beach read.  I will be picking up the second book in the series for sure.

 The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl - Belle de Jour

Sexy summer beach read, a perfect guilty pleasure book.

288 pages

Rating: 3/5.  A bit lacking in plot , but fun nonetheless.

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Full disclosure right from the beginning: I didn't finish this one and I'm ashamed.  I haven't not finished a book in years.  Usually, if a book sounds good enough for me to start reading, I finish it.  This was not one of those books.  I tried to finish it because I've heard good things about this book, about the author, and it seemed right up my alley.  However, it just wasn't working out. 


Oryx and Crake is a dystopian fiction  set after the fall of civilization.  It opens on a boy called Snowman who is living in the woods like Tom Hanks in Castaway.  No real shelter, scrounging around for scraps of food, hasn't bathed in ages, that kind of stuff.  The story of this fall of civilization is told through the flashbacks of Snowman, in which Oryx and Crake both play significant roles.  Snowman's father works at some sort of bio-engineering lab where they are trying to grow human organs inside pigs for easy harvesting and transplant options.  Snowman and his family live in the lab's compound area in order to keep out impurities (of what kind, I'm not exactly sure).  Eventually, his dad gets a new job, they move to a new compound, and that is where I stopped reading. 

I've been trying to read this book for the past month, a few pages here, a few pages there, but it just wasn't able to hold my attention.  I didn't find anything endearing about Snowman or the fall of this society.  I think the flashbacks are what killed the book for me.  I generally don't like stories told like that unless there is action in both times.  However, most of the flashbacks started when Snowman was thinking about something and when the flashback scene was over, nothing is different about Snowman.  And in the scenes when we're with him, he doesn't do much except wander around his little camp area.  After this going on for a third of the book, I was done.  It took me a month to read about 100 pages and I just couldn't force myself to read any more.

On the upside of things, I think that Margaret Atwood is a terrific writer.   She has great descriptions and the world that she created in this book was very detailed and well thought out.  I think I really would have liked this book if it was told either as the civilization fell, or if we just got the aftermath part with Snowman trying to survive.  But the back and forth wasn't working for me.

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Give it a try, it didn't work for me, but I know lots of people who liked it.

376 pages

N/A rating for not finishing

I'm Back!

Hi everyone,
I know I've left you alone for a while, but I have a good excuse.  I've spent the last few months finishing up my college career, and as of this past Sunday, I'm a college graduate!  It was a rough few months, especially at the end, but now I have time to read!  For fun!  In any case, I'll pick out a new book to start reading either today or tomorrow, look for my pick on the shelfari shelf above, and there should be a new blog post within the week.  I have a fair number of books on my shelf that I've accumulated over the past four years of college that I haven't had the time to finish.  Excuses, excuses, I know.  But I promise, I'll be back for good now.

Happy reading!

Along for the Ride - Sarah Dessen

It’s been a while since I’ve read Sarah Dessen, although not by choice.  She is one of my all-time favorite authors and I haven’t found a book of hers that I haven’t loved.  And Along for the Ride is no exception.  What started out as a fairly predictable story line – the summer before college finding yourself story – ended up being so much deeper than I would have imagined.  Sure, I picked this book up because I wanted a good summer, young adult, romance kind of read.  But Dessen got me hooked on the characters and kept me turning the pages as fast as I was able to so I could see more.  An enticing story filled with heart wrenching twists and hopeful turns, Sarah Dessen doesn’t disappoint.

One of the things I liked most about this book was how none of the characters were perfect.  Usually, I’ve found, the protagonist’s love interest and/or best friend and/or sibling is held on a sort of pedestal as being flawless.  As always having the answers, having everything figured out, and they help the protagonist in their journey to find themselves.  Sure, the reader gets the same satisfaction of seeing the main character change as the story progresses, but it just isn’t the same as seeing two flawed people work things out together.  And frankly, the first option just isn’t realistic.  No human is perfect, and so no character should be perfect either.  I can admit that in Along for the Ride, Eli, the main character’s friend/love interest (no spoilers, this is obvious from the back cover) is flawed, but it shows less than Auden’s flaws.  Which is perfectly reasonable seeing as the story is told from Auden’s perspective and Eli is characterized as a quiet loner from the beginning.  So while we see more of Auden’s flaws because we’re in her head, my previous point stands because we see and get to know Eli with his flaws and problems and insecurities.  He’s real, she’s real, and that helps make this story more real.

While most of the characterization in the story was wonderfully done (none of the character’s blended together and I cared about the little side stories), I found the parents to be a little flat.  Auden’s mother, father, and step mother all felt like their story lines were there to remind the reader of Auden’s internal conflict.  She could be cold and kind of a bitch like her mother, she could settle down and start popping out kids like her step mother, or she could wrap herself up in her studies like her father.  I acknowledge that Auden’s parental relationships are directly tied to the flaws that make her so realistic, I just wanted to see a little less of them and more of Auden’s thoughts about them and what they’ve done with their lives.  Along for the Ride is set in that seemingly magical summer between high school and college and I think Auden comparing the different paths the adults in her life have taken could have been an interesting way to show more of her character.  Basically, the parents could have been used to further the character development of the protagonist but I feel like they’re more props that Dessen put into the story to give it some more action and emotion and it fell flat for me.

Role of the parents aside, I absolutely loved this book.  It was in the running as my favorite Sarah Dessen book, but This Lullaby still holds that title (which I highly recommend, by the way).  This is a smooth read with a satisfying ending.  There were parts where I held my breath, waiting for the resolution that I expected and then had to wait a little longer for Dessen to turn my expectations into something even better.  A fast read, an emotional read, a tender read, a must read.

Along for the Ride - Sarah Dessen

A must read, perfect for summer

383 pages

Rating: 4/5