CBR4 Review 2: Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich

If you've never read one of the 18 Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich, here's a quick primer. Stephanie is a really bad bounty hunter working for her sleazy cousin Vinny's bail bonds company in the suburbs of Trenton, NJ. In every book, the following things happen:
Stephanie eats a lot of junk food: donuts, fried chicken, pineapple upside-down cake, meatball subs, and pizza.
Stephanie does very little exercising.
Stephanie's car blows up.
Stephanie takes her Grandma Mazur to a wake at the local funeral home to try and figure out a mystery she has somehow stumbled across.
Stephanie's friend Lula (former prostitute, plus-sized, and super confident) shoots someone and there are no repercussions.
Stephanie must try to choose between the two beautiful men in her life: Handsome cop Joe (who wants to settle down and have a family) and mysterious and dangerous Ranger (who wants no strings attached).

All of these things happen in book 18. In addition, Lula falls under the spell of a love potion gone wrong, Ranger and Joe get into a mysterious brawl in Hawaii, Stephanie's mortal enemy Joyce Barnhardt is presumed dead, and someone (actually, many people) are trying to kill Stephanie because of a strange picture that somehow ended up in her bag on an airplane.

I know these books are formulaic and that the plots repeat themselves over and over again...and yet, I always look forward to reading the next installment. I enjoy peeking into Stephanie's life and seeing what outrageous (and completely implausible) situation she and her friends have gotten themselves into. Evanovich has created a ridiculous little world filled with equally ridiculous characters, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Looking forward to book 19. And no, I won't be seeing the upcoming Katherine Heigl movie...it just doesn't look right to me (although kudos for casting Debbie Reynolds as Grandma and Sherri Shephard as Lula). Maybe on Netflix.

Bronwyn's CBR4 Review 2: Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume

I just read Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great and it was about a girl named Sheila and she is afraid of lots of things. She doesn't want to admit it to her friends, or to herself.

She and her family move to Tarrytown, New York from New York City for the summer and there is a dog who lives at their rented house, and Sheila is definitely afraid of dogs. She has to learn to swim and she doesn't like that either.

My favorite part is when she swam all the way to 12 feet and then fell asleep!

She finally learns how to tell the truth and admit things, thanks to her new friends. Especially her best friend, Mouse.

CBR4 Review 1: American Vampire by Scott Snyder, Stephen King and Rafael Albuquereque

As a devoted Stephen King fan, I was happy to stumble upon the Comixology app for my iPad recently, where there was a sale on the first volume of American Vampire books. American Vampire is in fact made up of two stories -- one that takes place in the 1920s in Los Angeles (written by Snyder and illustrated by Albuquereque), and the other in the Old West (written by King and illustrated by Albuquereque) -- with one common character, Skinner Sweet.

Snyder's story is that of Pearl, a young woman in LA trying to be an actress but barely making ends meet. She meets a nice man named Henry and is invited to a Hollywood party...which isn't what it seems. At the party she is brutally attacked by a group of ancient, European vampires and left for dead in the desert covered in blood and bite marks. When she wakes up she finds herself with a man she recognizes -- Skinner Sweet. He tells her that she is now a vampire, but not the kind that attacked her last night. She's a new kind of vampire...more powerful than the old Europeans can imagine.

King's story also tells the tale of Skinner Sweet in the late 1800s. Sweet is an old west outlaw who has a run in with a vampire (one of the very same who attack Pearl) in the desert. Sweet is buried and drowned and yet he still survives -- stronger and more evolved than any vampire before him.

Although I'm a life-long King fan, I preferred the story from Scott Snyder -- Pearl's struggle with what she had become was the real page turner for me.

The books are beautifully drawn and look great on the iPad -- I'm sure I'll be buying additional volumes in the future.

Bronwyn's CBR4 Review 1: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, retold by Gaby Goldsack

I read The Wizard of Oz and it was about a girl named Dorothy and her dog, Toto. I really like this book! The book came with a ruby slippers necklace, and I like that, too.

Its called The Wizard of Oz because it is about the wizard who lives in Oz and this is how the story goes:

She gets in this little world and meets friends, but plans to see the wicked wizard! How is she going to get home? Her friends are Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion. She gets home by tapping her shoes 3 times and automatically, she is home! The Wicked Witch of the West tries to stop her, but she dies because Dorothy throws some water on her.

The end.

Books, books, books

I really enjoyed the challenge of reading and reviewing 52 books in 2011 (for charity, no less), and am going to attempt the same this year.

As an added treat, my 7 year-old Bronwyn will be reading and reviewing along with me! She is even more excited about it than I am, and mom is very proud.

CR Review #52: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Every year after Thanksgiving, we pull out all of the Christmas DVDs we've accumulated over the years for the kids to watch. And we find that we have a good number of variations on A Christmas Carol -- Mickey Mouse, The Muppets, Looney Tunes (no, not recommended), and my personal favorite, Mister Magoo. This year, my 7 year-old (soon to be seen reviewing books for the CBR-IV!) had lots and lots of questions about Ebeneezer Scrooge while watching Mister Magoo work his way through Dickens' story. And I found that I didn't have lots of answers for her, as my Scrooge knowledge was completely based off of movies and cartoons, as I had never read the story. So I ran to my kindle and downloaded in post-haste, and am so glad I did.

By now, most of us know the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge and his love of money and hatred for all things Christmas related, so it wasn't the story that was such a delight for me. What made me enjoy the story more than I expected was the writing and the language, plain and simple. The words and language used by Dickens were never less than enjoyable, and in some cases, worth reading over and over.

And now, I can answer my kids' questions...
Was Scrooge an orphan? No.
Why was he alone at school? Why didn't his parents pick him up? According to his sister, their father was just plain mean.
How many children did the Cratchits have? Well, I'm still not completely clear on this one...at least 5...maybe more.
What was the deal with those people who stole Scrooge's bed curtains? They might as well have been graverobbers, they were so disgusting.
Did they really eat razzleberry dressing and woofle jelly cake? No, only in Mister Magoo's story.

Anyway, that's review #52 for me -- a full cannonball. So glad I did this and am looking forward to next year!

CR Review #51: Crossed by Ally Condie

Earlier this year, I read Matched, the first in a trilogy of books about a future society where marriage is arranged by "society" and in the instance of Cassia, who is matched with her life-long BFF Xander, a rare mistake is made in her match. Cassia is mistakenly matched with another boy she knows, Ky Markham, but the mistake is corrected and she is matched with Xander. Cassia should be happy, but of course instead, she falls in love with Ky. And at the end of the story (SPOILER), when Ky is taken away from Cassia by society and she decides to risk everything -- her family, her match with Xander, and her status as a citizen -- to find him.

I didn't love Matched, but didn't think it was a terrible story. I assumed I would feel the same way about Crossed, but boy, was I wrong. I could barely get to the end of Crossed, and really, could have cared less what happened to any of the characters (except for young Eli) by the end.

In Crossed, the narration alternates between Ky and Cassia. Every tedious chapter details how they are trying to survive, how much they love each other, and how hard they'll try to be together again. Ky's chapters also talk about how XANDER HAS A SECRET and how he doesn't trust the society rebels who call themselves THE RISING and are led by the mysterious PILOT. Cassia's chapters talk about how much she wants to be a part of THE RISING and can't wait to join them with Ky (who, according to Cassia's new friend, just might be the Pilot).

Its no surprise that Ky and Cassia and their rag-tag group of travelers meet up about halfway through the book, and then they talk and talk and talk and talk about THE RISING and whether or not they should try and join up with them. And Ky and Indie (Cassia's new friend) talk about XANDER'S SECRET.

By the time the end came along and they made their final decision regarding joining THE RISING, I had lost complete and total interest. Honestly, this book could have been condensed into about 10 pages of information about society and the rebels, and used as an introduction to the next book, and we would be no worse off.

I can't say I'll be picking up the next installment.

CR Reviews #47 - 50: Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, Fourth Comings and Perfect Fifths by Megan McCafferty

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of reading Sloppy Firsts , the first of five books about Jessica Darling. I really enjoyed her humor and sarcasm, and her true-to-life friends and other acquaintances. I liked the doubt that Jessica had about herself, and the realistic high school scenarios painted by McCafferty. I immediately emailed my library and put the other four books on hold.

I just finished reading the remaining books (all in a row), and while none of them were as good as the first, and some were better than others, I'm glad that I stuck with it to find out what happens to Jessica (and, to a lesser extent, to Marcus and the rest of the characters).

Quick overviews, and of course, lots and lots of spoilers:

Second Helpings takes place in Jessica's senior year of high school. She's still pining for Marcus Flutie, but he doesn't seem to be reciprocating, so Jessica dates his best friend, Len. Handsome and smart, Len should be everything Jessica is looking for in a boyfriend, but he just isn't as interesting as Marcus, and he simply can't compare. After a while, Len tires of being "second best" and dumps Jessica (on Valentines Day, no less), leaving Jessica to wallow in her Marcus misery. However, all is righted when on prom night Marcus proves his love for Jessica, leaving us to hope that they live happily ever after. Other tidbits: Best friend Hope is still living in TN, neighbor Bridget is now dating Jessica's french buddy Percy, Jessica is led to apply to Columbia by her former crush Paul, and both Jessica and Marcus spend time with her grandmother Gladdie.

Charmed Thirds begins halfway through Jessica's freshman year at Columbia. Struggling to keep a long-distance relationship with Marcus going while she is in NYC and he is in CA (attending a buddhist college of some sort), Jessica begins to doubt whether she and Marcus should be together. They eventually break up (or do they? she doesn't really know) and she begins to date classmate Kieran (when she should definitely know better). Jessica graduates a semester early, and when she is about to embark on a road trip with best friend Hope, Marcus pops back into her life, ready to start over.

In Fourth Comings, Jessica and Hope are living in Brooklyn while Marcus is about to start his freshman year at Princeton. Jessica doesn't want to be the girlfriend of a college freshman and decides to break up with him, but Marcus thinks that instead of breaking up they should get married. He gives her a week to think about it, and in that week she writes and writes about their lives and relationships, trying to make the right decision for their future. My least favorite of the books, as the insecurities and doubts that Jessica has that once made her seem so charming now make her seem selfish and a bit annoying.

Lastly, in Perfect Fifths, Jessica and Marcus randomly run into each other after years apart. They spend 24 hours together and talk about what happened between them and how things went wrong. Almost written entirely in dialogue, I enjoyed this one for the most part, but did miss the interactions with the supporting characters. However, the introduction of supporting character Mr Barry Manilow almost made up for the lack of others in this one. Nicely tied up all the loose ends for most of the characters in the five books and once again made the characters likeable for me.

In short: while these four books don't live up to the standards of the first, the second and fifth almost make up for the weaknesses of the third and fourth. Definitely worth reading if you like your main characters filled with snark (although, sometimes too much snark) and you like Barry Manilow and 80s references.

CR Review #45 & 46: Please Ignore Vera Dietz and Sloppy Firsts

I'm slowly finishing up the reviews of the books I had piled up over the past few months. And while I don't think I'm going to make it to a full Cannonball of 52 books, I outdid the original half-Cannonball that I pledged, so I feel good about things.

I recently read two great stories (both considered YA, but really, they could relate to anyone), both with two strong female characters: Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King and Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty.

Vera Dietz is a high school senior who also works a full-time job as a pizza delivery driver. She lives with her dad (her mom left them years before) and is still grieving the death of her best friend Charlie, who died earlier that year. Before Charlie's death, they had severed ties and he had gone to make new, questionable friends and do things that were out of character.

Only Vera knows the truth about what happened the night that Charlie died, but Vera is not ready emotionally to talk about it to anyone -- her father, the police, etc. And until then, she is constantly haunted by thousands of images of Charlie, which scares her but also gives her a bit of comfort.

I really liked Vera as a character -- she was smart and funny and full of delicious sarcasm -- and I could barely put the book down.

I also really enjoyed Sloppy Firsts, the story of Jessica Darling. Jessica starts the story as a high school junior, upset that her best friend Hope has recently moved away due to the horrible death of her brother. Jessica feels alone -- she doesn't really like her friends, she doesn't think her parents like her, she isn't interested in Scotty (the boy who likes her). It isn't until she meets Marcus, the school stoner and notorious ladies man, that she seems to feel anything at all.

I saw that there are 4 more Jessica Darling books and can't wait to tear through them. This was entertaining and breezy, but still filled with funny and realistic scenarios from high school (of course her high school crush turned out to be gay -- didn't everyone's?).

Definitely recommend both books.

Weekend Away

Home from an extended weekend in Boston -- the first time all five of us have flown at the same time. Not as bad as I had feared, our kids knew what to do and how to behave, which was a relief. The other kids on the plane, well, that's another story. One kid on there was the absolute worst behaved I have seen in a while, and his mother was clearly to blame. I try not to point fingers in cases like this, but there was no doubt that the mother was at times ignoring and at other time encouraging his behavior. Screamed for the whole flight at 7am on a Saturday morning. Not a great way to start the weekend.

And then B and I both came down with strep throat, which we didn't get diagnosed until we landed on Monday. I felt so bad for her, she tried so hard to have a good time with uncle Doug :(. Here's hoping the rest of the family escapes the wicked strep!

CR Review #42 - 44: Blood Wounds, Before I Go To Sleep, Austenland

#42 Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer

A few years ago, I came upon the Life As We Knew It trilogy of books by Pfeffer -- the story of what happens in various parts of the country when the Moon is suddenly thrown off course and comes much closer to earth. I thought the first book was great (seriously, how is this not a movie?), the second book was interesting, and the third book was actually pretty “meh”. Still, I went into Blood Wounds optimistically, hoping for the best. Too bad.

Blood Wounds tells the story of Willa, who lives with her mom, perfect step-father, and spoiled, over-achieving step-sisters. One day she finds out that her estranged father has murdered his wife and the three daughters that Willa knew nothing about, and that he was potentially on his way for Willa and her mom.

The story starts out well enough, but really, ends up being about how terrible it is to repress your feelings. Willa is a cutter BECAUSE SHE CAN’T TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT ANYTHING. Ugh.

Not recommended, especially if you liked the “Moon” trilogy.

#43 Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson

I had heard a lot about this book before I got it from the library waiting list. I keep seeing it pop up on Top-10 lists for 2011 and was quite excited about it.

Before I Go To Sleep tells the story of Christine, a woman with absolutely no memory of anything that has happened to her in the past 20 years. She wakes up every day as a “blank slate” -- she doesn’t know where she is, she doesn’t know who is lying in bed next to her, she doesn’t understand why the reflection in the mirror is of a woman who is in her late 40s.

And every day, Christine’s husband must explain to her that she was in a terrible accident that caused her to lose her memory.

At the urging of her therapist, Christine begins to keep a journal, to help her put her day-to-day life in order. And as she writes -- and reads over what she has previously written -- she finds herself starting to piece her life story together, realizing that many secrets are being kept from her and many lies being told to her.

The book and the mysteries within start off strong -- but I found that by the end I was really disinterested. I was really hoping the book would be as mysterious and exciting as Memento (the only other amnesia mystery I can think of), but it didn’t quite pull it off.

#44 Austenland by Shannon Hale
Jane Hayes is a 30-something New Yorker who finds that no man in her life can compare with Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy. Her wealthy great aunt thinks Jane needs to get over her obsession and sends her on a three week vacation to Pembrook Park -- a British estate where guests (along with hired actors) must dress and act as if they are in Jane Austen’s era.

If you can get past the absolute ridiculous plot set up, the book isn’t terrible. I knew exactly what would happen to Jane at the end of her three weeks, but it was a fluffy and enjoyable story that was written fairly well. Not literature at all, but a nice way to pass the time for less than $3 on Kindle.

CR Review #39 - 41: The House at Riverton, Where She Went, Blood Red Road

#39 The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of reading The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (see my review here). I loved Morton’s language and her ability to weave past and present storylines together, blending to create a beautiful story and surprising mystery. And I’m a sucker for a long book.

I “liked” The House at Riverton, but didn’t love it. The wonderful writing and clever story were still there, but I just didn’t feel the same connection to the characters. Riverton tells the story of Grace, a young girl who is sent by her sick mother to work at the Riverton estate in the years before WWI. Grace becomes obsessed with the family that lives there -- Lord Ashbury and his extended family, in particular the grandchildren David, Emmeline, and Hannah.

The story switches between the past (as Grace spends time at the house, and eventually becomes maid and confidant to Hannah), and the present, where a 98 year old Grace helps a young film director who is making a movie about a scandal and murder that happened at Riverton (and that Grace happened to witness).

While I enjoyed the detail of the “Upstairs/Downstairs” life at Riverton, I just didn’t care all that much for Grace and the choices she made. Still, Morton is a talent, and I’ll definitely be adding The Forgotten Garden to my list for Cannonball 2012.

#40 Where She Went by Gayle Forman

I also recently read If I Stay, the heartbreaking story of Mia, the young girl who loses her entire family in a car accident and then must decide to die with them or to stay and live with her grandparents and her boyfriend, Adam (read my review here).

Where She Went takes place three years later, and is told from Adam’s perspective, which is a nice change of pace. It seems that since Mia woke from her coma, she went of to Juilliard to become a star cellist, and then just stopped talking to Adam, more of less breaking up with him.

Adam is now a huge rock star, with a movie star girlfriend, but he is still hung up on Mia. One day in New York, Adam is on a layover, on his way to London for a world tour, when he sees that Mia has a concert that night. He gets a ticket and stops backstage to see her...and then they spend the night walking the city and talking. Both are looking for closure to their relationship but are afraid to really open up to each other.

My one issue with this book was that I didn’t like the character of Mia AT ALL this time around, and could not wrap my head around the fact that Adam would drop everything for a high school girlfriend that he hadn’t heard from in almost three years. But still, a nice bookend to the original, and glad to have another point of view to the story.

#41 Blood Red Road by Moira Young

I recently read a review of Blood Red Road here on the Cannonball site, and for some reason, it stuck in my mind. When I saw it at the library, I picked it up and stuck it in my bag, and then sort of forgot about it. A week later, it was poking out of my library bag and I decided to give it a read -- and I’m quite glad I did.

Like many dystopian future YA stories, Blood Red Road is the story of a young girl (Saba) who must fight against evil to hold on to what little she has. Her life is changed in an instant, when men cloaked in black come riding onto her farm and proceed to kill her father and kidnap her twin brother Lugh before riding off. Saba swears that she will come after him...but what will she do with her annoying 8 year old sister, Emmi?

Saba and Emmi travel across desert and mountain, meeting new and dangerous people along the way, and forging a small army of warriors who want to fight along with her to destroy the people who took Lugh away.

Many of the reviews that I’ve read of this book spend a lot of time complaining about the language and style of writing used by Young. Saba speaks in a strange English dialect that is a bit odd at first, but easy enough to get used to (much easier than reading an Irvine Welsh novel -- at least you don’t need a glossary!), and the text doesn’t have any quotation marks to spell out who is speaking. I think this is a minor issue and actually works well with the particular story. If nobody from Saba’s time even knows how to read or write, then to me, the language fits.

Supposedly, this is the first in a proposed trilogy (shock!). I”ll be sure to pick up the next one to see what happens to Saba and her crew.

CR Review #38: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

First things first, I'm a huge Stephen King fan. I've read every single one of his books (except for maybe Danse Macabre) and as many of his short stories as I could get my hands on. I love figuring out how threads of his stories link to other stories (most of which link to the Dark Tower series, which I adore). I first read The Shining when I was in 8th grade (and my mom even got it out of the library for me) -- it scared me to death, and I loved it. When I read the Stand a few weeks later, I was so scared I couldn't sleep for days. And then I read it again as soon as I finished it. And over the next few decades, I devoured them all. Even the forgettable ones with weak endings (hello, Lisey's Story)...and it seemed like lots of recent ones have had endings that have disappointed lots of fans (Under the Dome was a great story and idea, but the ending didn't quite hold up to the first 700 pages. And don't even mention the end of The Dark Tower to most fans).

I'm very happy to report that while 11/22/63 isn't perfect, it is definitely more like Stephen King of old -- a huge story with richly drawn characters, and a chilling and fitting ending that works ideally (I guess we have the wonderful Joe Hill to thank for that, as Mr. King thanks his equally talented son in the afterword for helping him to correct the ending. If you haven't read 20th Century Ghosts yet, run out and get it right now. It is awesome.).

11/22/63 tells the story of Jake, a high school teacher in Maine (surprise!) who ends up traveling through a "wormhole" in time to 1958, with the task of stopping the JFK assassination in 1963. Along the way from Maine to Texas and from 1958 to 1963, Jake changes a few other things -- he stops a man from killing his family, he prevents a young girl from becoming paralyzed, and he makes money by placing bets on sporting events that he already knows the outcome to. And then he gets to Texas, settles down, gets a job teaching at the local high school, and he falls in love with the town librarian. And all the while, he wonders about "the butterfly effect" that is always discussed in time travel stories -- how will the small things he changes in the past change the future?

Meanwhile, he studies and follows Lee Harvey Oswald from his arrival in Dallas after defecting back from Soviet Russia (with his beautiful wife and baby daughter in tow). Jake rents apartments near Oswald and even spies on him with tape recorders and binoculars. He decides that if he can prove that Oswald was the attempted assassin of General Edwin Walker -- an outspoken anti-communist (someone took a shot at him in his Dallas home in April 1963, but missed), then the odds were higher that he was, in fact, the sole shooter from the sixth floor of the book depository.

But if Jake stops Oswald, how will this change the future? If Kennedy lives, what happens next? Does the US still get involved in Vietnam? Does his brother Robert decide to run for president in the future? Does he live or die? What about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement? And what about the people that Jake helped along the way -- the family who lived because their father didn't kill them in a drunken rage in 1958? The girl in the wheelchair from rural Maine? And his beloved Sadie, the Texas librarian? Do they fare better or worse in the new version of the future?

King also includes some sly references to past works -- some of the kids from It appear at the beginning of the book, the Yellow Card Man (I'm guessing he's a "breaker" or something like it), and of course the town of Derry, Maine. And my absolute favorite reference: to Dwight Holly, the fictional FBI agent from James Ellroy's American Tabloid trilogy. American Tabloid is one of my all-time favorite books (Note to self for 2012 Cannonball Read: re-read and review American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover).

Glad to see King back in his groove.

CR Review #35 - #37: Some so-so books I got on Kindle for less than $2

Ever since I got my iPad, I've been reading a lot more Kindle books than I did with my actual Kindle. I think I just like the option of being able to do other things in between chapters (check email, look over my to-do list, etc.). So I've been reading books that are free or in the $1.99 range...one OK (Glimpse), one forgettable (Bridesmaid Lotto), and one terrible (Slim to None).

****

Glimpse, by Stacey Wallace Benefiel, is the first in a trilogy (of course!). It tells the story of Zellie, a teenager in Oregon. She is the pastor's daughter, has an annoying little sister and a terrific best friend, and a curious ability to tell when and how people are going to die. It turns out that she has a hereditary power, passed on to the first born daughter of each generation, as her mother sort of explains. At her sweet 16 party, Zellie gets to dance with the boy she is in love with, Avery, and she has a vision of them together in the future -- she is pregnant and covered in blood, and he is lying in the middle of the road, dying.

With the help of her grandmother and aunt, Zellie learns to make sense of her new abilities (and finds that she can do even more than she knew), and make sense of her vision of Avery, and how she might be able to prevent it.

Not a bad read, but honestly, I probably won't follow up with the next two installments unless they are put into the same price range (not dying to find out what happens for $9.99).

****

Bridesmaid Lotto, by Rachel Astor, is also the first in a series of stories. I've read a lot of stupid "chick lit" stories over the years, and this one has to have the most ridiculous plot ever. Josie wins a contest (entered by her mother) to be a bridesmaid for a socialite who is marrying a man who's brother happens to be the biggest movie star in the country. While there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Josie and the movie star will fall in love Notting Hill-style, the writing isn't awful and the characters are mostly well formed (I liked her flamboyant friend Mattie), so it wasn't completely painful. You could do worse for a $0.99 Kindle book.

****

Slim to None, by Jenny Gardiner, was the worst of the bunch. The story of a NYC food writer who wakes up one day to discover that she is too fat to continue her job. Her boss puts her on leave for 6 months to lose weight and get her life in order. Meanwhile, her husband who loves her no matter what wants to have a baby, she discovers that she has a secret bunch of half-sisters, her dog almost dies, and she becomes best friends with a homeless man who is actually a multi-millioinaire. And of course, she loses tons of weight and finds true happiness.

Terrible, across the board. Poorly written, terribly edited, and such a bad story, I don't even want to give it another second's thought.

CR Review #34: What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

So, so, so far behind on my reviews. I'm having trouble even remembering what some of the books were about...but when I looked at the cover of this one, my memory was jostled and it all came back to me.

What Happened to Goodbye is the story of McLean (hey, that's the town I live in!), a senior in high school who lives with her father after her mother's affair and her parents' messy and very public divorce. Her dad has a weird job as a restaurant consultant, and he moves from town to town constantly, leaving McLean to constantly have to start over socially. As she goes from school to school and town to town, she reinvents herself, creating new personalities that fit with each situation (and new names, too, usually variations of her middle name, Elizabeth).

Until she gets to her new town, and by accident she is just known as McLean, and she begins to discover her true self -- A basketball loving girl who takes care of her dad and ostracizes her mom. She meets new friends and a potential boyfriend (the boy next door, of course), and gets involved with the community while working on a big project at her dad's new restaurant.

I've never read any of Dessen's other YA novels, but might give them a chance (if anyone can recommend a good follow-up, please let me know). Her writing is honest and fun, with likable, real characters and dialogue.

CR Review #33: Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

Maine is the story of three generations of Boston-Irish women. They live in the Boston suburbs, they summer in Southern Maine, they struggle with their Catholicism, and they drink. As a Boston-born Irish girl (who often spent the summers in the exact same neighborhood as they do in the book), I thought I'd pick it up and see if it rang true.

The Kelleher family is a typical, fictional Boston Irish family. Lots of drinking, lots of repressed emotions, lots of reliance on Catholicism, and tons of secrets. Alice is the matriarch of the family, a widow who likes to drink and doesn't hold her tongue. She goes to mass every morning, and resents her late husband for the family he left her with that she doesn't particularly want. Kathleen is one of Alice's daughters, a recovering alcoholic, divorced and living a new life (that her family doesn't try to understand) out in California. Maggie is Kathleen's daughter, a young writer living in New York who finds herself pregnant and suddenly single. And Ann-Marie is Alice's daughter-in-law, a Martha Stewart-esque housewife, always striving to look perfect on the outside (while hiding lots of imperfections on the inside, of course).

The book switches narrators with every chapter, and more or less reads like a soap opera. But that's ok -- I'm pretty sure this was released and advertised as a "summer beach read", which is exactly what it should be. Lots of gossip and family secrets are brought out and the family learns how to live with and without each other.

Of particular interest to me was the focus the book made on the terrible fire at the Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston in the 1940s, after a BC/Holy Cross football game, where hundreds of young people were killed. Growing up in Boston, we always heard stories from our older aunts and uncles about the fire and how it affected every family they knew.

If you are looking for a gossipy, quick read, then by all means, give Maine a try. Maybe next summer I'll pick up one of her other books for a light beach read.

CR Review #32: Mile 81 by Stephen King

I am way behind in my reviews, so I thought I'd do a quick one for this "Kindle Single" short story by Stephen King.

I'm a huge King fan, and I downloaded this story two weeks ago, just as I was on my way to see him speak over at George Mason University, where he received an award. As I assumed, he has a terrific public presence -- he is a gifted and easy speaker, very much full of humor and humanity. He spoke for about an hour, and even did a quick reading from his in-the-works novel "Dr. Sleep", a sort-of sequel to The Shining, with Danny Torrence as the main character. The bit that he read was about soul-sucking vampires who drive around the country in big RVs, going from town to town on the highways. You can see part of that reading here.

While I was waiting for King to come out on stage, I started reading Mile 81 (and almost finished it, as it was only about a 30 minute read). Mile 81 is the story of a mysterious car that stops over in a deserted, closed rest area on a busy Maine highway. And the mysterious car starts doing horrible, other-wordly things (readers of books like From a Buick 8, Hearts in Atlantis, or the Dark Tower books will see a tie between this story and the "low men" described in those books). And in true King fashion, only the children are clever enough to figure out what to do, as the adults around the die grisly deaths.

Totally worth the $2.99 paid to Kindle for reading this -- always a good sign when King's stories make you wish they were longer (instead of the huge, long books that sometimes --ahem, Under the Dome -- go on too long).

CR Review #31: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I have a thing for pop culture and trivia. I love having useless bits of information stored away in my brain, ready to be suddenly useful at a moment's notice. I even used my knowledge to get on Jeopardy (and *humblebrag* win a few times). But then I had three kids, and didn't find my ability to instantly name all 8 Bradford kids on Eight is Enough quite so useful. But it did help me to keep up when watching shows with clever dialogue like Veronica Mars or The Gilmore Girls (watched all 7 seasons in a row on dvd in the middle of the night when kid #3 was a newborn), or reading books like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and getting more references than anyone else in my book club (actually, not much of an accomplishment). So it was with great joy that I stumbled upon Ready Player One at the library recently, and am here to tell all of you pop culture children of the 80s, that this is a book you must run out and read RIGHT NOW.

Ready Player One is the story of Wade (avatar name Parzival), an overweight, nerdy teen living in the Oklahoma of the near future. The world now exists in two realms: the regular day-to-day world, and the online, virtual world of OASIS. OASIS is a game/online world that has taken the actual world by storm. Kids go to school in OASIS. People have jobs in OASIS. You can fall in love and get married in OASIS -- without ever actually meeting your spouse in real life. The creator of OASiS, a very Bill Gates/Steve Jobs-ian character named James Halliday, who died several years before the story takes place, created a contest, wherein users of OASIS could follow clues to recover three "keys", meet several challenges, and then become the new leader of OASIS and inherit Halliday's immense fortune.

Wade and a few of his online friends attempt to do just that, while outsmarting the government, virtual hackers, and millions of other gamers. Oh, and I didn't mention that Halliday was obsessed with the 1980s, so almost everything related to the contest refers to the tv, movies, music, and video games popular during that decade, as well as other popular Sci-Fi favorites like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and all things Joss Whedon. While I didn't play a whole lot of video games in the 80s or listen to the same kind of music as detailed in the book, I still got a laugh out of most of the references

Ernest Cline writes with an enjoyable, breezy, conversational style that immediately hooked me and and pulled me into his world. I'm pretty sure this is his first book, and I look forward to reading anything he may write in the future.

CR Review #30: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Kate Morton. And then I read a few engrossing reviews of The Distant Hours by various other Cannonballers, and now I can't imagine not reading everything that Kate Morton has ever written.

The Distant Hours is the story of Edie, who lives in 1990s London. She works in publishing, has just broken up with her live-in boyfriend, and needs someplace to live that fits her budget. One day, while Edie is visiting her parents, her mother receives a letter in the mail that was written in the 1940s but was in a lost bag of mail, recently recovered. The letter sends Edie's mother into hysterics, and sends her crying up to her bedroom. Over the coming weeks, Edie gets bits and pieces of information from her mother (who she is not particularly close to) about the letter and about her secretive past, including the amazing fact that during WWII, her mother (Meredith) was sent to live in a castle in the countryside with three mysterious sisters. It turns out that the castle in question was where Edie's favorite book was written, "The True History of the Mud Man".

Edie visits the castle and meets the sisters and becomes obsessed with finding out more about her mother's time there in the 1940s. Meanwhile, she moves back in with her parents and gets to know more about her mother and her past.

The book jumps from the 40s to the 90s with ease and we find out more about the castle, the sisters, and a mystery that binds them together with young Meredith (and how the mystery relates to the letter that Meredith receives in the 90s). The book is pretty long -- over 500 pages -- and honestly, I had no idea how the mystery was going to wrap up and was pleasantly surprised that it was something I hadn't even considered.

I loved Morton's writing style -- beautiful and gothic, with an extraordinary attention to the detail of the war era. I have already recommended this book to several of my "anglophile" friends, and just picked up another of Morton's books at the library.

CR Review #29: The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

A few weeks back, just when I was finishing up my original "half-cannonball", I put off writing a review for a book that I didn't like, in lieu of one that I enjoyed (thank you, Major Pettigrew!). I can't put it off any longer. I need to tell you about my dislike for The Unnamed.

The Unnamed is the story of a man named Tim, a busy lawyer in NYC with a big house in the suburbs and a doting wife named Jane. Tim suffers from a mysterious disease (so mysterious, it is indeed unnamed) that causes him to stop whatever he is doing and immediately start walking. It doesn't matter if he's in the middle of a trial, or asleep in his warm bed, or fighting with his wife or daughter. He just has to get up and walk until he falls down from exhaustion.

Tim and Jane try all kinds of doctors and treatments, but nothing works. After a few months, Tim usually stops walking and goes back to the remnants of his life. Jane tries to keep a backpack at the ready for him, so that whatever the elements Tim finds himself in, he'll survive (including a cell phone, so she can pick him up when he falls down tired).

After a few battles with his disease, things get worse for Tim and he simply takes off, leaving Jane and their daughter alone, thinking they are better off without him and his strange problems. And then Tim walks. And walks and walks and walks. And along the way, he loses his mind, some of his toes and fingers, and most of his previous identity.

The story of The Unnamed could have been a riveting one. But I just couldn't stand Joshua Ferris' writing style. He uses 20 words when 2 or 3 would do, not to be eloquent, but just to be clever. So annoying. A few years back, I had tried to read his debut novel, "And Then We Came to the End," about jobs in the crazy dot.com years (I had worked and been laid off from lots of those jobs, so I expected to enjoy this one), and couldn't even make it halfway through the book. His writing ruined the story for me -- his pretentiousness really was a turn off for me.

The one good thing about this book was that it was the first library book that I read on my kindle. So, yay for that.