The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins 3.5 / 5	Published 2015 First Sentence "She's buried beneath a silver birch tree, down towards the old train tracks, her grave marked with a cairn."
Publisher's Description: A debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people's lives. Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good? A compulsively readable, emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller that draws comparisons to Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, or Before I Go to Sleep, this is an electrifying debut embraced by readers across markets and categories.
Dear Reader, Augh, another too-hyped book that I found to be a letdown! I have to stop getting myself so excited for these books! Ninety-nine percent of the time, they don't live up to their accolades. (But at least there are those who do, and they often make up for the others.) Don't get me wrong - Troy can attest, I couldn't put this book down all weekend, nor could I stop talking about it. But! I felt like the "big reveal" was rather predictable much earlier on, and that the whole rest of the book was kind of...pointless. I didn't need to know that much about how everything wrapped up. I just needed to know the how & the why. I loved the premise of this book - hearing about it on a webinar last November, I was eager to pick it up, imagining a modern-day Rear Window (one of my favorite Jimmy Stewarts). And it started off with a ton of promise, as the reader got to know Rachel's sad life (and indulge in a little schadenfreude). We could understand the frustration & helplessness she felt (especially those of us who had been through that situation, in one form or another). We sympathized with the situation she found herself in, and could see why she would want to allow herself the escape of becoming a bit too nosy about the life of  another couple ("the perfect couple"). That she didn't know them at all just made it easier for her to invent perfection. So when things go downhill quickly for "Jess & Jason", it makes sense that Rachel feels a connection to them, a responsibility to help out where she can. I enjoyed how the book flipped between the narration of three women, all of whom were tied together through Rachel. Their unique voices helped shape the story, and seeing things from their perspectives really changed my sympathies and alignments as time went on. I was solidly pro-Rachel the whole book, but felt various amounts of sympathy for the other two. I think this book is great for those who enjoyed Gone Girl and Before I Go to Sleep and other similar thrillers; it certainly is engrossing and a great weekend read! I just...wasn't all that won over by it, in the end. Unfortunately! Yours, Arianna

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The Good House

The Good House Ann Leary 3 / 5	Published 2013 First Sentence "I can walk through a house once and know more about its occupants than a psychiatrist could after a year of sessions."
Publisher's Description: A riveting novel in which an engaging and wildly irreverent woman is in complete denial — about herself, her drinking, and her love for a man she's known all her life. The Good House tells the story of Hildy Good, who lives in a small town on Boston's North Shore. Hildy is a successful real-estate broker, good neighbor, mother, and grandmother. She's also a raging alcoholic. Hildy's family held an intervention for her about a year before this story takes place — "if they invite you over for dinner, and it's not a major holiday," she advises "run for your life" — and now she feels lonely and unjustly persecuted. She has also fooled herself into thinking that moderation is the key to her drinking problem. As if battling her demons wasn't enough to keep her busy, Hildy soon finds herself embroiled in the underbelly of her New England town, a craggy little place that harbors secrets. There's a scandal, some mysticism, babies, old houses, drinking, and desire — and a love story between two craggy sixty-somethings that's as real and sexy as you get.  An exceptional novel that is at turns hilarious and sobering, The Good House asks the question: What will it take to keep Hildy Good from drinking? For good.
Dear Reader, Okay -- is it REALLY that illegal to sleep with a former patient? One you only saw professionally like once before you become involved and thus didn’t treat anymore? Totally unethical, yes. Ugh because they were also both married. Risky to his professional career, yes. But - illegal? I don’t buy it as being such a big thing as they are making it out to be! (Okay, I have learned after doing some research that there are states (anywhere from 15-23 of them) which do have laws criminalizing sexual therapist-patient relationships, and I do get that - there is a vulnerability there which can certainly be taken advantage of - but again, if a person removes themselves from the doctor-patient relationship for that reason, is it then illegal? - of course, we know that the characters in this book could have done no such thing officially, since they were both married…) Anyway! What an odd thing for me to focus on, but I just kept not being able to get past that while reading. Apparently, I should have - it is in fact the reason the author even wrote the book: originally, it was the story of the illicit relationship, but evolved into being the story of a recovering alcoholic, and the reader then sees affair story through her eyes. In other news, I could not STAND Hildy. She and her daughters clearly hated each other 99% of the time. Why were they even in each other’s lives? And she was so self-righteous even when she was clearly in the wrong. And so entitled! Believing she deserved a real estate listing just because she’d known the seller for so long. Granted, okay, I did believed she deserved it too, because she was the only local agent, but...it was just annoying. How she almost threatened Peter over it! I really disliked her right then. Part of it must have been the narrator’s voice. She always sounded so freaking SMUG, about everything! I don’t think she read the book right. Plus, if she wasn’t smug, she sounded like she was just about to laugh with everything she said. I like that SOMEtimes. Not with every single sentence of the book! And let’s not get me started on how awful I thought her Frank voice was…! However, I can’t say I disliked this book, particularly because it was not about the character of the narrator so much as it was her story of recovery - and I understand that the author wrote her very much the way she did so that she could show the true nature of denial and pride that many alcoholics hide behind. So I did appreciate that aspect of the book, and why Hildy had such a grating personality. (I guess I just  couldn’t see why everyone in town seemed to like her, too, though! Maybe it was just her longevity in Wendover...) Oddly, this was the second novel I have read this year where the protagonist has to sort through the broken memories of an alcoholic blackout in order to remember whether a crime had been committed! One of the things I loved best about this book was the strong connection to witchcraft - in a not-fantastical way. As in, Hildy had ancestors who had been tried as witches in the Salem trials, and she felt as if she still had a bit of that nature in her own blood. She was able to “read people’s minds” (a parlor trick she was quite good at) and she called her pet dogs her “familiars,” which I found cute. There was a bit of that old New England feel about the whole town, which I felt connected to - I especially appreciated that it was a story which took place in the North Shore of Boston. It felt cozy and comfortable and familiar to me.  I’d recommend this to a book club, as I think readers will have much they want to discuss. I think it is the perfect book for a group, with all of its layers and subplots. While not a favorite, an enjoyable and well-written read. Yours, Arianna P.S. Until typing out that first sentence above, I hadn't recalled its portentousness!

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How to Grow Up: A Memoir

How to Grow Up: A Memoir Michelle Tea 3.5 / 5	Published January 27, 2015 First Sentence "I chose the apartment because of the persimmon tree outside the bedroom window."
Publisher's Description: A gutsy, wise memoir-in-essays from a writer praised as “impossible to put down” (People) As an aspiring young writer in San Francisco, Michelle Tea lived in a scuzzy communal house; she drank, smoked, snorted anything she got her hands on; she toiled for the minimum wage; and she dated men and women, and sometimes both at once. But between hangovers and dead-end jobs, she scrawled in notebooks and organized dive bar poetry readings, working to make her literary dreams real. In How to Grow Up, Tea shares her awkward stumble towards the life of a Bonafide Grown-Up: healthy, responsible, self-aware, stable. She writes about passion, about her fraught relationship with money, about adoring Barney’s while shopping at thrift stores, about breakups and the fertile ground between relationships, about roommates and rent, and about being superstitious (“why not, it imbues this harsh world of ours with a bit of magic.”)  At once heartwarming and darkly comic, How to Grow Upproves that the road less traveled may be a difficult one, but if you embrace life’s uncertainty and dust yourself off after every screw up, slowly but surely you just might make it to adulthood.
Dear Reader, I have long been a fan of Michelle Tea, which is why I picked this book up even though I don't tend to like memoirs. So, Tea's voice in this book balanced out a lot of my disinterest in learning "life lessons" from people. I found it to be, overall, a good read, although certainly nothing life-changing. Tea had a few great pieces of wisdom to impart, particularly (for me) in her chapter on "How to Break Up," advice I really could have used around the time I lived in Boston with a particularly loveless & selfish person. (Although knowing my neediness at that point, I probably would never have heeded it. - Which Michelle Tea also totally understands; she's like a wise & "been there" aunt.) I also really enjoyed "Beware of Sex and Other Rules for Love" (Tea makes herself quite a few ground rules following her "crazy sexual period" where she decides what she really wants in a partner she plans to share her life with). And I had to laugh at the first sentence of the "WWYMD?" chapter: "What would Young Michelle think of today's Michelle? -- Who cares? That Michelle was a jerk.") Tea doesn't take herself too seriously, and has learned to question the beliefs and ideals she once had, which I do appreciate. I also did enjoy how well the author was able to make a memoir - essentially, her collection of essays - flow into a pretty cohesive and overarching life story. However, I have to admit I was a little bored by other parts of the book, those that just didn't engage me. While I could relate to her adoption of the punk rock fashion and "lifestyle" in her teenage years, I wasn't all that interested in the story of when she achieved her lifelong goal of attending Paris Fashion Week, or purchasing a $900 leather jacket. I was interested in her rationalization for experiencing those things, and I understand that growing up with nothing and suddenly having money can make you see the world differently, but I had to say I cringed when she risked her job to do something that felt so...frivolous. Maybe she knows something I don't know, though. Besides, it is her life, her money, and her passion. So what if it isn't mine? That's okay. (And I actually think that is one of the things Tea tries to express in her book.) Tea's frank discussions about how she feels about not having gone to college, her recovery from drugs and alcohol, and her newly-established family life were all quite engaging, and I think the true meat of this book. It was what kept me reading, even through her chapters on affirmations (a 12-step concept), her take on Buddhism (kind of yawn), and her validations for getting Botox (blerg). And despite the wildly varying quality and quantity, each chapter did have something valuable to impart on the reader. Tea was able to learn from her life - both her mistakes and her triumphs - and has come out the stronger on the other side. Which is why I think she felt the need to write this, and why I think many will get something out of this. My three favorite quotes from this book? "...I was haunted by the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? I never wanted to be a nurse, or a truck driver. There was only one job in the whole world that I had ever heard of that sounded good to me: I wanted to be a librarian." ★ Not going to college does not mean you've opted out of educating yourself." [Nor does finishing school, at whatever level; you should always be choosing to learn & improve!] ★ "I try to make choices that will align with my highest beliefs. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't and in between I try not to have a panic attack over it." I'd suggest picking this book up if you need some inspiration, especially if you worry your life has maybe gone in the wrong direction. Michelle Tea's life has gone pretty much every direction possible, and yet by anyone's standards she is pretty darned successful. It reminds us all to reflect on our own lives more impartially, for some true perspective. Yours, Arianna P.S. While poking around online looking for an image from her wedding (beautiful couple), I stumbled across a photo of the jumpsuit she wears on the book jacket! -- http://elisashea.com/post/5781067153/michelle-tea-tap-dancing-on-her-birthday-at-her P.P.S. I am including the list of chapter titles here because I typed them all out as I read them in an effort to remember things, and I figured why not share them if the work has already been done? 1. You Deserve This 2. Fashion Victim 3. My $1,100 Birthday Apartment 4. I Have  Trust Fund from God--and So Do You! 5. Beware of Sex and Other Rules for Love 6. How to Break Up 7. Too Cool for School 8. The Baddest Buddhist 9. Getting Pregnant with Michelle Tea 10. Ask Not for Whom the Wedding Bell Tolls 11. You Can't Fire Me; I Quit 12. WWYMD: What Would Young Michelle Do? 13. Eat Me 14. I'm So Vain 15. Confessions of a Gym Rat P.P.P.S. I received this book as an ARC through the Penguin First-to-Read program.

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Fourth of July Creek

Fourth of July Creek Smith Henderson 4/5	Published 2014 First Sentence "The cop flicked his cigarette to the dirt-and-gravel road in front of the house, and touched back his hat over his hairline as the social worker drove up in a dusty Toyota Corolla."
Publisher's Description: In this shattering and iconic American novel, PEN prize-winning writer, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions. After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
Dear Reader, Want to know what a small town Social Workers life is like? This book will give you all the inside info! Corruption, alcoholism, welfare, mental instability, starvation, runaways, homelessness, drug abuse, sexual abuse, mental abuse, verbal abuse, and any other kind of abuse you could think of... this book has it. I don't mean to say that this book is trying to shock the reader, because everything inside is written very naturally, almost like you see glimpses of horribleness but with understanding behind it. The main character, Pete, isn't the type of Social Worker you would normally think of. He isn't that super sweet, perfectly normal, entirely helpful, the one who thinks there is a cure for every malady out there - even the emotional ones. He is hard, true and knows how to connect with these people. He relates to them, because you see, his life is pretty messed up as well. His wife and daughter have moved away and soon after his daughter ends up running away, completely disappearing. This happens while he has a giant stack of cases that need to be taken care of, some of them harder than others. It's a little like a train wreck, watching Pete try and sort out his own life while playing nice with the other families who are under his care. You feel terrible that he has so many people to look after that he can't even focus on his own life. One of the families has an abusive mother who is having trouble with her teenage son acting out. Another family consists of a wacked out father (total conspiracy theorist) who lives out in the woods with his son and doesn't trust anyone. You know these people exist, that all this is TRUE... somewhere... but I still found myself in disbelief quite a few times. I guess it might be because I don't want things like that to happen, I don't want people to treat others that way. The hard reality of life I suppose. I can't write this review and not mention the emotional pull I felt because of the subject matter. I have had to work very closely with DCF myself when my own family had troubles. I ended up cursing the worker because he'd constantly miss pick up times, give me the wrong information about meet ups, etc... After reading this, I guess I can understand the stress they have to go through and the amount of cases that come across their desks. It's a wonder they can keep anything straight.  I also can't write this review without mentioning how great the writing is. It pulls you in, I have to admit that I found myself plopped down in a town I would never image visiting. However, I need to caution those who pick up this book, there's quite a few ugly things happening and I don't know too many people who could read through it unscathed. I know this book gave me a few scars that I'll take with me, I know It'll make me think twice next time I see a family struggling. Happy Reading, AmberBug

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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands Chris Bohjalian 4.5 / 5	Published July 8, 2014 First Sentence "I built an igloo against the cold out of black plastic trash bags filled with wet leaves."
Publisher's Description: A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway, from the bestselling author ofMidwives and The Sandcastle Girls. Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless girl living in an igloo made of garbage bags in Burlington. Nearly a year ago, a power plant in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont had a meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault—was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to leave their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's house, inventing a new identity for herself, and befriending a young homeless kid named Cameron. But Emily can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever-and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.
Dear Reader, Despite my love for his other books, this might be my favorite Bohjalian book yet. I started reading it only a few days ago, and was worried I wouldn't finish it before its release date. But I ate it up! It was so engaging. (I picked up this ARC when attending the Connecticut Library Association's annual conference back in April. Chris Bohjalian spoke in front of a packed room, and I was lucky enough to snag one of two remaining galleys.) This book is the story of Emily, whose parents have supposedly caused a nuclear power plant's meltdown in her hometown. This means that not only is Emily suddenly orphaned, she is also left homeless, with nowhere to turn. On top of all this, and what might have been the most heart-wrenching part for me, Emily also worries that her dog has been abandoned, trapped in the family house, and is starving to death. Being a dog lover, this part especially hit home for me. However, as it is the story of a teenage girl from New England, it really was quite an easy story for me to relate to. Emily Shepard's life sounded much like my own, growing up. (Luckily, though, I did not have to deal with alcoholic parents!) Emily is a very strong, independent character, which I loved. She is constantly uncertain about her future, but manages to take care of herself - and later, also a nine-year-old boy. I use the term "take care of" loosely, as Emily resorts to many unsavory acts in order to survive the cold Burlington, VT winter. But she has such a personality! And despite her insecurities, she really does have a great sense of herself and engages in some wonderful self-reflection throughout the book. She is very self-aware, especially for a sixteen year old. Emily's idol is the poet Emily Dickinson, which I found a really interesting direction for the author to go, particularly since Dickinson is rather "dated" in the eyes of today's youth, I believe. But I like the way the main character was constantly comparing her life to the poet's, and in many ways trying to emulate her famous namesake. She went so far as to adopt the new name "Abby Bliss" when she needed to go incognito: this being the name of Dickinson's best friend. The whole setup worked really well. I wondered at times whether Bohjalian determined the name of his protagonist because of the poet, or whether he linked the poet up with his teenage hero only after she had already come to be. I don't want to give away too much, so I won't talk at length about what actually happens in the story. The book really does a great job at looking both forwards and backwards in time: Emily/Abby explains that she has trouble staying on track and not straying from her linear timeline.  I thought that was a great touch. Bohjalian definitely knows teen girls (although during his talk at the CLA, he mentioned how much he leaned on his own teenage daughter for help with voice and especially slang!), and I would equate his ease with the main character's voice to that of Wally Lamb. Both authors craft such real stories: you almost feel as if you know their characters personally. I will probably be recommending this book highly for the next few months, to anyone who will listen!  Haha. I would caution that it's maybe a little bit adult, as there is mention of drugs, prostitution, and self-mutilation, but a teenager with a good head on his or her shoulders should be fine with the content; there is very little that is explicit, as far as I can recall. Definitely check out this innovative & imaginative story - like me, you may spend half the time wondering what you would do if such a nightmare scenario happened in your hometown! Yours, Arianna

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Mother, Mother

Mother, Mother Koren Zailckas 3.5 / 5	Published 2013 First Sentence "Her face was the first thing William Hurst saw when he opened his eyes from his not-so-sweet dreams." Very appropriate author-selected epigraph:  "A family is a tyranny ruled over by its weakest member." --George Bernard Shaw
Publisher's Description: Josephine Hurst has her family under control. With two beautiful daughters, a brilliantly intelligent son, a tech-guru of a husband and a historical landmark home, her life is picture perfect. She has everything she wants; all she has to do is keep it that way. But living in this matriarch’s determinedly cheerful, yet subtly controlling domain hasn’t been easy for her family, and when her oldest daughter, Rose, runs off with a mysterious boyfriend, Josephine tightens her grip, gradually turning her flawless home into a darker sort of prison.  Resentful of her sister’s newfound freedom, Violet turns to eastern philosophy, hallucinogenic drugs, and extreme fasting, eventually landing herself in the psych ward. Meanwhile, her brother Will shrinks further into a world of self-doubt. Recently diagnosed with Aspergers and epilepsy, he’s separated from the other kids around town and is homeschooled to ensure his safety. Their father, Douglas, finds resolve in the bottom of the bottle—an addict craving his own chance to escape. Josephine struggles to maintain the family’s impeccable façade, but when a violent incident leads to a visit from child protective services, the truth about the Hursts might finally be revealed.
Dear Reader, Let me first admit that one of the reasons I finally HAD to read this book was so that I could stop getting that darn Meredith Baxter song stuck in my head for weeks straight every time I saw this book on my shelf!  Not that I don't love that song, but man is it catchy, and I couldn't shake it.  My poor boyfriend had to listen to me singing it all the time, and then it only got worse while I was reading the novel, haha.  Luckily, I'll pass it on (perhaps to my sister?) and can finally rid my brain of that song, 24/7!  Probably. Anyway, on to actually discussing the book, and not just the title.  So: there was definitely a point when I couldn't put this book down.  Zailckas pulls you in with a really gripping and confounding mystery, and all you want is to know what the heck is going on!  Not to mention the absolute craziness of "mother, mother" - watching her is like watching a train wreck.  It's hard to believe anyone could really be that psychotic, although I know it's not unreal.  I think one of the most thriller-esque qualities of this book for me was the idea that if everyone thinks the crazy person is the sane one, then there is a danger of the actual sane ones being condemned as the insane - and then actually starting to believe it themselves!  It's a terrifying thought. The characters in this book were definitely engaging and pulled you in to their little world.  There wasn't a very wide scope to this book; it barely ever left its focus on the Hurst family, but I think that was a great plot device on the part of the author, to keep everything so narrow that the reader couldn't tell what was real or who was telling the truth.  There were certainly times I didn't know who or what to believe.  This book called vividly to mind the way I felt when reading Gone Girl, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed that mystery/thriller.  It is a delicious combination of slightly eerie and slightly insane and very much intriguing. It's difficult to talk too much about the book without revealing things, but I will say I enjoyed the strong distinction between the characters, particularly those in the Hurst family.  A controlling mother, a victimized daughter, the rebel daughter (but: which daughter was which, really?), an autistic son, and an entirely helpless father, too busy caught up in his own messes to see what is going on with the rest of them.  Then there are the peripheral characters: the endearing social worker, the pushy social worker, the friend's mother who is a hardcore hippie...so many wonderful characterizations and stereotypes all show up in the book.  Again, I think it was a brilliant way for the author to emphasize how easy it was to pigeonhole these characters, in their world.  You'll have to read to understand what I mean! Yours, Arianna

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