Now On Sale! Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense by Sarah Weinman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


4.5 stars


Let me just say, I love this book. I can’t say it’s my usual genre. I’ve read exactly one female-oriented murder mystery since junior high, and I didn’t like it. But, being a supporter of women writers everywhere, I felt obliged to read this one. I could not have been more delightfully rewarded.
The book grabbed me from the first story, which was so deliciously twisted I could not stop reading. The collection’s editor, Sarah Weinman, could not have chosen a more gripping start to the anthology. “The Heroine” by Patricia Highsmith starts us off with a bang. In it, psychologically disturbed Lucille gets a job as a nanny in an idyllic home and sets about to prove her devotion to the children no matter what it takes. The short story is concise and compulsively readable. I couldn’t put it down, and luckily for me, and other busy readers, it’s short enough at 22 pages to breeze through in one short sitting, so I didn’t have to. The ending isn’t unpredictable, but so exactly right that you’re not sure the author will go there. And then she does.
Most of the stories continue in this vein. They are quick reads, they are suspenseful, they are daring, and above all they are shockingly, breathtakingly, savagely honest. (Excuse the adjective overload, I tend to pile a lot of them on when I’m deep in the squee of book love). Like most books, this one is not without flaw. Some of the stories have little holes, but I found myself not even caring. The stories were too damn good. And trust me, I never say that. I find all the little holes and loose threads and I pull at them and obsess about them until they unravel the credibility of the story. But this time, I really didn’t care. It was too good to care about any nit-picky flaws. And there weren’t many.
I’ll admit, I’m not usually a short story fan. That is, I didn’t know I was until I read this book. I haven’t read short stories since college, and I usually like to lose myself in the world of a novel, the tension and plot development and depth of character that can only come with a full-length novel, or at least a novella. But I may have to rethink that. This collection was delightfully twisted fun from start to finish. Each story had something new to think about, something to offer, some new twist that had me grinning from ear to ear while I read, hardly stopping to breathe. Most of the women who wrote these shorts also wrote novels, which I am going to have to check out very soon. They are some talented, incredibly clever writers. It’s a shame, nearly a sin, that these authors have been swept so far under the rug and ignored so thoroughly that I’ve never heard of thirteen of the fourteen featured in this book.
I was going to do a giveaway, but I’m going to be greedy and hang on to this one. I can’t bear to let it go so soon. I am going to do a more thorough read when I’m not under pressure to finish by deadline. But go get yourself a copy. This book is a hit, from the cover to every single page within. Recommended for everyone! (Over 12).


Disclaimer: I received this book for review from the publisher.





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Released Today! Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Interview today, review tomorrow!)

Hello, readers!


I'm so, so excited about this book, and about the opportunity to share with you the new release of a collection of stories by some amazing female domestic suspense authors who were, unfortunately, forgotten along the way. Sarah Weinman has compiled a thrilling selection of short stories to remind us of their importance as well as offer some good, exciting reading.

Here's the blurb: 

TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic
Suspense (A Penguin Books Original; On-sale: August 27, 2013) is a salute to the real femmes fatales of the domestic suspense genre-and the deceitful children, deranged husbands, vengeful friends, and murderous
wives they unleashed.
 One of today's preeminent authorities on crime fiction, Weinman asks:
Where would today's bestselling authors like Gone Girl's Gillian Flynn,
Sue Grafton, or Tana French be without the pioneering women writers who
came before them and created the psychological thriller?  In this new
anthology, including hair-raising stories by Patricia Highsmith, Shirley
Jackson, Vera Caspary, and more, Weinman brings together fourteen tales
by women who-from the 1940s through the mid-1970s-took a scalpel to
contemporary society and sliced away to reveal its dark essence.

Today I have the wonderful privilege of sharing some of her thoughts about the book.

A Conversation with Sarah Weinman

Q: What inspired you to compile this anthology? Were you working on it before the big splash created by GONE GIRL?

A: TROUBLED DAUGHTERS emerged from an essay I wrote for the literary magazine Tin House. I'd been approached by an editor there to write something for their themed "The Mysterious" issue, and I'd long contemplated why it seemed that a fair number of female crime writers working around or after World War II through the mid-1970s weren't really part of the larger critical conversation. They weren't hard boiled per se, but they weren't out-and-out cozy, either. Hammett and Chandler and Cain, yes; but why not Marie Belloc Lowndes and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Vera Caspary? Why Ross Macdonald but not his wife, Margaret Millar, who published books before he did and garnered critical and commercial acclaim first? I knew after writing the essay that I wasn't done with the subject, and when I had lunch with an editor at Penguin on an unrelated matter and started going on, rather enthusiastically, about this widespread neglect, he said, "sounds like there's an anthology in this. Why don't you send me a proposal?" It took a while to organize, but eventually I did, and Penguin bought the anthology. Publishing being what it is, it's taken a little less than two years from acquisition to release date.

To answer your other question, I had just started putting the anthology together when it became clear that GONE GIRL was going to be a massive hit, and that I had a very easy one-sentence pitch for TROUBLED DAUGHTERS: “If you loved GONE GIRL, here's an entire generation of writers who helped make that book possible, and who deserve to be rescued from the shadows.” Flynn clearly tapped into contemporary anxieties about marriage, identity, high expectations, and whether we can really be true to ourselves and the ones we profess to love. So it's fascinating to explore an earlier time when many of the very same anxieties women had manifested itself, even as the very concept of independent womanhood was perceived to be a great threat.

Q: What is “domestic suspense”? What relationship does it have to other kinds of crime fiction?

A: Domestic suspense is a catch-all term for work largely published by women and describing the plight of women -- wives, daughters, the elderly, spinsters, the underserved, the overlooked, and many other phrases used then but thankfully, not so much now -- as World War II was coming to a close and the feminist movement dawned. Without domestic suspense you couldn't have contemporary psychological suspense. Conversely, the work of people like Gillian Flynn, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Sophie Hannah, Tana French, and many more would not be possible without the likes of Hughes, Jackson, Millar, Highsmith, and -- though not included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS for reasons outside the scope of this interview -- Ruth Rendell, Mary Higgins Clark, Mignon Eberhart, and more.

Q: Which one of the authors in your collection would you like to see get more credit?

A: Bear in mind my answer will change daily, but right now, I'll say Joyce Harrington. She won an Edgar Award for her very first short story – “The Purple Shroud”, included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS – but she spent most of the 70s and 80s writing stories of equal if not greater excellence. Harrington also published three novels: No One Knows My Name (1981), set in a summer stock theater troupe; Family Reunion (1982), a very creepy Southern Gothic with quite the toxic family; and Dreemz of the Night (1987), a terrific mystery set in the then-contemporary New York City graffiti world. I love that book of hers the best because of the window it unexpectedly opened on a nearly unrecognizable version of the five boroughs.

Q: What was the first domestic suspense you ever read?

Mary Higgins Clark’s Where Are The Children?, back in eleventh grade. That book scared the hell out of me, and only later did I realize what a pivotal book that was.

Q: What is the difference between “classic” domestic suspense and the writing of the new generation (Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Gillian Flynn, Tana French, etc.)?

A: Largely the sensibility afforded by contemporary times. But there are many more similarities. For example, Lippman’s most recent novel, And When She Was Good, was about a suburban madam, and the way in which the suspense unfolded and she depicted Heloise’s nose for business and growing internal tensions could have been written by Margaret Millar sixty years ago (albeit with more dated references to technology.) When I first read Megan Abbott I thought immediately of Dorothy Hughes’ In A Lonely Place. The DNA of so many of these earlier writers inserted themselves into those writing today, whether they realize it consciously.

Q: Do you think women write better domestic suspense? If so, why or why not?

A: I'm a big fan of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay’s work, both of whom certainly work in the domestic suspense field. Ira Levin’s books work so well because he knew exactly what domestic anxiety buttons to push – Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives absolutely count as domestic suspense (and, to a certain extent, A Kiss Before Dying.) That said, women are still struggling with the work/life balance, if I may drop in some cliches like “having it all” or “leaning in.” So there are more of them exploring these themes in a fictional universe, and that means more of them are doing so with great success and acclaim. I'd like to see more men write domestic thrillers and more women write traditionally “male” subgenres so that we can blur the lines once and for all. But forty, fifty, sixty years ago, there weren't as many options.

Q: You mention in your intro to TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES that the World Wars, particularly WWII, shaped the lives of domestic suspense writers, and consequently, what they wrote. Is there a similar “seismic event” that might have shaped the new domestic suspense, in your opinion?

A: I think these forces were at work already, but I hope that, twenty years or later from now, someone looks back at the current generation of women writers and edits a fabulous anthology explaining just how much the 2008 Great Recession changed everything. Which is to say, I think it did, and we still don't know by how much.

Q: If this kind of fiction grew out of post-war culture, particularly the idealization of women’s role in the domestic sphere and the anxieties and yearnings hidden behind that glossy picture of the happy home, is there anything analogous being written today?

A: Would that these anxieties could disappear entirely! But it’s pretty clear that any day’s headlines shows how far we still have to go. (Case in point: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In.) I do think it’s why Gone Girl was such a massive hit, and why publishers are now on the hunt for that “next Gone Girl” (best current candidate: ASA Harrison's debut The Silent Wife, just published as I write this, and released more than two months after her premature death from cancer.) Now we have domestic suspense mixed with the anxieties associated with technology, and there's a great deal of terrain to explore there.

I also don’t want to exclude men unduly here; Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay also write very gripping domestic suspense tales.

Q: At your companion website, domesticsuspense.com, the tagline is “celebrating an overlooked generation of female suspense writers.” Why have they been overlooked? What influence do you think these women writers had, both on the genre and on culture as a whole?

A: The author Tom Bissell wrote an excellent essay for the Boston Review back in 2000 about his time as an assistant editor at Norton, discovering, and then republishing, the work of Paula Fox, and the tremendous responsibility (and related fear) of being responsible for a writer's renaissance. Fate has a tendency to be cruel and quixotic about who merits posthumous recognition and who does not. I feel much the same way about the 14 writers included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS. So many of them won or were nominated for awards (like the Edgar), sold many thousands of copies, and were well-reviewed. But it's hard not to think that because their subjects were primarily "feminine" and "domestic" they weren't taken as seriously as the men, even though in many cases, the women wrote with less sentimentality and more subtlety.

Some of the writers included in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, like Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson, may not need my editorial assistance. But looking at Highsmith’s first-published short story "The Heroine" or Jackson's "Louisa, Please Come Home" in the broader context of what was going on over this three-decade period is what's key, as is seeing the importance of domestic concerns to female noir giants like Vera Caspary, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Margaret Millar.

What I really hope is that the anthology allows readers to sample and be introduced to writers who have fallen by the proverbial wayside. Raymond Chandler held up Elisabeth Sanxay Holding up as his equal. Helen Nielsen is something of an enigma to me, but “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree” demonstrates the anxiety of being the other woman-turned-new wife and how it never recedes.  Nedra Tyre was both an avid mystery fan  and passionate about social justice and the poor, stemming from a previous life as a social worker; it’s why “A Nice Place to Stay” packs the punch it does. Barbara Callahan never published a novel during her lifetime, but "Lavender Lady", published early in her career, has the sense of depth and feeling of an experienced practitioner of prose and of emotional stakes.

Boy A, by Jonathan Trigell

Boy A by Jonathan Trigell


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I wish I could find a way to adequately convey my love for this book without sounding like a gushing groupie. But, I can't, so I'll soldier on with my groupie flag flying.

What can I say other than this book is amazing. I can't begin to say how amazing it is in a short review, and I'm a fair hand at wordplay. I'll do my inadequate best.

Trigell takes the story of Jack, a newly-released-from prison, twenty-something convicted child murderer--as in, he was a child when convicted of murder (the victim was also a child) and makes you wallow in it. He takes you into the mind of Jack and makes you love him. He takes you to the slimy, dark, gritty underbelly of English society and makes you lie on your back and lick it. You can't help but do what he wants as he weaves the story through the minds of various characters, crafting a perfectly plotted, perfectly paced, perfectly terrible story of attempted redemption. As you slough along towards the inevitable conclusion, you know what's coming, but you breathlessly keep reading, wanting to look away but utterly unable. Such is the hypnotic control Trigell masters in this artfully honed masterpiece of suspense. As difficult as it must be to create such tension in a book where from the start you know almost without doubt of the story's outcome, Trigell does it, and does it well.

Although his writing style is more gritty than poetic, Trigell can turn a phrase with beauty and almost magical precision. I can't count the number of times I had to stop and savor a sentence and wish ardently that I could weave words together with such breathtaking rightness. Because each of these sentences shows craft and a kind of heartrending accuracy. You find yourself thinking simultaneously that you'd never think to put words together in that way and that it's the exact way they were created to fit together.

In short, from the first words this book grabs you by the throat like a vicious, one-eyed mangy dog with oozing pustules and shakes you senseless until the last breathtaking sentence.

Although I can't recommend it to everyone due to its graphic nature, I wish I could.




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New Year, New Book!

Hey guys,
As a lot of you already know, I just released my second novel. YAY! The Vigilantes came out on Kindle, Nook, and at the Smashwords store last week. It should be out in paperback later this week. I'm so excited about it and happy to share my journey with all of you. To learn more about The Vigilantes look for it on amazon.com, smashwords.com, or barnesandnoble.com. Or find it on Goodreads. If you haven't read the first book in the series, The Superiors you can read find it on the righthand side of my blog and also find out all about it by clicking any of the links in my blog tour.

Review Wednesday: Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


3.5 stars



This book was a fast-paced, interesting historical fiction for young adults. It had some pretty adult themes, but nothing graphic. It was really interesting to me, especially all the parts about the opium trade and how England endorsed it and legally sanctioned the opium growers of India. Unfortunately, I'm not sure many young adults would be interested in the subject, so I don't think this book was very popular (at least not in America). However, it was well worth reading. It's full of action, mystery, and plenty of educational stuff. Now I want to read two things: the next book in the series, and more historical fiction about the British/Indian opium trade.



This is not a light, fluffy read, despite the action and themes (mystery, murder, stolen treasure, a giant ruby, pirates, orphans, curses, oh my!) It has a dark atmosphere, but not gloomy. And besides the action and suspense, the characters are wonderful and lovable. Not quite as much as in His Dark Materials, but wonderful nonetheless. I like how Pullman writes strong female characters at the center of his novels, and surrounds them with a memorable cast of men. In this book, both the heroine and the villain are female, both of them striking and wonderful. And all the supporting characters are quirky, but not too quirky. Realistically rendered and delightfully deviant.



I'd recommend this book to intelligent young adults and adults.



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Hallo-week Book Reviews: Carrie by Stephen King

Carrie by Stephen King

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm not sure why I haven't read this book before now. In high school I read tons of Stephen King, but for some reason I skipped over this one. Maybe because it was thin and I liked the big thousand-plus page books he wrote. I was finally inspired to read this book because I saw the movie, liked it, and wanted to see if the book was better.



For me, it was a good read. Some of the parts got a little tedius, but overall, it was a good book. A little immature in the King realm, but that's to be expected from his first book. Some of the characters could have been better developed, IMO, and some of the exciting parts were too slow. They would have been better if the action had been speeded up some. Such as the part about Carrie after the prom, which went on and on, and I really lost interest and drifted off to sleep a few times during those parts. I did like how the book showed how alienating it can be to be an outcast, and how that made Carrie at sort of hateful person on the inside despite her religious upbringing and her usual character for most of the book. But when she had the power to get back at everyone, all the years of being picked on boiled to the surface. I thought the book did a good job of showing how brutal girls can be, even more so than boys.



This book was pretty good, but far from my favorite King book. Recommended for King fans, since this is a classic and his first book--you sort of have to read it.



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Ten Things I Love About You

Okay, so...It's fall, officially and in every other sense. And everyone knows fall is the best season. Obviously.

In honor of my favorite season, and my favorite month, I've made a list to prove why fall is once and for all the best season ever.

1. Jeans, glorious Jeans!

2. Not one, but two, holidays. One for family (Thanksgiving) and one for troublemaking wholesome fun with friends.

3. That would be Halloween, if you hadn't figured that out. Actually, number 3 is an extension of number 2, but come on, Halloween deserves its own number. Candy, Costumes, Carving.

4. Pumpkin patches. No matter how old you are, these things are fun. And local. And you get to pick a pumpkin for that carving I mentioned above, and support your local growers (unless your patch gets their pumpkins from Mexico, and then you can support growers in another country).

5. Um, leaves. Hello, what fun would it be if you had to call it autumn all the time and not fall? Falling leaves make fall.

6. Lighting the fire again. My house smells like wood smoke again...yay! Bonfires outside are good, too. Just don't let your costume catch on fire. Those synthetics go fast. You don't want to be the naked guy (or girl) with a scorched bum. And frankly, probably no one else wants you to be either.

7. The end of the heat-wave we call summer down here in the South. That's right, South with a capital S. When the summer temps are over 110 degrees for a week straight, you have one thing to look forward to. Fall. Unless you have a pool, and then you probably don't care. And also, you should invite me over.

8. Goodbye, bugs. Now I know lots of people who don't know the irritation of a mosquito hovering next to your ear for months at a time, but it's really annoying. Just trust me on that. And we won't even get into the other friendly neighborhood bugs who think they'll try out being little itchy Draculas for half the year. And how do we deal with bloodsuckers?

9. Changing my wardrobe. Even if I only buy one new sweater, it's worth it. I'm tired of all my summer clothes by now...ready to switch back into cozy winter mode.

10. What's number 10? Football? New Sam Adam's seasonal flavor? Halloween again? Rocky Horror Picture Show? Thriller playing on the radio? Octoberfest? Haunted Houses? Austin City Limits? I can't pick just one. And I'm sure I've left out about 10 more reasons why this month and this season 'totally rock, dude!' Oh, yeah, that was in honor of all the college students swarming back into town. Yep. That's good, too.

Show Me Your Teeth Blog Hop!

Hi guys,
I'm honored to be part of this awesome vampire-themed blog hop in honor of Rachelle Mead, author of the Vampire Academy series. As my giveaway, I'm offering a free ebook copy of my own vampire novel, The Superiors. The contest starts at midnight, August 15 CST and ends at 11:59pm on August 23. Check out the other blogs, too, there are tons of awesome giveaways of all kinds of vampire loot.

To win my giveaway, do the following:
Follow my blog (1 entry)
Follow my twitter @lenahillbrand (1 entry)
Like my FB page http://www.facebook.com/LenaHillbrand (1 entry)
Retweet, repost this on your blog, or link it on FB. (1 entry each).

Please post a comment letting me know which of these things you've done, and please include links so I can verify! Thanks and good luck!

Review Wednesday: The Shining by Stephen King

The Shining by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I hadn't read any Stephen King for a while, so I forgot how awesome he is. It's wonderful (and wonderfully rare) to find a writer who can maintain suspense while creating such beautifully real characters. He never sacrifices character development for plot. Which is a good thing for readers like me, who can't really care what happens at all if I don't care who it's happening to.

I know people who can't read King because of his descriptions and development, people who think he's too slow to get to 'the good stuff.' Personally, I wish a lot more writers would take his lead and stop shoving 'the good stuff' down our throats from the first sentence to the last. Stephen King writes whole, complete novels. They have real, fully developed characters as well as action, and if he sacrifices some fast-paced action to make the characters real, it only adds depth to the story. Too many of the fantasy and suspense novels I’ve read have pretty much nothing going for the characters. They are flat, Barbie-and-Ken cutouts from magazines, with only physical description and no development past what they look like. If that’s what you’re looking for, King isyou’re your ‘cup of tea.’ His novels rarely have sequels. He says all he needs to say in one book, and it's plenty, and the endings of his books are, well, endings. Not teases for a following book. They are final, wrapped, complete. And usually good, although I didn't really care for the ending of this one.

In this book, as in many of King's novels, the hero is a child. I have come to understand King's fascination with child characters in horror novels after reading a couple of his nonfiction books. Children are more innocent, and therefore more psychically receptive than adults. They haven't quite yet internalized the impossible, and therefore, they are usually (in King's novels) the ones who figure out what's going on, and usually the ones who try to do something about it, often with the help of a receptive adult father figure. And it's a good thing the protagonist in this novel has one, because we all know what kind of man his father is.

I've heard a few people say that the father is the most tragic 'victim' in this haunted house classic, but I'm not sure I agree with that. The father was never a very likeable character for me, no matter how victimized he was. Sure, he was an addict, and trying to recover. But I never really got the sense that he loved his family as much as he loved the bottle. I thought that he was not only picked off because he was the weakest link, but also because perhaps there was something inherently evil in him, something that responded to the evil in the hotel. One of my only complaints about this book was the swiftness of Jack’s transformation. It seemed like in one chapter he’s a loving (if guilty) father and husband, struggling to put his life back together. Then suddenly in the next chapter he’s fantasizing about twisting his wife’s nipples off? It seemed too sudden for this kind of evenly-paced book. I skipped back to see if I’d missed something, or if it really was almost instantaneous. I thought the suspense of him going crazy could have been drawn out a little more.

I did thing that Stephen King did a great job capturing the emotions of the mother towards her son. I'm sure his wife helped him with that! I had a bit of a hard time relating to her white-bread personality, with how passive she was and how she could still love someone who had turned into a monster. But that was how she was supposed to be. Although I didn’t relate to (or even like) most of the characters in this book, it was still a superb read. Not one of King’s creepiest, although the hedge animals were pretty great.

Overall, this was a good book. I like King’s classics, and if you do too, this one is it.







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eBook Review: Fire In the Blood by Dale Ibitz

Fire in the Blood by Dale Ibitz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Okay, first off, let me just say that I usually avoid teen paranormal romance/fantasy/whatever you want to call it. But this one was really fun!



It's a hilarious fantasy/sci-fi book for young adults, complete with romance, the requisite love triangle, plotting and betraying, kidnappings, alternate worlds and runes, oh my! The whole time I was reading, I kept cracking up, which is not what I expect from this kind of book. But in the best way, of course! I love books that make me laugh. I was surprised that this book was self-published, because it seemed to fit so perfectly into the YA genre that is so popular right now.



This is a new author I believe, and I have no doubt we'll see lots more from her in the future, probably traditionally published books. If you're wary of indie books because you think they aren't well-written or edited, you'd be surprised. This book is every bit as good (or better) than the handful other YA fantasy books I've read. Even better, it's funny! The protagonist has a witty, wry and sarcastic voice that will pull you in and make you laugh. My only complaint with this book was that it ended too soon! I wish it had been a little longer. I can't wait to see what happens to Haley in the next book.



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Book Review: Sara's Face by Melvin Burgess

Sara's Face by Melvin Burgess
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book a few years ago, but it's one that stood out in my mind, so I think I can remember enough to write a book review.

First of all, Burgess writes this book in a documentary fashion. It seemed so real that every time I started reading it, I wanted to go look up on the internet and see if it was based on a true story. I've read four of Burgess's books, and they are all so absorbing I become borderline obsessed while reading them. I can't think of another author who writes in such a consuming way.

The story is about a girl who wants to be famous. She's obsessed with fame, but she doesn't want to do anything to become famous. She just wants to be famous for being famous. It reminded me of Paris Hilton when I read it. The girl in the book, Sara, was pretty, but she didn't want to sing or model or act. She even scars her face so as not to be pretty. She's very weird and self-destructive.

Sara meets Jonathon Heat, a famous musician who has had so much plastic surgery his face collapses or is ruined (Michael Jackson, anyone?) He wears a mask of his own younger face and never lets anyone see the ruined mess that is his real face. Sara becomes obsessed with him and wears his mask all the time, too. He takes her under his wing, of sorts, because of the resemblance between her face and his younger, pre-surgery face.

About now the story gets weird and very creepy. Jonathon lives in a weird house with all these rooms, including a creepy plastic surgery center in his basement. Sara breaks with her parents and goes to live with Jonathon and begins to fall in love with him, or at least his fame. There is a scene that stands out in my mind where Jonathon goes to kiss her and she can smell this rotting smell from under his mask. Sara starts getting a little creeped out, but not nearly enough. Things start getting weirder and weirder, and you can feel Burgess dragging you to the horrifying climax that you have to read even as you cringe and don't want to...because you know Jonathon is going to steal her face. Or at least try.

The ending of the book confused me some, as it is much later. I wasn't too concerned with writing quality when I read this, so I didn't notice much. I believe Burgess is an extremely talented story-teller who can keep a reader rapt and panting towards the conclusion. This was an extremely timely book full of social commentary and disturbing circumstances that ring eerily familiar in our society. Along with Smack, this is Burgess's best book by far.

Recommended for anyone who loves a good satire, creep-fest, or gripping thriller. Must be able to handle disturbing material.

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Book Review: Kindle eBook Aries at Dawn by William Amerman

Aries at Dawn by William Amerman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Aries at Dawn is a thriller about one man's life as it falls apart. Although it's not my usual genre, I enjoyed it very much. Amerman is a gifted writer, something that goes a long way for me. This book is clearly well-edited and polished, which made reading it a joy. Amerman has a unique writing style that has great rhythm once you get into the flow of his prose.
The story itself is well-crafted, and while reading, you know you are in the hands of a talented writer who knows the art of writing, pacing, plotting, and everything else you'd want in a book. Without giving too much of the story away, I will say that it keeps you moving and wanting to know what comes next. At one chase scene, my heart literally started beating faster!
The only part of the book that lost me a little was the technical stuff about unions and details about the shipping industry, but that's my shortcoming and not the author's. Overall, this is an exciting and very well written book that I would recommend to anyone who likes a fast-paced read.

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Book Review: Sophie's Choice by William Styron

Sophie's Choice by William Styron
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I finished this book a while ago, but I couldn’t decide what to think of it, so I held off on writing a review. But it really deserves a review, so I’m making myself sit down to write one before I forget what I wanted to say about it. I really wanted to love this book, and I did…until about ¾ of the way through. I wish I’d hated the whole book, because that would have been better than taking an amazingly written, moving story and ruining it with a pathetic, self-indulgent ending.

First, about the writing. Styron’s writing is so luscious and delicious that sometimes I had to stop myself from actually licking the page. It was so rich and full of beautiful words and phrases that made me almost drunk with the prose. But, in the end, all that delicious richness left me with a stomach ache. It seemed like Styron fell in love with his own story and his own voice and it killed the book. Literary vomit was the end result.

I’d heard of this book and the movie a few times, but I didn’t even know what it was about before I picked it up. I knew it was supposed to be devastating and heartbreaking. What surprised me was how funny the book was. Told through the eyes of Stingo, a chronically horny twenty-two-year-old in the late forties, the humor in the book kept it from growing too dark. The protagonist’s sexual frustration and foiled attempts at getting laid made me laugh out loud. Throughout most of the book, I loved the story almost as much as the writing. There were several fifty or hundred page chapters I could have done without—long asides that did nothing to advance the plot and instead distracted from the narrative. I would have liked to hear more of Sophie’s story and less of Stingo’s.

The first part of the book was so dull I almost skipped it. I found some of it offensive or in poor taste, but I kept reading. Once Stingo meets Nathan and Sophie, the story gets better.

Nathan was brilliantly created and captivating, the best character in the book by far. Until…he has schizophrenia AND a coke addiction? It just didn’t ring true. I thought the story would have been stronger if he was just evil. Or schizophrenic, but with the good job he said he had. Once I found out that he had lied and was basically an invalid, the book just went downhill from there. It seemed inconsistent with the story, and it rang false to me. He was the best character, complex and full of rage and guilt and issues, and then Styron ruined it all by making him just some crazy guy who made up stories. I wanted his brilliance to be real, not a drug-fueled delusion.

Sophie’s character was developed well, as was Nathan’s. But again, towards the end of the book, it all started to seem hackneyed and false. Over three months she goes from beautiful, refined, and poised to this brazen lush who describes in detail how much she loves sucking cock? I doubt it. Even when she was drunk, she wasn’t the kind of person who would do that. I didn’t believe it. She was developed in a certain way, and then Styron wrote her doing all these things that her character would not have done or said.

Stingo: Although I felt for the guy and his obsession with unrequited love for Sophie, I started to lose sympathy for him at about the same time that the whole book fell apart for me. I understood that he was sexually frustrated, but it seemed like Styron kept building and building on that when he could have been focusing on something more interesting, like Sophie’s time in Auschwitz. And after a while, Stingo just seemed like a nasty pervert, so I lost sympathy. I really didn’t need to hear all about his wet dreams and such. And he was very rude to all the women in the book, which did not endear him to me. Then he takes advantage of drunken, heartbroken Sophie in a cheap hotel somewhere. Really turned me off.

From close to the beginning, I knew Stingo would probably hook up with Sophie, and I knew when he did, it would ruin the book for me. And it did. If not for that, this would have been one of the best books I’ve ever read. Now it’s a 3. It was just not believable that this beautiful, sexually insatiable thirty-year-old woman would have sex with a young guy who is only a friend and say he was a great lover. He was basically a virgin, and yet he claims his very first time he rocked her world even though she was quite experienced. Yeah, right. It felt like Styron fell in love with his own character and wanted to give him everything he ever wanted instead of telling the ‘truth’ of the story—what would have happened to those characters in that world. He based Sophie on someone he met but didn’t know—obviously someone he wanted to fuck. So he let Stingo do it for him. I just didn’t believe a virgin could rock Sophie’s world after she’d been with Nathan, her great love and lover. No way.

This book had a great story to tell, but unfortunately, it was mixed into a story that I had no desire to read. The whole book is this relentless trek towards Sophie’s choice and her demise. And then it’s all cheapened by this detailed sex scene where Stingo gets all he ever wanted and fucks her brains out. Really? Ugh. I read somewhere that Styron was accused of eroticizing the holocaust. Um, hello, because he DID. He also eroticized everything else. The book was beautiful and I devoured the sexually charged writing, but the plot lost all the momentum in the end. For me, it would have been much better if it had focused on the choice and the consequence without the completely unbelievable sex scene, which replaced the much more poignant climax of the choice. Completely ruined the book and detracted from the impact of the choice, which was what the book was supposed to be. It was called Sophie’s Choice. Not Stingo’s Fantastic Fuck.



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Book Review: Stranger with my Face by Lois Duncan

Stranger with My Face by Lois Duncan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn't know what to expect when I got this book from the library. I had heard of the author, but I'd never read anything by her.

Duncan does an amazing job creating suspense. It was SO HARD to put this book down every time I had to stop reading. It caught me and never let go--the pace is relentless. This should be required reading for suspense writers, because so many get it wrong. Duncan is a master.

That said, I didn't really care for the main character. I tried hard to like her, and succeeded only partially. I did have sympathy for her, but some of her decisions were just so stupid it made things harder. Like, how did she NOT know Leah was evil? And I found parts of the book way too predictible for a suspense novel. I knew the second Leah tried to get her to leave her body that Leah was going to steal it.

Overall, though, I did enjoy this book. It was very well crafted. A little less foreshadowing would have made me like it more. Also, the whole thing with the boy with the damaged face really added interest to the story. I liked how the ending was good, but not all shiny happy, either. For some reason I didn't really believe in the relationship between the protagonist and the boy with the messed up face, though. It just happened so suddenly I was like "WHAT? Since when? Come on, make me believe it a little more than that.

Fun, interesting, absorbing read. Very exciting and suspenseful.


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