Tag: fiction

Blurb Book Review: Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Jane and Dan go out to a ridiculously expensive restaurant to celebrate their nineteenth wedding anniversary, one Jane feels is their last. Neither expected to be smack dab in the middle of a crime – or to be taken as hostages – for the evening. As events unfold, Jane notices the crime plays out eerily similar to the novel she published six years prior. At the same time, Dan realizes one of the hostage takers is their daughter.

The novel highlights the stagnant feeling that can happen in long term relationships, especially with children on the cusp of leaving home. Jane feels underappreciated and anchorless, unsure of what she wants in life after having devoted two decades to parenting and being someone’s wife. Dan, also needing an outlet of his own, takes on a new hobby, one which Jane assumes is an affair.

I enjoyed the narrative voice. Mostly told through Jane’s pov, the voice is humorous with a dash of frustration. Jane wants change in her life but doesn’t know what that change is, exactly. She takes the apparent affair as a launching pad for divorce, thinking that by separating from Dan she’ll be able to find herself again.

Overall, this is a light read, the author ties up all the loose ends, and Dan’s new hobby even helps save the day.

Blurb Book Review: The Only One Left by Riley Sager (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Kit is a caregiver on suspension because her last client died due to her apparent carelessness. Desperate for a job, Kit accepts a position at Hope’s End, caring for a woman who’s rumoured to have murdered her whole family just over 50 years prior.

When Kit arrives, she sees the house is crumbling along with the cliff face. While navigating the tilted house, she hesitantly takes up her duties caring for Lenora Hope, a victim of several strokes and unable to move anything except her left hand.

Lenora teases Kit with details of the murders by typing out pages on an old typewriter. As the history of the murders is revealed, so are secrets about the family that have been kept for five decades.

This novel has several reveals by the end, all of them hinted at throughout the work. Just as I absorbed reading about how the murders were committed, I was hit with what really happened to both sisters, Virginia and Lenora, as well as how Kit’s family was involved. By the end, every thread is tied up neatly and masterfully.

My only nitpick was that the author repeated information quite often, making parts feel repetitive and drawn out. The reveals at the end make up for this, though.

Blurb Book Review: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Willis Wu is a background actor on Black & White (a police procedural with a Black cop and a white cop) and strives to be more than just Generic Asian Man. Someday, maybe he’ll reach the top and become Kung Fu Guy, but first he must work his way up from Generic Asian Man #3, then #2, and finally #1. In between, he dies on screen, cannot act for six weeks, and provides the reader with some backstory about his parents and their struggles with fitting into their roles.

But this novel is more than that. It’s an unflinching gaze into what it must be like to be Asian in America; shoved to the sidelines and kept below a glass ceiling.

The story is told in screenplay format, which helps immerse the reader in the perpetual filming of the show while also demonstrating how the entire lives of the characters are defined by their roles on the show. This is both suffocating and illuminating.

This novel is clever, intriguing, and at its core, heartfelt.

There is a Netflix show of the same name based on the novel running at the time I’m writing this. While the show is entertaining on its own, the book has depth and a social message that I didn’t see in the show.

Blurb Book Review: The Life Impossible by Matt Haig (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Grace is a woman in her seventies who is stuck in a rut. Once upon a time she was a wife and mother but lost both her husband and son, now she fills her days with the same routine, slowly fading into the background of life.

When she receives a letter informing her that she’d been left a property in Ibiza, Spain, she decides she might as well check it out. While she hadn’t seen the owner of the property, Christina, in decades, nor had she been close to Christina, the mystery of why this college friend would leave her a house was enough to disrupt her usual pattern of her day.

Grace has no idea that her entire world will be upended in the best possible way, nor that the simple act of diving could infuse her with life.

The author weaves a tale of supernatural abilities, kindness, grief, loneliness, and joy against a lively and vivid backdrop of Ibiza. The novel is told as a letter to a student, who reached out in a time of need, and is glorious in its complexity. Grace is a delightful character, one who softens as the pages go on, and who opens up to life’s experiences despite being attached to her grief.

The novel was one I’d love to relive, to experience again for the first time. Its tone is soft, its characters vivid, and the message of respect delightful.

Blurb Book Review: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Ada Lamarr is running out of air. She sent a distress signal and knows there’s a huge vessel nearby but they took their sweet time answering. When they finally arrive, she’s barely alive and has to launch herself out of the giant hole in her ship, across empty space, and into her rescuer’s ship. She barely makes it.

Once there, she needs to explain why she was looting a ship that had crash landed on the nearby planet. Lamarr knows what’s on that ship and knows that her rescuer’s ship had no reason to be in the area except to also retrieve something from the downed ship.

What follows is a heist novella, where the author skilfully leaves clues that build to a massive cliffhanger ending.

While this was very well written – Lamarr’s character is vibrant and consistent – it’s frustrating to read a novella that ends so abruptly. The story is complete, yes, but also leaves room for sequels, sort of like Marvel movies and their after-credit scenes that give a taste of a future movie.

Still, the novella immediately gives the stakes and a sense of character and never slows down. It was entertaining enough for me to seek other work by the author.

Note: there’s a page of binary code near the end. I translated it: “This data has been compromised. This d1t1 has bee6 compromised. This data haromised. This data haromised.ised.ised.ised”

Blurb Book Review: Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Kenzie and Gennaro are hired by a woman to watch her adult son. A photo of him was taken and he told her he’s being stalked by someone. While Kenzie and Gennaro can’t find any evidence of foul play, someone starts targeting the people Kenzie loves and some dark secrets about his family come to light.

This is the second novel in the Kenzie and Gennaro series and it’s better than the first one. The author develops the characters well in this novel. Gennaro’s husband Phil is shown trying to be a better person by quitting drinking and the childhood friendship of Phil and Kenzie feels robust and nostalgic. The relationship between Kenzie and Gennaro deepens as well, almost to the point of restarting a sexual ember.

Honestly, I would prefer not to have the will-they-won’t-they between the male and female lead characters. I find this tiresome and worn out. Having said that, this novel was written in 1996, so it’s kind of expected.

Overall, this novel is a giant step forward from the first book in the series. The author does a better job of setting the scene here, keeps the reader engaged by giving reminders of how the clues stacked up, and rounds the characters out well. I’m looking forward to reading the third in the series.

Blurb Book Review: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Four women; a biologist (the narrator), a psychologist, an anthropologist, and a surveyor, are sent into Area X as the twelfth expedition team. Their purpose is to map the area and make observations, all while trying not to be affected by the area itself. The biologist volunteered because her husband was part of the eleventh expedition.

The narrator gets infected very early on by inhaling spores and tries to cover it up. While she continues the investigation she learns that the psychologist is hypnotizing the three of them, that there had been more than eleven expedition teams before them, and that there’s some kind of life form deep underground.

While this novel was good, it felt incomplete. It’s the first in a trilogy, which might explain why the story is left dangling. The biologist is the only survivor of the expedition and she chooses not to return to the border, but instead to follow in her husband’s footsteps.

I found the dangling storyline frustrating. I wanted to know what the alien was, why it was there, when did it arrive, is it actually an alien, how drastically the biologist changes, and how those changes affected her. Maybe those answers are in the next few books.

In the story, the biologist encounters a massive pile of journals but doesn’t inform the reader of what she’s read, which is a pet peeve of mine. I wanted to know what was in those journals, how far back did they go, how many different people wrote in them, and why they were in a huge pile. I understand that this narrator is unreliable, but still, this was frustrating.

Overall the novel was good, it was an interesting peek into a mysterious zone, but irritatingly incomplete.

Blurb Book Review: I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Jolene is an anxious person who hates her job and doesn’t make any attempt at being sociable with her coworkers. To deal with her hatred, she types nasty messages at the bottom of emails and changes the font to white. Except one day she forgets to change the font colour, is caught, and formally reprimanded. The reprimand includes restrictions on her computer, but the administrator makes a mistake and accidentally gives her admin access to all texts and emails. Now Jolene knows more about her coworkers, including how they feel about her.

The characters in the novel are rich, well developed, and believable. That kept me going throughout, especially when I felt like Jolene’s anxiety was laid a bit thick. The author did an excellent job revealing the source of Jolene’s anxiety and hatred, as well as slowly doling out bits of the other character’s backstories.

I wasn’t quite expecting the romance angle of the novel – Jolene has an instant attraction to the new HR guy Cliff – but it worked well.

Overall, the author’s narrative style made this an easy, interesting read, rich with sensory description and emotion.

Blurb Book Review: Liars by Sarah Mangus (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

This is a novel about a disintegrating marriage. Jane, an aspiring writer, meets John, a filmmaker and they hit it off immediately. There are some red flags, but that’s expected. Nobody is perfect, after all. But as the novel progresses it becomes clear that John is not what he seemed while dating. Nevertheless, Jane marries him and they have a child.

Jane takes over all of the domestic duties, putting her career on the back burner while John reaches for success. He starts companies and is fired from them. They move five times in seven years for his work, each move becoming more and more difficult for Jane.

While she sees that John isn’t helpful and is in fact a grown-up child that expects his wife to look after him, she doesn’t leave him. She speaks of leaving him later, after the child is older, but doesn’t take any steps to do so. Instead John is the one to leave, having began a relationship with someone else.

I found this frustrating. While I could identify with her quandary – it’s easier to stay than it is to leave – I think I would have preferred reading about how she left and the fallout of that decision instead of feeling like Jane was just tugged along through life.

Not naming the child in the novel is an odd choice. This made the child seem like a tangential part of the narrative, not an active participant, which keeps the character at a distance from the reader.

Overall the novel was a good read, but one I’m likely to forget over time, not remember.

Blurb Book Review: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Charles is a robot valet, created to serve the upper crust of society. When he murders his Master, he’s mystified as to why, having found no motivation for his actions in his records. Since Master is dead, Charles reports to Diagnostics to try to suss out the problem. There, he finds and strange robot called The Wonk and embarks on a journey of self-discovery in a world where humanity has fallen away and rendered valets obsolete.

The novel is wonderfully written and the reader is firmly anchored in Charles’ point of view throughout. Charles’ logic and reasoning make sense, and the author helpfully gives the reader a step-by-step analysis of most of his decisions.

My problem was that my focus was on a different aspect of the story. When Charles leaves the manor and begins to walk to Diagnostics, he observes the world around him, a world that’s crumbling. Other manors appear to have fallen into disrepair and Charles doesn’t encounter another human for quite some time. I wanted to know what befell the world, what caused this ruin?

That question is answered at the end but to get there I had to drag through a lot of material that was only somewhat interesting.

The book is divided into five parts with titles that eluded me. I looked them up and understood that each part was an homage to an author, specifically:
Part I KR15-T: Agatha Christie
Part II K4fk-R: Franz Kafka
Part III 4w-L: George Orwell
Part IV 80rh-5: Jorge Luis Borges
Part V D4nt-A: Dante Alighieri
I haven’t read some of those authors and didn’t recognize the homage, but it’s a cool Easter egg for other readers. I did see the Wizard of Oz reference at the end, though.

So while some parts of this novel flew right over my head, the work itself was an interesting commentary on how our society could lead us into ruin.