Daily Scoldings by Beryl Barclay

Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost three coins.  Distressed, he searched for his missing money.  He came upon a girl who was delighted because she had found three coins.  [He] told her what he had lost.  The girl's joy quickly faded as she handed her coins to the boy.  Seeing how sad she was, the boy could feel no happiness.  He said, "I cannot say for certain these coins belong to me.  Let's ask the wise owl what to do."  The boy and girl explained it to the owl.  The owl reached into his own pocket and produced a coin.  He gave two coins to the boy and two coins to the girl.  He said, "Today we each have lost a coin."  The children were content.  Never did they consider the peculiar, creepy implausibility of a talking owl with pocket change.  Be alert.

from March 5

Daily Scoldings: A Bracing Tonic of Criticism, Rebuke, and Punitive Inspiration for Better Living by Beryl Barclay was recently mailed to this blog for review.  I'm not sure how I feel about being mailed books for review--mixed feelings I guess because I do have my own list of books to read--not all of which I succeed in reading in their entirety.  If a book can't hook me and keep me reading, I discard it and move to the next one.  There are too many books to read to struggle to finish one when I could fly through another in a fraction of that time.  However,  I had recently read Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern, the hilarious chronicle of the wisdom that has come from the mouth the author's father over the years.  In a way Daily Scoldings reminded me of the pearls of wisdom shared in My Dad Says.

I must say the title of Daily Scoldings pretty much sums up what the book is about.  Meant to be read like a desk calendar that has a joke or anecdote of the day, each day in Daily Scoldings provides a swift kick in the butt.  This might be imparted in a snarky two or three liner or in a parable.  And I must say the parables are my favorite by far because these aren't your typical Biblical parables.  Barclay's parables are quirky, insightful and often end with a twist and it's the twist at the end that I so enjoy.  Many of the anecdotes imparted in Barclay's unique voice are humorous and make you think--hmm, she has point (especially when it comes to creepy, wise owls).

This book is coming soon to the library.  I recommend you pick it up and brace yourself for some better living.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Project 17 by Laurie Faria Stolarz

I'm always on the lookout for good young adult fiction because some YA fic is just as good or better than some adult fiction I read.  I've reviewed quite a few YA titles in the past.  Project 17 by Laurie Faria Stolarz is the latest young adult fiction title that I've read and it is a quick read with short chapters (my favorite) of rotating narrators.  We see the story unfold from multiple viewpoints, and while this can be quite effective in some novels, it seems to hinder the story development in this one.  This is a spooky, but not scary, eerie read.  The teenage voices of the narrators are differentiated between the various teens, but Stolarz fails to create distinctive, unique voices and when the chapters are right next to each other, it's easy to tell that it's the same person writing all the voices.  The rotating narrators detract also from the atmosphere of what could easily be a wickedly terrifying night in a damaged and condemned state asylum that clearly retains some of what has transpired within its walls in years past.

Derik, Greta, Liza, Tony, Mimi and Chet are high school seniors who float in different social circles.  Derik assembles this mismatched bunch to break in to the long abandoned Danvers State Hospital outside Boston on the eve of its scheduled demolition.  The former mental institution, long rumored to be haunted, is steeped in local  lore, dark secrets and the heavy atmosphere of a building that has witnessed too many years of human cruelties, tragedies and illnesses.  Derik's mission is to tape the night the group spends there, edit the film, and submit it to a reality TV channel's contest.  As the teens trek onto the hospital grounds its clear Danvers is already weaving its dark effects and thoroughly spooking the teens before they even enter the building complex.

Each teen is in Danvers that night for their own personal reasons, but they each have escape in mind.  Whether it's escaping a volatile, abusive home life for a night, the chance to escape the family business upon graduation or an effort to escape a prestigious ivy league college's wait list, each teen in that group has a lot riding on seeing this extracurricular project through to completion.  The question is, is it worth the price that Danvers will surely call due before the night is through?

Anyone who enjoys a spooky, subtle ghost story will enjoy this book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

It's been a long, long wait for Tess Gerritsen's latest, Ice Cold.  Throughout my wait I've been obsessing about the massive spoiler revealed in the jacket blurb.  Is it for real or will it turn out to be a fake out because who puts that kind of major development involving a character upon which the series focuses on the book jacket instead of saving it for the mother of all shocking story lines for the unsuspecting reader?  That is the conundrum I've been pondering for several months ever since Amazon posted the blurb on the book's page.

The first few chapters seem off to a slow start that's compounded by the slight awkwardness of the diction in the first chapters describing what is surely (one way or another) the end of the affair for Dr. Maura Isles and her beloved Father Daniel Brophy (a Catholic priest with whom she's been having an affair for over a year!).  Then the story and the suspense crank up into a scary, thrilling page turner that's hard to put down.

Isles is in Wyoming at a forensic pathologists' conference where she reconnects with Doug, a former fellow medical student.  Doug convinces Maura to join him, his daughter, and two of his friends on a weekend excursion to a secluded ski lodge.  Maura, at a difficult emotional crossroads, impulsively decides to join the travel party.  The group takes their rented SUV and when the GPS takes them on a wrong tun, the trip slides sideways steadily and rapidly towards disaster.

When a charred body turns up in the burned wreckage of Doug's rented SUV, it is identified as Isles and Detective Jane Rizzoli, her FBI agent husband Gabriel Dean and Anthony Sansone escort the body back to Boston for burial.  However, this mystery is just getting cranked up and there are far more devious and far darker forces at work behind Isles' and her travel party's disappearance and murders.

Before long Rizzoli meets up with a social worker who tells her about a secretive, reclusive, isolated, polygamous cult that shuns and expels its teenage boys so the older men have less competition for the young girls.  The outrage doesn't end there when the social worker shares her suspicions that the charismatic cult leader buys off cops, town officials and judges in efforts to avoid legal repercussions and jail time.  In a town and county where the sheriff and any number of local law enforcement could be in the back pocket of this cult, who can Jane trust to run a clean investigation, to find the still unaccounted for Isles, and to see that the cult leader answers for his crimes?

The possibility of corrupt law enforcement reminds me of S.J. Bolton's debut novel (is it time for the fourth one yet?  No?  Still another seven months to go?), Sacrifice, in which law enforcement and local government officials were members of a murderous cult.  It only makes the action more terrifying when you don't know who might be revealed to be in bed in with the bad guys.

I recommend you pick up this novel-- it is another satisfying installment to the Rizzoli and Isles series.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Faithful Place by Tana French

This is Tana French's third novel.  You can always count on French to turn in a spectacularly written and plotted novel.  I've read all of her novels thus far and I've never been disappointed.  Faithful Place follows Frank Mackey, who made his first appearance as Detective Cassie Maddox's old undercover boss who pulls her back in for one more undercover operation that ends in disaster.  Just where Faithful Place's story is in the chronology in relation to The Likeness and In the Woods, I'm not sure--there aren't any clues that give it away and none of the other characters from previous novels make any cameos in this one.  If there were clues in The Likeness that hinted at the placement of Faithful's chronology, well, I read that one over a year ago and I don't remember them anymore.  Right now is about the time I start wondering and digging around for clues as to what French's next novel will entail.  Will it be about an entirely new character?  Will an old character return for an encore?  I wonder, I wonder.

Faithful Place's tone stands in stark contrast to the tone of The Likeness.  I remember when I read Likeness I was afraid to read it for fear of the fulfillment of the pervasive sense of foreboding that haunted each chapter in the book.  Faithful, while depicting events that are in some ways even darker than those depicted in Likeness, did not exude the same sense of dark foreboding as its predecessor.  Perhaps this had a lot to do with the vivid, shall we say colorful, characters that French draws so masterfully.  This is a gripping page turner, and, with this novel especially,  French's talent for creating a distinct and unique voice for her narrator is on display.

Frank Mackey, the undercover detective who nearly wrecked Cassie Maddox's life in the previous novel, returns as the narrator whose past comes back to haunt him with a vengeance.  I do not want to be Frank Mackey on a good day.  Mackey has been estranged from his crazy, working class family, save for his baby sister, for over two decades.  He thinks he's finally made it out of his old neighborhood, Faithful Place.  Then one evening Frank returns home to several frantic messages from Jackie, his younger sister.  Jackie, along with the rest of the family, is in a panic thanks to a suitcase that's been uncovered in a long abandoned and derelict house on Frank's old street where much of his family still live.  Upon further investigation, Frank verifies that the case does indeed belong to Rose Daly, his first love with whom he made plans to run away to England as teenagers.  Both Rose and Frank were determined to make it out of the Place, even if it meant they might never be able to see their families or come home again thanks to a nasty on going feud of murky origins between the Dalys and the Mackeys.

On the night the two planned to make their getaway, Frank waited for Rose out at the top of the street for hours in the cold, but Rose never showed.  Frank, assuming she changed her mind, ditched him and set off on her own for England, leaves the Place, cuts off all contact with his family, and makes his way elsewhere in the city of Dublin where he eventually becomes a cop.  However, Frank never forgets Rose, in fact, her specter haunts every romantic relationship he has after her, and every few years he runs checks, hoping something will come up to tell him where Rose is and why she never met him that night.  But Frank never finds anything that points to Rose until his sister calls him twenty years later with the news that Rose's case has turned up.

The reappearance of Rose's case reopens old wounds and Frank's instincts tell him that it points to a far more ominous explanation for why Rose never made their rendezvous that night.  So Frank is reluctantly drawn back to his old stomping grounds and to his family (most of each of whom occupy different places on the crazy spectrum) to resolve what really happened to Rose.  Unfortunately upon Frank's arrival, events start developing at a fast clip well on their way to spinning out of control.  He finds that once both his family and his old neighborhood both have their claws hooked in him again they won't release him until they've drawn their share of blood.  And events are set in motion by the discovery of Rose's case that will claim and disfigure more lives and by the mystery's resolution Frank has relearned a hard lesson of how those we love most are capable of wreaking the most damage on us.

I highly recommend you pick up this novel and any of French's others if you haven't already.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie