The Everafter by Amy Huntley

Published in 2009 The Everafter is Amy Huntley's first and (thus far) only novel.  It's a fast, suspenseful, and sad read--I read it in a day.  Unfortunately, it is not available in county; I requested it through Inter-library Loan.

Madison Stanton wakes up dead in an endless, dark void populated only by the glowing objects she lost during her lifetime.  She discovers each object is a portal to the moment in her life when she lost that object.  She can use these objects to relive those moments to see her family and friends again who were involved in those moments, but there are rules.  If she finds an object while reliving that moment, it disappears from the void and she can never return to that moment in her life.  She can change the moments' outcomes, but in changing them, she also changes herself in imperceptible but monumental ways.

Using these objects Madison slowly pieces together who she was, who her family and friends were, when she died, and, she hopes eventually, how and why she died.  But Madison isn't the only one who died that day--who else died and why?  Can she use her lost objects to change her fate?  Or is she only able to use them to reveal how and why she died?  When the disturbing truth of her death is revealed, will Madison be ready to move on?

Equal parts haunting, heart wrenching and tragic, this is a young adult novel that has many layers--there's the metaphysics of Madison's spirit void and how she's able to travel back to various moments in her life and there are the moments in her life relived and retold throughout the novel.  This is a novel as much about life and death as it is about a coming of age with the unique spin that the adolescent's coming of age happens after she is dead.  It is a novel about the experiences and people who make us who we are and a story about letting go.

I recommend you check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming is the first in a mystery series starring an Episcopalian priest, Clare Ferguson, and Miller's Kill chief of police, Russ Van Alstyne.  I mentioned in a previous entry there was a second mystery novel that I'd read and liked well enough but didn't like the characters enough to want to read the rest of the series.  This is that novel.  This title was on the book club list for a library in the Philadelphia area that our book club will be reading next year, and I decided that I wanted to read it too.

The Reverend Clare Ferguson is new to Miller's Kill and St. Alban's parish, a tiny town and Episcopalian parish in upstate New York.  One bitterly cold winter evening Clare, just two weeks into shepherding her new flock, discovers a newborn baby boy bundled in blankets inside a box left on the steps of her church.  When the body of a local teenage girl is discovered in the snow out on the frigid shores of the kill, Van Alstyne instinctively knows she is connected to both the baby boy and St. Alban's Church in some way.  But the girl herself was not a parishioner, so who is her connection to Clare's church?

As Clare struggles to guide her extremely conservative congregation into serving the needs of their community, she is drawn into the ensuing investigation and a new friendship with Van Alstyne.  Meanwhile, the pressures of an infertile couple bent on taking in the abandoned baby collide with the perverse dysfunction that infects the murdered girl's family.  Class lines between the poverty stricken that her upper middle class congregation deems 'undesirables' are examined through the lenses of the foster care system and adoption.

As the story hurtles towards a pulse pounding, hair raising, disturbing resolution to the mysteries of the baby's parentage,  the identity of the murderer and the murderer's motives, the reader will find this a hard book to put down.  I recommend this read for hard core mystery fans who are tired of mysteries starring police detectives and forensic specialists.  Check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Still Life by Louise Penny

Still Life is Louise Penny's first novel in the series that features Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.  Life is a good book and a gripping mystery; however, the characters didn't make enough of an impact on me to want to read the entire series.  This was also the case with the next book I'll review.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the tiny village of Three Pines to investigate the suspicious death of Jane Neal, a beloved local woman found dead of a mysterious wound on a path through the woods near her house.  In addition to the difficulty of proving the death was a homicide warranting a thorough investigation or a hunting accident, the investigation is hampered by the negligence and arrogance of Agent Yvette Nichol, new to Gamache's team.  Meanwhile, Gamache, master of observation and detail, is convinced the suspicious death has roots sprung from seeds planted and left festering for decades.

I have to say that Nichol really irked me. Okay, if I'm honest, she infuriated me on multiple levels. Nichol is a young officer eager to move up the ranks of the police and is recently promoted to Gamache's homicide squad.  She's not bright, quite immature, has a bad attitude and very poor interpersonal skills.  And Gamache is determined to take her under his wing and mentor her.

In a story and a mystery that has several turns that reveal shocking revelations, one finds that the pages keep turning until one suddenly finds themselves at the surprising ending that unmasks the cruel and cunning murderer hiding in plain sight.  Mystery fans will love this book--and probably the series.  I recommend you check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Saint's Gate by Carla Neggers

Saint's Gate is the first in a series by Carla Neggers that will star an ex-nun turned FBI agent and her deep cover FBI operative lover, which is really only a minor spoiler because let's face it, savvy readers will know right from the outset that these two will hook up by novel's end.  I have a hard and fast rule that when an author starts the first lines of the first chapter with a main character's first and last names, as Neggers does with this one, I ditch the book because it always strikes me as a lazy way to start a story and probably a sign of mediocre writing. However, something about the story of Saint's Gate grabbed me.  Neggers sets up an intriguing mystery with an unusual heroine at the center of the story.  The art history and iconography elements add interest to what could be a run of the mill procedural FBI caper.

FBI special agent Emma Sharpe works on an elite team that tracks dangerous, high end art thieves who are often well funded.  Out of the blue Sharpe is called home to Maine by Sister Joan, a member of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart, a convent whose mission is art conservation, restoration and education.  It is where Sharpe was once a novice before she left to work a year for her family's art recovery and authentication firm after which she joined the FBI.  Sharpe's specialization in art recovery and related crimes as well as her history with the convent make her the person to whom Sister Joan turns for help when a certain piece of art comes to the convent.  But before the sister can tell Sharpe what concerns her, she's murdered and the artwork disappears.

Enter FBI deep cover operative Colin Donovan, fresh off a dangerous assignment and taking some much needed downtime in his native Maine; Donovan is enlisted by his friend, Father Bracken, the local priest serving the convent, to look into the nun's murder and by Sharpe's supervisor to keep eye on her.  Before long Sharpe realizes that both the stolen art and Sister Joan's murder may be related to another piece of artwork depicting a saint that was Sharpe's favorite as a child.  But that piece is now missing from her family's firm's attic vault.  What does it all mean?  How is it connected to her family?  And what story do the missing artworks tell that someone would kill to keep hidden?

Despite some plot developments verging on the implausible, the book is an engaging, easy, and suspenseful read.  The story is as hard to put down for the developing romance as it is for the mystery.  You can check this book out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

In Search of the Rose Notes by Emily Arsenault

In Search of the Rose Notes is Emily Arsenault's follow up to The Broken Teaglass, a novel previously reviewed here on the blog.  I was looking back at previous posts and when I clicked through Teaglass' I decided to head to amazon to see if Arsenault had published a follow up yet.  Sometimes these new authors can be tricky--some take forever to publish another novel, some never publish another novel.  I'm still waiting for Ronlyn Domingue's follow up novel to The Mercy of Thin Air--and I've been waiting five years for it!  I'm also wondering when Katherine Howe will publish a follow up novel to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.  Anyway I went to amazon and that's how found out Arsenault had published a second novel.

While Notes doesn't have as unique a premise as the setting of a dictionary company, poetry plays an integral role in this novel.  The narrative is split between 1990 in the months leading up to and those following the disappearance of Nora's best friend, Charlotte's babysitter, Rose, whom the girls idolized, and 2006 in the wake of the discovery of Rose's bones buried in wicker by a pond shore that spurs a short lived reunion between the currently estranged friends.

The 1990 narrative is told from the perspective of eleven year old Nora, who sees and intuits things about Rose that Charlotte doesn't see or refuses to acknowledge.  It's clear that there are currents of secrets running beneath the surface that eleven year old Nora cannot grasp.

The 2006 narrative sheds light on the current estrangement, personalities and dispositions of Charlotte and Nora as they recall that last summer with Rose and struggle to make sense of the discovery of her body so many years later.  Communication between the two friends is stinted, frought with their shared assumptions regarding past history, marked by the tragedy of Rose's disappearance, and prone to misunderstandings due to false assumptions.

When Nora discovers a series of anonymous poems entitled "You" that were published in the high school literary magazine her senior year, years after Rose's disappearance and then discovers Rose's long forgotten dream log the girls kept that long ago summer, Nora realizes the poems were drawn verbatim from Rose's dream log.  Both Nora and Charlotte each assume the other wrote and submitted the poems only to find that neither of them did.  But if neither girl wrote the poems, then who did?  And how are they connected to Rose's disappearance?

This is a novel as much about the boundaries and dynamics of friendship as it is a mystery about a disappeared girl.  The story of Nora, Rose, and Charlotte easily and completely sucks the reader into its pages and the novel reads fast.  The characters are distinctly drawn--though readers will find themselves exasperated with Charlotte.  Ultimately the resolution is quietly devastating.

I recommend you check this book out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Coming Up For Air by Patti Callahan Henry

Coming Up For Air is the first book by Patti Callahan Henry that I've read.  I enjoyed it--great story made even better by great writing and vivid characters.

Ellie's mother is controlling and a force to be reckoned with but in the wake of her sudden death, Ellie becomes unmoored as she realizes she has come to a crossroads in both her life and her marriage.  Ellie admits a heart breaking realization to herself: her marriage is loveless and she can choose to stay and allow it to wither what's left of her heart and soul or she can choose another path; a path that won't end with her becoming a numb, emotionless, steely woman like her mother.

Rusty, Ellie's husband, shows only the kind, charming self to the public, but Ellie knows he has another darker side, prone to cruel words and temper tantrums that he shows to her.  While he's never raised a hand to her, Ellie's come to realize that she mistook his ways of controlling for ways of loving.  And she's tired of it.  One might also describe Rusty's behavior as borderline verbally abusive.

All these years Ellie's lived with the regret of what might have been with her first love, Hutch, had she not allowed her controlling mother to drive a wedge between them to manipulate the end of their love affair under the guise of protecting Ellie.  Hutch comes back into Ellie's life after her mother's death because he wishes to finish some interviews and research he's been doing on her mother's life for a museum display.  He tells Ellie about her mother's mysterious, nebulous, and, until now unknown to her family, involvement with the civil rights movement.

A hidden journal that her mother kept for most of her life is discovered in a locked drawer in her closet when Ellie's packing up her mother's clothes.  In its pages Ellie finds a girl who grew up to be a woman different from the one she knew as her mother--a passionate woman, a woman in love with a mysterious, nameless man also involved with the civil rights movement before a disastrous Freedom Ride spells the beginning of the end of the love affair that shattered her mother's heart.

With the revelation of Ellie's mother's failed love affair and broken heart one wonders how much this experience influences her mother's actions to orchestrate the end of her daughter's love affair.  One also wishes for a more satisfying confrontational resolution to the situation with Rusty, but that would have been out of character for Ellie.  Part romance, part history, party mystery, I recommend you pick up this great read the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie