I'll Be Seeing You by Suzanne Haynes and Loretta Nyhan

I'll Be Seeing You by Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan is the other book that I was reading while I read My Name Is Mina. I liked I'll Be Seeing You a lot better than that Mina book. This is the kind of book that sneaks up on you and sucks you in before you realize what's happening. It's a pretty fast read and once the letters start going back and forth between the two women, it turns into a page turner because you want to find out what's going to happen in their lives and will their men make it home from the war and then what's going happen next when they do come home and wait, it's the end of the book?! But what happens in the post-war years to these women and their families?

According to book jacket, the story reflects the authors' own story, and there's an interview at the end of the book that explains this. Apparently, the authors are penpals over email who met through one of their blogs. As of the day of the interview they had not yet met. I thought that was interesting, and I wanted to share it.

The story is set during the tumultuous and uncertain years of the second world war, and it tells the story of the power of friendship among women, specifically the power of a long distance friendship forged through many, many letters. Glory Whitehall is a young wife and mother whose husband enlists in the army when America declares war. Left behind at their home in Massachusetts with a toddler son, she awaits the imminent birth of her second child and news from her husband. Rita Vincenzo is the wife of a college professor who enlists despite being too old for the draft. He serves as a medic and is shipped overseas. Rita is left behind in Iowa when both her husband and then their son enlist in different branches of the military and are shipped overseas to opposite fronts of the war.

Glory and Rita are brought together by a penpal program that aims to connect women in similar wartime situations--maintaining the home front while their husbands go off to war. Happenstance connects Glory and Rita and from this happy coincidence a strong and vital friendship is born. It is this strong bond of friendship that each woman will need at various times throughout this harrowing war to carry them through to the other side. It is over many letters, through many trials and several years across thousands of miles that these two women offer each other the emotional support and advice that will sustain them as they strive to overcome and survive personal tragedy and dramas.

The story is told as a series of letters written by the two women to each other, to their husbands, and one of their sons, and this is one of the reasons that the novel reads fast. The story rather effortlessly draws the reader into these women's lives. I recommend you check out this book the next time you're at the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

In The Woods by Tana French

"What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with the truth is fundamental, but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies ... and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely ... This is my job ... What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this--two things: I crave truth. And I lie." opening lines of In The Woods chapter 1, pages 3-4 In The Woods by Tana French, an Irish writer, is an extremely well-written and well-crafted mystery novel. The downside is that this is French's debut novel, and her website (located at http://www.tanafrench.com/ ) does not off...

Broken by Karin Slaughter

Before I begin the formal review there are a few things I need to get off my chest in the wake of finishing this book; I'll do so without giving away too many (or any) spoilers. The OUTRAGE!: the identity of Detective Lena Adams' new beau; the low depths to which Grant County's interim chief has sunk and brought the police force down with him; agent Will Trent's wife, Angie's, sixth sense/nasty habit of reappearing in his life just when he's slipping away from her. Thank God for small miracles though because while Angie was certainly referred to during the book, the broad didn't make an appearance. One sign that I've become way too invested in these characters is that I'd like to employ John Connolly's odd pair of assassins, Louis and Angel, to contract out a hit on Angie; do you think Karin Slaughter and John Connolly could work out a special cross over? Hallelujah: Dr. Sara Linton and agent Will Trent are both back. There is no hallelujah fo...

Generation Kill by Evan Wright and One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick

Non-fiction books aren't really my thing; generally, this is how my relationship goes with non-fiction books: I see a really interesting one, I borrow it, I start to read it, and then I ditch it a chapter or two later when the dry, boring writing and non-existent plot fail to hook me. However, this a review of two non-fiction books that I read back to back after a five year old three article series that I dug up on the internet; it was written by Evan Wright and preceded his book Generation Kill , which is basically a book version of the article series that he wrote and published in Rolling Stone Magazine . Recently HBO adapted Generation Kill into a mini-series that ran sometime last year; I got the series on DVD and in the midst of watching it, I decided I wanted to get my hands on the book to read. In the meantime, I stumbled across One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick, the lieutenant of the platoon that Wright embedded with, and I read that book while I waited for Generation K...

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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