A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

I remember I came across The Day I Lost You by Fionnuala Kearney sometime last year before it was published, and I had to wait months for its release.  Kearney is a British writer, and this is her second novel.  I haven't read the novel that preceded this one, but from what I read of the blurb and the first few pages, both novels deal with similar themes.  Secrets and infidelity (and probably a secret love child thrown in for good measure to make everything extra messy) figure prominently in both novels.   The Day I Lost You is an engrossing read with a side of suspense--as in who's the baby daddy and will the main character bite the bullet and finally get it on with her bff now that they're both single at the same time? It's been ten weeks since Jess's daughter, Anna, was swallowed by an avalanche in the French Alps while on holiday, and, without a body to bury, every day has been a dark struggle to keep her head above water.  The only thing that's keepin...

Missing Pieces is the sixth novel by Heather Gudenkauf and the third Gudenkauf novel that I've read.  I previously read and reviewed her debut novel, The Weight of Silence , and her third novel, One Breath Away .  Gudenkauf has another novel on the way in May called Not a Sound .  Gudenkauf consistently delivers gripping, engrossing thrillers, so I'm looking forward to Not a Sound in May.  So I read Missing Pieces , and I had opinions (lots of opinions) before I was even through the second chapter.   But I'll get to those later. When Jack Quinlan's beloved Aunt Julia takes a fall and ends up in the hospital, Jack and his wife Sarah fly back to the small town in Iowa where Jack grew up and that Jack has endeavored to leave behind forever.  As soon as they arrive Sarah can tell that something is off with the family.  There are strange family dynamics.  There's tension between Jack's cousin Dean (Julia's son) and Jack's sister, Amy, who found J...

Frozen Charlotte is the third novel written by Alex Bell who has seven books to her name, some of which belong to the horror genre.   Frozen Charlotte , a young adult novel, is a creepy, strange, mysterious ghost story.  It is a terrifying read for much of the novel especially once the reader intuits just what is actually afoot regarding one of the characters. Following a frightening and bewildering incident with a ouija board cell phone app in a cafe, Sophie's best friend, Jay, drowns in a freak biking accident on the way home.  Dealing with her grief over Jay's death and determined to find out exactly what happened that night, Sophie travels to the Isle of Skye to stay with her uncle and cousins, Cameron, Piper, and Lilas, over vacation while her parents go on a long planned trip to California.  By the end of the novel this inciting mystery will be eclipsed by the story of the disturbing evil that is source of the nail biting horror. Sophie fears she and Jay...

As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel's Amazing March Toward Freedom is written by Richard Michelson and illustrated by Raul Colon.  I found this title on a list of books recommended to teach children about the civil rights movement.  The book was listed on Amazon's 2010 12 Best Children's Books of the Decade and has received the Sydney Taylor Award Gold Medal, Skipping Stones Multicultural Book Award, Museum of Tolerance Once Upon A World Silver Medal, and National Parenting Publications Awards Gold Medal as well as other honors. As Good As Anybody tells the parallel stories of the discrimination, oppression, and hardship that King and Heschel endured growing up an African-American in the American South ruled by Jim Crowe and a Jew growing up in pre-World War II Poland respectively.  Michelson shows how both men's experiences as members of historically oppressed groups lead them to become men who worked together to march for peace...