Book Review: A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman

Title: A Man Called Ove
Author: Frederik Backman
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: a clean read with a couple of bad words

Ove doesn't have anything left to live for. His dear wife, Sonia, died six months ago. He was just let go from the job he held for almost forty years. And he's always been grumpy by nature. He's just about to pull the plug on his life when the new neighbors, a young couple with two daughters, run their U-Haul into his mailbox. Over the next few weeks, Ove's suicide attempts are thwarted again and again as he makes friends, adopts a cat, saves a man from an oncoming train, and brings couples together, all against his will.

If you want a funny, feel-good book that isn't cheesy, A Man Called Ove might just be the book for you. Backman's Ove is so curmudgeonly that it's lovely to watch both his transformation and learn about his back story (in alternating chapters). Of course the book is a little Pollyannaish, but everyone needs a happy story from time to time. Besides, I've read so many dark and depressing Swedish books (hello Stieg Larsson) that it was really nice to read something light and Swedish for a change.

Book Review: The Lake House by Kate Morton

Title: The Lake House
Author: Kate Morton
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A pretty darn clean read

When Sadie Sparrow is placed on administrative leave from her police job (basically for becoming overly involved in the family of one of the cases she was investigating), she retreats to her newly-retired grandfather's home in Western England. Even though she's supposed to be relaxing and regrouping, her mind cannot rest, and soon she finds herself investigating the decades-old disappearance of a baby boy from an estate in town. She reaches out to Alice Edevane, the sister of the lost boy, who was sixteen when her brother disappears and is now a reclusive, cranky writer in her eighties. Alice and her sister have never talked about their brother's disappearance, and both always carried the weight of their own culpability. In The Lake House, Morton manages to marry the strains of guilt, responsibility and familial love of all kinds.

The Lake House is a remarkable book. There are many books that I get to the end of and think, "I could have written that." The Lake House has such a complicated story, and Morton manages to bring back tiny threads from early in the story that become prominent as everything comes to light. I was delighted to guess the mystery right with about 100 pages left to go, and even though some people might say that the way Morton ties together some of the threads are implausible, I prefer to see them as lovely and serendipitous.

Book Review: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Title: When Breath Becomes Air
Author: Paul Kalanithi
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Hard Copy
Content Alert: a pretty clean read. There are a handful of swear words, but don't let that hold you back from reading this beautiful book.

When Paul Kalanthi was thirty-six, just a year from completing his training as a neurosurgeon, and just on the verge of finally achieving adulthood, he was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer. In When Breath Becomes Air, Kalanthi looks back on his life, especially on his training in medicine and literature, and how those two fields informed his approach to his disease, and, ultimately to his death.

A few years ago, I read a short piece by Kalanthi published in The New York Times. If you've read this blog for a long time, you probably know that I love literature about medicine, and this piece, and this story, really hit home for me, because, like Ed and I a few years earlier, Kalanthi was poised at the beginning of a life he'd spent half a lifetime preparing for. It felt so unfair, and I really admired the poetry of his language and the pathos I felt while reading. When Breath Becomes Air manages to retain the beauty in the language of that shorter piece, while providing a more extended meditation of life. This is a fabulous book for any reader, whether confronting your mortality or not.

Book Review: Humans of New York Stories by Brandon Stanton

Title: Humans of New York: Stories
Author: Brandon Stanton
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Hard Copy
Content Alert: a pretty clean read, but the stories really run the spectrum

Remember back in the day before smartphones when people used to keep a stack of magazines in the bathroom for a little toilet reading? In my house we even had a book called The Bathroom Book, with bite-sized little tidbits, short enough for a potty break. It's kind of ironic that Brandon Stanton's The Humans of New York phenomenon started on Instagram (which has definitively won the bathroom reading battle, if there was one), because Humans of New York: Stories, would be the best back of the toilet book ever.

Stanton's book is his Instagram account in published form. My sense is that Stanton walks around New York and asks people if he can take their picture, then asks them a few questions, and picks a snippet from that short interview to post along with the picture. With 4.7 million followers, the account is insanely popular (and whoa, all the judgy jerks on the internet who used to hang out on message boards now comment on HONY), and I'm always impressed with the way Stanton manages to get something interesting and profound of the people he talks with. There seems to be a light attempt at some thematic arrangements in the book, but mostly, the pictures and stories speak for themselves. Even though I'd read most of the stories individually when they came out on Instagram, there was a power to reading them together in the book.

Book Review: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Title: Between the World and Me
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: swearing

I pay for an Audible account that gives me two book credits per month. In that month, I'll probably run about 250 miles, much of it by myself, and I use the books to keep myself entertained. So I tend to shop for long books. Alexander Hamilton, at more than thirty hours, was a good buy. I was loath to spend the money on Ta-Nehisi Coatses's book, Between the World and Me, since it's only 3 1/2 hours long. But within a couple of days of each other, I heard that the book won a National Book Award, and I heard an extended interview with Coates about his newfound success on This American Life, and I knew I had to part with the credit and listen to the book.

Between the World and Me, which is written as a letter from the author to his (then) fourteen-year-old son, Samori, was eye-opening. It's a book written by a black man about my own age, to his son, who is the same age as my oldest son, and while we grew up within a few hundred miles of each other, studied the same things in college and have worked at writing as a career, our worldviews could not be more different. And Coates would say that this is because he's a black man and I am a white woman. He writes poetically, emotionally, sparely about the experiences of his life. Of his loving father hitting him with a belt. Of being a teenager in Baltimore. Of having college friends shot and killed by the police for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He writes of fear and hatred. And the book left me feeling unsettled and fearful myself, finding my privilege uncomfortable and conspicuous. It's a book I'm glad I read and perspective I'm glad I understand a bit more, but not an easy read. If you read it, don't forget to listen to the This American Life piece. They stand as interesting counterpoints to each other-- showing the complexity that lies within each of us.

Book Review: Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker

Title: Dear Mr. You
Author: Mary-Louise Parker
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: mild language, abuse, sex

In Dear Mr. You, actress and writer Mary-Louise Parker writes letters to the men in her life, from her grandfather to her ex-fiance to her son (and many fellows in between). In this memoir, we see Parker obliquely, not as part of a narrative but as a narrator, filtering her one-sided vision of interactions with these men. The idea for the book is ambitious, and the execution is pretty genius. There were times when the lack of a clear narrative made this book easy to set aside for a while, but I was always happy when I picked it up again. I feel that eventually, a picture of the author emerges that might have been more obscured through a more conventional format.

Book Review: Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Title: Year of Yes:  How to Dance it Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person
Author: Shonda Rhimes
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Acknowledgement of sex, swearing

Shonda Rhimes is one of my guilty pleasures. I watched Grey's Anatomy with an almost religious fervor when my kids were little, and I still tune in to TGIT for Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder. Heck, I even watched every episode of Off the Map. And as much as I may mock the Shonda Rhimes dramatic monologue, you know I'm a secret fan.

And it's a good thing, because Year of Yes is basically one extended Shonda Rhimes dramatic monologue. The story starts when Rhimes's sister says to her, one Thanksgiving, "You never say yes to anything," and Rhimes decides that for a year, she's going to get out of her comfort zone and say yes to opportunities for growth in her path. These range from giving commencement addresses and losing half her body weight to playing with her children and having the courage to end relationships. There's a lot to be learned here about the ruts we tend to let ourselves fall into, and how to get out of them. I have talked with lots of friends about how much I love her chapter on "doing it all." Rhimes contends that there's no way we can do it all, and her nanny is the only way she's even able to pretend, but even then, when she's succeeding in one aspect of her life, she's letting other areas slide. That was so refreshing for me to hear (trying to write, right now, with a child actually sitting on my lap watching YouTube). I also really loved her insights into her characters, and how ambitious, arrogant intern Christina Yang (from Grey's Anatomy) represented who she was early in her career and powerful, isolated, morally ambiguous Olivia Pope (from Scandal) represents some of how she has felt as she's achieved more success. This is a really fun read, whether or not you're a fan of Shondaland like I am.

Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Title: Alexander Hamilton
Author: Ron Chernow
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible

Just like everyone else on the planet, I've been swept up in the fervor over Alexander Hamilton. I was "this close" to making our entire family detour to NYC during our summer vacation so I could go see the play (by myself, because tickets for eight would cost bank). I was so captivated by Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical (and cultural phenomenon) that I finally cracked the book that has been sitting on our shelf for more than a decade, Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'm not an avid reader of biographies. In fact, I had to create a tag for biographies when I was reviewing this book. But my friend Michelle told me that if I listened to this one, I wouldn't be disappointed. She was absolutely right. While Alexander Hamilton's included the jubilant highs and devastating lows of high drama, the story is putty in Chernow's able hands. He makes the villains (Burr, Adams, Jefferson) and the heroes (Washington, Lafayette) come to life, and Hamilton shines as someone who's as complicated as any central figure in a Shakespearean tragedy. When I started listening the 30+ hour audio version, I was really skeptical, but it took me about a week to power through the story. It's definitely worth a listen, and fans of the musical might just find themselves singing along.

Book Review: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Title: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: maybe some language?

Have you ever wanted to live creatively but felt mired in the everyday miasma of living? I do. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about steps to take to live a creative life. She talks a lot about the spirituality of creative inspiration, which I really love about the book. And yes, it's a motivational rah rah sort of book, and that's just what I need right now. You see, I don't just read books and review books. I've always wanted to write books. Right now, I'm about 50 pages into the first draft of a novel. It's an idea that I've had percolating for a while (if you have an hour I'd be happy to tell you all about it), and I gave myself a deadline-- by the end of this school year, I want to have a complete draft. But finding time to write with six kids and a job and editing Segullah and being primary president isn't easy. So I need the motivational speeches.

I wrote a post about this book the other day at Segullah, and how it both inspires and scares me. This book could change your life, but probably not if you listen to the audiobook. I felt similar to how I felt when I listened to Brene Brown's Rising Strong-- that when you listen to an audiobook, it's hard to stop and think and take notes (I usually listen when I'm running or folding laundry or driving), so a lot of the stuff I want to remember gets missed. And it's probably better to mete out the motivation bit by bit. When I was a senior in high school, I spent the whole year collecting quotes, which I printed out on my word processor and then cut into tiny hearts and pinned to the bulletin board in my freshman dorm room. I feel like I could pin a whole board of quotes from this book that would be useful to me as a writer, but now I've forgotten all of them. Never fear, though, Gilbert has a podcast that serves as a companion to the book, and I'm waiting to listen to the first episode when I need an extra dash of motivation.

Book Review: Why Not Me by Mindy Kaling

Title: Why Not Me?
Author: Mindy Kaling
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: language

You know how you sometimes fall in love with a character on a tv show, and then you're disappointed that they don't exist in real life? Well, I have sort of the opposite feeling for Mindy Kaling. Kelly Kapoor, her breakout role on The Office, was someone I never really connected with (and I haven't watched The Mindy Project yet, but it's on my list), but somehow I ended up reading Kaling's first book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and I fell in love with it, and with her (and isn't it nice when the real person behind the character is so much cooler than the character?). So I had high expectations for Why Not Me? and Kaling surpassed all of them. This book is funny (of course), but it's also really honest and open, and not just about interesting but superficial things like how to get your clothes tailored so they fit your body perfectly, but also about deeper things like how she decided sorority life wasn't for her, what it's like to work in Hollywood when no one else looks like she does, and how she credits her success to lots and lots of hard work, and not simply to being in the right place at the right time (and her resume attests to her work ethic). She reads the book herself, and has perfect delivery, and she finally answers the question about what is going on with her and BJ Novak. Even though Kaling's a little loose with the language, I heartily recommended that my teenager daughter give the book a listen, because let's be real, a girl who works hard but also loves great shoes is a pretty good and realistic role model.

Book Review: Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

Title: Bone Gap
Author: Laura Ruby
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: abduction, sexual content

Finn and his brother Sean live in Bone Gap, which looks a lot like any small rural town. People tend to get lost in Bone Gap. Finn and Sean's mom left with an orthodontist a few years ago, and they've been alone ever since. Well, for a while they had Roza, Sean's girlfriend, but she disappeared too, right before Finn's very eyes. He hasn't been able to forgive himself for letting her go.

At first, I wasn't sure I liked Bone Gap. I wasn't sure I trusted the world Laura Ruby was creating. Was it our world that Sean and Finn and Roza lived in? Or was it it our world, with a twist. For a long time, I wasn't sure. When we hear from Roza, she feels like she's inside the nightmare part of a fairy tale, and I didn't know how a world that contained EMTs and beekeepers who like to make out could also contain Roza's story. But Laura Ruby makes it work. She makes us reexamine how we see the world, and look for the gaps in our own spaces. The book manages to feel both intensely realistic and one step away from reality.

Book Review: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Title: Fates and Furies
Author: Lauren Groff
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: sex

Today the National Book Awards are being announced. I've read three of the five finalists (you can see my reviews of The Turner House and A Little Life), and Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff would be my pick if I were judging. I was captivated by the first page of the book, which opens on the day Lotto and Mathilde, seniors at Vassar, elope after two weeks of dating. Lotto, the scion of a wealthy Florida family, struggles as an actor, and when he finds success as a playwright, he credits all of it to Mathilde, who loved him and made his work possible. First, we get Lotto's view of the marriage, and after his death (about midway through the book), the point of view switches to Mathilde, whose outlook on the relationship was more pragmatic and less rosy.

I read an NPR review of the book that says that Lotto's perspective represents the fates (the gifts) while Mathilde's represents the furies (the vengeance), but I think it's a lot more complicated than that. Lotto and Mathilde enter the marriage as nearly complete strangers, and while they do love each other and stay married for a long time, they (or at least she) still keep parts of themselves secret. I love the epic nature of this book (how could it be anything else with a title so grounded in Greek mythology?), and the focus on the minutae of marriage. Lotto and Mathilde are gorgeous, fully-rounded characters, and one of the things I loved best was that they still had the capacity to surprise each other, in good ways and in bad, even years into their marriage. Fates and Furies isn't only a love story, or the story of a marriage, because Mathilde's story is also a lot about childhood trauma, grief and resolution. Although the subject matter is difficult at times, it was a really engaging read for me. I wanted to gobble this book up, and then I was sad when it was over.

Book Review: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Title: A Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: repeated sexual abuse of a child, violence

A couple of nights ago, Ed and I were driving down to the BYU basketball game together, and I started telling him about this fantastic book I was reading. I said something about how it was about a group of friends who met in college, then moved to New York, and how the central character, Jude St. Francis, had suffered horrible abuse as a child, first abandoned at birth, then growing up in a monastery, then when he was taken by one of the monks and used as a prostitute, then finally, when he ran away and met even worse people who damaged him both physically and mentally. But eventually he became successful and found a family and someone with whom he could share his life, and yes, it's true that he refused to talk to anyone about his past and cut himself to deal with the psychic pain, but it really was a fantastic story.

"Wow," Ed said. Remind me not to read that book.

A Little Life is a deep dive into Jude St. Francis's life. His struggles to overcome his past, and the way he never really can see himself as something other than fragile or broken. I don't think it could be classified as anything other than a tragedy, but it's also hopeful in lots of ways. I think it shows that someone whose life is scarred from the beginning and continues to bear those wounds can also have moments, even years, of beauty. It's a difficult book, and a book that is both incredibly detailed yet also feels almost timeless (I never could figure out what year the book started and what year it ended-- it all felt like it took place in the present), and I can see that it wouldn't be something everyone would enjoy, but I found it really moving, and I think I'm a more empathetic person for having known Jude, at least over the course of 700 pages.

Book Review: Rising Strong by Brene Brown

Title: Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.
Author: Brene Brown, PhD, LMSW
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A little bit of swearing

I had never heard of Brene Brown until a few weeks ago, when shout-outs for her new book Rising Strong started showing up in my Instagram feed. Without knowing anything about her or what the book was about, I decided to use my September Audible credits to buy it. I trusted those friends that much. It turns out that Rising Strong is the companion book to Daring Greatly. In Daring Greatly, Brown encourages people to take risks and be vulnerable, and in Rising Strong, Brown talks about how to emerge from the inevitable failures of life.

I'm a little torn on the audio version of Daring Greatly. On the one hand, I think there's so much to be gained to hearing this book in Brown's voice, because her enthusiasm is infectious. On the other hand, I wish I had a hard copy of this book to mark the heck out of. I wanted to underline things so I could come back to them easily. So I would recommend and old-fashioned paper copy of this girl. I love the way that Brown practices what she preaches here and examines her own failures. She looks into the failures in her life (and in the lives of people around her) and shows how we grow when we're willing to admit when we're wrong and take the consequences for it. I've already ordered Rising Strong and I'm eager to immerse myself in that one as well.

Book Review: The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Title: The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Author: Richard Flanagan
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: War, sex, language-- it's definitely a book for adults

Dorrigo Evans is a fine doctor, although what would have been his crowing achievement as a surgeon, a new cancer surgery, didn't work out. Although he's been married for many years, he's a complete failure as a husband, and a minor failure as a father, a role that seems almost forgotten as he nears the end of his life. He's been a serial adulterer forever. He once knew true love. And a long, long time ago, he led a group of POWs in Burma during World War II. For that, the people of Australia consider him one of their greatest heroes.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a complicated book. The narration, which goes back from the 1910s and forward to the 1990s with many stops in between, isn't always easy to follow. Dorrigo's motivations are often unclear as well. Why does he act so nobly on behalf of his men, dying by the dozens as they work to build a train line, but so ignobly at home? Does the loss of one love kill all other opportunities for love? What purpose does sex serve when it doesn't bring two people together? The Narrow Road to the Deep North is beautifully written and very thought-provoking. There's a scene toward the end of the novel when he sees a woman he hasn't seen in years which is possibly the loveliest and most painful thing I've read in my life. It's not an easy read, but it as a rewarding one.

Book Review: The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

Title: The Light of the World
Author: Elizabeth Alexander
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: This book digs deeply into grief and loss

Poet and Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander expected April 4, 2012 to be a regular evening, juggling work and child care of her two boys, Solomon and Simon, with her husband, Ficre. Then, the bottom dropped out of their lives when Ficre, so healthy and full of life, suddenly died of a heart attack while exercising on the treadmill. The Light of the World is an elegy in prose, in which Alexander shows how Ficre, an Ethiopian painter and chef, brought color and spice to her life, and how she and her boys mourned and lived in the time just after his death.

I listened to The Light of the World in less than a day, and I would have listened to Alexander talk about Ficre and her love for him for ten times as long if she had written more. This isn't a whitewashed love story-- she's open and honest and raw about the imperfections of their life together, but that doesn't diminish the story-- it endeared me to them. I loved the inside view Alexander gave us into her life-- it takes a brave author to be willing to expose the private aspects of life, especially and love and grief and raising teenagers, and Alexander shows herself both wise and brave in The Light of the World.

Book Review: Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Title: Luckiest Girl Alive
Author: Jessica Knoll
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: This one is pretty dark-- violent, non-consensual sex, consensual sex, swearing

Ani seems to have the perfect life-- she's an editor at a magazine in Manhattan, she lives with her stockbroker fiance, she has a perfect body and perfect clothes and is planning the perfect wedding. But the veneer of perfection is thin, and underneath that perfect exterior is Tiffani FaNelli, the girl she once was-- the chubby insecure girl whose mom talked too loud and whose parents never had enough money for her to really fit in at her private school in Philly. Although Ani would say she has risen above her past (and we learn more about the dark secrets of that past as Luckiest Girl Alive unfolds), but she is not happy. In fact, the book opens with visions of Ani stabbing that perfect fiance with knives from their wedding registry.

I know that Luckiest Girl Alive is getting mixed reviews. Ani is an unreliable narrator, and she's pretty unlikeable too. While Knoll worked as a writer for the same kinds of magazines that Ani writes for, I don't think she made Ani unlikeable by coincidence. She name drops. She's obsessed with brands and with keeping herself thin. She's marrying a guy who seems more like an accessory than a partner. All in all, she's kind of a nightmare. She was a nightmare fifteen years ago, when she started at the Bradley School too. But Knoll does a great job making readers interested enough care about his damaged girl, and then lays out a harrowing, totally compelling story of what happened to Ani during that pivotal freshman year. I can't tell too much without giving things away, but this book is full of twists and turns, and deals with issues far more important (like sexual abuse, school violence, and class issues) than having the perfect boots for the season.

Book Review: The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

Title: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
Author: Jeanne Birdsall
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

When I was a little girl, I loved novels in series. Little House gave way to Betsy-Tacy and All of a Kind Family, and then I started reading Anne of Green Gables and read all eight books at least once a year until I left for college. I wanted my daughters to have this same kind of series experience, but sometimes I worry that the world has changed so much in the last thirty years that Betsy-Tacy doesn't have the same allure for my daughters that it did for me, and so far, they haven't shown much interest in any of the books series that I adored as a girl (which is fine, I guess, there are a lots of good books out there, right?). Then I came upon The Penderwicks, which my lovely friend Catherine mentioned in her list of top summer reads for kids in a segment on Channel 5. Maren and I started reading this together, but then she wanted to read something else, so I finished on my own. The Penderwicks is the first book in a series of five about four sisters who take a summer vacation with their widowed father to a cottage on an estate in the Berkshires. They have lots of adventures with Jeffrey, who lives in the big house with his imposing mother.

The Penderwicks is the kind of book that could take place in 1950 or 2015. While Birdsall mentions a computer once, the book feels totally timeless. The girls have the kind of unplugged, roaming adventures that parents think don't really happen any more. I loved the characters of each of the four girls, who are nicely differentiated by the author, and with whom most readers will find someone to identify. I'm definitely hooked-- I want to see where The Penderwicks go from here, and I want to take my kids to a cottage in the mountains without wifi and see what happens.

Book Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Personal copy
Content Alert: Some swearing, dark theme for young teens

Take three cousins, and one friend so close he's practically family: Cady, Mirren, Johnny and Gat. Add one private island off of Martha's Vineyard and lots of inherited wealth. Mix in jealously, lust, and power struggles, and the result can be tragic.

We Were Liars is a book that's hard to write about in a review. I'm usually one for spoilers. I often like a book better if I know exactly what it's about. But in the case of this book, I think even telling people that there are spoilers might ruin the experience for them. I'm a little surprised that I got my hands on this book and started reading without knowing what it was all about (it got a lot of buzz last summer when it was first published). So I won't ruin it and tell you. What I will tell you is that if you appreciate a great story, a story that requires a reader to be engaged work out what's happening along with the narrator, who may or may not be reliable, then this is a book with a rewarding payoff. Lockhart writes in a spare, poetic style, and makes good use of fairy tales to shed light on the story of what exactly went wrong with the Sinclair family in summer fifteen.

Book Review: Finders Keepers by Stephen King

Title: Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy #2)
Author: Stephen King
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Violence, swearing

In 1978 Morris Bellamy and his friends break into the home of John Rothstein, an author who seems to be part JD Salinger, part John Updike, part Harper Lee. While Bellamy's friends think they're just going to rob the guy and get out of there, Bellamy is after something more-- he wants to know what Rothstein, the author of three books about Jimmy Gold, has been writing since he stopped publishing in 1961. The men kill Rothstein in the heist and hit paydirt, finding more than $25,000 and a whole safe full of notebooks. But before Bellamy can read the stories, he's arrested on an unrelated charge and spends the next 38 years in prison.

Thirty-five years later, at the height of the financial crisis, Pete Saubers finds a trunk full of money and notebooks buried in the woods. It seems an answer to prayer, since Pete's father was injured at the civic center massacre a year earlier, and Pete anonymously sends the money to his family, bits at a time. But he becomes even more interested in those notebooks, and when Bellamy gets out of jail, he's willing to do just about anything to get them back. We get the same familiar cast of characters we grew to love in Mr. Mercedes-- Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson, who try to save Pete's gravy before it's too late.

You may be reading this review in July, but I'm writing it in June, the last of more than a dozen books I reviewed over a couple of days. They were the first of my summer reads, and I saved Finders Keepers until the end because I loved it so much that I knew I'd keep writing them if I had this carrot dangling at the end of my line. I really enjoyed Mr. Mercedes, the first book in the Bill Hodges trilogy, but Finders Keepers is far better (which is practically unheard of with trilogies, right?). It's also the kind of book where you don't have to read the first one to know what the second one is all about. Yes, there are too many details (you get the sense that Stephen King is a bit disdainful of people who are overweight, for example), and it could be a little shorter, but the story itself is super exciting. And it's a book for readers. Both Bellamy and Saubers genuinely love the Jimmy Gold story so much that they share more than they'd like to admit. King writes beautifully about how a love of literature can shape a life, for good or for evil.