Hannah received a note from Owen asking to protect his daughter. There is no other information. If it is you, how agonizing it will be?
Hanna and stepdaughter Bailey did everything they can to find Owen. The more they dug, the more confused they became. His past was not the one he told them.
Laura Dave keeps the suspense till the end. I like the style and story.
I made the graphic to show the inner vibe of the novel. I Hope, you like it.
Follow BooksAndBindu with BloglovinActually, I finished 3 books last week. It was a bit more than my usual reading.
I love to write about the book "How A Woman Becomes Lake" by Marjorie Celona.
Leo took his sons on New Year's eve to the Square point. It was a heavy snow day. The lake was frozen. It was bone-chilling cold.
Vera was walking her dog there and found Leo's older son standing in the snow. She called the police to report seeing the child.
Later officer Lewis cote found Vera's car and her dog. But Vera was nowhere to be found.
Leo and the kids tell the police they never saw the woman first. Are they telling the truth?
Danny is so lost after Vera is gone. Lewis later finds out the truth.
We can feel the melancholy in the narration. Life is not what we really see on the outside. The mind plays a lot of games on how we are treated by our parents. Some people can overcome the trauma. some cannot.
With the story, we understand how Vera's death affects the characters. How their life turned around because of Vera. Even the dog Scout has to live with the loss of her and the new living conditions.
Highly recommend this book to you.
The book, "The Jet Setters" by Amanda Eyre Ward is the 28th book after I started recording the books I read.
Charlotte attended Minnie's funeral. Now, she is lonely. Her grown children are away from them.
Lee is supposed to be an actress. Regan is supposed to be happy with her kids and husband. Cord is supposed to be a successful venture capitalist trying hard to find the woman of his dreams. Charlotte herself is supposed to be a very religious Catholic, church-going lady.
In reality, Lee is deep in debt, without work and dumped by her boyfriend. Regan wants to get a divorce from her husband. She is depressed too. Cord is a struggling alcohol addict and gay. Charlotte herself is hiding her desire to find a man and to have sex.
Lee was traumatised by finding their dad hanged himself in her bathroom. Under the strict orders of Charlotte, she keeps this a secret. The images of the dead man hanging in her bathroom are haunting her life.
Regan is keeping the infidelities of her husband from her mom and siblings. Cord is in love with a man whom he wants to marry. But, he cannot tell his family the truth about his sexuality or his addiction. Lee is hiding her depression and her failures in life.
When Charlotte won the "jet setters" cruise, she invites her children to join her. Charlotte herself is reluctant to open up to the truth. She wanted to make it looks like everything is fine on the outside.
The truth about all of their lives is unfolding in the Mediterranean cruise ship.
The novel takes us through the messiness of love and life.
Posy she was over the moon when Matt proposed to her on top of the mountain. She loved the ring he chose for her.
She got confused and worried when her sister Fleur, her best friend Leah and her mom were not happy about her and Matt.
She started searching for her exes online and decided to find out why she got dumped by them.
When Matt found out about Posy going after the exes, he decided to call off the engagement.
This made her even more determined to find out why her relationships are all come to a disaster.
Finally, she figured out the biggest lies of all were in her own family.
The ending is good, with Matt and Posy finding out that they love each other.
I don't like the way Posy was acting stupid in the beginning.
Yeah, it is a novel. So just go with the story, right?
Have you tried any of Jenny Colgan books yet?
I don't know why chose that book to read. Think, it was available to borrow right away and the title sounds nice.
The first chapter got me hooked. Toby is a charming young PR person for an art gallery. He has a good life: a nice job, great family, a very good girl friend... He is a charmer, who knows to get his way around.
In the beginning, Toby tells us how he almost messed up with his job. By providing solutions to get out of the mess he had co-created, he was able to keep his job. Then, his life took a turn and he got attacked in his own home. The attack caused neurological damage to him.
Toby moved in with his uncle Hugo while recovering. Hugo is diagnosed with brain cancer and not much time left for him.
Then the story was moving slow, at a crawling speed. Half way through it, I almost abandoned reading. Then, the skeleton was found by Zach. It became so interesting to find out how the skeleton got inside the hole of the Elm tree. Toby even got confused he might have done the crime. But, the way his cousins tells the story and let him know he didn't do anything wrong. But that didn't bring any comfort to him. He thinks about uncle Hugo and how Hugo might have known the truth years ago.
I was wondering the criminal mind of Susannah and how she can get away with everything.
After Hugo's death, Toby happened to kill the detective. In the end, Toby lost everything of his happy go lucky life. But, still he is lucky: in in several other ways.
The economic disparity is mentioned in the book a few times. Toby's friend remembers getting in trouble at school. While Dec got suspended for three days, Toby got detention for a day. Toby does't even remember the incident. When he killed a cop, he got sentenced to recover in a mental hospital. If it was some one with a not so privileged background, the verdict would have been different. Toby thinks about it.
When Toby is out of hospital, he got a PR job because of his family connections. He still don't have to struggle economically, even though he has trouble with his neurological damages.
If you can handle the slow pace, it will be a pleasure. It was not a great one for me. This is the first I am reading a Tana French novel.
The Witch Elm by Tana French
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It is a murder mystery, a thriller. But moves in slow pace.
People keep a lot of secrets. They are not the ones they appear on the surface.
View all my reviews
It is just 5.30 in the morning. I am washing the cups after morning coffee. The pink rubber glove adorned hand feeling the warmth of the water. I am aware of my breathing too. Yes, breathing through the nose.
Last week I was reading the book "Breath : The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nester.
The book is fascinating to read. Nester tells the story struggling to breath to becoming an expert in the science of breathing.
His writing style makes us follow the page after page of information. With so many experiments, we learn how breath can affect our body.
While, we can see how breathing techniques improved Nester's life, we will doubt about its power to cure Cancer and Schizofrenia.
If you are just interested in the techniques alone, skip to the last part of the book and read that one alone.
If it is breathing though both nostrils, or through one, or holding it, breathing is an important part of our life. We do it all the time, till we take the last one.
Breathe, fill your lungs!
Happy reading!
For week 11, I read "Recipe For a Perfect Wife" by Karma Brown.
Alice is fired from her job. But she lied to her husband about it. Actually, she was not honest to herself, when she agreed to move to suburbs.
When Alice was agreeing to Nate about having a baby, she lied again. She was not ready for it.
She was "writing a novel" was another lie she was telling everyone.
But, things changed with Alice when she discovered Nellie's cook book. She started cooking. Then she learned more about Nellie. Then, she gained more information about Nellie from her unsent letters to her mom.
Karma Brown narrates two parallel stories of two women lived in the same house on different times. It is full of twists and turns. Both women had their own struggles. Actually, women still struggle to have ownership of their own body and mind, it seems.
Throughout the story, I was questioning why Alice had to lie to her husband? We can understand Nellie as a victim, but who is Alice? Why can't she tell the truth about events happened in her life to her husband?
I have to agree that it was a page turner. In the end Alice decided to stand for herself. A relief to my curious mind!!!
Bindu
I wrote this entry last Sunday. But, forgot to publish.
I finished another thriller: title is "Blue Moon" by Lee Child. It is one of the Jack Reacher series.
Bindu
Alicia Berenson killed her husband by shooting him 5 times on the head. Then she didn't talk.
Alicia, a famous painter and her husband were having a good life. No one understands why she killed him and refused to talk.
The psychotherapist, determined to help her, made her start talking. What happened when she started talking?
This is a psychological thriller and page turner. It gets the readers interest till the end.
Very captivating story and end is the real twist!
I am not giving away the plot. You must read to get the full fun of this book!
There was another book, I started to read: "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tart. It was highly recommended by the librarians. I saw myself skipping the pages to finish it. The book is interesting, don't get me wrong. It was making me go faster to see what happens in the end.
Bindu
Last week I finished Emma Straub's "All Adults Here".
The novel starts with Astrid witnessing a bus accident. It happened just before her hair appointment.
The accident make her think over her life. She was thinking about her past, her kids and then the future.
She realized she was not a great parent to her 3 kids. Now, her grand daughter is here to live with her.
She realized, she has to do certain things now, or she will never get a chance. So, she decides to stick with truth. That is a lot of courage.
I really loved reading this book. The style is capturing your attention.
Bindu
"Elevator Pitch" is the book I selected for last week. It is written by Linwood Barclay.
It begins on a Monday with the death of 4 people because of an elevator accident in New York.
Then, there is the body of an elevator tech with finger tips off.
The following days, other buildings had same type of elevator accidents. Mayor locked down elevators to figure out what is happening. Reporter Barbara Matheson is very keen about reporting all the mishaps of the mayor. No one knows about her personal life. Not even her daughter knows who her father is.
The story has police detectives searching for clues about the murdered elevator tech. A right wing extremist is also happened to be in the city at the same time, arranging more terror.
Te story develops by going back and forth between all these characters. Barbara finally found some sort of connection with all the elevator incidents. But, before she could convince the mayor about it, they had a new high rise building inauguration.
Each chapter takes us to different parts. The novel holds the suspense till the end. while reading, I thought may be this is the killer. No, not that one, the next chapter says. The author holds the suspense till the end. When it was finally revealed and the reason for the killings, I was really surprised!
This one really hold my curiosity till the end.
It is worth the reading. I will definitely read more from Barclay in the future.
Bindu
What is your soul is not ending with you? What if there is a database of the souls kept by government? What if the scientists can find out if a soul is reborn? what will happen your soul previously belonged to a criminal?
As a part of my reading a book a week, last week I finished "Soul print" by Megan Miranda.
Alina Chase is held in an island for all her life. Why? Because her soul belongs to the whistle blower and blackmailer June. Alena is held there for her own protection, authorities told her.
On her 17th birthday, she wanted to get out and wanted to have a normal life. Other three teens are trying to help her escape.
June broke into the soul database and used it to blackmail people. That is what every one thinks. Everyone sees Alina as June. But, in her heart, Alina knows she is not June. She wanted to be different from June. She tried so hard for that. But everyone saw her as June.
Her rescuers wanted her to break in to the soul database. They all went through high adrenaline events. With all the tense circumstances, Alina started to trust Cameron. Eventually she fell in love with him too.
Megan Miranda takes us for a ride with Alina Chase's journey. Alina follows the clues left by June to find out who was actually responsible for the black-mailings . That journey led her to find love too.
I loved reading this book. For a person who was not a fan of sci-fi, this one was fun.
Bindu
I was actually writing about my book reading in the other blog.
It feels like it needs a home of its own.
The background story is I started reading one book in a week as a fun thing in October 2020. I was an avid reader before too. But, not really documenting my reading.
I found that if I am choosing novels, I tend to finish the book faster.
So, I chose my first book "The Reckoning" by John Grisham.
The story unravels a murder mystery. A local veteran killed the local priest, and refused to answer why. His wife is in a mental asylum. His two kids are away from home studying at universities.
I was so hooked by the story. John Grisham was recommended by my husband.
One lie and the consequences for many people: that is the story. In the end, two families are disturbed and 3 people were dead.
I never thought of war zone and war crimes before. Grisham takes us through the sufferings of prisoners under the Japanese army during World war 2. that is what a talented writer do with words!
"A Town Called Solace" is a novel by Mary Lawson. The story happens in a northern Ontario town. Clara, an eight year old, is ho...
