The Rain Watcher, by Tatiana de Rosnay ~ 4.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Family Drama, Literary Fiction, Paris

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: Available Now 

240 Pages

Synopsis: The first new novel in four years from the beloved superstar author of Sarah’s Key, a heartbreaking and uplifting story of family secrets and devastating disaster, in the tradition of THE NEST.

The Rain Watcher is a powerful family drama set in Paris as the Malegarde family gathers to celebrate the father’s 70th birthday. Their hidden fears and secrets are slowly unraveled as The City of Light undergoes a stunning natural disaster. Seen through the eyes of charismatic photographer Linden Malegarde, the youngest son, all members of the family will have to fight to keep their unity against tragic circumstances. 

In this profound and intense novel of love and redemption, De Rosnay demonstrates all of her writer’s skills both as an incredible storyteller but also a soul seeker.

I loved Sarah’s Key so when I saw The Rain Watcher being offered on NetGalley, I immediately requested it, and I’m happy to say that I quite enjoyed it. I have to be honest and say that I found the first thirty pages slow to get through as the Malegarde family is introduced, but once I passed that point I was completely sucked into this story about a dysfunctional family gathering in Paris during a long period of incessant rain that’s not only adding to their woes, but is also threatening widespread devastation for the locals and tourists. It’s the perfect backdrop to what’s happening with this family, and in some ways, the weather and flooding actually becomes another character.

The Rain Watcher is another beautifully written novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, and I highly recommend it to readers who enjoy tightly written stories about family drama.

The Fall Of Lisa Bellow ~ By Susan Perabo – 3.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Bullying, Child Abduction, Family Relationships, Literary Fiction, PTSD

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: March 14th, 2017

352 Pages

Synopsis: What happens to the girl left behind?

A masked man with a gun enters a sandwich shop in broad daylight, and Meredith Oliver suddenly finds herself ordered to the filthy floor, where she cowers face to face with her nemesis, Lisa Bellow, the most popular girl in her eighth grade class. The minutes tick inexorably by, and Meredith lurches between comforting the sobbing Lisa and imagining her own impending death. Then the man orders Lisa Bellow to stand and come with him, leaving Meredith the girl he left behind, 

After Lisa’s abduction, Meredith spends most days in her room. As the community stages vigils and searches, Claire, Meredith’s mother, is torn between relief that her daughter is alive, and helplessness over her inability to protect or even comfort her child. Her daughter is here, but not.

The Fall Of Lisa Bellow is the first book I’ve read by Susan Perabo. While I had a few issues, I thought she did a fantastic job getting into her characters’ psyches, which made this a very interesting read. The story is told for the most part from the first person POVs of Meredith, and her mother Claire. Thirteen-year-old Meredith is what really holds this book together. Seeing the trauma she goes through during and after the robbery and abduction of her classmate, who is your classic mean girl is heartbreaking. Perabo has a very descriptive style of writing which made me feel as though I was in the sandwich shop with the two girls as they laid on the sticky linoleum floor, terrified beyond belief, and trying to comfort one another. Meredith is extremely sympathetic as a young teen dealing with the aftermath, others expectations of her, and her PTSD. The way she deals with all this has her mind wandering at times into the fantasy realm. One scenario has her observing what Lisa is going through with her abductor. The other has her fantasizing that she and Lisa were both abducted. Both scenarios come across realistically, but the author meanders a little too much with them. The chapters that are told from Claire’s perspective are the ones I had the most trouble with because I disliked her immensely. Without going into spoiler territory, some of Claire’s thoughts and actions are pretty horrifying even before the abduction of Lisa. She loves her children, but she’s selfish and displays an appallingly skewed moral compass. Making things worse is that she and her husband are completely clueless when it comes to helping Meredith and her brother Evan who is still recovering from a trauma of his own. The loving relationship and dialogue between Meredith and Evan were my favorite parts of the book. I think they do a far better job at helping each other than any of the adults in the story. I wasn’t thrilled by the ending which left me with questions I really wanted answered, but I understand why the author chose to go this route. Overall, The Fall Of Lisa Bellow is less a thriller, and more a psychological drama that takes a thought-provoking look at the people affected by a child’s abduction. Susan Perabo has an interesting style of writing and I’ll definitely be on the lookout for any future books by her.

 

The Next ~ By Stephanie Gangi – 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Ghost Story, Literary Fiction, Relationships

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: October 18th, 2016

320 Pages

Synopsis: Is there a right way to die? If so, Joanna DeAngelis has it all wrong. She’s consumed by betrayal, spending her numbered days obsessing over Ned McGowan, her much younger ex, and watching him thrive in the spotlight with someone new, while she wastes away. She’s every woman scorned, fascinating about revenge…except she’s out of time.

Joanna falls from her life, from the love of her daughters and devoted dog, into an otherworldly landscape, a bleak infinity she can’t escape until she rises up and returns and sets it right–makes Ned pay–so she can truly move on.

From the other side into right this minute, Jo embarks on a sexy, spiritual odyssey. As she travels beyond memory, beyond desire, she is transformed into a fierce female force of life, determined to know how to die, happily ever after.

I have to be honest and admit this was an impulse request from NetGalley. From the synopsis I wasn’t even sure if I was going to like Joanna, but the story sounded very different and quirky, so I went for it. Much to my surprise, I really liked her. Joanna’s pain and anger just radiated off the pages, yet so did her love for her daughters and her poodle, Tom. Her transformation from a caring, compassionate woman to a vengeful, hate-filled ghost, is for the most part understandable and lends a humanizing quality to her. The secondary characters were also richly drawn, even Tom, the poodle, who’s devotion to Joanna extends well beyond her death. You get to see things from both the daughters’ and Ned’s perspectives, which gives you a real sense of who they are. The close relationship that Joanna has with her daughters was beautiful and amazingly I even wound up liking Ned a little near the end. The author’s prose is elegant and flows smoothly right up until the perfect ending. The Next is a very unique mix of literary fiction and ghost story, and I think it’s going to attract a lot of readers once it’s released. I know that I’ll definitely be looking into any future books by Stephanie Gangi.

Arcadia ~ By Iain Pears – 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Suspense

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for providing an e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Henry Lytten–a spy turned academic and writer–sits at his desk in Oxford in 1962, dreaming of other worlds.

He embarks on the story of Jay, and eleven-year-old boy who has grown up within the embrace of his family in a rural, peaceful world–a kind of Arcadia. But when a supernatural vision causes Jay to question the rules of his world, he is launched on a life-changing journey.

Lytten also imagines a different society, highly regulated and dominated by technology, which is trying to master the science of time travel. 

Meanwhile–in the real world–one of Lytten’ s former intelligence colleagues tracks him down for one last assignment.

As he and his characters struggle with questions of free will, love, duty and the power of imagination, Lytten discovers he is not sure how he wants his stories to end, nor even who is imaginary…

Iain Pears is another author who I’ve been meaning to try but never got around to until now. Arcadia is a book that shouldn’t have worked. It has a huge cast of characters and alternate timelines and storylines that go back and forth between fantasy, science fiction, and even cold war spy drama. It should have been a confusing mess, but somehow the author skillfully juggles everything for 528 pages until the stories and characters are brought together in a brilliant conclusion. The three settings are: 1960s Oxford, a Scottish island called Mull in 2200, and Anteworld, which seems for the majority of the book to be set during medieval times. There are no less than ten main characters to follow. I know. Sounds complicated, right? While the chapters alternate between these worlds and characters, I was never left feeling confused though. Everything is laid out in a comprehensive fashion, which I especially appreciated as I was reading this on my Kindle which makes it tough to turn back pages. The only story I thought was a bit superfluous was the spy mystery. I found it pretty predictable and it didn’t really add anything to the other stories. Otherwise, although it doesn’t seem like it all these characters and worlds are interconnected. I didn’t know that there’s actually an app for iPad/iPhone users where readers can choose which paths they want to follow while reading the story. You don’t need this, but it is a fun app and I wish I had known about it when I started the book.

Arcadia is a beautifully written and ingenious book whose characters and stories will mesmerize you. Iain Pears is an author that doesn’t show his cards at the very beginning. Instead he lays out a trail of breadcrumbs to follow from chapter to chapter which makes it almost impossible to stop reading. If you’re looking for a book that is different from anything you’ve previously read, I highly recommend this.