The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

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Summary: The renovation of her grandmother's house changes Willa's life and the town of Walls of Water in unexpected ways. 

This book was a major disappointment to me, lacking the wonder and joy that Sarah Addison Allen's previous books have. In fact, If think her writing has actually gone downhill with each subsequent novel, though I still recommend Garden Spells to almost everyone.

The invitations go out to everyone, celebrating the renovation of the Blue Ridge Madam, the house that Willa's grandmother lived in many years ago, and the reinstatement of the Women's Club that was once such an integral part of this town. Of course, that old peach tree must come down. The grandmothers of the last two founding women, Paxton Osgood and Willa Jackson, are in the same nursing home in town. When Agatha Osgood troubles herself to visit Georgie Jackson all the way over on the other side of the nursing home, the two women, one blind and one catatonic, both know their terrible secret will be revealed. Can you guess?

By page 54, I could predict that they would find a long-buried body under the peach tree. Whose body could it be. And who murdered him? You can guess, and I foolishly read the 200 other pages of the book, just to have it confirmed that yes, Paxton's brother would end up getting together with Willa and that Paxton's friendship with Sebastian would turn into something more.

This book was predictable and cliched: a barista who can tell what people need by their drink, a magic wind that whispers, a slick con man who deserved to die. Read a different Sarah Addison Allen book or anything else.

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts

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Summary: Montana firefighters find romance during the fire season.

Nora Roberts must be having a mid-life crisis or lots of senior sex. (She's 61.) In this book, the heroine's father finds romance as well, and even though I know that older people do have sex, the sex scenes seemed more intense than usual.

The king became a stallion, rearing over his mate.
When she cried out, fisting around him in climax, his blood beat in triumph. And letting himself go, he rode that triumph over the edge.

Whoa!

The romance of Rowan's father and a middle-aged divorced principal took on greater weight in the story, likely because Roberts herself is on her recent second marriage and won't have to worry about birth control any more. Nah! But she does have adult kids, who likely are struggling with her new romance, the Rowan struggled with her father's.

Lately, with the exception of the Bride quartet, her main female characters are adrenaline junkies, with men who are protective, yet like tough broads. In this one, Rowan Tripp is a "salsa-eating, tequila-downing, smoke-jumping stunner with brains and a wicked uppercut."

I figured out the villain pretty early on in the book, and kept wondering why such a smart woman was so stupid! But it also may be that I totally know Roberts' work and can guess the villains, too. The romance didn't have that many obstacles, and that was really nice. If you're a Nora Roberts fan, this review won't sway you either way. But if you're new to her (what, do you live under a rock?), this would not be the one I would recommend. That would be Angels Fall, which was also made into a Lifetime movie starring Heather Locklear.

A Spy in the House (The Agency 1) by Y.S. Lee

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Summary: A clandestine women's detective agency operates in Victorian London.

Mary Quinn is saved from the gallows at age twelve and is reared in a girls finishing school. When she grows bored with her safe life, she is invited by the headmistress there to train and becomes a spy for The Agency. Dun dun dun. What I hoped for would be details of the training, and quirky teachers, but instead her training was glossed over and we jump to Mary's first job.

She is expected to find details about English cargo ships that have been sunk, and whether or not the owner, Mr. Therold is committing fraud. There's also a main agent who's working on this case, but Mary serves in the Therold house as companion to Mr. Therold's spoiled heiress daughter Angelica. The case didn't seem that urgent or important and I also couldn't figure out what the urgency was, although Mary is under a two week time limit.

Despite a few plot holes and red herrings (I NEVER suspected the true villain), I enjoyed this story. It is chick lit? Hardly. Historical fiction? Yes, a bit. A romance? Barely. Although as a mystery, it felt very reminiscent of its time. Have you read any of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries? They are quite good and this book seemed to be similar in pacing and tone.

I am eager to discover who else works in The Agency. Having women who work in Victorian households in that sort of in-between status (governesses, companions, etc) and are also secret spies has been done before, multiple times in romance novels, but having an Agency place them? Well, that's a delightful twist. I wanted more of the Agency. Who founded it? Why? What's that story? How could other women in the agency identify each other? Is there anybody inside the royal household? I will be reading more of this series, but won't feel a need to rush through them.

Feed by Mira Grant

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Summary: In a future under constant threat from zombies, a blogger journalist and her brother follow a presidential candidate.

I read MT Anderson's Feed instead when I skimmed over my online book's club selection. Oops! When I realized my mistake, I checked the information again. Is this a zombie book? Yes, it is a zombie book, but it's also so much more.

Set in the future (2039), this is ultimately a book about journalism, but with zombies. Georgia Mason and her brother Shaun are the lead bloggers of their site. Shaun is an Irwin, obviously named after Steve Irwin, who died on camera during an adventure. Shaun is reckless, charming and absolutely good at his job. Georgia is a Newsie, one who insists on the truth no matter how much it hurts. I know I'm a blogger myself (you're reading this, right?) but in light of the furor over the news that Aveda will no longer pay bloggers for reviews, I'm naturally skeptical of the journalistic integrity of bloggers. Georgia's fierceness about always telling the truth seems a way to redeem the current blogging environment, which is rife with rumors. Georgia's defensiveness is justified, given the blogosphere in 2011.

But in 2014, a cure for the common cold, when it meets the cure for cancer, turns people into zombies who feed on living flesh.

"No one gets cancer or colds anymore. The only issue is the walking dead."

The United States government has ceded control of Alaska to the walking dead and the book opens with Georgia and Shaun zombie hunting in Santa Cruz, California. The sly humor kept me reading, even though I'm not a horror fan.

Georgia, Shaun, and their partner Buffy are the only bloggers chosen to be part of the presidential press corps following Senator Ryman. He gives them almost complete access and their blog site is gaining popularity. Ratings soar when Georgia and Shaun fight off a zombie attack at one of the Seantor's campaign rallies. Buffy, their technical expert, actually uncovers information that suggests the zombie attack was actually an assassination attempt.

The conspiracy runs deeper and deeper, with tragedy striking in surprising ways. I was racing to finish this, wondering exactly who was behind it all. The book dragged in the middle and there were a few plots holes. But on the whole, I loved this book, despite the zombie theme. I almost wish I was more of a a zombie movie fan, because I'm sure there are references I missed. I'm definitely reading the next book in the series.

The Secrets Sisters Keep by Abby Drake

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Summary: Four sisters are gathered at the 70h birthday of their uncle, after a 20 year separation. 

Uncle Edward is missing, the day before his 70th birthday.

His housekeeper and niece Ellie does NOT need the stress of looking for him, what with all the party-planning and the arrival of her three other sisters in addition to all the out-of-town guests. Beautiful Babe is an middle-aged movie star married to an even older movie star, and both of them are obsessed with their comeback. Amanda is struggling under her mountain of debt and Manhattan lifestyle after just finding out her husband is having an affair. Then we have Carleen. No one speaks of her, but what she did twenty years ago is still affecting people today.

Ellie is responsible for greeting the guests, dealing with her guests and Amanda's family's arrival. Carleen does arrive and after being rejected by both Amanda and Babe (what exactly did Carleen do?) decides to leave again.  Events unfold so quickly that it was almost, but not completely implausible, that things turned out the way they did. Is Carleen stealing from Ellie? Is Edward flying down from a helicopter? Is Edward's long-term lover a murderer? Ellie escapes to the island and finds a noose hanging from a tree! She freaks out, wondering if Uncle Edward is planning to commit suicide.

The book flips back and forth between the girls' childhood and teen years quite well, revealing just enough about Carleen's "crime" to keep me reading, but also uncovering reasons why Edward might decide to go missing. While this book dealt with extreme situations, the reactions and thought processes of each person were explained in such a loving, understanding way that no one character was a true villain or hero. The relationship between the sisters actually seemed the weakest part of the book, but I quite enjoyed the entire book. 

Me, Myself and Why? by MaryJanice Davidson

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Summary: An FBI agent with Multiple Personality Disorder tries to track down a serial killer in Minneapolis, while dealing with the challenges of dating someone who isn't scared off by her MPD. 

Sometimes, when you start a book, you just have to commit to the rules that the author has laid out, no matter how silly they seem. (See J.R. Ward, Laurell K. Hamilton, Cassandra Clare.)

In Me, Myself, and Why, author MaryJanice Davidson takes a welcomed break from her Elizabeth Taylor, the Vampire Queen series, and introduces us to Cadence Jones, a member of the FBI's BOFFO team. BOFFO (real definition: a person who has extensive skill or knowledge in a particular field) is titled the Buerea of False Flag Ops, a name which doesn't really make sense as a title, but fills in the letters. But I can sum it up - it takes a crazy to catch a crazy.

Agent Cadence Jones and her partner George - a sociopath - are assigned to the ThreeFer serial killer case. An unsub has been killing exactly three people and leaving them to be found together. But now the killer has hit their hometown of Minneapolis. Cadence works well with the local police, especially Lynn, who knows about Cadence's special issues.

Lynn was a rare creature - she thought an entire department of armed, crazy federal agents was a fine plan. Congress, by contrast, didn't always get on board. Most people didn't, in fact. It was almost like they felt the disadvantages of putting schizophrenic kleptomaniac sociopathic multiple personality depressives in the field outweighed the benefits. Which only proves that many people have no imagination.

Cadence's secret, and her advantage, is that she is actually three agents in one. Cadence Jones is tall, thin and blonde. She's also polite, charming, gentle and a virgin. Her "sister" or alter personality Shiro is a short Asian woman, in addition to being tough, no nonsense and very smart. Their last sister, Adrienne, is crazy. By that I mean she is excessively violent, sings "The wheels on the bus" out loud, is sexually adventuresome, and a muscular leggy redhead.

Now do you get the situation? As a reader, the only way we know which sister is present is that Cadence's text will stop abruptly, and we go to an entirely new chapter. The people who work with Cadence/Shiro/Adrienne seems to know exactly when Shiro makes an appearance. It must be some expression on her face. We also know when Adrienne is around, because her text appears in italics or caps and looks like bad poetry. Shiro appears whenever she thinks Cadence is in danger, but it's unclear exactly what triggers Adrienne's appearance. Perhaps some sort of violence that Shiro can't quite handle?

In addition to tracking down a serial killer who has hit Minneapolis, Cadence was set up with her best friend's brother, Patrick. On one date, all three personalities come out and when Cadence comes to and sees Patrick covered in syrup, she knows that Adrienne must have freaked out. Expecting to slink away mortified, Cadence is alarmed when Patrick confesses that he's intrigued by all three sisters and would like to see them all again. What kind of sicko wants to date a woman with multiple personality disorder? If he has sex with one sister, is he cheating on the other two?  And surprisingly, all three sisters are attracted to Patrick. What can they all be thinking? All sorts of things to think about.

And the dates are disturbing. A nice dinner with Cadence at a fancy restaurant turns into a parking lot brawl after Shiro is approached by some hoodlums, and then they drive away with Adrienne at the wheel commanding Patrick not to remove his hand from whatever it's doing. Cadence wakes up from her black-out with her panties around her knees, driving a car going 60 miles per hour on side streets. That Adrienne!

The story was intriguing and I do like FBI procedural mysteries, but the absolute silliness of the book left me uncertain on how to approach the book. There's Cadence's stereotypical Midwestern demeanor. She swears furiously at Patrick -  "Darn it all to hippy-skip!"  Shiro is no-nonsense and the best detective of the three, taking over Cadence's mind for three days (!?) while she complies research. But Shiro also likes to smoke cigarettes, because she knows it will piss off Cadence. And then there's Adrienne, who rips the spine out of three guard dogs when Cadence goes to interview a witness.

And Cadence absolutely refuses to deal with the trauma that created the personality split in the first place.  When her work-mandated therapist suggests integration of the personalities, Cadence rebels.

I'd been this way as long as I could remember. Shiro and Adrienne had always been there. We were a family. A screwed-up murderously nutty family with government benefits and great parking spots. 

If this book had been a little less silly and/or ridiculous, I would have given it a higher rating. I would like to read more about Cadence, and Shiro, but maybe it would take another book to explain the purpose of Adrienne and what she brings.

Forget You by Jennifer Echols

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Summary: After a car accident, teen Zoey struggles to control a life that is spinning radically our of control after her parents' divorce and her mother's suicide attempt. 

It’s been a hell of a week.

Zoey finds her mom in the middle of her suicide attempt. The cop who picks up her mom in time to save her life just happened to be the older brother of Doug Fox, a member of her swim team and the smoldering, brooding (and gorgeous) teen who also spent time in juvie. Zoey is terrified that Doug will tell people, her classmates, her Coach, since Doug also seems to hate her.

That same night, her father insists that she move in with him and Ashley, the 24-year-old pregnant HR employee he knocked up.

“Whether you got any or not, Slide with Clyde sold sex.” 

And everybody hooked up this past summer, including her father Clyde. Since the divorce, Zoey and her mom have been living by themselves and Zoey is helpless in the face of her dad’s anger. He’s angry that he now has his privacy impeded and that something might happen to prevent his honeymoon trip to marry his pregnant employee.

Zoey can’t go back to her house and she’s going crazy in her father’s house. She tells him that if he wants her to act normal, she has to go to this party at the beach. Far more concerned about what other people think, he encourages her to attend. That night, Zoey needs to escape her life, her stress, the expectation. She drags her friend Brandon, who has been sharing his romantic sexual exploits with her all summer and asking for her advice on juggling women, to his car. Zoey grabs a condom and asks Brandon to have sex with her. She expects something good, since Brandon has been having sex with girls all summer. In fact, Zoey needs to escape and hope that Brandon will give her an transcendental experience. Just before they have sex, Zoey is convinced of the rightness of her decision, but in the middle of sex and afterwards, it feels wrong, strange, not like she expected.

Perfectionist, anal Zoey is convinced she can make everything right by just willing it so, killing herself at school and trying to be the perfect girlfriend. That whole next week, everyone is shocked that Brandon and Zoey are a couple but Zoey is too worried about everybody finding out about her mom that she is micromanaging all she can.

'Since my mom tried to kill herself, routine reassured me that my life was still perfectly normal.'

A week later, Doug is shaking her awake. Zoey’s trapped behind the wheel of her Bug and Doug drags her free with his broken leg. Zoey must have fallen asleep waiting for the ambulance because she wakes up cuddled next to Doug and his smell – the ocean and warmth. Zoey falls back asleep because, for the first time in weeks, she can relax. I love this book because I found the writing extremely sexy.

But Zoey wakes up the next morning and can’t remember the crash, even though she looks and feels like she was in a bad car accident. Who was driving which direction? How did it happen? What was going on? Why does Doug act like they’re a couple now?

"No wonder Doug thought we were together now and I would break up with Brandon for him. What had I done? Had I freaking humped Doug Fox in the ER?"

And why is Brandon avoiding her? I loved that the mystery of what happened the night of the crash is unknown to us, the reader, and also unknown to Zoey.

As Zoey struggles to regain her memory and physically recover from the crash, Brandon is unavailable and Doug is always there. And Brandon doesn’t even want to have sex.

"It crossed my mind that he was lying about something. I knew he lied. He’d lied to every single girl he’d had sex with over the summer. But I was the one he told about the lies. I wasn’t the one he lied to."

Doug’s story unfolds too and you can’t help falling for this responsible, charming, teasing hunk. I couldn’t resist him but Zoey fights her feelings and Doug every step of the way. Instead of me being angry about Zoey being so clueless about the wrong and right guy for her, I enjoyed this Young Adult mystery romance. And did I mention the writing is HOT?

“His mouth took the back of my neck, kissed it like it was my mouth or my ear or my breast. I wasn’t sure where these ideas came from. A boy had never put his mouth on my breast before. The thought frightened me and I loved it.”

Zoey’s transformation from spoiled brat and queen bee to someone I want to be friends with unfolds delightfully in this novel. I am off to read Jennifer Echols' latest.

The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst

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Summary: When her estranged son is accused of murder, author Octavia Frost searches for forgiveness and connection.


I was given a copy of this book by the publisher.

How do I begin to describe a complicated, fascinating book that occasionally haunts me as a parent but also intrigues me as a book lover?

Let me attempt to explain:

Author Octavia Frost is doing a brave, bold thing. She has re-written the endings to all of her published novels. As readers, we get the jacket copy of her book, the original ending, and the revised ending. (Wow! What books would I wish the endings rewritten? That's a great question for my book club.) And Octavia, like author Carolyn Parkhurst, writes dark, intensely sad stories about human love and human cruelty. My favorite story of Octavia's was The Human Slice. I want to read this fictional book, so intrigued was I by the excerpt and both the original and revised endings. I knew I wouldn't read most of Octavia's stories but eagerly read through the main story: Octavia's son Milo is accused of murdering his girlfriend.

Octavia is a widow, having lost her husband and daughter in an accident years ago, leaving Octavia and teenaged Milo to stumble along with their solo grief. Octavia is eaten up by her guilt and contentious relationship with Milo.

"I did one of the following things, just one. Did I (A) Walk away, leaving him to destroy the book in private? (B) Stand in his doorway, with my face in my hands, wondering whether or not to let him see me cry? Or (C) sit next to him on the bed and say, "Let's get rid of this thing. What do you think about burning it?" 

Never mind which one is true. Tell me which one would have changed things. Tell me which one would have led us, inevitably to an ending other than this one."

As an adult, Milo is a popular, talented musician who seems to have reached happiness, until his pretty girlfriend Bettina is found murdered in their bed, with Milo as the only suspect. Milo and Octavia have been estranged for years, and Octavia is an expert on all things Milo after Milo shut Octavia out of his life.  What even more disturbing about this brutal murder is that Milo is convinced he has killed Bettina, even though he can't remember.

Feeling panicked with his upcoming trial, Milo allows Octavia back into his life, and Octavia carefully builds trust and love with Milo, without having resolved the original reason Milo cut off all contact four years ago. Octavia is dangerously curious about Milo's life without her, and yet, she still is not convinced of Milo's innocence.

Octavia revisits her parenting of Milo, recognizing only too late where she should have stepped in and where she should have backed off.  Octavia's attempt to rewrite her books despite everyone knowing the ending mirror her attempt to rewrite her own history and past with Milo, even though once said (or written or published) some things cannot be unsaid. This is a dramatic, challenging book, written with astute observations about human motive and hidden thoughts.