For those of you who are new to my blog, it's probably important to know that I am a literacy coach at a high school in the south suburbs of Chicago. As a result, I find myself reading A LOT of young adult novels in an attempt to stay current on trends in YA, and to identify books we could add to the curriculum to supplement what we already offer. If you are a lover of YA fiction, you will definitely find inspiration for your to-read list here at Book Addict Reviews.

One of my favorite YA novels I read over my recent winter break was When We Collided by Emery year old should have to shoulder. Viv helps bring Jonah and his family out of their gray despair, and Jonah provides a stabilizing influence for Viv, at least for a while. Their love story spins out over the course of a summer, one that brings big changes to both of them.
Lord. It tells the story of two teens, Viv and Jonah, who unexpectedly find each other at exactly the right time. Jonah's family is dealing with the death of his father and his mother's subsequent depression. Viv arrives in the small seaside town where Jonah lives with her mother and a brand-new mental health diagnosis. Viv has a zest for life that is infectious and often reckless. Jonah is a rock for his family, taking on responsibilities that no 16

This novel explores themes of family, love, loss and mental illness with tender yet ultimately hopeful care. The brokenness of both Jonah and Viv actually makes them more, rather than less, beautiful as human beings. While mental illness has been a more frequent theme of YA books of late, Lord really focuses less on diagnosis or treatment and more on the kind of strength and perseverance it takes to live day in and day out with depression or bipolar disorder. She seems to really understand that rather than being a sign of weakness, living with a mental illness and having the quality of life that you want is a sign of incredible endurance.

I think this novel would be great to use for high school literature circles, or as part of a unit on mental health or coping with loss. Both Jonah and Viv experience the loss of a father, though in very different ways. Jonah knew and loved his father, and is constantly being struck by things that remind him of his father's exuberance, wisdom, and humor. Viv feels deeply the loss of a father she never had, the man who provided the genetic material for her existence but who has never been a part of her life. There are many youth who would be able to relate to the type of loss Jonah and Viv feel, and that could lead to some interesting discussions in a classroom setting. I'd definitely recommend this book for inclusion in any high school classroom library!

The Passage Trilogy, Justin Cronin

I have a rule about audiobooks. If I am going to spend the money to purchase them, I need to get the most hours for my money. Most of my audiobook purchases are epic fantasy novels like Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, or long historical fiction, a la Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series. This also allows me to get looooong books read on otherwise "dead" time-when I am driving. This frees up my actual reading time for shorter novels that help me make my Goodreads goal (I know, I know...I might have a problem).

I recently read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (review to come, I promise), and one of the things she shares in the afterword is the title of a novel that she made passing reference to within the context of her story. To be honest, I don't even remember the reference from Station Eleven, but I was so in love with that book that I figured if she liked it, surely I would too.

The book she mentioned was The Passage by Justin Cronin. Now, I had heard of the book before. Anyone who reads as much horror and supernatural fiction as I do can't help but run into the title, and I figured the fact that I even read the afterword of Mandel's book (I'm not so good about reading the forewords and endnotes of the novels I read. Mea culpa), was the universe's way of telling me it was time.

I'm always up for a new take on vampires (and werewolves and zombies and other creatures of the night), and Cronin's vision is at once completely new and utterly familiar. In the world of The Passage, a virus created by the US government (because who else) in an effort to create a super-soldier has been given to twelve convicted murderers living on death row (because expendable). When a mysterious event destroys the compound where the once-human-now-something-else creatures were kept, the "virals", as they came to be known, are unleashed upon an unsuspecting world (because of course), and quickly decimate the population, turning millions of people into blood-sucking monsters who prey on anything with a pulse.

The first book jumps back and forth between the time when the virals were being created, and a time about 100 years later, when what is left of humanity is dealing with the aftermath. Because the virus gives its hosts immortality, some of the characters overlap. There is a mysterious girl who was given a version of the virus that somehow did not turn her into a monster, the man who tries to save her, a nun who's life is unnaturally extended through some mystical force that never really becomes clear, a group of brave souls who strike out across the empty landscape to find help for their dying community, and lots and lots and lots of vampires.

Cronin has woven an intricate story of human connection and intense action. There are themes of love and family and faith and oppression, with sympathetic figures on both sides of the fight. Cronin's writing is full of beautiful, terrifying imagery, to the point that occasionally I want him to stop using so many words already and get on with it. But it's not because the words are unnecessary, like I feel with some authors <cough> Anne Rice <cough>, but because he's created such a compeling story that I can't wait to find out what comes next. I suppose if I was reading rather than listening to the books, I'd probably be skipping those long descriptions in favor of getting to the action, and I would surely be missing out.

The Storied Life of A.J Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin

I'll admit it-I'm a sucker for books about books. Not literary analysis or style guides, mind you. Fictional stories about bookish people, places, or things. So I suppose it's no surprise that I found The Storied Life of A.J Fikry charming and endearing, much like the main character himself.

Fikry's life is getting narrower and narrower all the time. Depressed after the death of his wife, Fikry cuts himself off from his friends and neighbors on Alice Island slowly but surely. His bookstore is doing poorly, and his daily existence mostly consists of brooding in his office, followed by brooding in his apartment alone, except for the bottle of liquor he consumes like it's his job. His friend, Lambiase and his sister-in-law Ismay try to pull him out of himself and back to the world, but Fikry basically doesn't see the point. Even the attractive and persistent book rep, Amelia, who keeps coming to the island determined to make this curmudgeonly client accept at least one of her books.

He thinks things couldn't possibly get any worse, when his most prized possession, a copy of a collection of Poe stories, is stolen. Just when he's about to give up, a surprise package arrives on his doorstep-a baby! In a storyline that is not at all realistic but completely works anyway, he becomes the girl's guardian, and things begin to change for him.

Fikry's character is smart and sarcastic and hilarious. His love of books, and the way in which Zevin writes about them, made me chuckle aloud more than once, despite how hopeless Fikry is for much of the first quarter of the book. Even at his most self-pitying, I couldn't help but like Fikry. Which makes the ending all the more poignant. Zevin was not lazy with this one. All of the plot points are nicely summed up, and while many authors would have stopped at what was definitely one of the happiest points in the story, she didn't. Not only did the novel move past the easy, happy ending, it somehow made the not-as-happy ending into something wonderful. Zevin explores the power of words and stories, and the way that community and family are created in so many different ways.

It probably didn't hurt that this book contains two dreams of mine: island living and owning a bookshop. A bookshop on an island sounds pretty much like heaven to me. So yeah, I was predisposed to love this book. And love it I did, not just because of the bookishness of it all, but because of the heart and soul of this story of love and life and family and power of ideas.

The Honey Thief

This fall I installed a Little Free Library in my front yard.  For anyone who might not be familiar with Little Free Library, it is an organization that promotes and supports small "take one, give one" libraries in yard, parks, and other public places.  To be honest, my reasons for wanting on were not entirely altruistic.  I need somewhere for the "ink and paper" books I've read to go, and I can only give so many at a time to my public library.  But, of course, the universe has other plans for me than neat, orderly, not-stuffed-to-the-gills bookshelves.  It's that whole "give one" part of "take one, give one" that gets me.  Because while its true that the books I read go to good home (rather than my overstuffed bookcases), they are replaced with other books!  Clearly, my house is meant to be a permanent fire hazard.

There are, of course, upsides to this arrangement, like getting to know my neighbors as readers, and
watching the neighbor kids come running to see if there is anything new in the library for them.  But the biggest, without doubt, is that books appear before me that I would never have found on my own. Such was the case with The Honey Thief, by Elizabeth Graver.  It tells the story of eleven year old Eva, a city girl exiled to rural upstate New York after a brief crime spree as a shoplifter.  In desperation, her mother Miriam gives up her job, finds a subletter for their tiny Manhattan apartment, and hightails it out to the country.  Eva spends her days riding her bike down isolated roads, blacktop and dirt, while the babysitter her mother hired sleeps on the porch in the heat of the day.  One day while riding, Eva comes upon a table full of honey, glowing in the sunlight.  Her inner conflict (should she steal it or not) causes her to come back again and again to the small farm, where she gets to know the reclusive bee keeper, and where she learns about the importance of balance and harmony, in the life of the bees, and in the life of her family.

It can be a challenge for authors to write adult novels with child narrators, but Graver manages it pretty well.  There are also chapters told from the point of view of the bee keeper, and of her mother, but it is Eva's chapters where the real emotional pay off is for the reader.  I found myself rooting for Eva, even when she made choices that were not necessarily in anyone's best interest.  Graver also manages the fact that Eva is a girl child and the bee keeper an adult man in a way that is neither creepy nor inappropriate (though there is one scene that verges on ewwww).  All in all, I'd say The Honey Thief is a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.

Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones takes place during the twelve days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.  Esch lives in the small Louisiana town of Bois Sauvage with her alcoholic father and three brothers.  The oldest dreams of being a basketball star, the youngest is just six years old, and his birth brought about the death of their mother.  Esch is the only girl surrounded by men-her father, her brothers, and their friends.  She learned early that sex was something she could give away for some time and attention from the other boys in their group, and now she is 14 and pregnant.  As the storm grows in the Gulf, so too do the tensions in the family.

Esch is the main character and narrator, and Ward uses her to show the desperation in which she and her family live.  No one in the family has regular work, though they all have schemes for how they can improve their future.  Her oldest brother has his sights set on a basketball scholarship, with scouts coming to visit during the summer league.  Her closest brother, Skeet, breeds his fighting dog and plans to sell the puppies.  Esch herself has no real idea what her life can be, but she would just be happy if Manny, the father of her unborn child, would ditch his pretty girlfriend and choose her.  Their father is mostly absent, only paying attention to the children when he wants them to help him get ready for the storm that none of them actually think is coming.  Many of the choices that the family makes are questionable, but the reader can't help but root for them.  Underneath all of the poverty and desperation, there is a lot of love between Esch and her brothers.  They have taken care of each other for so long, and in such dire circumstances, that they function as parts of one machine.

Ultimately, nothing works out the way that anyone hopes.  Esch is a big fan of Greek mythology, and the story of her family follows the basic rules of a Greek tragedy.  It does seem as though the fates are against them, regardless of what they do or think will happen.  When the storm finally breaks, the family faces the loss of everything they have, except each other.  In the end, it is their love for each other, and their perseverance that proves that the human spirit can be amazingly resilient.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Jesus famously said "The poor you will always have with you" (Mark 14:7).  Two thousand years later, this statement remains a sad truth about the state of the world we live in.  Poverty is a blight on human civilization, rendering huge swaths of the population unable to do more than work tirelessly for subsistence level existence.  The causes of poverty are many and varied, and fighting poverty is made that much more difficult by the attitudes that people have about the poor.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, there are many people around the world who choose a "blame the victim" mentality when thinking about those who live in poverty. They are lazy, or dissolute, or ignorant.  Obviously they must be making bad choices, or they feel a sense of entitlement to government assistance that keeps them from "working hard", "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps", or "climbing the ladder" of economic success.

While some of these prejudices are stated openly by people who seem to have a dearth of compassion towards their fellow human beings, they are more insidious than that.  Often, well intentioned people who believe it is their "Christian" duty to serve the needs of the poor reinforce these stereotypes in the way that they structure their social action around poverty.  Throughout the history of the United States, there are a multitude of examples of churches, governments, or social service organizations who espoused a particular policy to fight poverty that actually caused more harm than good.  "Indian schools", where Native American children were sent after being (forcibly) removed from their families to be re-educated in the "Christian" way are one example.  Another is the subject of the book Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline.  For a period of about 70 years, trains full of orphaned and abandoned children were sent to the middle of the country, where farmers, factory owners, shopkeepers, and yes, some loving families were able to adopt them by signing a piece of paper on a train platform.  The stated goal was to provide for these children, the products of the teeming, filthy streets of cities in the northeast, a fresh start in a wholesome environment where they could learn the values of hard work and clean living that so obviously escaped their vile, low, lazy parents (please read sarcasm into that last sentence).

Orphan Train is the story of two women-Molly, a Penobscot Indian teenager in the foster care system in present day Maine, and Vivian, a 91 year old woman with an unexpected past.  When Molly volunteers to help Vivian clean out the attic of her large seaside home, she discovers that she and Vivian share a history of being judged by people who do not understand who they are, and of being shunted around from place to place, never really feeling secure.  Vivian was one of the children sent west on the Orphan Train, an Irish girl with red hair and freckles.  The Irish in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America were looked down upon much like many immigrants of Mexican descent are today (like poverty, this tendency to revile newly arrived immigrants who are coming to "take our jobs and ruin our towns" is always with us).  Her father was an alcoholic who gambles away much of the family's money, and her mother has what would today be diagnosed as clinical depression.  When most of her family is killed in a fire, she is sent from New York City on a train to Minnesota.  Too old to be easily adopted, and her obviously Irish features and name (Niamh), she is not taken into the arms of a loving, Midwestern family, but sent to what is essentially a sweatshop.  The story follows Niamh, who will change her name several times in the course of the novel, through the 20th century and the many times she had to move from place to place, never really feeling as though she belonged anywhere.

The book highlights an important period of American history, and the story is very moving.  What makes it more than just a well-written historical fiction novel is the relationship between Molly and Vivian.  These two women, who have felt alone and misunderstood for much of their lives, find kindred spirits in each other. In Vivian, Molly finds a model of what it can look like when someone decided not to let their past or the prejudices of others define them, and Vivian discovers that family connections can survive despite tragedy, separation, and the passing of nearly a century of time.

Sisterland, In Which Psychic Twins Still Manage to Have Screwed Up Lives

People have always been fascinated by identical twins.  Twin studies have shown that often they have a
deeper connection than normal siblings, developing their own language to communicate and sensing when something is wrong with the other.  It is this idea that Curtis Sittenfeld explores in Sisterland, his 2013 novel about two identical twins who end up taking very different paths.

Kate (born Daisy) and her sister Violet grew up in a small town near St. Louis, Missouri.  They knew from an early age that they had abilities that they could not explain, what they called senses.  Their "senses" gave them feelings about things that were going to happen in the future, things that it would be impossible to know. Raised by a mostly absent father and a mother with untreated clinical depression, there was no one that the girls could turn to when it came to understanding the power they possessed.   After a sleep over with some friends during which Kate felt a malevolent presence in the room, she actively tried to ignore and quash her senses.  This became especially true after she married and became a mother. She wanted nothing more than to be normal.  Her sister Vi, on the other hand, turned her senses into a career, which began after Kate and Vi helped find a kidnapped boy while in college.  Vi is a handful-loud, brash, crass, and pushy, she requires almost as much attention from Kate as her own children, or her aging father.  When Vi predicts a major earthquake would hit the St. Louis area, the story is picked up by the major networks, and her life becomes a series of interviews and psychic readings, embarrassing her sister Kate and driving the whole family into virtual hiding from reporters.

Sittenfeld does a wonderful job with the backstory of the sisters, which he tells by alternating between present day and past.  Kate is a fully developed character, though to be honest I didn't find her a particularly likable one.  I found her suburban attitudes about her gifts, her sister's choices, and her family history to be sort of obnoxious, in fact.  Sittenfeld did not do quite as well with some of the other characters-Kate's husband, for instance, is a little too good to be true-but I thought he captured the Midwestern sensibilities of a small city pretty well.  Overall I found the story engaging, and was drawn in enough to ignore my chores for the day and keep reading (though, in truth, this is not exactly hard to do).  In the end, though, I felt like this novel, as engaging as it was, failed to deliver anything truly unique.  For an earthquake does come, thought not in the literal ground shaking sense.  Kate's life ends up being rocked by her own very questionable choices, and while there is a certain symmetry to her getting her comeuppance after all of the years she judged her sister and others, this particular earthquake was entirely preventable.

Back Roads, Which Should be Titled All Things Dark and Twisty

Let me start by saying that I am not usually squeamish about dark and twisty stories.  I have the stomach to read about things like incest, sexual assault, murder, etc...Not for me just the books that are full of sweetness and light-I like a book with a dark side.  That said, I usually want there to be some sort of redemption involved, or justice being done, or something to resolve the story such that there is a larger message about this experience of being human we are all going through.  Apparently, author Tawni O'Dell didn't get the same memo.

Back Roads is about as dark and twisty as a family drama can get.  The description on Goodreads makes the book sound a bit like an overblown Lifetime movie.  Harley is a 19 year old who suddenly finds himself looking after his three sisters after his mother is convicted of killing his abusive father.  The pressures of working two jobs to make ends meet, and dealing with the emotional fall-out of their father's murder, takes a toll on Harley.  Looking for an outlet, he begins a relationship with a mother of two from down the road.  He becomes obsessed with her, and his obsession sets off a series of events that ultimately tears his family apart.

I remember when I wrote my review for the novel Push, which I actually really appreciate as a work of literary art.  My one criticism of it was that I felt the author, Sapphire, had gone overboard on the tragedy, giving her main character every single problem that a person of her race, gender, and class might be expected to ever have.  At least in that book, however, the problems were, if not resolved, improved throughout the course of the book, and it felt as though Sapphire was trying to highlight the specific issues of racism, sexism, classism, and gender violence that many people living in urban poverty experience.  O'Dell's book also throws pretty much every family problem at her characters-incest, alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual assault, poverty-but in the end I was left wondering what the point of it all was.  Almost none of the characters were that likable or relatable.  They were all deeply flawed, which would be fine except that they never developed past them.  I felt as though just about every character left the novel in exactly the same state as when the book began.  And the serious issues presented about toxic family dynamics were sensationalized rather than examined critically.

Given all of that criticism, you might expect me to pan this book completely.  But I still gave it three stars on Goodreads.  Because despite my dissatisfaction with the ending, the story was engaging enough that I wanted to keep reading.  Granted, I wanted to keep reading because I was sure that O'Dell was going to eventually offer a moment of redemption for at least one of the characters, but it was well written enough that I didn't want to give up on it.  So if you don't mind dark and twisty for the sake of dark and twisty (and based on the number of true crime shows out there that do nothing but highlight dark and twisty there must be lots of you), then you would probably enjoy this book.

And the Mountains Echoed

Like many serious readers, I hate the "what's your favorite book" question.  Neil Gaiman recently said (and I
am shamelessly paraphrasing here) that trying to pick your five favorite books is like trying to decide which five limbs you don't need.  I can tell you books I've loved recently, or books I loved at various stages of my life.  I can tell you I loved a book I forgot I even read if you remind me what it's about!  My "favorite" book is a function of who I am today, and tomorrow that could change.

There are, however, a few books that moved me so profoundly that they are permanently fixed in my "favorites" category.  I prefer to call them "book you should read before you die". One of those books is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  It is a true masterpiece, raw and powerful, a master class on creating rich settings and authentic characters.  Now, Hosseini is back with another story about the history and people of Afghanistan.  This time, he explores not just Afghan culture, but how the intersection of Afghan and Western culture affects his characters.

And the Mountains Echoed begins with an Afghan folktale about a father's love for his daughter.  That theme runs throughout the novel, with characters finding these familial relationships tested by poverty and secrets and history.  The book highlights the many ways that families can nurture or hurt each other, and the many sacrifices that we make in an effort to give our children the best possible chance in life.  The narrator changes at different points in the story, as the action moves from the Afghan countryside to Kabul to Europe and America.  The characters are all connected to each other in a delicate web of relationships-parents, children, siblings, spouses.  The plot is intricately crafted, with each section picking up from the one previous in ways that show the interconnectedness of us all.

The most poignant part for me was the relationship between chauffeur Nabi and his rich employer.  Despite the fact that Nabi is the catalyst for one of the most heart-wrenching betrayals in the book, through his story you are able to see his inherent goodness and compassion.  When his employer's wife deserts him after a sudden illness, it is left to Nabi to stay and take care of him, and the relationship that develops shows how deeply Hosseini understands the ties that bind us to the people we love, even outside of blood relations.

Hosseini does his usual good job exposing the inequalities of men and women in Afghan society, in a way that is not politicized or overly dramatic.  Each of the female characters in forced by circumstance to either conform to the gender roles assigned to them, or to escape.  Parwana is bound to her village in order to care for her disabled sister, and lives a desperate life of unfulfilled dreams of love.  Nila Wahdati, spoiled daughter of a wealthy family, writes poems about love, desire, and sex in 1950s Kabul, and is ultimately driven away from her husband and her country to escape the beautiful cage she felt she was living in.  Though she is by no means a sympathetic character, you can't help but feel sad for her desperate attempts to find love and happiness outside of herself, since she never finds it within.  Even the female characters who never lived in Afghanistan, the daughters of the original main characters, struggle to meet the responsibilities that their parents place on them as good Afghan women.  And the Mountains Echoed is not on my "read before you die" list, but it is definitely one of my favorites of the moment.

Take One Candle, Light a Room

Many years ago now, I read a book call Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, by Susan Straight.  It's the story of a black woman living in poverty, doing whatever she can to raise her son in  violent neighborhood.  It is richly detailed, with an emotional honesty and depth of experience that you really are transported into the character's life.  When I finished the book, I was almost stunned to find that Susan Straight was a middle-class, middle aged white woman.  Not that it isn't possible for authors to write convincingly from a cross-racial viewpoint, but the book was so raw and the emotions felt so authentic I could only imagine someone who had been in similar circumstances to be able to articulate the story so well. When I delved a little more deeply, however, I realized that living in the racially and socioeconimcally diverse city of Riverside, California, and working in the struggling public schools there, gave her an insight that truly comes to life when paired with her remarkable facility with language.

So I was very pleased to get Take One Candle, Light a Room as a gift earlier this year.  It had been years since I had read one of Straight's books, and I was looking forward to what she could bring to her new subject-mainly, the inner struggle that comes from being of mixed-race, and how the legacy of slavery can affect the descendants of slaves even today.  The narrator of the book is Fantine Antoine, daughter/sister/niece/aunt of a mixed-race family originally from the Louisiana coast, now living in Rio Seco, California.  Fantine, who goes by FX in her professional life, is a travel writer-a profession which forces her to disappoint her mother on a daily basis, since it means that she has deserted the family compound for L.A. Fantine, just back from a trip to Switzerland, returns home to find her nephew on her doorstep-with two of his gang-banger friends.  Victor is a gentle, intelligent, creative type, scarred emotionally by his mother's murder five years before.  Tired from her travels, Fantine sends him away, promising to spend time with him the following weekend.  But when he and his friends are involved in a shooting that leads to the death of a rival gang member, Fantine embarks on a very different kind of trip, cross country and back through time and history to find him and bring him home.

Straight does a beautiful job of getting into the head of Fantine and her family members.  The family's history is firmly rooted in racial violence-her grandparents left Louisiana because of a white man who was preying on the young black girls in the parish.  Since coming to California, the family has stayed mostly in the small town where they settled, running an orchard and keeping to themselves.  Fantine was raised on the stories of the women who came before her, the slaves and former slaves who struggled to survive so their children and grandchildren could have a better life than the one they had.  Straight explores issues of revenge, belonging, guilt, redemption, and the invisible threads that keep us connected to our past, even as we try to run away from it.  Fantine's journey takes her back to Lousisana, and Straight uses Hurricane Katrina as a backdrop for the final climactic scenes of the book.  It's a story of second chances, for another shot at doing the right thing, and about the resilience of a people who refuse to give in to the titanic forces trying to tear them apart.

Red Hook Road

For most people, their wedding day is one of the most joyful days of their lives.  For me, even though my first marriage ended in divorce, I still have fond memories of the wedding that brought us together as a family for the short time we lasted.  But for Becca and John, the young couple who get married at the beginning of Red Hook Road, their happy day becomes a nightmare when they are killed in a car crash on the way to their reception.

For a marriage that only lasted an hour, Becca and John's union had a lot of power over the other people in their lives, which becomes evident as the story follows Iris (Becca's mom), Daniel (her dad), Jane (John's mother), Matt (his brother) and Ruthie (Becca's sister) in the years following their deaths.  Set during four summers in the small coastal Maine Town of Red Hook, the book details the way that each person struggles to deal with their loss.  Iris is an East Coast intellectual a professor of English literature who lives in New York most of the year, but who strongly identifies with her family's connection to the old beach house where they have summered for three generations.  She is like a force of nature, strong and willful, and her sometimes overwhelming personality causes her children, her husband, and the other people she loves to be at once awed and intimidated by her.  Daniel, who has always found it easy to let Iris plot the course of their lives, suddenly finds himself frustrated and resentful at her attempts to control everything that happens in the aftermath of the tragedy.  Jane, John's mother, is a local woman who was never comfortable with her son's relationship with a privileged daughter "from away", and resists any attempt my Iris to continue their families' connection after the young people are killed.  Ruthie and Matt each try to live up to their older siblings' examples in their own ways, but find following in the footsteps of those who have passed on before their time more difficult than they anticipated.

The book examines issues of death and loss, dealing with grief, and privilege.  John was a shipbuilder, and the old boat that John was restoring at the time of his death, which Matt takes over afterward, becomes a symbol of the group's collective experience-mainly, that of being stuck, unable to move on with the task of living their own lives, so mired are they in trying to honor and remember the dead.  Each character must go off the the trail a bit to eventually find their footing-Iris, through a young musical prodigy; Daniel through revisiting his young adult self; Ruthie by re-examining her assumptions about what her own path should be; and Matt through coming to grips with his feelings of guilt and inadequacy.  The relationship between Iris and Jane highlights the differences between two very different kinds of mother, but in the end their strong love for their children brings them together, if not into an easy friendship, at least into mutual respect.  Red Hook Road is not the best family drama I've read, but it does have an easy readability about it that makes is accessible to even the casual reader.

These Things Hidden, Heather Gudenkauf

Adolescence is a time of transition, a time in a child's life when they are not yet adults, but not really children.  This makes it a challenge to decide how to deal with them-finding a balance between supervision and freedom, support and independence, is something that parents and society struggle with.  And when the adolescent commits a crime, we as a society have trouble finding that balance-are they children who cannot be held accountable for their choices, or are they adults who have defied societal standards and must be punished.  I was reminded of this dilemma while reading Heather Gudekauf's novel These Things Hidden.

These Things Hidden interweaves the lives of four women-Allison, Brynn, Charm, and Claire.  Five years earlier, 16 year old Allison was convicted of manslaughter in the death of her newborn infant.  Released from prison early, she goes to a half-way house and tries to reconnect with her sister, Brynn.  Brynn, who at 15 was with her sister on that awful night, has borne the brunt of the fall-out of her sister's crime.  Emotionally fragile, bearing the guilt of the infant's death, she struggles to get through each day.  Charm, a 20 year old college student, carries a secret that makes it difficult for her to deal with the imminent death of her step-father.  Claire, a bookstore owner, marvels daily at the miracle that brought her son Joshua into her life-after years of trying to have a child, she and her husband adopted Joshua after he was left at the fire station as a newborn.  None of these women know it, but Joshua is the one thing that connects them all.


Told in the first person by Allison and Brynn, with chapters in the third person for Charm and Claire, this book is about more than just the fairness of holding a 16 year old responsible for the death of her child.  It is about family, what it means to be a mother, a sister, a caregiver.  Allison and Brynn's parents appeared perfect from the outside, giving their girls every advantage.  But emotionally there was very little connection in their family, and when first Allison and then Brynn disappoint them, their parents turn away from them.  Charm's mother collected men like trading cards for many years, and Charm feels much closer to her stepfather Gus than to her biological parents.  Obviously simply giving birth to a child does not make a person a parent.  Claire and her husband are excellent parents to Joshua, but they live with the fear at the back of their mind that his biological parents could show up and ruin their happiness.  Gudenkauf paints a portrait of love and guilt and fear and love again through the stories of these women and the ways they are connected to Joshua, and to each other.  This novel is women's fiction at its best.  Not overly sentimental or sappy, with no easy solutions, the book explores relationships and family in a way that is insightful and engaging.

The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta

Have you ever been driving down the road and come upon a car with the bumper sticker that reads, "In case of rapture this car will be unmanned"?  For a while they were real popular here in southern Chicagoland, and every time I saw one I thought the same thing, How arrogant! Granted, as an atheist I don't really believe in the Rapture or heaven, but from what I know about the teachings of Jesus somehow I find it hard to believe that he would be in favor of his followers assuming that just by believing in him they get a free pass to heaven when the Apocalypse happens.  Wasn't he all about good works and loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek and all that?  What would happen if suddenly millions of people worldwide disappeared in a Rapture-like event but the supposedly devout faithful weren't necessarily among them?

This event and its aftermath are the backdrop for Tom Perrotta's latest book, The Leftovers.  One October morning millions of people all over the world, of all races, cultures, and religions, simply disappeared.  Vanished without a trace.  One minute you are sitting next to your best friend on the couch, the next instant-gone.  Some people lost their whole family in the blink of an eye, other families stayed intact but lost friends and colleagues.  There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the disappearances, which led those trying to recover from the loss to find different ways to cope.  The novel follows one family and their attempts to make sense of what seems like a senseless event.  Kevin and Laurie and their children Jill and Tom  were living the American dream.  Kevin was a successful businessman, Laurie a busy stay-at-home mom.  Jill and Tom were both honors students, and Tom has just left for Syracuse University when the Sudden Departure, as the world soon called it, occurred.  Three years later, Laurie is a member of a cult called the Guilty Remnant, Jill has shaved her head and nearly failed out of school, and Tom has disappeared into the organization of a faith "healer" who gained fame by hugging away the pain of those left behind.  Kevin tries desperately to keep some semblance of normalcy going while trying to give everyone he loves time to recover from what happened to them all.

The narrative structure of this novel is of the every-chapter-from-a-different-POV variety, which I know bothers some people, but it works in this book because it allows Perotta to examine the various personal emotional reactions of the people affected by the Sudden Departure of their friends and family.  Aside from the family listed above, we also see the point of view of a woman named Nora, who lost her entire family-husband and two kids-in the time it took for her to go to the kitchen for a rag to wipe up a spill.  The depth of her grief feels boundless-to her and to the reader.  Her unsuccessful attempts to move on from the event illustrate just how difficult it can be to move forward when everything you thought you knew is taken away.

Perrotta does an admirable job imagining how different types of people would react to such an impossible-seeming occurrence.  The loss, and ultimately the not knowing, drive people to extremes.  Some turn to religious cults who claim to understand "god's" plan and to provide answers that people seek.  Some frenetically try to return to normal, diving into the same mindless consumerism that existed prior to the Departure.  Some turn to drugs or alcohol or sex as a way to dull their pain.  But the book does not dwell only on the sadness and loss-to me the book's message speaks to the human ability to survive, to the unique capacity of human beings to adapt to new circumstances, to the idea that even in a world where the old rules have been turned on their head, people can and will begin to create order from the chaos.

Still Alice, Lisa Genova

I freely admit that a large part of my identity is defined by my not inconsiderable smarts.  When I was in elementary school, I was the stereotypical teacher's pet.  I easily comprehended the lessons, I always finished my work before everyone else, and I frequently had my nose buried in a book.  This caused me to be teased by the other students quite a bit (fourth grade was particularly brutal), and I was often alone.  In my moments of hurt and anger, I often comforted myself by telling myself that the other kids might be bigger and meaner, but I was smarter!  That defense mechanism from elementary school has lasted into adulthood.  No one is picking on me for being smart and loving to read and learn, but the ability to do all of those things has remained central to my own perception of who I am.

But imagine that the intelligence and knowledge that has become such a central part of my identity were suddenly fading, not because of old age or a freak accident, but slowly and inexorably due to early-onset Alzheimer's Disease.  This is exactly the fate that befalls the main character in the novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova.  Alice Howland is a 50ish Harvard psychology professor, ironically an expert in linguistics and the acquisition of language, when she begins having lapses in memory.  She chalks it up to stress and overwork-until the day that she gets lost three blocks from home.  She consults a neurologist, who gives the stunning and completely unexpected diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease.  Alice is completely taken aback-what will become of her teaching, her research, her speaking engagements?  As she and her family struggle to make sense of her diagnosis, she designs a daily test for herself.  She will ask herself five questions, and the day that she has trouble remembering the answers will be the day that she ends her life.  But with her memory fading fast and her family taking care of her, will she be able to keep her dignity and make her own choice?

Genova did a good job creating the character of Alice.  Using first person narrative allowed the reader to go along on the journey with her, and frankly it was terrifying.  Alice goes through the stereotypical stages of grief-denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance-and at each stage I was able to imagine myself in her shoes.  The way that Alice is written evoke empathy and not just sympathy in the reader, which in this particular kind of story is more important than a cerebral analysis. 

Genova also used Alice and her situation to highlight certain issues releated to Alzheimer's disease.  She makes a point to bring forward the genetic nature of the disease, and in fact Alice and her children are tested for the defective gene, only to discover that her daughter Anne, currently in her late 20s, is sure to develop the disease.  Alice, released from her responsilibities at Harvard and at a loss for what to do next, realizes there is a need for a support group not just for the caregivers of people with Alzheimer's, but for the sufferers themselves.  She even makes an impassioned speech at an Alzheimer's conference about remembering the humanity of the person behind the symptoms.

While this book packed a great deal of emotional punch, it is not exactly subtle in its theme-people who have Alzheimers are still people, and they know what is happening to them (at least for a while), and they should be treated in such a way that their dignity and pride is preserved.  Alice's suicide plan creates an interesting point for discussion, which makes it a decent book club selection.  That said, when I finished reading I felt a little bit like, "All that build-up for THAT!"  I was not a fan of the ending, but that didn't really take away from my enjoyment of the novel as a whole.  If you don't mind being sad on your vacation, this would actually make a decent spring break or summer read-it's easy and fast, but still has substance.

What the Dead Know, Laura Lipman

Laura Lipman can usually be counted on to provide a mystery that is more than a mystery.  Her intricate plots are always just as much about love, family, and the difficult choices we make as they are about solving a crime.  What the Dead Know is no exception.

What the Dead Know is the story of the Bethany sisters-two young girls who disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1975.  Thirty years later, a woman turns up claiming to be one of the lost sisters, but the circumstances of her sudden reappearance leave more questions than answers.  Joe Infante, a detective in Baltimore, and Kay, a social worker who is assigned to evaluate and protect the rights of "Heather Bethany" can sense that the woman is lying, but about what, and why?  Each tries to get to the bottom of the mystery in their own way, but it is not until the mother of the girls arrives from the life she managed to make for herself in Mexico that everyone finally gets the full story.

Alternating between the past and present day, Lipman weaves together a narrative that is engaging and infuriating-well, really it is engaging partly because it is so infuriating.  Getting to the end of a chapter was like a cliffhanger at the end of your favorite show.  Bits and pieces of the story slowly start to coalesce into an almost clear picture, and then you learn something that makes you reevaluate what you thought you knew.  The general gist of the girls' story-kidnapped and held for years against their will-is something that has become almost cliche in contemporary mysteries.  But Lipman's treatment of it made it feel familiar yet new at the same time.

What I found so interesting as I was reading was that I didn't really like any of the characters.  Not the cop, not the "found" sister, not the father or mother.  I can't remember the last time that I was able to get this into a book where I didn't really feel sympathetic towards any of the characters.  But somehow it worked.  Even though I found myself annoyed with everyone at one time or another I still wanted to know what happen.  Maybe Lipman's biggest risk was making "Heather" so unlikeable.  We want our lost girls to be sweet and damaged and innocent.  Well, "Heather" was damaged all right.  She was manipulative, emotionally stunted, selfish, and a liar.  But after learning about the circumstances that led her back to the place she disappeared from, that all made sense to me.  How else would you feel if you were ripped away from your home and family, forced into sexual bondage and a new identity, and then escaped into a world that you thought had forgotten you, and would tear you apart if they remembered?  Lipman explores the ties of family, and those who become our family, even in the most horrifying of times.

Monsters of Templeton

I admit it, I read this book because Stephen King wrote a blurb for the cover.  I don't usually read the cover blurbs, but when I see and author I love as much as SK has read the book I am considering, I pay attention.  That blurb was pretty much all I knew about The Monsters of Templeton before I started reading.  As a result, I was expecting a horror story...and why wouldn't I?  Stephen Freakin' King wrote a blurb.  What I actually got was something far more complex and indefinable.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff tells the story of Willie Upton, the down and out descendent of the founder of Templeton, Marmaduke Temple.  She has fled back to her childhood home after a disastrous affair with her dissertation adviser.  Pregnant, depressed, sure she is losing her career and her life, she stumbles into town in the middle of the night.  The next morning, much to everyone's surprise, the body of a huge animal floats to the surface of Glimmerglass Lake-the fabled monster Glimmey, supposed-myth turned real.  Into the public chaos that ensues, Willie gets a little surprise of her own.  After years of believing that her father was one of three men her mother lived in a commune with in the year before her birth, she is told by her mother that her father is right there in Templeton, and has been all along.  When her mother refuses to tell her who the lucky man is, she goes on a quest to discover his identity-a quest that takes her back through her family's (and the town's) long and sordid history.

Despite the monster in the lake, and the ghost that lives in Willie's house, there is nothing scary about this book.  The true monsters of Templeton were the people who lived, loved, fought, and died there throughout the years.  In many ways, this book tells the story of a woman who is finally growing up.  Willie, who lived a fairly privileged and idyllic childhood in many ways, just was not able to get herself together out in the "real" world.  Despite the prestigious college she went to, despite her competence in her chosen field (archaeology, the symbolism of which is only now hitting me), Willie can't seem to take that last step into being responsible for herself.  Her pregnancy, her return to her hometown, her realizations about her mother, and most of all her research into her family, finally bring her to a place where she can find herself in the mess of high expectations, failed relationships, and career suicide that she left in her wake.

The story alternates between present-day Willie and characters from the past, and it is this narrative structure that shows how talented Groff really is.  She wrote sections of the novel as the journal of a 19th century woman, as letters between two 18th century women, as the son of the founder of Templeton, as a nameless Indian girl, and as the monster itself.  Each voice felt authentic, and each one revealed a little bit more about the sprawling family of which Willie was a product.  The story is intricate and multi-layered, and I think that the revelations about the various Temples, Upton, Averells, and others were well-paced.  While there is some magical realism, this novel is not really that.  While there are some historical fiction elements, it's not really that, either.  In the end, I think that this book defies any clear-cut description, which to me makes it even more intriguing and enjoyable to read.

Fallen, by Karin Slaughter Review and Give Away

Welcome to Book Addict Review's first ever blog tour!  I'm excited to be a part of promoting Karin Slaughter's new book, Fallen.

I am becoming a reluctant audiobook user.  I can't bring myself to call myself an audiobook "reader", because a part of me still feels like it's cheating.  But I have found over the years that on long drives, music is no longer enough to keep my brain occupied.  It started with my favorite red-headed comedian, Kathy Griffin.  I listened to her memoir on a long drive to Michigan, and found that it made the drive much more enjoyable.  I was convinced that it was only because she's freakin' hysterical, but when the time came for my next long drive through the boring, flat landscape of the midwest, I found the longest audiobook iTunes had to offer, World Without End by Ken Follett.  So when I was approached by the publishers of Karin Slaughter's new audiobook, Fallen, I decided that I would give it a shot.  I am a fan of Slaughter's Will Trent/Faith Mitchell series, and the fact that they were sending me some give-away copies was icing on the cake.

Fallen picks up the story of GBI Agent Faith Mitchell after the birth of her daughter, Emma.  She is on her way to her mother's house to pick Emma up after a Saturday morning in-service at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.  When she arrives at her mother's house, she finds Emma locked in the shed, her mother's house in bloody disarray, and two armed men struggling in the bedroom.  Faith tries to question the men about where her mother is, but is forced to kill both men before they tell her anything.  Will Trent and her mother's best friend, Amanda Wagner, Assistant Director of the GBI, swoop in and take control of the scene.  With Faith a person of interest, and Will and Amanda not technically on the case, they have to work under the radar, and outside of standard operating procedure to find and save Faith's mother, Evelyn.  They once again call on the help of Sarah Linton, a local doctor who was drawn into a previous case and who has developed a rather strained friendship with Will.

I've decided over the course of the last few years that the reason that I like so many mystery/thriller series is because they are character driven first, and mystery-centered second.  I feel like a close personal friend of Alex Delaware, Myron Bollitar, Kay Scarpetta (more on her here), Temperance Brennan, and Pete Decker and Rina Lazarus.  But none of these characters are as interesting and well-developed as Will Trent.  An incredibly smart man with significant dyslexia, an orphan who was "raised" by the Georgia Children's Home, Will is complicated and intense and damaged and loyal and strong, and so emotionally stunted  that he has no idea how to get out of his very dysfunctional marriage and into a healthy relationship with Sarah.  The cast of characters that surround him are also memorable and complex-Faith, former cop and former teen mom; Amanda Wagner, ball-busting middle aged woman who came up through the ranks the hard way, Evelyn Mitchell, Faith's mom and former cop who may or may not have been on the take; and Angie Trent, Will's completely sociopathic wife.  In this particular book, the characters and their lives were inextricably linked to the mystery to be solved.

The story itself is compelling and well-paced.  There is enough action to be engaging, but enough character development and exposition so that things don't feel disconnected.  There were times when I would arrive at my destination and have to sit in the car waiting for a good place to stop, but really, there were no good places to stop.  Slaughter has given us another great mystery/thriller, one that will grip you and hold tight until the very end.

Thanks to AudioGo for providing me with 5 (yes, FIVE) audiobooks to give away to me readers.  If you are interested in a copy, please comment below with your email or blog address.  I will use the ol' "pull names out of a hat" trick to decide who the lucky recipients are.  No, you don't have to become a follower, or find me on Twitter, or send me a pint of blood or your first born child.  Just say hi!

The Violets of March, Sarah Jio

One of the recurring themes in literature is the way that the past can come back to haunt us.  Things that happened long ago can reverberate through our lives and our families until they touch us, without us even knowing.  Secrets long held can be devastating when revealed-or they can lead to redemption, closure, and the ability to move forward in life.  All of these ideas are explored in The Violets of March, a novel by Sarah Jio coming out in April.

Emily Watson thought she had it all.  A best selling book, a handsome husband, a glamorous life in New York.  Then the writer's block set in, her husband had an affair, and her fabulous social life dwindled as her fame fell.  Ten years later, on the day her divorce becomes final, she accepts an invitation from her Aunt Bee to visit her on Bainbridge Island, where Emily spent many happy summers as a child.  There, Emily reconnects with an old boyfriend, Greg, and meets Jack, who her aunt warns her away from.  She also find a red velvet diary, and gets drawn into a tragic mystery that happened fifty years earlier.  She soon comes to believe that the diary is connected to her in some way, and that she was fated to find it and bring her family's secrets out into the light at last.

I love books about islands.  I have always wanted to live on an island-to be that close to the sea, to be a part of a close knit community just seems idyllic to me.  I was immediately drawn by Jio's description of the island, and the way that the sea matched what was happening in the story at the time.  I was also immediately drawn in by the mystery.  Whose diary had Emily found?  Why was her aunt so tight-lipped about it?  And why was she supposed to stay away from the gorgeous and interesting Jack?  Emily finds that she cannot complete her own healing process, or move forward in her own life, until she uncovers the mystery around the women in her family.  She also finds that she cannot go back to her old life in New York with thoughts of Jack in her head.  The Violets of March is an imminently readable, thoroughly enjoyable book about love, family, and moving foward.

(Thank you to Penguin Group USA for the  free review copy)

The Road, Cormac McCarthy

The Road is one of those books that I knew I should get around to, but just never seemed to make its way into my reading rotation.  I knew that it was post-apocalyptic, which I enjoy.  I knew that McCarthy is a well-respected author, for good reason.   I was waiting to watch the movie until I read the book, and even that wasn't enough of a push.  Well, I finally got around to it, and now I know why I resisted.  I knew that the story was depressing as hell and it would suck me into its dark, ash-filled, cannibalistic world like a black hole sucks in light.

The story centers around a man and his son, wandering a world that is utterly dead.  While  this is obviously because of some man-made disaster, we never really learn what.  The man and his son have been wandering and scavenging for years, sometimes going days without finding anything to eat.  There are no animals, nothing grows-the earth is filled with ash and smoke and burned out cities.  They often have to hide from gangs of cannibals, looking for other survivors to hold captive and use as food.  Despite the apparent hopelessness of the situation, the man and his son keep traveling along the road, not really believing that things might be better on the coast, but unable to bow to the seeming inevitability of death. 

Here's the thing-despite the fact that at least once I was contemplating suicide on the characters' behalf, I loved this book.  The writing is genius.  I've never read any of McCarthy's books before, but if all of them have the same ability to convey with just a few words the enormity of life and love and death then I'll read them all.  I'm always in awe of authors who can choose exactly the right words to create a vivid picture for the reader-no more and no less.  Being rather verbose myself, I admire this ability.  I also admire the imagination that can come up with this kind of skewed reality in the first place.  Though it makes me wonder what kind of dark place McCarthy's mind is.

My one complaint-the ending.  Not that it is left completely open-ended.  I get that as a metaphor for life in general, and that as long as there is life the story is never over, everything is uncertain except for the passage of time, etc..In fact, my complaint is that the story should have ended about 10 pages sooner than it did, with the boy completely alone.  Now THAT would have been a head-scratcher, real food for thought, a book group discussion starter. Despite my feeling that he caved a little bit at the end, overall I am deeply affected by this book, and find myself thinking about it off and on in the days since I finished it.  What more can a book have to recommend it than that?

I Should Not Have Been Fearful of Her Fearful Symettry

Her Fearful Symmetry is the second novel by author Audrey Niffenegger, author of the much admired The Time Traveler's Wife.  As someone who read and loved, loved, triple loved TTTW, I was a little nervous picking up Her Fearful Symmetry.  What if her second novel couldn't live up to the mind-bending, mind-blowing amazingness of the first?  Well, I should have had more faith in Ms. Niffenegger (sorry, Audrey-maybe we could meet at Uncle Julio's for margaritas and I can make it up to you!).  Her Fearful Symmetry, while a completely different sort of novel, is in fact pretty amazing itself.

Her Fearful Symmetry tells the story of two different sets of twins, and the people who love them.  The first set, Elspeth and Edie, have not seen or spoken to each other in nearly 20 years.  When Elspeth finds that she is dying of cancer, she leaves all of her possessions, including her flat in London, to Valentine and Julia, the twin daughters of her estranged sister.  The only condition is that they have to live in the flat for one year to inherit anything.  Little does Elspeth know when he makes that condition that she will be there with them.  After her death she finds herself an insubstantial ghost in her flat, unable to leave.  Valentine and Julia have their own issues.  Julia is fiercely insistent that the girls stay together always, even though Valentine feels smothered by her sister's constant presence and yearns to break free.  It is this desire that leads to a decision that changes everything, for everyone, living or dead.

It is fitting that a central feature of the novel is Highgate Cemetery in London, a rather famous Victorian era cemetery.  There is much about this novel that reminds me of Victorian-era stories.  Their fiction tended to be almost as cluttered as their mantelpieces and pianos.  Lots of characters, lots of plot lines, lots of intrigue.  The relationship between the twins borders on creepy, and you can feel Valentine's restlessness and claustrophobia quite clearly.  Her relationship with her dead aunt's lover is also a little creepy, though he is frankly the most likeable character in the book.  The big family secret that underlies a great deal of the book drives the story, making it a page turner.  When the big reveal finally comes, I thought I had it all figured out-and I was wrong.  I love that, when  a book can surprise me.  And then surprise me again with what happens in the aftermath of the truth.  Valentine's fate is the very definition of cruel irony.  All in all, this novel lives up to my very high expectations for Ms. Niffenegger's writing, if not being quite as engaging a story for me as her first, amazing novel.