Book review: Bittersweet

Title: Bittersweet
Author: Miranda Beverl-Whittlemore
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Picture courtesy Amazon

Summary: Mabel Dagmar just wants to belong.  On scholarship at her East Coast college, her roommate is the beautiful, enigmatic and blue-blooded Geneva Winslow, Ev for short.  Ev ignores Mabel for a good part of the year until one day Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer with her as her guest at the Winslow family's Vermont compound.  Mabel sees this opportunity to ingratiate herself with Ev and belong to a well-known and very wealthy family.  As she becomes more and more ingrained with the family, Mabel is faced with a decision of whether to expose the secrets this family has kept hidden for so long or to accept them and become one of them.

Review: Wow.  I've expressed some frustration recently about books (like this one, this one, and even this one) where the characters are wealthy and are dealing with their own challenges.  But give me a book about a very wealthy family with some truly f***ed up stuff and I'm smitten.  Mabel's character is pathetic in her desperation to be liked by Ev and her family.  But she's also manipulative in her own ways.  At the end you truly don't know who to trust.  This book was awesome and just what I needed to cleanse my palate on "why do I keep reading books about wealthy people".

Book review: Broken Monsters

Title: Broken Monsters
Author: Lauren Beukes
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Picture courtesy Amazon

Summary: There's a serial killer on the loose in Detroit.  He's using the bodies as artwork.  Detective Gabriella Versado is on the case.  She thought she'd seen it all, but these bodies are gruesome. Gabriella's 15-year-old daughter Layla is just trying to fit in at her new school.  Jonno is desperately trying to revive his freelance journalism career.  TK is trying to protect his homeless family.

Review:  I started listening to this book on CD.  This is NOT a good book to listen to in audio format (at least it wasn't for me).  While the story is creepy (in a good way, at least at first), I didn't like the character's voices and there were too many characters to keep track of.  I can always sense when I'm not engaged with a book on CD when I space out while listening and realize I have no idea what's going on in the book.

When I realized the audio version wasn't working, I checked out the actual book.  Ah, that's better. One thing I liked about this book is that the protaganists weren't particularly likeable.  Jonno is trying to exploit this case to further his own career.  Layla's primary "fault" is she's 15 and dealing with her parents' divorce and all of the other insecurities that come with being 15.  TK is a peripheral character at best but he has his own violent history.  Gabriella is a detective and dealing with all of the bureaucracy and other crap that goes along with that, plus less than stellar co-workers.

Where this book lost me is what happened once they discovered who the serial killer was.  The search for the serial killer dragged on for a bit and the climatic scene where Gabriella and the rest of the characters converge on the killer's final piece of artwork was a little too supernatural for my taste.   I'm not really into demons that take over somebody's body, but that's just me.  If you're into that stuff, you might like this book better than I did.

Book review: Secrets of the Lighthouse

Title: Secrets of the Lighthouse
Author: Santa Montefiore
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Ellen Trawton is running away.  She hates her job and is engaged to a man that she doesn't want to marry.  She escapes to the Irish town where her mom grew up to live with an aunt that she's never met.  While there she discovers an entire extended family that her mom has never mentioned.  There's also a sexy (but brooding) widower.  The widower's dead wife isn't very happy that her husband might be starting to move on (five years after her death, I might add).

Review: I'm pretty sure I already started this review, but sometimes Blogger gets a little testy and doesn't like to save my drafts.  I hate re-writing reviews.  It makes me crabby.  However, this book is a delightful frothy confection.  And there are angels (well maybe one angel and a ghost).  I like angels.  Nothing earth shattering, pretty formulaic, but who cares?  It's a book version of the rom com. Also, can we talk about how unique the author's name is?  I have no idea if that's her real name, and I can't imagine what it's like to grow up with the name Santa.  I surmised from reading up on the author that she grew up wealthy.  Maybe Santa is the English counterpart to Muffy or Tinsley? 

So why not the full five stars? Because, Ellen comes from a wealthy family.  And has the luxury of quitting her job and escaping to Ireland.  Perhaps I need to start getting my book suggestions from publications other than People magazine.

Anyhoo, if you're looking for an easy read during the cold winter, I highly recommend this. 

Book review: Yes Please

Title: Yes Please
Author: Amy Poehler
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: Amy Poehler, of SNL, Parks and Recreation and Upright Citizen's Brigade fame, has written a book.  What else do I need to say?

Review:  I have a crush on Amy Poehler.  How could you not?  She's so funny and seems down-to-earth and like somebody you'd love to be friends with.  Also, she's from Burlington!  I listened to this book on CD, so not only did I get to read a book she wrote, I got to listen to her read it too.  Win-win!
While the book was interesting and had lots of stories of her progression to fame and essays on her thoughts on motherhood and other topics, it wasn't double-over-laughing funny.  That's the primary reason I didn't give it 5 stars.  Also, I was perplexed when she discussed her insomnia in one part and then described her ability to sleep anywhere in another part.  Maybe that's not fair but I have high standards for my crushes.  Still, very enjoyable.

Book review: Psychos: A White Girls Problems Book

Title: Psychos: A White Girls Problems Book
Author: Babe Walker
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Babe Walker is fresh out of rehab and looking to get her life back. She has the luxury of endless money, so this book is about her post-rehab adventures. 

Review: I felt a lot better about disliking this book when I read in People magazine that Britney Spears loved it, although I'm not sure I believe she actually read it.  I don't really see Britney as much of a reader.  I digress.  As I mentioned in my review on You Should Have Known, I'm getting a little tired of reading about characters that are rich and don't have to work.  This is a mocu-memoir (If that's not already a real word then I'm making it up right now), I think.  I'm pretty sure this person isn't real but is some persona that somebody made up.  But again, I'm becoming older and out of touch, so...who knows.

Perhaps this is a sign that I'm getting old, but I didn't really get this book.  In fact, I started reading it awhile ago but then put it down because I couldn't get into it.  I like to think I have a pretty good sense of humor but I didn't really find this book that funny.  All I kept thinking was, "she would be more interesting if she didn't get bailed out all the time".  To Walker's credit, she has a blog too, which I enjoyed more than this book.  But not enough to provide any sort of link on this review.  

Book Review: Edge of Eternity

Title: Edge of Eternity
Author: Ken Follett
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary:  This is is the final book in Follett's The Century trilogy.  Rather than summarize this book in my own words, I'm going to use Amazon's summary: "Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy follows the fortunes of five intertwined families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—as they make their way through the twentieth century."

Review:  In the interest of full disclosure, I read this entire trilogy for a book club at work.  And I use the term "book club" loosely since we have yet to actually meet to discuss any book in this trilogy, although we are scheduled to meet and discuss in just a few weeks.  I've never read any of Follett's other books, so I can't speak to how this compares to his other books, but this book is so bad it's good.  There isn't a lot of depth to the characters, but I like to think it's educational (if I assume that the description of events in the books from the 60's on is actually true.  I was educated by the California Public School system and while I was in high school when the Berlin Wall fell, I don't actually remember learning about why the Wall going up in the first place).

There are a LOT of characters to keep track of.  Fortunately, there are character lists and family trees to help one remember who is who.  I wouldn't read this book on its own--if you're going to read this then start with the beginning of the series.