Book review: The Children's Crusade

Title: The Children's Crusade
Author: Ann Packer

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Audiobook

Summary: Bill Packer buys land when he's starting out in the Bay Area as a young doctor.  It will be the perfect place to raise a family that doesn't exist yet.  He meets Penny Greenway and they have four kids.  Years later, the youngest, James, appears and uproots the other kid's lives.  What does James want after all these years?

Review:  As previously stated in past reviews, I'm a sucker for three things--post apocalypse stories, addiction tales and dysfunctional families.  Side note; Imagine a story about all three?  Well, this one is just the latter but it's still good.  There's a good balance of shifting between the parents and the kids, although the ending is a bit fuzzy for me.  Also, it takes place in the Bay Area.  Overall, good character depth and things aren't fully resolved, which I like.

Time to write: 2:56

Book Review: The Possibilities

Title: The Possibilities
Author: Kaui Hart Hemmings
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Summary: Sarah St. John is dealing with the sudden death of her son.   Nobody--not her dad, best friend or her son's dad can help her with her grief. When a woman appears to link to her son, she has the potential to change Sarah's life forever.

Review:  I could have sworn that I wrote this review ages ago but apparently I didn't.  I happened to read this in the midst of other books about children dying.  It wasn't as sad as I thought it was going to be.  Again, the story was fine, just nothing earth shattering.  Perhaps I'm getting overly critical?  Somebody wow me!

Time to write: 1:21

Book review: That night

Title: That Night
Author: Chevy Stevens
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Audiobook

Summary: Toni Murphy is a typical teenager--she has a boyfriend that she's crazy about, her little sister annoys her and she fights with her parents.  Toni's also bullied at school by a group of four girls.  These four girls seem bent on ruining Toni's life.

Toni's life changes forever when Toni's sister is killed and Toni and her boyfriend are charged and convicted with her murder.  After serving her time, Toni's back in her hometown.  She wants to prove her innocence and find her sister's killer.

Review:  I finished this book months ago and I'm just getting to writing the review.  I initially gave this three stars but I'm going to bump it up to four.  I really liked Toni and her toughness, as well as her drive to prove her innocence in a town where she was considered a bad seed.  For obvious reasons not a lot of people (including her parents) trusted her when she came back to town.  I suppose she really had nothing to lose.  A good murder mystery if you're into those!

Time to write: 4:22

Book review: After Birth

Title: After Birth
Author: Elisa Albert
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Format: e-book

Summary: Ari had her son Walker a year ago but she still can't find her place back in the world.  When a legendary rocker (who also happens to be pregnant), moves to her town in upstate New York, Ari is cautiously optimistic that she's found a new partner in crime.

Review: I wanted to like this book, I just couldn't get into it.  I got it--the transition of becoming a mom and the isolation that can go along with that.  Also, the feeling that this wasn't necessarily something you always wanted but once it came along it was awesome.  But it just didn't hold my interest--I couldn't remember the various characters and it just seemed to meander along.

Time to write: 1:08

Book review: Family Life

Title: Family Life
Author: Akhil Sharma
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: I'm getting lazy with this one.  I'm going to steal from Amazon's description: We meet the Mishra family in Delhi in 1978, where eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju play cricket in the streets, waiting for the day when their plane tickets will arrive and they and their mother can fly across the world and join their father in America. America to the Mishras is, indeed, everything they could have imagined and more: when automatic glass doors open before them, they feel that surely they must have been mistaken for somebody important. Pressing an elevator button and the elevator closing its doors and rising, they have a feeling of power at the fact that the elevator is obeying them. Life is extraordinary until tragedy strikes, leaving one brother severely brain-damaged and the other lost and virtually orphaned in a strange land. Ajay, the family’s younger son, prays to a God he envisions as Superman, longing to find his place amid the ruins of his family’s new life.

Review: Here I am, behind again.  I read this a few months ago and I gave it four stars but I can't remember why.  So....trust me?  In all seriousness, it was an extremely well-written book and to see the changes to this family when tragedy struck was sad yet accurate (or so I would imagine).

Time to write: 1:30

Book review: Party Like a President: true tales of inebriation, lechery, and mischief from the Oval Office

Title: Party like a president : true tales of inebriation, lechery, and mischief from the Oval Office
Author: Brian Adams
Illustrations: John Mathias
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary:  A president-by-president account of all the various vices the POTUS' were emboldened to.  

Review: I love a good addiction story and to hear about all of the Presidents' various vices was a dream book.  What's not to love?  Booze, women, drugs, gluttony--what more could you want to know about our great country's leaders?  The main reason I didn't give it the full five stars is it would have been nice to hear a little more dirt about some of them.

Time to write: 1:48

Book review: A Fall of Marigolds

Title: A Fall of Marigolds
Author: Susan Meissner
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary: This is a tale of two women--Clara and Taryn.  Clara is working as a nurse on Ellis Island in 1911.  She can't bear to return to Manhattan after witnessing the man she loved fall to his death during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.  Taryn's story takes place in Manhattan in 2011.  Taryn's husband died on 9/11.  Taryn was supposed to meet him in the Tower to tell him she was pregnant but she was running behind and she survived while her husband died.  Their stories are blended by a beautiful scarf that provides comfort to both of them in their time of need.

Review: I wanted to like this book more.  There was nothing wrong with it.  It just wasn't great.  Maybe I feel like it should have been more heavy.  There are some heavy topics here but it didn't get too deep.  Everything was pulled together in a pretty bow at the end and sometimes I get disappointed by those.

Time to write: 1:38

Book review: World Made by Hand

Title: World Made by Hand
Author: James Howard Kunstler
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary:  The world as we know it has ended.  Washington DC was blown up and there might be a new President, but nobody's really sure.  Everybody has had to start over because there isn't any access to oil, gas or electricity is intermittent at best.  In the town of Union Grove, New York, the residents have created their own society.  When a pack of religious extremists come to town, they bring their own brand of law and order.

Review: If you read this blog often you know I'm a sucker for a good post-apocalypse tale. Reading books like this one where everybody that survives has to start over reminds me how screwed I'd be in an actual apocalypse and that deep down I really am quite a princess.  I might enjoy becoming a farmer though I suspect I'd become a vegetarian because I don't think I could handle killing and taking care of my own meat/chicken/game.  Anyway, the book.  The book is good and apparently part of a series.  I'm not sure if there's a prequel to this.  It seems like there might be because the book glosses over what led to the apocolaypse, implying that one already knew. Or it really wasn't that important.  Reading about the book on Amazon it apparently started when the world's oil supply ran out.  I didn't really pick up on this at all. I thought it was about an epidemic.  Regardless, I look forward to reading the next one in the series.

Time to write:  4:32

Book review: Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's post-crash Recruits

Title: Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's post-crash Recruits
Author: Kevin Roose
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary:  Wall Street. It used to be the go-to job of Ivy grads looking to make money and set themselves up for a long boring career that would make them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.  But how has the 2008 crash changed this career path and does it still hold the same appeal to today's generation getting out of college?

Review:  I was intrigued by this book and the peek it provided into a world that holds no interest to me yet I'm sort of fascinated by it.  What's the point of working 100 hour weeks if you can't enjoy life?  I liked that some of these kids didn't buy into the hype.  This world will always hold some appeal to some but it's promising to hear that it seems to have lost its luster.

Time to write: 1:56