Holy crap. A sick, twisted nightmare of a novel. I read the first half of it. Then I realized I'm not sick enough to finish reading it. I am grateful for that.

I do not like this genre of novel. Murder, suspense, investigation. Ugh. I skimmed through the last portion, thoroughly tired of it.

I expected to love this book, and I did love the first part of it. But as it went on, the never-ending conflict and battles became tiresome. I skim-read the final half, and was relieved to be finished with it.

I enjoyed the first third of this book, but then it stopped resembling anything I would call a novel. It didn't maintain a coherent storyline and the ongoing introduction of new, poorly developed characters became tiresome. I lost interest and did not finish it.

I have derived guilty pleasure from books of this type when I'm in a certain mood, but this title didn't measure up to my standards, even for what I call 'crap fiction.' It is laden with hackneyed horror tropes: sister gone missing, revisiting the creepy house of one's childhood, buried memories rising to surface, protagonist's slowly increasing disquiet, etc. etc. Simply put, the writing was not engaging or memorable. I became bored and stopped reading about halfway through.

I read this because my husband enjoyed it and recommended it. For me it was a long boring slog. Took me over 3 weeks to finish because I simply didn't feel engaged. I found the main character irritating as hell.

I recommend this book to anyone who needs a mood lift. Great fun!

I loved this book, and I am sorry to see that it apparently did not reach a large audience. I found it witty and engaging. I'm afraid the title did not help its popularity as it is rather misleading and gives no hint what the book about.

This was an entertaining read. The main character is a female librarian who is 'on the spectrum,' high functioning in many ways but crippled by her terror of most social situations, and unable to tolerate much sensory stimulation. She believes that she unintentionally murdered a friend when she was twelve, and that she can't be trusted around vulnerable people, especially children - except in her job as a librarian. She struggles with low self-esteem and guilt and is highly dependent on her 'neurotypical' twin sister.

It was fascinating to see the world from this young woman's eyes.

The plot thickens as she becomes friends with a young man, and her backstory is slowly revealed as present-day events unfold. I would give a higher rating except one primary character seems like a clumsy caricature instead of a person. Also I didn't like feeling manipulated by the author.

This book looked promising and I bought it against my better judgment because my local library didn't have it. I was disappointed. It's a romance primarily, and the characters lack the rich multidimensional quality of actual people. There is intergenerational conflict, a pair of old unsolved murders plus hatred from the male locals to give the story some plotline, but this book lacks the vividness that makes a story come to life for me.

fiction, rural Appalachians, 1930's, murder trial, publicity, reporters, folk ways, kin, clairvoyants, Sara Bonesteel

This a delightful novel about a lonely elder man who finds his path and changes the course of his life, after a bit of well-intentioned meddling by 3 women of his acquaintance. It was just the sort of uplifting read I needed.

A guilty pleasure ...

I tried to read this book. I was not prepared for its content and I did not get far before I had to stop reading, feeling physically ill and heartsick.

This book featuring two powerful witches, one evil and one not, is set in rural 19th century Wales. The teenage protagonist, a "natural" witch whose powers are becoming more manifest to the people in her village, unwillingly weds a well-off farmer/widower she doesn't know, who lives a two-day drive away, in a marriage arranged by her mother. The farmer's property includes a sacred well which was once a destination for pilgrimage. The well has magic properties known to few people. For this reason the farm is coveted by a prosperous local woman who is secretly a witch. She had sought to marry the farmer, but he chose the teenager. The plot centers around the evil witch's attempts to disgrace and oust the teenage bride.

Despite the hackneyed plot, I enjoyed this book, because it was fun to follow the character development of the wild young witch, her patient husband who still grieved for his first wife, and their relationship.

I confess I take guilty pleasure in reading many novels about witches and their entanglements and difficulties with the conventional people around them. In fiction, a witch is usually just another type of misfit/loner (albeit one with supernatural powers). I think many of the introverts among us identify with such characters.

I enjoyed most of the Ripley novels (the first was by far the best), but this one, in which Ripley gets attached to a teen psychopath who secretly killed his father, was rather boring. I skimmed the last third of it.

An enjoyable but very light read. Struggling teenage parents save each other in a small town in Georgia. Likeable characters.

My eldest sister gave me this book in 1973. As the first person in my family to graduate from college and as a feminist, she believed she ought to help me add the feminist perspective to my worldview.

Looking at this yellowed paperback now, it's a sort of time capsule from that exciting, turbulent period of my youth when the societal status quo was challenged by a broad swath of rebellious young people. I became one of them, in my quiet way, and my critical, rebellious thought processes have persisted into crabbed old age.
OK, I admit this isn't much of a book review. Maybe I will rewrite later.

This book, set in South Africa in the years 1938 - 1968, centers around the life of Persome, a daughter in a dirt-poor white sharecropper family.

It was hard to suspend disbelief about some key plot details, so I enjoyed this book much less than I would if it had a more plausible storyline.

What a disappointment this book is. I've enjoyed previous novels by this author very much. I stuck with reading it for over 100 dreary pages, but, as another LT reviewer said, life is too short ... Why would I, or anyone, want to read a novel without a single likeable character? It's too bad, because this has elements of a potentially intriguing story. But if there is no one to care about, who gives a shit what happens?

I enjoy well-written satires of academia, but Rosenblatt's novel is clumsy. He seems to be working awfully hard at sardonic humor, but is too heavy-handed to achieve it. I loved Lapham Rising, so this book was quite disappointing.

This is an unsentimental and gripping tale of a platoon of US soldiers who searched and cleared IED bombs on roadways in Iraq so that military troops could move through. The story is told in first-person by several characters in the platoon. It is set in 2006 when they have been back in their civilian lives for a year. Much of the story is told in flashbacks.

I do not like war stories, yet this book gripped me and didn't let go. I deem it a realistic portrayal of what often happens to kids who enlist in the military because they have NO idea what they're getting into. The book is painful to read, but I found it bearable perhaps of the lack sentiment, and I'm glad I read it. I recommend this book highly.

I rarely read suspense-driven books, but I enjoyed this one despite its flaws, because it depicted an interesting scenario.
(Spoiler alert)
A terrorist organization has small but powerful nuclear bombs that can be delivered by one-seat airplanes hidden near major cities all over the world. They bomb a big city in the US and threaten to keep bombing cities until their demands are met. Their basic demand is that everyone in the world, starting with the US President, publicly convert to Islam, declare allegiance to Allah, and adhere to Wahhabi -style Sharia law. (Apologies if my terminology offends someone - I know very little about Islam or what is considered respectful terminology.) The main characters are key players on both sides and are mostly not well-developed. I didn't care, in this case. What intrigued me was simply contemplating this "what if" scenario.

This novel is a paradigm of a genre I call "cozy reads." Unlike the traditional British cozy, murder is usually NOT part of the plot; the focus is on family relationships, psychological conflicts, and making one's way through life's joys and challenges. All or most of the main characters are likeable and well fleshed out. Love of one's home, love of animals and nature, and engaging descriptions usually feature prominently in the narration, and the narrator shares her philosophical outlook generously. With cozy reads, one feels safe in the author's hands. Although it is well-written, it often receives little acclaim from the 'literati' due to its oft-used themes. "Looking for me" has all of these features. It's like comfort food in book form.

Cave Dwellers is set in 1938 Germany. The main character is a young lieutenant in the German army who is tapped by the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence branch, for a secret mission in the U.S. The German military (which was separate from the SS, Hitler's paramilitary organization) is hoping to somehow unseat Hitler and stop the 'New Germany' movement that is planning invasion and war. Things get complicated quickly.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is well-written and plotted, the characters reveal complexity as they wrestle with their inner conflicts even as the action moves right along. I got something of a feel for what it was like to live in Germany during the pre-war years. Highly recommended.

This book poses as a post-WWII spy thriller. But it's mostly a well-researched historical novel about 1) life in London's impoverished Eastside London circa WWII and 2) Berlin in the aftermath of WWII. The central characters are well-developed and the book is rich in historical detail. I quite relished it. However, if you are looking for a suspense-laden plotty spy thriller, this is probably not a book for you. The plot takes a third seat to the above-mentioned details, and the book's ambiguous resolution will leave most devotees of this genre dissatisfied.

For those reasons I tagged this book a 'literary thriller.'

This is a modern tale of three youngish adult eccentrics sharing quarters in Paris as they do their best to cope with their individual issues, life baggage, and daily challenges. It gets delightfully complicated as their lives become increasingly intertwined. I loved reading this novel; it was balm to my scarred spirits.

A debut novel in the best tradition of the literary Southern Gothic, this dark tragicomedy held me in a dreadful grip right to the end.

Lots of historical detail, but I became bored with the endless battles between the houses of York and Lancaster for the crown of England. The characters weren't depicted vividly enough for me to care very much about any of them.