Month: January 2020

The Girl from Widow Hills

~ noveltherapy

Available June 23, 2020

Thanks to Megan Miranda, Simon & Schuster, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital advance copy of this novel.

As a young child, Arden Maynor was famously and miraculously rescued after being swept away into a storm drain. Years later, in a new town with a new name, she is trying to live an anonymous life, when she begins sleepwalking again. Suddenly, her life is thrown into chaos and she is in danger. What really happened to her all those years ago? And who is coming after her now?

The Girl from Widow Hills is a well-executed thriller which kept me eagerly turning the pages until the end. The plot is very well done — I was surprised throughout — and the writing is also quite good. I recommend this novel for readers who enjoy thrillers and I very much look forward to Miranda’s next book.

Running Against the Devil

~ noveltherapy

Running Against the Devil, by Rick Wilson

Rick Wilson had a highly successful, 30-year career as a Republican strategist, primarily specializing in ad creation and campaign messaging. This book is his attempt to lay out — in tough love style — what it is going to take to defeat Trump in 2020.

Let me say at the outset that this book is not for anyone in the “MAGA”-sphere. You are not going to like Wilson’s take on your candidate and you are not going to appreciate his humor. Even if you are not a Trump fan, this book is not for you if 1) you are not interested in hearing hard truths about what it’s going to take for a Democratic candidate to win in 2020 (I’m looking at you, Bernie Sanders fans) and/or 2) you are offended by profanity.

While Wilson does spend some time in this book discussing how we got here and making jokes at Trump’s expense, the bulk of the book is really a deep-in-the-weeds assessment of the politics at play on the ground. He uses math and polling data to make his case, as well as brutal revelations about what his former side (GOP political consultants) are willing to do to win. This is not a kumbaya narrative, but for anyone serious about defeating Trump at the ballot box, it is an essential one.

Recommended for political junkies/political science nerds (like me!) and for those looking to laugh while learning a lot about political campaigns in the age of Trump.

A Good Neighborhood

~ noveltherapy

Available March 10, 2020

Thanks to Therese Anne Flowler, St. Martin’s Press, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital advance copy of this novel.

Set in present day North Carolina, A Good Neighborhood follows the story of two families as their teenagers — one white and one bi-racial — fall in love. Each family makes decisions along the way that make sense to them in the moment but that ultimately lead to tragedy. A Good Neighborhood tackles very difficult topics, specifically racial prejudice, and I think largely succeeds in handling those topics with nuance and sensitivity.

Having said that, I didn’t love this novel. It started well, with interesting, well-drawn characters, but it took a long time to get going and then everything wrapped up VERY fast. It would have been nice to see some growth, redemption — something, as a result of the horrible things that happened in the story, but there seemed to be very little/none of that. Finally, I found the device of the unspecified neighbor “narrators” very distracting and ultimately, annoying. I’m not sure why that choice was made by the author, but every time the narrator intruded into the story, it took me out of the spell of the novel.

While there were things about this book that I didn’t love, I very much liked Fowler’s writing style. I look forward to reading her next novel.

Unspeakable Things

~ noveltherapy

Thanks to Jess Lourey, Thomas & Mercer, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital advance copy of this novel. As a someone who was in middle school and high school in the 1980s, who also loves mystery novels, I was very excited about the premise of this novel. Lourey does an excellent job narrating from the point of view of a young girl in the 80s, and the pop culture references (which were plentiful) were appreciated. She is also skillful at setting a very unsettling, creepy scene. I was creeped out by the second page!

That said, I did not love this book. As the book wore on, I found that I was skimming. I thought the ending/resolution was quite rushed and left too much hanging. Also, there was something about the overall tone of the novel that didn’t work for me — the fun 80s references and teenage/middle school social issues seemed jarring and almost inappropriate when set against such horrific subject matter. Perhaps that was the author’s intent, but for me, it just didn’t sit right. (This book deals with a laundry list of horrible subjects: incest, rape, murder, among others. Anyone reading this book should be aware of that before getting started.)

Still, there was a lot here that worked. I can’t really recommend this book but I’d be interested in reading more from this author in the future.

The Sun Down Motel

~ noveltherapy

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Available February 18

Two young women, thirty-five years apart, are caught up in the mystery surrounding a haunted, isolated road-side motel in Simone St. James’ The Sun Down Motel.

I very much enjoyed St. James’ previous novel, the Broken Girls, but I liked this one even more! Creepy ghosts, cold-case mysteries, and good pacing make this novel a real winner. I had a few nit-picks with it, which I won’t detail here because I don’t want to give away any of the plot, but they didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of the book.

Highly recommend! Put it on your list!

A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World

~ noveltherapy

About one hundred years after the world as we know it comes to an end, Griz and his family survive in isolation on a remote Scottish island. When a stranger arrives and steals Griz’s dog, Griz impulsively goes after him, chasing the thief into the dangerous unknown.

I’m a big fan of dystopian fiction and so the set-up of this book appealed to me. Overall, I liked it a lot, though there were places in the middle of the book that seemed to drag. The story really picked up in the last quarter or so of the novel, though, and the ending was very well done. This book is not Station Eleven or The Stand, but with that said, I recommend it to people who are fans of this genre.

The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals

~ noveltherapy

(Available August, 2020)

Thanks to Becky Mandelbaum, Simon & Schuster, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital advance copy of this novel. In The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals, it’s post-election 2016, and Ariel returns to rural western Kansas when she finds out that her mother’s animal sanctuary has been burned in a hate crime.

This is a solid debut novel and it succeeds in many ways. Mandelbaum’s writing is quite good. I would recommend this novel to fans of literary fiction and especially to animal lovers. I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

While I enjoyed this novel, a couple of things kept me from loving it. First, I thought the political angle was a bit too heavy-handed (and I say that as someone who agrees with the political point of view expressed by the characters). Second, I really wanted to like the mother and the daughter — they are the emotional core of the book — but I found them both to be selfish and destructive, so much so that it was hard to root for them or empathize with them. So, while I was engaged in this book and was very interested to see how it would end, these shortcomings kept me from giving book a higher rating.