Book Review: "Shadow Ranch" by Robin Covington

Robin Covington's Shadow Ranch is a H-O-T story. But reading it made me blush like crazy. I don't embarrass too easily, and I don't have a problem with explicit sex scenes. It's something totally different than that.

You see, I've known Robin Covington long before she was Robin Covington, back when she was just a super-awesome, take-no-prisoners, smart, dynamic, funny friend with whom I attended middle school and high school. Imagine reading a sex scene when you keep thinking about the fact that it is written by someone who knew you when you were more awkward than you are now! Even in my own house, as I read the story, this was me:

Luckily, there was a good story to go along with the hot scenes, so my face didn't catch on fire!!

Eli Sutherland is an artist. He hasn't been back to his family's ranch, Shadow Ranch, in some time, not since his mother was convicted of killing his father there. But when his mother dies, and he needs to escape his life in Austin, he starts thinking about moving back home. It actually may be the perfect place to work on his art. And hide.

His remaining family isn't too happy that he has returned, nor is the man he paid to run the ranch, but he doesn't care. When he meets Shep Lockwood (how hot is that name?), a sexy Texas Ranger, he's even more convinced that he's making the right decision. But will the concussion he sustains when another murder is perpetrated at the ranch make him turn tail again? Or will Shep protect him, and help him figure out who is behind the trouble?

Despite knowing Robin as long as I have, I've never read anything of hers before, and I'll admit that I was drawn in partly because of the man on the cover. (Whatever.) Robin tells a great story, one without clichés, and all embarrassment aside, she can write a pretty steamy sex scene. (This is the second full-on M/M romance I've read, and both were written by women. I know some have a problem with women authors writing M/M stories, but if they're all as talented, I see no problem!)

If I had any criticism, it's that it was too short. I'd love to see these characters in something a little longer—I can't guarantee I won't get all bashful again, but it's worth the red face. And if you like this genre, your face may be red too, just from fanning yourself!

Book Review: "Words on Bathroom Walls" by Julia Walton

Adam has recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He knew something was wrong with him, and he's both horrified and relieved to know what it is. As much as it hurt to lose his friends, who all stopped talking to him after his diagnosis, he has a chance for a new start—he's going to attend a new school as a junior, and he's been enrolled in a promising drug trial which hopefully will help him manage his illness, or at least alleviate the anxiety he feels when he sees the people in his visions.

"I really didn't want to be crazy. Nobody wants to be crazy, but now that I know what's happening to me, now that I understand what's going on in my head, I don't want to think about what it means to know you're crazy. To know that your family knows you're crazy."

While starting a new school is always daunting, he's determined to keep his illness a secret so nobody treats him differently or starts to worry they can't be around him. He also has to struggle with keeping a brave face for his mother and stepfather, both of whom worry about him, but Adam knows that even his stepfather is a little concerned about their safety if things go awry. It's a lot of pressure, but he believes the drug will help him weather it.

As with almost anyone new in school, Adam must deal with a bully who believes he is better than anyone else because his parents are wealthy, but he also makes a good friend and tries keeping his head down as much as possible. And then he meets Maya—beautiful, fiercely intelligent and opinionated, and someone for whom Adam wants to remain well and act as "normally" as possible. But that means hiding a part of himself from her, even if she may be more observant than he realizes.

"I'm not afraid of telling Maya about me. At least not in the same way I'm afraid of losing control. It's just not something I want to think about too much. I want to keep her far enough away so she won't ever have to see me as I actually am. I don't want to lose my secrets, because they keep me safe...I guess I just don't want her to know the truth. I'm afraid of what she'd do with the information. I doubt she'd ever climb through my window again. She might even be afraid to be alone with me. It might ruin the way she looks at me with her side smile, the one that secretly makes me feel like I'm waking up on the first day of summer vacation."

Adam and Maya grow closer and closer, and their feelings for each other grow deeper and deeper. At the same time, the drug Adam has been taking starts failing, and it's making him more anxious, making his symptoms more vivid and less easy to hide. He's trying to hold it together the best he can, but with pressure from all sides, he's unsure how much longer he can keep his secret before people start to think of him differently, and their relationships change, something he fears more than his illness.

I've honestly never known anyone who was schizophrenic (or, I guess, never had anyone share their diagnosis), so I appreciated the unfiltered look at the illness that Words on Bathroom Walls gave me. This is a powerful, moving, emotional book which does a beautiful job capturing an adolescent's struggle with keeping up appearances, both for himself and those around him, and the pressures that causes.

This book really made me think. I realized how even our best intentions get outweighed by our inner fears and prejudices, no matter how hard we try. I also never thought about how a person living with an illness might feel if someone with the same illness does something wrong; in this case, Adam's feelings and those around him after the shooting in Sandy Hook, since the shooter was schizophrenic. What a powerful scene, one which really opened my eyes.

There was so much to like about this book. Julia Walton is a fantastic writer, and her characters were truly fascinating, even if they didn't always behave the way you hoped they might. Adam was insightful, sarcastic, and sensitive, but I didn't find him or his friends more erudite than typical teenagers. I also loved the fact that Walton had her characters react in what you think would be realistic ways to the situations around them.

My only criticism of the book was that some of the plot was really predictable, and that disappointed me a bit. One event I absolutely saw coming, and it irritated me when it actually happened, even though I know it was true to how that character would react. I also wondered if Walton was hinting that Adam's friend had some medical issues of his own, but then that storyline never picked up again, so I don't know whether that was intentional or not.

The truth is, though, those are minor little gripes. Words on Bathroom Walls is beautifully written and definitely will make you feel, and it may also make you think. It was a special book I'll think about for quite some time.

Book Review: "The Best Kind of People" by Zoe Whittall

"When someone is your husband or father, that's simply who they are. You don't stop to question much about them, unless you're given reason to, and they'd never been given reason to."

The Woodbury family is well known in their suburban Connecticut town; in fact, the family has lived there for years and the Woodbury home is a fixture in the neighborhood. About 10 years ago, George, a popular science teacher at the town's prep school, thwarted a gunman who came into the school to kill one of the receptionists, so he has been viewed as a hero for some time. It's more than a bit of a shock when one night, George is arrested for allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior with several female students.

The news ripples through the Woodbury family and their town, causing a multitude of reactions. George's steadfast wife, Joan, an ER nurse, cannot understand how the man she has known and loved and lived with and raised children with could be the person who did the things he's being accused of. Their 17-year-old daughter Sadie, smart and popular, suddenly finds herself a social pariah, and she isn't sure her father deserves the benefit of the doubt that everyone expects her to give him. Andrew, their son, who couldn't wait to leave their suffocating small town so he could finally be himself, is now a lawyer in New York City, and is struggling with memories of his past he has tried so hard to leave behind, as well as a partner who wants to support him and his family.

As the family grapples with reconciling the man they've known, or the man they thought they've known, with people's reactions toward his alleged crimes, they struggle with their own feelings. Did they miss the signs all along, did they deny seeing anything out-of-the-ordinary, or did all of this really come out of the blue? Is it part of a plot to discredit George, as he claims, or has he done a masterful job at hiding his true nature? Dealing with this on a day-to-day basis proves difficult for each of them in different ways, especially given those in their family and community who both want to help and who think they all should pay.

"Even if they turned out to be lies, those stories were there, obstacles between them, things she couldn't un-hear or un-imagine. Someone had taken Joan's only confidant, the one person who actually knew her completely, and her best friend, and replaced him with a monster. The person she knew and trusted was gone."

The Best Kind of People starts with an interesting premise, how well we truly know those we love, or if they are capable of pulling the wool over our eyes and harming others. We need to figure out if we're in any way to blame, either for somehow enabling the behaviors or denying their existence, or if the person's sins are all their own. It's also a story about the dynamics of a family who always thought had everything, only to find out there were lies underneath it all.

While this is a compelling albeit familiar storyline, the story gets a bit muddled when it looks at the social reaction to George's alleged crimes, pitting those who immediately believe what the girls accuse him of versus those more conservative voices in the community who believe women make false claims of sexual misconduct and rape simply to cover up their bad judgment or mistakes. Additionally, a thread in which a local author (who also happens to be dating the mother of Sadie's boyfriend) decides to write a book about the scandal, and manipulates Sadie to get information, felt a little bit creepy, and actually raised more questions that the story never answered. And honestly, I'm not really sure what the ending meant.

This is the first book of Zoe Whittall's I've ever read. She definitely knows how to unravel a story little by little, and create memorable characters. I felt that The Best Kind of People tried a little too hard to be dramatic, and actually wound up creating melodrama instead that undercut the story's power. But it's definitely an interesting story, even if the characters aren't as sympathetic as you'd expect them to be.

NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

Book Review: "Cold Harbor" by Matthew FitzSimmons

If an author has only written three books, can you say that their latest is "vintage [author's name]"? Well, I don't care. I've just read Matthew FitzSimmons' third book, Cold Harbor, which is the third book in the Gibson Vaughn series, and I can say unequivocally that it is vintage FitzSimmons, in that it kicks ass just as much as the first one did. Why isn't this guy famous yet?

Gibson Vaughn was kept in a CIA black-site prison, isolated from all human contact for a significant period of time. He had no concept of the difference between day or night, and at times he had no idea whether he was really alive or dead. Visions of his childhood friend, Suzanne, and his father kept him company, helped him to cope, and gave him the will to survive, so he could one day be reunited with his young daughter (if she is even still young), and he can enact revenge on the man who has taken him prisoner.

When he is released into the cold, he has no idea how long he has been imprisoned. At first he doesn't even know where he is. All he has are Suzanne and his father's ghosts, cajoling him, bullying him, pushing him toward dual missions—Suzanne wants him to find his daughter and rebuild their relationship; his father wants him to get revenge on the man who ruined Gibson's life.

As Gibson tries returning to the life he knew before he was imprisoned, he finds the readjustment to be very difficult, and his constant ghostly companions don't help matters any. He discovers how many things have changed—rarely for the better—since he has been gone, and he needs to figure out how to get his head, his life, and hopefully, his daughter, back. But it won't be easy, as he quickly makes himself a suspect in a crime he wasn't even around to commit, and is under scrutiny by law enforcement.

The more he tries keeping his head down and doing what he needs to do in the hopes it will heal him, the more roadblocks he runs into, and the more he becomes reacquainted with both old friends and old nemeses. He can't seem to escape the trouble that follows him, and he gets embroiled in a dangerous scheme, unsure of whom he can trust, and whether he'll even come out of it alive, and if he does, what his life will be like afterward.

Cold Harbor is the story of a desperate man trying to regain control of the life he once knew, only to find that life doesn't really exist anymore. When everything you knew, everything you worked toward is impossible to have now, where do you go and what do you do? And does getting revenge against those who've wronged you the therapy you need, or does that open you up to more harm than good?

When FitzSimmons' first book in the series, The Short Drop (see my original review), was published two years ago, it took me by surprise and absolutely blew me away. At that point I knew this was an author worth watching, and I couldn't wait for the series to continue. While I didn't love the second book quite as much as the first, Gibson Vaughn is one of my favorite characters in recent years, and I couldn't wait to find out what happened to him after the last book ended.

Cold Harbor is FitzSimmons firing on all cylinders, and it proves once again that he is a writer with tremendous talent, and that Gibson is a character I can't get enough of, even as he's having trouble distinguishing reality from madness. This is a fantastic series, and this is a writer you need to read if you like this genre. Believe me, you'll want to read him now, so you can look totally cool when he hits the big time—which I hope happens soon.

NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

Book Review: "The Force" by Don Winslow

I have been a fan of Don Winslow's for more than 20 years, starting when I found his series featuring Neal Carey, one of the more unlikely private investigators I had seen back then. (This was a time when there wasn't such a glut of books featuring unlikely PIs.) Through the years I've read pretty much everything he has written, and I kept hoping there would be a book that would finally catapult him to the level of fame his talent so deserves.

Simply put, his latest book, The Force, is nothing short of a masterpiece, and it appears to be the book which might finally make Winslow a household name. While the story of corruption in the ranks of the NYPD may be a familiar one, in Winslow's hands, it is raw and gripping, one of those books you can't stop reading, and it feels incredibly current. It is definitely one which will make one hell of a movie. (And it already has been optioned, so it will be one to watch!)

The Manhattan North Special Task Force, otherwise known as "Da Force" (as if said with a New York accent), is the NYPD's most elite unit. Created to crack down on the influx of violence, gangs, guns, and drugs infiltrating the city, particularly in the Harlem area, the detectives who serve on Da Force are among the toughest, smartest, most bad-ass cops the city has to offer. At the helm of this unit is Detective Sergeant Denny Malone, who relishes his power and all he can accomplish with it. And boy, does he love his job.

"All Da Force detectives are kings, but Malone—with no disrespect intended to our Lord and Savior—is the King of Kings. Manhattan North is the Kingdom of Malone. Like with any king, his subjects love him and fear him, revere him and loathe him, praise him and revile him. He has his loyalists and rivals, his sycophants and critics, his jesters and advisers, but he has no real friends. Except his partners."

Malone and his partners have given every inch of themselves to the city. They've put themselves at serious risk of injury and death (and have the scars to show for it), and have witnessed the utter horrors that people inflict on one another, whether due to the influence of drugs and alcohol, for revenge or retribution, if they perceive someone is threatening their business interests, or simply out of boredom or cruelty. It's a job that wears you down, but Malone and his partners and his fellow officers love it anyway.

"The cops feel for the vics and hate the perps, but they can't feel too much or they can't do their jobs and they can't hate too much or they'll become the perps. So they develop a shell, a "we hate everybody" attitude force field around themselves that everyone can feel from ten feet away. You gotta have it, Malone knows, or this job kills you, physically or psychologically. Or both."

The thing is, police work is a lot about "what have you done for me lately," so no matter what heroic deeds Da Force does, there's always pressure from higher up to keep crime stats down, keep guns and drugs away, keep people from being murdered. Ultimately, to succeed, you can't be 100 percent idealistic, nor can you be 100 percent innocent. And through their years in the NYPD, Malone and his partners haven't done everything by the book. There may have been times when evidence or weapons were planted, when money changed hands to make things go away, where lawful procedures were skirted or avoided. If the end result is what is desired, what's the problem?

When Da Force makes the biggest heroin bust in the city, they're hailed as hero cops. Yet Malone and his partners actually steal some of the drugs and some of the money before turning everything else in. They're entitled. But this sends them down their slipperiest slope yet, and when Malone catches the eye of the feds for a fairly routine (but still illegal) thing, he finds himself caught in a trap, and has to decide whether to save himself or betray his fellow officers, something he vowed he'd never do.

The Force is magnificently told—it's a big novel with a big vision and a fairly large cast of characters, yet the cops at its center fully grab your attention. Malone is far from perfect and he'll admit that to anyone. He knows that somewhere along the line he and his comrades stepped out of line, but once you get used to the privilege and the perks and the money and the prestige, can you go back and admit your mistakes? This is a man so in love with the job and what they can achieve, he can't think of doing anything else in the world.

Elements of the plot are definitely familiar, but woven together with Winslow's amazing storytelling, it is completely riveting, and I read nearly the entire book on a cross-country flight. Perhaps because of all the references to Serpico I kept seeing a young Al Pacino as Malone, but the characters and the images are so vivid, I watched the book play out in my head as I was reading it. I cannot wait to see this adapted into a movie, because in addition to the violence and bravado and corruption there are moments of true tenderness and emotion and vulnerability.

As you might expect, there is a lot of violence in this book, and in a book which takes place in a culture greatly affected by racism, there is strong language and racial and cultural epithets used throughout. None of it felt gratuitous to me, but I know some may find that triggering or troublesome.

Ever since I learned Winslow would be writing this book, I couldn't wait to read it. Now that I have, I am so excited about the response it has received from critics and readers across the country. He is definitely a writer worth reading, and whether you start with this book or one of his others, you're sure to find an excellent, exceptionally written story.

Book Review: "Young Jane Young" by Gabrielle Zevin

Living in the Washington, DC area during the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, you just couldn't escape it—everything from news to gossip to rumors to hatchet pieces about Lewinsky, even spoofs of her on Saturday Night Live and other television shows. And while President Clinton certainly was the subject of a great deal of criticism, in many people's eyes, it seemed like Lewinsky was the only one to blame, and yet for quite some time you never heard her side of the story, but certainly her life was adversely affected.

In Gabrielle Zevin's Young Jane Young, Aviva Grossman interns for an up-and-coming Florida congressman with whom her family was friends when she was younger. Immensely smart and driven, with possible ambitions of a political career of her own someday, at first Aviva does the "typical" intern stuff—answer phones, send out mailings, make phone calls—but as she demonstrates her intelligence, the congressman and his staff begin relying on her for more serious tasks.

It's a few years after the Lewinsky scandal, but clearly Aviva didn't learn from that, as she and the congressman begin an affair. She knows it's wrong, but she falls in love with him, and she really believes him when he tells her that his marriage hasn't been happy for some time. Since she can't tell anyone about this, she keeps an anonymous blog about their relationship, this in the early days of blogging when she has no way of knowing if anyone is even reading what she writes.

When news of the affair becomes public, Aviva becomes a laughingstock. She can't get a job because of her "fame," her family is disgraced, and even graduate school seems a remote possibility because anyone with an internet connection can find out what she has done. She finds that she has no choice but to leave Florida and head far away, to Maine, where she changes her name to Jane Young and begins her life anew.

Years later, Jane has a successful event planning business and is raising her headstrong daughter Ruby to make smarter choices than she did. When Jane is convinced to run for mayor of her small Maine town, it's not long before her past is exposed. And when Ruby finds out that her mother isn't quite the person she believed she was, Ruby sets off a chain of events which bring Jane and her family back into a time of her life that she had tried putting behind her.

Young Jane Young is told from a number of different perspectives—not only Jane and Ruby's, but also Jane's mother, whose life was also affected by her daughter's scandal, and Embeth Levin, the congressman's wife. The narrative shifts from the time of the scandal to the present, and even includes a pseudo "Choose Your Adventure" section in which Aviva gets the opportunity to tell her side of the story.

This is a fascinating book which shows how quick we are as a society to rush to judgment about someone, even if that someone is our own family member, and how we often don't realize how many ripples a scandal can cause in other people's lives. It's also a book about owning your mistakes and trying to move on, but how sometimes you just can't outrun your past. Of course, it's also an exploration of the double standards that still pervade our society, double standards we've seen play out recently in our political arena here in the U.S.

I've read a few of Zevin's books in the past, with my favorite being The Storied Life of AJ Fikry (see my original review), which made my list of the best books I read in 2014. I really like the way she writes, and I like the way she made her characters fascinating despite their flaws.

I was frustrated by Ruby's actions after she discovers her mother's past. No matter how intelligent and independent Ruby was supposed to be, I just found the way she reacted and what she did a little unbelievable and immensely unlikable, despite understanding why she felt the way she did. The whole thing just seemed more melodramatic than the rest of the book, and it irked me.

Despite my irritation with a portion of the book, this was a very fast and enjoyable read, and an interesting look at the lifecycle of a scandal and its victims. Zevin's talent as a storyteller takes a familiar tale and makes it funny, fascinating, and a little soapy.

NetGalley and Algonquin Books provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

Book Review: "Less" by Andrew Sean Greer

It's been said (in a catty way, of course) that after age 42 gay men become invisible, that no one wants an older gay man except, if they're lucky, another gay man. Andrew Sean Greer's beautifully moving but slightly uneven new novel, Less, deals with a man coming to terms approaching his 50th birthday, wondering if he'll ever find true love, and trying to define himself and his career. No small feat, there!

When he was in his early 20s, he was the boyfriend of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Brownburn, who was a member of the famed Russian River School of writers and artists. Even though the relationship ended after a few years, Arthur has always been defined somewhat as the former boyfriend of Robert Brownburn, even as he experienced a slight bit of renown in his own literary career. Robert will always be Arthur's first love, even though Arthur knows he frittered away the relationship as many much-younger gay men would.

As Arthur's 50th birthday approaches, he is in the midst of a crisis. His former boyfriend of nine years (this time he picked someone younger) is getting married to someone else, and Arthur has been invited to the wedding. His publisher isn't interested at all in his newest novel. And he wonders if he'll spend the rest of his life alone, unloved and unsuccessful. So he does what any self-effacing person would do: he flees the country.

But he's not running away. (Well, yes, he is.) He's pursuing a number of different literary opportunities across the globe, which will end with some time at a writer's retreat in India, where perhaps he will be able to fix what ails his novel. Along the way he travels to Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, and Morocco, plumbing the depths of his soul, looking back at the memories of relationships gone sour, and trying to figure out where he goes from here, and whether he's made the biggest mistakes of his life by simply deciding not to decide things, not to say things, not to do things.

How does a man who always seems to intrigue, always seems to provoke feelings in others, figure out his self-worth, and find the courage to act instead of waiting for things to happen to him? There are lessons to be learned in mistakes and failures, but does he want to learn those lessons? What awaits him on the other side of 50?

Less is an emotional, somewhat elegiacal meditation on aging, love, and one's professional and romantic legacy. It is at times poignant, at times funny, even a little ridiculous occasionally, but tremendously thought-provoking. Greer brings so much poetry and beauty to his sentences, and even if his main character is a somewhat elusive enigma, at least to the reader, his lamentations and his journey are utterly fascinating.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I felt as if so much of this story was so interesting, so moving, that I was a little irritated when the narrative veered into almost farcical and/or metaphysical territory a few times. In a sense you know how the story may ultimately unfold, but Greer makes you wait a really long time for the payoff, and there were a few moments I just wanted Arthur to stop moping, stop walking around with his head in the sand, and speak, or act, the way he knows he should.

I have been a huge fan of Greer's since reading his first story collection, How It Was for Me. While it took me a while to get into what is perhaps his most famous book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, I absolutely loved his other books, The Path of Minor Planets, The Story of a Marriage, and The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. He is an absolutely beautiful storyteller, and even though this book has some flaws, reading Greer's writing is like eating a fine meal or watching a beautiful movie or play—you just don't want it to end, you want to savor every minute.

NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!