Book Review: "Stillhouse Lake" by Rachel Caine

Stillhouse Lake is a great book. I mean, stay-up-until-2:00-a.m.-to-finish-it great. I read the whole thing in just a few hours, and my heart was pounding pretty fast for a while afterward!

"I'm glad I've escaped a hell I had hardly even recognized when I was burning in it. Glad that I've pulled the kids out, too."

Gina Royal had your typical, everyday life. Her marriage to her husband Mel had its ups and downs, but for the most part, they were happy, and she felt comfortable raising their two children, Lily and Brady, together. They were the family she had always wanted.

One day, a seemingly innocent car accident totally derails Gina's life, as it reveals that her husband has been a serial killer for a number of years. He used his garage workshop to commit the murders and store the bodies, and Gina had no idea. Mel always said that he had some expensive tools in his workshop, so he kept it locked. How could she have missed the signs, spent all of this time thinking her life with her husband was normal?

When Mel went on trial for the murders, Gina found herself in the public eye as well, and on trial. It didn't matter how many times she swore her innocence and her ignorance of Mel's crimes, there were many in the press, in the neighborhood, across the world, and even within her own family, who believed she had a hand in the murders. Mel's supporters on the internet criticized, bullied, shamed, and threatened her in droves, enough that she had to take the kids and run, creating new identities and starting all over again—several times.

Now Gina is Gwen Proctor, and her kids are Atlanta (Lanny) and Connor. In a remote town called Stillhouse Lake, they finally feel comfortable after so many years of fleeing when people started asking too many questions or Mel's minions found them. The kids are weary of giving up their lives in the blink of an eye, of having no friends, having to set and reset the house alarm, and of watching their mother driven to the brink of violence and fear in an effort to keep them safe. All three of them start to think about fixing up their house, making friends, building a life again.

And then the body of a young woman is found in the lake near their house, and the similarities to Mel's crimes are eerie. Gwen's first instinct is to flee, but how can she do that to her kids again? Should she finally let her guard down and let someone know the truth about who they are, or is there someone who already knows it? Who is behind this murder? Does she still need to fear Mel, even though she's left no trail?

One thing is for certain: she is no longer a victim. If it comes to defending her children or herself, she will fight to save them. No matter what that takes.

This was one hell of a thrill ride! Rachel Caine reels you in on the first page and doesn't let you go until you've read the last word. Gwen is one badass mom, although I, too, wondered if she really was as innocent as she claimed she was. But having read other books in which characters have to run away when their identity is exposed, I felt as if Stillhouse Lake was one of the strongest in depicting how that split-second decision affects the children involved, those who've never had a say in what happened to them.

As I've remarked before, my general MO when reading thrillers is to trust no one. I really was wondering how Caine would resolve everything, and while I felt like I had to stretch my disbelief a bit, it didn't frustrate me that much. Caine is an amazing storyteller—there aren't a lot of books that would keep me reading late into the night, desperately needing to see how the book ended!

If you're a thriller fan, you'll want to grab this one—I know I'm ready for Book #2!

Book Review: "Rich People Problems" by Kevin Kwan

Sometimes the best antidote for the craziness of the world is reading a wacky book. (It leaves my head clearer than drinking would, anyway.) Kevin Kwan's Rich People Problems, the third in his Crazy Rich Asians series, was just the ticket. Campy, a bit melodramatic, and utterly outrageous, Kwan's tales of three generations of Chinese families, set mostly in Singapore, provides a hysterical glimpse into how the ultra-rich live.

"Peel away the veneer of wealth and sophistication and you'll find extremely provincial, narrow-minded people. The problem is that they all have too much money, and it's come so easily to them that they think they're bloody geniuses and so they are always right."

Su Yi, the matriarch of the Young Family, is on her deathbed. She has a massive fortune, capped by Tyersall Park, a 64-acre estate on prime land in Singapore. While Asian tradition would usually expect Su Yi to leave the estate to her eldest son, Philip, many believed she'd bequeath it to his son, her favorite grandson, Nicholas. But Nicholas has been estranged from his grandmother after she voiced her disapproval of his marrying Rachel, whom she viewed as a common Chinese girl, so he hasn't been home to visit her in several years.

With disposition of Su Yi's estate in question, her entire family heads to Tyersall Park to hopefully get into her good graces (and perhaps move up a bit in her will) before she passes. Her eldest daughter, Felicity, knows that she'll probably get the short end of the stick because of her gender, but she has bigger fish to fry—her daughter Astrid is scandalizing the family with her relationship with her college boyfriend Charlie Wu. The family never thought that he was good enough for her, even though he is a self-made technology tycoon now, they don't want the two to get together now, even though both are on the verge of divorcing.

Another grandson, Eddie Chang, has also come to be with Su Yi, with his family in tow. Eddie is the most status-conscious of any of the family members—he always has to be sure people know he's wearing top-of-the-line designers, the most expensive and unique shoes (one pair needed to be dyed multiple times, so they took weeks to be ready for him), and the most luxurious of luxury timepieces. He is bound and determined to finally get the respect he believes he deserves, and if that means keeping others away from his grandmother until he wins her over to his side, so be it.

While Nicholas says he doesn't care about the estate and doesn't want to revisit the hurt his grandmother caused, he realizes he needs to say goodbye to her. (Plus, his high-strung mother insists about five times a day, when she's not interrogating him and Rachel about when they'll give her a grandchild.) His return home dredges up some resentment (especially with his cousin Eddie), but spending time with Su Yi and other family members reminds him of the importance of family, but reinforces how smart he and Rachel are to live in New York!

Meanwhile, former, umm, actress Kitty Pong has finally gained some status with her marriage to China's second-richest man, Jack Bing. But her quest for respectability keeps falling short, as she can't seem to reconcile her schizophrenic tastes in fashion and decor with what is expected of someone in her position. Even worse is the fact that she is convinced her stepdaughter, fashionista-turned-attorney's wife Colette, is trying to upstage her at every turn. No matter how hard she tries to stand out, Colette seems to be in her way, despite her sudden passion for the environment and no-frills fashion.

"Scientists talk about how we inherit health issues from our parents through our genes, but we also inherit this entire lineage of fear and pain—generations of it."

Rich People Problems is quite funny as it chronicles the over-the-top behavior of these people as they battle for an inheritance, social acceptance, love, and most of all, more money. Kwan imbues his book with painstaking details (even his footnotes are hysterical while also being informative) and a litany of designers, couture, and descriptions of food sure to make your stomach growl quite loudly.

Even the characters' names are amazing—my favorite is probably Scheherazade Shang, or Harvard Bing, the infant son of Kitty and Jack. The visuals Kwan's imagery conveys are eye-popping, and some of the dialogue is campier than any soap opera diva or villain's.

Like many, I've occasionally thought about what life might be like if I didn't have to worry about money—what I would do, where I would go, what I would spend it on. But the amount of money the characters in this book throw around (one character gets an eye lift for a rare fish to make it look younger) is unfathomable, which makes the book so much fun to read.

A true guilty pleasure.

Book Review: "Our Dark Duet" by Victoria Schwab

You know when you want to absolutely devour a book, but it's the last book in a series you love, so you're torn between reading it in practically one sitting and savoring it for as long as you can? That's the way I felt about Victoria Schwab's Our Dark Duet, the second and apparently final book in Schwab's Monsters of Verity series. (The first book, This Savage Song, was pretty fantastic, too. See my original review.)

"There were two kinds of monsters, the kind that hunted the streets and the kind that lived in your head. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous. It was always, always, always a step ahead. It didn't have teeth or claws, didn't feed on flesh or blood or hearts. It simply reminded you of what happened when you let people in."

Kate Harker and August Flynn should never have known each other, much less become friends. Kate's father was a notoriously power-hungry man who harnessed the monsters that roamed the half of the city he controlled, and then charged the city's residents for his protection from them. August is the adopted son of Henry Flynn, who wants to keep the residents of his half of the city safe by controlling the monsters, not harnessing them as pawns in a shakedown.

August is also a monster, the rarest of the three breeds, who can steal a person's soul by playing his violin. He simply wants to to be kind, to live a good life, and not face the reality of his familial responsibilities, but he cannot escape what he is. He and Kate were thrown together, and after weathering fear and mistrust of one another, they built a relationship, more than a friendship, and each became indebted to the other in a bloody battle for survival.

Six months later, after fleeing her home city, Kate has become the monster hunter she always knew she was destined to be. But when another breed of monster appears, the so-called Chaos Eater, one who feeds on bystanders' emotions and fears in order to reap violence, she finds she has some sort of dangerous connection to it, and it lures her home to Prosperity, where old and new nemeses await her. Meanwhile, August has assumed his rightful place as heir apparent to his father's task force, but he is still conflicted between what is expected of him and what he wants from his life.

"And here in Prosperity, Kate had found a purpose, a point, and now when she met her gaze in the mirror, she didn't see a girl who was sad or lonely or lost. She saw a girl who wasn't afraid of the dark. She saw a girl who hunted monsters. And she was damn good at it."

Kate's return to Prosperity drops her back into the thick of the war between the monsters who wish to rule the city and those who wish for peace. She faces the resentment of those who hate her for who her father was, and don't believe in her capabilities. She doesn't understand what happened to August, where the boy she once knew has gone. And she knows that in order to fight the Chaos Eater she must unleash her own inner monster, and there may be no turning back once she does.

There's a lot more to this book, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone. I would say if this interests you, read This Savage Song first, because this book builds on that one. I know this series isn't for everyone, but if you've ever thought about giving YA fantasy/science fiction a try, here's a series worth cutting your teeth on.

I loved Our Dark Duet immensely, because Schwab pulled me right back into the amazing, dark world she created, and gave me even more emotion, conflict, and epic battles. I haven't read her other series but I definitely will have to, because she is an incredible storyteller. I loved these characters and their relationships, and my only frustration is that the series ended so soon.

I'm not a fan of so many books being adapted into movies and/or television series, but I'd love to see these books get adapted. Schwab's words and imagery deserve to be read, but this incredible world she has created deserves to be seen as well. I'd love to see how August and Kate, their family and friends, and those monsters translate onto the screen. So sad to see this end, but Schwab has a huge fan in me!!

Book Review: "Crime Song" by David Swinson

Retired DC police detective Frank Marr returns in Crime Song, the second book in David Swinson's great series. Frank is, for lack of a better term, a total mess. His addiction to cocaine and alcohol got so bad that he was forced to resign from the police force, so now he works as a private investigator, making just enough to live and (mostly) support his drug habit.

He agrees to do a favor for his somewhat-estranged aunt, who helped raise him after his mother died, and figure out what trouble his college-aged cousin Jeffrey has gotten himself into. Frank hasn't seen Jeffrey since he was a little kid, but when his aunt says that Jeffrey has been skipping his classes at George Washington University, he figures it should be easy to determine what he's up to. And after some surveillance at a trendy nightclub downtown, he confirms that Jeffrey has become a relatively small-time drug dealer.

Frank remembers Jeffrey as a kid, and part of him wants to talk some sense into Jeffrey himself, but instead he's going to report his findings to his aunt. Just before making that phone call, Frank's house is ransacked and a body is left on the floor—Jeffrey's. There's even a possibility that Frank's missing gun might have been the murder victim. It's more than enough to strain the fragile relationship with his aunt, not to mention possible damage his reputation for good.

Once the police are reasonably convinced Frank didn't have a hand in any of this, they promise to try and find all of his stuff and, more importantly, figure out what happened to Jeffrey. Of course, the police's involvement doesn't dissuade Frank from running his own investigation. He has some latitude as a private investigator, but he just can't get caught interfering. He wants answers, and perhaps equally important, he needs to replenish his stash, so if he comes into contact with a drug dealer he can steal from, so much the better.

As Frank follows the trail of his missing stereo equipment, records and CDs, and other electronics, he finds a pretty extensive operation involving drug dealers and addicts selling to fences who look the other way, and thinks he's found his guide into the madness in the persona of a conflicted cab driver. But there's a lot more than meets the eye than burglaries and drugs—and somehow, unknowingly, Frank is in the middle of all of it.

Will more lives be endangered, including his own, before he figures out the truth? How far can he let things go without telling the police what he's found? Can he even trust the police, or should he deliver his own justice? And how is he involved, and by whom? No matter what he does, he risks it all—his ability to work as a PI, the possibility of a relationship with his aunt, his friendships and his fragile relationship with a former police colleague-turned-defense attorney, his reputation, and his life.

Swinson tells a great story. This was an addicting crime novel from start to finish, and in fact, having a little bit of a staycation (and a sick husband), I read the book in one day. Frank Marr is a terrific character. He's utterly flawed and has his own skewed sense of right and wrong, yet he's doggedly loyal once he's trying to solve a case. He knows his addiction will destroy him, but he doesn't see a way out, and frankly, he's not too interested in finding one.

Not a lot of what happens plot-wise is too surprising, but that doesn't really matter. Following Frank, seeing how good of an investigator he is despite his issues, and watching his conflict between sharing what he knows with the police and dealing with everything on his own is fascinating and compelling. I like some of the supporting characters in these books, and I was sad that Swinson didn't give us a little more Luna or Leslie, but ultimately this is Frank's show.

Having lived in the DC area for years, I love a good locally set crime novel. Swinson's series is definitely worth picking up, and you'll marvel over the complexity of such a flawed, yet good, man.

Book Review: "So Much Blue" by Percival Everett

While I'm not one of those people who believes every painting needs to have meaning, on more than one occasion I've looked at an abstract piece and wondered just what the artist was striving for. Sometimes a painting strikes me initially as simply a jumble of colors or shapes or objects, but after looking at it a few times, suddenly everything clicks into place and makes sense.

That's how I felt about So Much Blue by Percival Everett. I'd seen some tremendously positive reviews of the book, and it has been included on more than a few year-end best lists. Initially, I wondered how (and if) the seemingly disparate pieces of the narrative would come together and what it all meant, but when they did, I was utterly wowed by the book as a whole.

Kevin Pace is a somewhat-misanthropic painter of some renown. His success certainly has made his family's life more comfortable, but he doesn't seem fazed either way. He is currently working on a major piece—a canvas of twelve feet by twenty-one feet (and three inches) that is covered entirely in shades of blue. He won't show it to anyone, not his wife, his children, or his best friend, Richard. This painting might be a masterpiece or it might garner no response, and he doesn't really care.

"To say that a painting is like a story is a pedestrian utterance, not altogether untrue, but uninspired, though that hardly stops people from making such invidious and unwarranted comparisons. The painting that was my life was static, hardly a story at all, moving but with no moving parts, changing but without alteration."

Kevin's life is characterized by secrets. Ten years ago, while he was in Paris working with a gallery owner selling his work, Kevin had an affair with a young watercolor painter. He wasn't looking for an affair and didn't allow himself any delusions it would continue or shake up his life, but the relationship touched him more than he imagined. But he never told his wife about the affair, although she knows something occurred while he was in Paris.

In 1979, while they were in college, Kevin and Richard headed to El Salvador, as the country was on the cusp of war, to find Richard's brother Tad, who apparently disappeared down there. The two have no idea what they're getting themselves into, and engage the services of The Bummer, an American war criminal, to try and find Tad and bring him home. What they encounter, and the situation Kevin finds himself in, has never left Kevin's mind. It caused him to become an alcoholic for a number of years, and this, too, has always been a source of distance between him and his wife, since he's never shared what happened down there.

"The real sadness was that I drifted away from my wife and children because of alcohol, but instead of finding the current back to them when I ceased, I camped out on an uncharted island in the middle of myself."

When Kevin's teenage daughter asks him to keep a secret of her own, he finally realizes the cost of secrets, the cost of keeping those he cares about at arm's length for so long. He also thinks about the sacrifices he has made for his art, whether those sacrifices changed him in any way, and whether a painting should take such precedence in his life.

"The fact that it was secret served its secrets, my secrets, and suddenly I understood at least one rather simple and perhaps obvious forehead-flattening truth, that a secret can exist only if its revelation, discovery, even betrayal is possible."

It takes a little while for the separate story threads to weave themselves together into something cohesive, but when it does, this is a powerful meditation on the lengths we go to protect ourselves, even at the expense of those we love. Everett provides cogent commentary on the artist and the artistic process, and also shows how one secret can beget others.

Kevin is a difficult character to like at times, but once you understand the weight he has been carrying, his detachment makes far more sense. Everett tells a beautiful story, one with flashes of humor and sensitivity. I think I'll carry Kevin in my mind for a while now that I've finished this book.

Much like a painting or other work of art, So Much Blue may not hit everyone the same way, but for me, this was so worth the journey.

Book Review: "Watching Glass Shatter" by James J. Cudney

Is there any better time to read a book about family dysfunction than around the holidays?

James J. Cudney's Watching Glass Shatter is an immensely readable, deliciously soapy novel about a family on the verge of being torn apart by secrets. It's also a commentary about how when it appears people have it all, they often aren't satisfied, and things are much more complicated than they seem from the outside looking in.

Ben Glass and his wife Olivia are about to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. They have five wonderful sons, and Ben is in the process of beginning to plan his retirement from the law firm he has led tirelessly for years. But the family is thrown into turmoil by Ben's sudden death, which leaves Olivia shocked, despondent, and wondering what she is going to do with the rest of her life given all that she and Ben had planned.

The truth is, Ben's death is actually not the worst of it. After reading Ben's will, his attorney reveals a secret a conflicted Ben has kept hidden for many years: when Olivia gave birth to one of their sons, the baby died shortly after his birth. Rather than tell Olivia, who was asleep at the time, Ben was able to find a young woman looking to give her infant son up for adoption, so Ben arranged for them to switch babies, and never said a word, although he always felt guilty and wanted to tell the truth.

To make matters worse, Ben directed his attorney to find his son's biological mother upon his death. Only once the woman is located (if that is possible) can the information about which son this was be revealed. Olivia feels angry, betrayed, and utterly despondent that in addition to losing her husband and best friend, she has now learned she lost a baby years ago, and she may lose one of the young men she has raised from birth.

As the attorney searches for the woman, Olivia decides to spend time visiting each of her sons, trying to determine if she can uncover the truth, but more importantly, ensuring that their lives are progressing the way that she and Ben hoped they were. In addition to experiencing a little friction with her daughters-in-law, what she finds is that each of her sons is carrying his own burden, his own secret that is torturing him. If all of these secrets are revealed they have the potential to destroy her family completely.

There is quite a lot going on in Watching Glass Shatter and I just couldn't get enough of it. Some of the secrets I could see coming, but I was hooked from start to finish. I've seen that Cudney is a fan of soap operas, and that comes as no surprise reading this book, and that's part of what makes it so enjoyable. He deftly avoids the plot or the dialogue becoming too campy or melodramatic, however.

You may know how this story will resolve itself, but it doesn't matter one bit, because you'll want to see it/read it with your own eyes. This is a compelling addition to the dysfunctional family genre, and I look forward to seeing what Cudney writes next!

Book Review: "Far from the Tree" by Robin Benway

This book...

Robin Benway's Far from the Tree recently won the National Book Award. It's a beautiful, thought-provoking tearjerker of a book, a meditation about family and its different forms, as well as the fears we don't share with those we love, and how what we don't say is often more of a roadblock than the things we do.

At times this book had me like:

While at other times it had me like:

Grace is an only child, although she's always known that she was adopted. But shortly after she gives birth to her own daughter while she's still in high school, and gives the baby up for adoption, she decides that it's time to start looking for her biological mother. She more than surprised to find out from her parents that Grace had two biological siblings—an older brother, Joaquin, and a younger sister, Maya, whom she never knew existed.

Maya is tremendously outspoken about everything, perhaps because she's the lone brunette in a house full of redheads. Her adopted parents' marriage is floundering, her mother has a drinking problem, and she's always felt the outsider in her family, since her younger sister was born shortly after her parents adopted her. She's not sure what she hopes to find in her biological siblings, but she hopes it brings her security.

While Grace and Maya were adopted as babies, Joaquin has spent his life in and out of foster families. Even the times he let his guard and his heart down, he ultimately was disappointed and hurt, so he's determined not to let that happen again, even when the situation looks promising. More than anything, he's afraid that he believes he can hurt the people who care about him, so he's afraid to let anyone get too close, even Grace and Maya.

Each of the siblings has their emotional wounds and their secrets, which poses challenges for their relationship but also demonstrates just how much they have in common. Beyond their mutual love of eating their French fries with mayonnaise, and their similar physical characteristics, the three share the fear of telling the people they care about the truth, about letting them see all of their problems, which has resulted in friction with others in their lives. But little by little, they let their walls down with one another and try to help each other face those fears—which is far easier said than done.

"Maya wondered if it would ever be like this with Grace and Joaquin, the ability to just sit quietly side by side, content in the knowledge that no matter what happened with your parents, or your girlfriend, that your siblings will still be there, like a bookend that keeps you upright when you feel like toppling over."

There is a lot of emotional upheaval in this book, as the siblings deal with their own issues as well as search for their biological mother. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but I'll admit I found their inability to verbalize the things they were afraid of/angry about tremendously frustrating. I know this was a realistic depiction of how people, particularly teenagers, often handle their problems, but to have it be the case with three people at the same time was a bit bothersome.

Beyond wanting to shake the characters so they'd finally say what needed to be said, I really enjoyed this book and was tremendously moved by it. It was a very real reminder about the fears and anxieties adopted children and children in the foster care system face, and it also demonstrated how feeling like you belong for the first time can truly make a difference.

This is a really well-written book. Benway had an ear for dialogue that was on-target for teenagers without making them sound so much wiser and more sarcastic than their years. I'm always a big fan of books which make me feel while they make me think, which is why I definitely recommend Far from the Tree.