CBR 12 #2 The Trespasser by (Dublin Murder Squad No. 6) by Tana French

When I like a book, I have the tendency to obsessively read everything the author has ever wrote.  Such was the case after I read In the Woods by Tana French.  I loved the atmosphere, the mystery, and especially the characters.  I of course, read all the Tana French books I could find.  When I was going through the epub files in my laptop to find a quick read, I was pleasantly surprised to find a French book I haven't read yet.  Or have I?This is still set in the same Dublin Murder Squad as most of the French books are.

The books are not strict sequels to each other but have a shared universe.  Minor characters in a book basically have spin offs and become major characters in the next book.  This particular book focused on Detectives Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran, who were also characters in the previous book, The Secret Place.  In the secret place, Moran was the main character while The Trespassed focuses on Conway.

Conway and Moran are partners in the Murder Squad (the newests members).  Moran is mild mannered and likeable.  Conway is another matter altogether.  She is of mixed race and had a difficult childhood.  An incident early in her tenure at the Squad had her feeling ostracized and she felt that everyone in the squad except for Moran was after her.  She is prickly and distrustful, building walls and never letting anyone in completely, not even her partner.  In fact, the bullying she felt at the squad was so bad that she was contemplating leaving.

The murder of a young woman, with very little physical evidence but a very good suspect seemed routing at first but suspicions that their perfect suspect seemed too perfect would turn their investigation in different direction.  Gangs, disappeared fathers, and even one of their own.  The case provides not only a good mystery to solve, but an opportunity for Conway for self discovery and growth.

Reading the book, I was struck by how familiar the Squad drama was and even remembered the ending to the drama.  However, while the murder was familiar, I could not remember the end at all.  In the end, I decided that I have read the book before but completely forgot abour it.  I don't know if that says something about the book or myself.  But seriously, Conway is a bit of a struggle to get to like.  She is super prickly and even a tad paranoid.  The story was ok, if a but implausible, but well, aren't all her books, really?  Fortunately they are saved by good writing and characterization.   This is my least favorite among the Murder Squad books that I've read.

CBR 12 # 1 The Stand (Uncut) Stephen King

When I was as kid, like maybe 12 or 13, every Sunday after church, my family would go the the mall where we had a store selling outdoor equipment.  Across our store was a used bookstore.  I would spend hours reading while my parents did errands or whatever.  At the end of the day, they let me choose one book that I could buy.  I was a very fast reader and devoured books so for practicality's sake (to make the book last longer), I always chose the thickest books with the smallest letters.  Which led to me reading a whole lot of James Micheners and of course, Stephen King.  But somehow, I missed The Stand.  I remember enjoying his work a lot when I was a kid, plus, I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic literature so I decided to read it.True to form, I got the longer, uncut version.

An artificially engineered superflu virus has ravaged the US, and most probably the world.  The survivors gather together for human connection and survival but end up having to face an epic showdown between good and evil.  The book follows the different survivors  until they meet up in small groups and finally into two communities, those who follow Mother Abagail and those who follow the Dark Man.

In typical King fashion, there are a lot of digressions and long backstories, which I quite enjoy. I like to guess which ones of the characters that are introduced will ultimately become important to the story. There were some digressions I did not particularly enjoy, like the Trashcan Man parts were not for me (from what I gather those parts were not part of the shorter version, in which case, I probably would have enjoyed that version better).  I enjoyed the the stories that don't really move the plot along but flesh out the post flu world, the horror of it.  I liked the parts when they were travelling and was excited for everybody to meet up.  I liked all of the background stuff better than the parts when they were gearing up for the final confrontation and the final confrontation itself.  There is also a lot of familiar stuff if you've read a lot of Stephen Kings.  The Dark Man, the shining, destiny, supernatural stuff, good versus evil, etc.  

I enjoyed reading it and it didn't feel that long (except for the Trashcan Man parts).  Likeable characters and interesting premise, and lots of backstory.   This is vintage Stephen King.

CBR 9 #2 - Chasing Harry WInston by Lauren Weisberger

Having enjoyed Last Night at Chateau marmont and finding The Singles Game, ok, if a little meh, I decided to read another Weisberger book.  Well, not so much decided as saw that it was the next book in my unread books dropbox folder.  Did I regret my lazy choice?  Yes.  Yes I did.

Emmy, Leigh and Adriana have been best friends since college and have maintained the so-called BFF status even as they approach their 30s.  The girls are of course, so different from each other but are utter stereotypes.  And not pleasant ones either.  Emmy is the "desperate" one who is desperate to get married and have babies.  Leigh is the "cold" one who is unhappy despite a pretty much perfect life because she was not complete without the bad boy married novelist.  Adriana is the "slut", of course.  The Brazilian maneater, superficial and shallow.  

After Emmy's long time boyfriend broke up with after cheating numerous times and giving her STDs, the girls decide to make resolutions for the following year, to do a complete 180 on their tried and true moves.  Emmy was going to fuck numerous guys instead of rushing into yet another long term relationship.  Adriana was going to stick to one man, get engaged and married.  Leigh didn't have a particular resolution yet, but you bet your ass it had something to do with finding her true passionate love.  Who cares if she agreed to get engaged to a perfectly good, even great guy that she didn't love, because she was too spineless to say no?

I really did not like this book.  Seriously.  The characters are ridiculous cliches and so unlikeable to boot.  Emmy is the least worst, though she is whiny as hell.  Leigh is horrible and Adriana is the wooorsstt.  The plot was boring and so unbelievable at the same time.  The writing is so meh.  Adriana says 'querida' every other sentence.  Because she is Brazilian.  Get it??  There was a whole Aruba vacation that was both pointless and boring.

I think that the author was trying to be all girl power with this on in the sense that it wasn't ALL about the romance.  They supposedly learned something about themselves and and their happy ever after was not the fairy book romance happy ever after but a supposedly real-world happily ever after.  But to this, I call bullshit!  Ok, Emmy did get to have some casual sex but still got the perfect guy in the end, on the way to babies and marital bliss.  Leigh broke up with her perfect, sportscaster fiance to be with an asshole author.  But Adriana is what irked me the most.  Her thing was that her ex supermodel mom wanted her to get married to a rich guy before she became to old to snag one.  Never mind that she was already fabulously wealthy.  And how was that subverted?  She decided not to marry a rich guy but became an advice columnist on how to snag rich guys using hard-to-get tactics and basically luying.  I think this is an older book, but it feels really icky in the present climate.  

Oh my gosh, I did not realize that I felt so strongly about this book.  Final verdict:  Did not like, do not read.  Do you guys have any advice on which "chick lit"/ romance books are good and won't make my brain rot?  That won't invoke any feminist rage?  I haven't really read a lot of them but from what I've read, I liked marian Keyes the best.  

CBR 9 #1 - The Singles Game by Lauren Weisberger

I am notoriously (in my small circle of reading friends) averse to "chick lit" and romance.  But during the last quarter of 2015, I was having double vision (as a result of myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease which affects muscles).  Then I got pregnant and was just basically sick a lot.  This led to me having a lot of trouble just reading (headaches) and concentrating while reading.  I had to forgo my more "serious" and long ass books.  Basically, I couldn't read anything that wasn't a page turner.  So I turned to thrillers and chick lit.  I read ALL the Liane moriarty and marian Keyes, which I loved.  I read Jojo moyes which was OK.  Then I read Last Night at Chateau marmont which was also Ok.  So that's the long story of why and how I started reading Lauren Weisberger and for this current pick.

This book is about wholesome American sweetheart tennis player turned warrior princess turned just plain herself Charlie Silver.  After a serious injury sidelined her for a few months, Charlie decided that being seeded somewhere in the double digits was not enough.  She wanted her grandslam win and would do anything to get it.  Including hiring an asshole coach, revamping her image ang disappointing her Dad.  So Charlie started living the glamorous life of a top seeded tennis player after her rebranding as a Warrior Princess.  But that meant sacrificing some of her relationships and principles.

I was pleasantly surprised that the new asshole coach was NOT the love interest.  In fact, the love interest wasn't really the focus of the whole story.  Sure, there was the unhealthy recurring booty call turned PR relationship with the handsome top seeded guy tennis player, the one night fling with the famous actor and the obvious true love hitting partner.  But the book was really about Charlie trying to be true to herself and her ambitions amidst all the expectations the men (usually) of her life have for her.  There was a lot of hand wringing about sportsmanship and sluttiness.  Her father in particular, annoyed me to no end in his saintly judgement of her sleeping around and unsportmanship behaviour.  I may be a horrible person but I don't think she was doing anything particularly wrong except being carried away by the partying and her image.  

It was an ok way to pass a few hours, I guess. Not that exciting but not boring.  I feel like I took a nice peek into the tennis circuit which was interesting since I used to play a teeny tiny bit in high school and live right beside a tennis court.  Overall, pretty meh about this one.

CBR VI # 3 - Messenger by Lois Lowry

This book is a more direct continuation of Gathering Blue.  Matt, Kira’s friend from Gathering Blue lived in the ghetto of Kira’s Tribe.  His parents were NOT nice. At the end of Gathering Blue, Matt had went with Kira’s father to live with him in The Village.  The Village was founded by people who are not welcome in their own villages.  Some travelled far and wide, some, like Kira’s father and Matt, came from just beyond the Forest.  Now this Village, this is Utopian.  Jonas, from The Giver, is the present “Leader” and resident wise man of the Village.  The Village is extremely peaceful with each person having their designation or their “true name”.  This is an echo of the Community where everyone is given their assignments when they turn 12.  But in the Village, naming seems more organic and benevolent.

Matt is living a pretty good life there.  He is far from his former wild self and is seemingly content and happy with Kira’s father and is hoping that he will soon be named “The Messenger”.  This is a job that he is already doing, in any case.  He delivers message far and wide, even beyond the mysterious forest which actually kills other people who have been living in the Village for long and dare to venture its depths.

But Matt’s perfect world is slowly being changed for the worse.  There is a mysterious trademaster who seems to be able to give everything your heart desires, at the cost of chipping away at your humanity one trade at a time.  The forest is becoming more and more corrupt and dangerous.  And the once benevolent and open villagers are planning on closing the village to outsiders, people, who, like the villagers when they first arrived, have nowhere else to go.  Because of the planned closing of the village, Matt goes back to Kira to lead her to the Village.  The way is hard and Matt barely makes it to Kira alive.  And things are even worse on the way back.  Someone will have to make a sacrifice.

The series, as it progresses, has less and less sci-fi aspects and has become very fantasy oriented.  While I also love fantasy, this leaves me a bit disoriented.  In this book, the mysterious trademaster seems like evil personified, a monster.  And Jonas’ and Kira’s and Matt’s special abilities are more magical, as is the dark forest.  As the series progresses, I like the books less and less.  I found the story a bit clichéd and simplistic.  And the ending, which was supposed to be really touching, didn’t really do anything for me.  That is not to say that the book was bad.  It was good enough to keep me interested.  It is quite alright and might be good for a younger audience.

CBR VI # 2 - Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

I went into this book thinking that I would get an answer to the cliffhanger ending of The Giver. Was Jonas and Baby Gabriel safe? Or was it the final delusions of a dying kid? Well, I was sorely disappointed when the book opened to depict a society completely different from the Community. What was the connection? Well, I just decided to go ahead and enjoy the book on its merits and not as a sequel. Kira lives in a mainly hunter-gatherer society (with a little backyard agriculture) where survival of the fittest is paramount. It’s a tough world and physical weakness is not tolerated in fact, the weak and people with disabilities are left in a field to die. The story opens with Kira mourning for her mother in their dumpsite for the dead. Kira is lame in one leg and her mother, an influential person in their village, protected her when her defective leg should have meant certain death. Her dad is thought of to be dead from a hunting accident when she was still a baby so it was just her and her mother. Upon her mother’s death, her position in the tribe is threatened by the other stronger tribemates who wanted her land. Fortunately, she is saved by her talent in embroidering. The Council of Guardians appointed her to become the official embroiderer, meant to dedicate her life to repairing a cape which depicts the history of their people. Of humankind. In the surprisingly modern building (there’s running water!) where Kira is housed along with the official carver and the trainee singer, she learns more about history and the inner workings of her village. 

 I didn’t really see the connection between this book and The Giver until almost the end of the book. ****SPOILERS***** Kira’s friend, a poor (even for her village’s standards) boy named Matt ran away to find color blue thread for Kira’s embroidery. He end up in a village where it turns out took in all the handicapped and physically deformed people from their village who were left for dead. One of those people was Kira’s father who had become blind and was not, in fact dead. He came back for Kira and asked her to return with him to the Utopian village but Kira wanted to make things in her village better and declined. But anyway, Matt mentioned that the leader of the village was a young guy with pale eyes. Oh hello Jonas! But it was only in passing. ****END SPOILERS**** 

The structure of this book is quite like the Giver, in some way.  There is a society which you initially would not think to be the future.  In this case, however, the society is not initially presented as utopia but it is quite clear that times were bad and things had turned primitive.  Like, the Giver, there is a young person chosen for a special job, one in which they learn about the past and their eyes are opened to how bad the society they are living in is.  They also attempt to do something to try to make the world a better place.  Jonas by leaving, any Kira by staying.  Unfortunately, like The Giver, I also found Gathering Blue to be simplistic and kind of childish.  It also has the added disadvantage of the mythology, the society not being as interesting to me as in the Giver.  It was really just ok for me (I know, I'm starting to sound like Randy Jackson).

CBR VI #1- The Giver by Lois Lowry

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I like how when you read the book, it doesn't really feel like the future. In fact, the setting seems positively retro with the bikes and the innocence, like the 50s or something. But its not. Jonas, he of pale eyes, lives in a Community where everything is regimented. Everything and everyone has its place and time. Your path is set from the moment you are born from your birthmother until the moment you are released from old age. Jonas is in the 11th year of his life and in the next ceremony, when he (and everybody born in the same year as him) will turn 12 and will be assigned their official jobs.  In the ceremony, Jonas is surprised when he is given a very special job.  He is to be the receiver of memory.  The job is a mystery to everybody, especially to Jonas, but it turns out that the job entails absorbing memories from the Giver, who was formerly the Receiver.  The memories are not just memories of a single person, but memories of their people.  Of a more colorful (literally) and chaotic past.  Hundreds of years of memories.  Jonas receives these memories, both the amazing and the horrifying.  It changes him (well that and the NO MEDICATION) and leads him into making a choice to either leave the safety and sameness of his Community or try his chances Elsewhere.

In reading sci-fi, fantasy, zombie or vampire books, I am always very interested in the world building.  I thought that the world, the Community was pretty plausible.  Feeling and emotion is erased I think chemically by drinking medicine everyday.  Everything is planned and organized meticulously.  I like how at first, the world seems utopian until Jonas digs deeper and well, you see the world as it really is.  There is peace, but what is peace without freedom?  The moment where it really hit me was when I realized that the Community had no colour!  I guess everything was in black and white?  That's my favourite thing about how the book is written, when you are slowly made to realize that this perfect world is anything but.

The thing that confused me a bit about the book was that I thought it was going to be pure science fiction but then there's Jonas with the special powers to see colour and to receive and feel memories.  I don't know, I guess it's not necessarily bad, just a bit disorienting.  I liked the book, but I was a bit disappointed that it was a bit simplistic, I guess.  Maybe because it's a children's book and it's supposed to be that way?  I just felt that the events leading to the ending were just.. that's it?  It gave me that sort of feeling.  But I actually liked the ending, in that Jonas was not able to magically fix or overturn the system.  The solution is smaller, more personal, but its effects still resound to the community and to the reader.

I live in a country where we didn't really have any public libraries and when I was a kid.  Our teachers didn't really assign us any books to read in grade school and brand new ones were pretty pricey for our family.  What I'm trying to say is, I think I would have liked this better if I had read this as the intended audience, when I was a kid.  As it is, I like it, but I wasn't really blown away.

PS.  Being a completist, my next three reviews will be the companion books.  The ending was sort of a cliff hanger so I was interested to know what really happened.