Before I Blogged I Read: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

January 18, 2013 by · 32 Comments

There’s a lot of books I read before I started this blog in June of 2010 and I figured it might be fun to spotlight those! They won’t be an actual review because OMG YOU GUYS THAT WAS SO LONG AGO but I’ll just note a few things about it, if I enjoyed it and what my Goodreads rating was. So thus “Before I Blogged I Read…” was born. Because you know…I’m so original with my names for things.

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The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

(Amazon | Goodreads )
Rating: I gave it 3.5 stars on Goodreads

1. It’s an adult book — general fiction, I guess you would say, but definitely leans towards a mystery. The main character receives a letter from a very famous author in England. She’s a secretive recluse who always tells tall tales to journalists who want to write about her and she’s asked the main character, who owns a book store and writes amateur biographies,  to write her biography. She agrees to, after being intrigued by one of her novels she has at her shop, and spends her days with the eccentric author and learns some very dark things of her past. Very twisty and turny!

2. I remember really enjoying it and, though it started slow, the suspense started to build and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough and I had so many different ideas in my head for how it was going to end but TOTALLY not what I thought. I also recall it being rather dark!

3. It has a very Gothic feel to it and was very atmospheric in that way.  Definitely recommend for fans of Bronte and Austen!

4. Definitely one of those books about people who love books as the main character is a bibliophile.

I definitely am now in the mood to re-read it because I can’t remember specific details and it’s killing me! haha

Have any of you read this one? Did you like it/not like it? Can you recommend any other really great Gothic feeling literature that I might also like? Let me know if you like this new series or not!

Filed Under: Adult Mystery, Before I Blogged I Read, book review, Fiction, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Review: Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio

December 5, 2012 by · 14 Comments

Book Title/Author: Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio
Publisher/Year:  Plume 2012
Genre: Mystery/historical fiction – Adult Fiction
Series: No
Other Books From Author: The Violets of March, The Bungalow

Amazon| Goodreads | Sarah Jio’s website |

I checked this out from my wonderful library. LIBRARIES ARE COOL, y’all!

 

 

 

Told in alternating perspectives, Blackberry Winter tells the story of two woman, decades apart, but whose stories become intertwined when a freak weather phenomenon in May, a blackberry winter, unearths an unsolved kidnapping from the 1930s. Vera Ray is a single mother who is struggling to pay rent with her low paying job as a maid at a ritzy hotel. With no way to pay for childcare, she tucks her three year old son in bed to work the night shift, only to return home to discover that there has been a freak snowstorm and Daniel has gone missing with only his favorite teddy bear left behind. Almost 80 years later, Claire, a reporter and wife in the midst of a failing marriage, wakes up to Seattle covered in snow and her boss wanting a great feature connecting the blackberry winter of today to the one in 1933. Claire finds the story of the missing child that went unsolved and sets out to find out what happened as Vera’s story becomes personal to her — even more so than she’d ever realized.

I really, really loved Blackberry Winter! It was a captivating story that and has made me a huge Sarah Jio fan with just one book. The way the two women’s stories were intertwined and told in alternating chapters really worked for me as I learned more about each women & their life in smaller pieces — which really piled on the suspense! I was so invested in both Vera & Claire’s stories that I’d finish one chapter and be all, “Oh man! I don’t want to switch perspectives” but then immediately be absorbed in the other woman’s story.I loved learning about Vera’s back story and how she became a single mother (umm rather swoony and then completely heartbreaking) while simultaneously learning more about what happened to her and Daniel through Claire’s investigation. That storyline REALLY got to me and Sarah Jio knows how to deliver bits of answers in a way that you can’t help but hastily read because you really care so much about what happened.

I was afraid I wasn’t going to really connect with Claire with the nature of the fact that so much of what she does in the book is help us learn more about Vera and Daniel but Sarah Jio really made her into a character I loved as she had so many of her own heartbreaking issues to deal with that really drew her to this story. While obviously her investigation about Vera was the shining storyline, I thought that Claire’s marital issues and the unfortunate accident that happened in their life was really interesting and I loved the healing that went on throughout the story in different ways. The only thing that I will say is that sometimes I thought things were a little bit too much of a coincidence but not in a way that really detracted from the story at all. But besides that, this book was fantastic & I’ll be reading all of her books!

 

Blackberry Winter was the perfect blend of mystery and historical fiction, laced with romance, and a serious page-turner. The  pieces of the mystery were revealed in that way that just makes on ravenous and the two intertwined stories were heartbreaking and beautiful. Truly a moving story that will leave you a bit misty-eyed while reading about Vera’s story — both through the back story & Claire’s investigation. Sarah Jio has just such smooth & exquisite writing — the unraveling of the mystery, the scenes that make your heart ache, the amazing characterization & more — it was just all so deftly and wonderfully written. Even if you typically don’t read adult fiction, I’d recommend still checking this one out!

 

You May Also Like: Kate Morton,  Lucinda Riley, The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rassmussen (it has that some sort of amazingly revealed mystery without being an overly “mystery” book — great characters, stories that make a mark on your heart, etc). 

 

Let’s Talk: Have you read this one? Heard of it? Did you guess how they were tied together? Have you read either of Sarah Jio’s other novels?  Which one should I tackle next?

Filed Under: Adult Fiction, adult historical fiction, Adult Mystery, book review, Contemporary Adult Fiction, mystery Tagged With: , , , ,

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

November 29, 2010 by · 9 Comments

Juliet, Naked
 Wasted time. What happens when you wake up one day and realize you are not quite happy with the life you are living and feel as though a good deal of it has been wasted? This stark realization hits a childless and middle-aged Annie, a curator at a small, English seaside town museum and in a stagnant 15 year relationship with Duncan, a pretentious music fan who is obsessed with an obscure singer/songwriter named Tucker Crowe who mysteriously and abruptly left the music scene ten years before. All the way across the Atlantic in rural Pennsylvania lives Tucker Crowe who faces the realization of being haunted by failures and wasted time from his past that are affecting his present relationships.  A new release, in the form of a stripped down version of his most famous album entitled Juliet, will forever change the lives of Annie, Duncan and Tucker and brings them together to face the lives they haven’t been living and make a decision about what it is they truly want for themselves.

Juliet, Naked is my first experience with Nick Hornby and I am quite pleased. I very much enjoyed his style and found him to be humorous, thoughtful and able to make very astute observations through interesting and quirky characters. The emotional aspects of the story are not overwrought and there is delicately placed humor within the pages. I found myself laughing out loud a few times–mainly at Tucker’s son Jackson. I can see Hornby becoming a favorite author if the rest of his novels are as good as this one. There were so many beautiful quotes that I wrote down from this book that I can’t even begin to share them! Such as:

“The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you”

I couldn’t put this book down once I had a good chunk of time to devote to it. I was reading it over Thanksgiving and it was near impossible to get into it at first with all the travel and family and general madness. The next day I curled up with this book to be drawn into such a good story. I loved Annie! I found her to be such a multi-faceted character and thought she was very real. I found Duncan to be annoying and whiny but reminiscent of some of the crowd I used to hang out with in college. I will admit that I used to be a little bit pretentious in my music and film taste and scoff at others with “lesser” tastes so I could relate in some ways.  Tucker was an interesting character for me and his relationship with his son was adorable. There was so much beneath the surface with him and at some points you wanted to hate him for his actions and failures but then you’d find other things about him that were so redeemable. I loved learning the truths about his life that Duncan and all his “Crowologists” got wrong. The little “love triangle” was pretty entertaining.

I was a little disappointed with the ending I will admit. I had to read it over a few times to try and figure out what happened because it was pretty vague and left open to interpretation. I think the thing that bugged me the most about it was that it seemed rushed towards the end so I just wasn’t happy all around with the ending. Perhaps if it would have been built up differently I wouldn’t have been so irked by an ambiguous ending.

My final thought: Read this if you are looking for a really wonderful novel that deals with the rumpled nature of real life that is emotional and yet quite funny in all the right ways. This book peers into life and the loneliness that can seep into our lives. I think it is also about second chances–giving your life a second chance despite how much you’ve screwed up or no matter how much time you’ve wasted on a relationship, a job, etc. etc. I think if you are a passionate music fan, like myself, you will love this for the passion that drives these characters and the fact that this really is a book about music and the people who make it and those who consume it. There is a quote that I just can’t find at the moment that talks about this idea perfectly but it really made me think about how I interpret what I read and listen to versus the real meaning behind the art and how others interpret it.

Rating: 4 stars

Filed Under: Adult Fiction, book review, Contemporary, Contemporary Adult Fiction, Fiction Tagged With: , , , ,

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

November 17, 2010 by · 22 Comments

Title/Author: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher/Year/Pages: Vintage 2006; 228 pages.
How I got this: Bought it.
Why I read it: The College Students group (on Goodreads) that I created/moderate picked it as the August group read and I’m just now getting to it..
Rating: See my final thought below. I give it four stars.

Set in dystopian England, Never Let Me Go tells the story of Kathy, Ruth and Tommy and their experiences from childhood and adolescence at their secluded boarding school told from the perspective of a grown-up Kathy reflecting on this time in her life. It deals intimately with your typical coming of age experiences but, like all dystopian novels, there are some very strange and mysterious aspects to their school and their lives–unexplained rules and happenings and being told of how “special” they all are.


I have to say that from pretty early on I was just completely fascinated by this society and wanted to know everything there was to know! But the way Ishiguro writes this novel was very incongruous to my need-to-know-everything-now attitude. I’ve always read reviews that describe a story as “controlled” and I’ve never really understood what that meant but this novel is the epitome of a controlled story. You get bits and pieces of this dark cloud of a mystery that is just hanging over the whole story. He’ll bait you with some enticing little tidbit that lets you in on their world and then just keep reeling you along, slowly handing out clues and small fragments of the bigger picture. It was completely effective and I was on the edge of my seat screaming, “Come on Ishiguro– I WANT THE WHOLE ENCHILADA!“..but in a good way! But in the end, this method of giving you bits and pieces was effective because I felt like, at the end, we find ourselves completely up to speed with the main characters. We are finally at a place where we understand everything that they do about their lives and I felt the emotion that they did as soon as things were revealed to them about who they were. I felt their horror and sorrow.


I was really irked because I’m normally that annoying person that figures out the twist in a movie before everyone else and I couldn’t figure this out right away! My boyfriend always groans while watching CSI with me because I always figure out the killer early on. I digress. But anyways, it took me a while to kind of figure out the mystery behind everything and why these students were so “special.”


It took me a little bit to get used to the way it was written from Kathy’s memories. It was quite jarring in some ways and she’d literally be talking about something and then skip off into another memory and then realize that she needed to finish her point from before and go back to it. It wasn’t at all in a linear manner. It takes some getting used to. Not going to lie. But then I was sitting there thinking about it, about halfway through the book, and realized that that is exactly how memories are. I often find myself going from one thing and then some other memory is triggered. After that I thought about it a bit differently. The writing itself was really accessible and craftily done but don’t let that fool you..this is an incredibly DEEP and moving novel.


I really found myself moved by this story and can’t wait to see the movie but know that I’m going to bawl like a baby considering I did after watching the previews for it upon finishing the book. The ending was so heartbreaking and moving. Without saying too much, this book would be an excellent platform to talk about some ethical issues and it raises many questions that I’ve found myself asking before. This book, to me, seemed much more realistic than other dystopian novels. I caught glimpses of our society in the proverbial mirror while reading this novel. And that is scary!

My final thought: Should you read this book? That depends. If you are intrigued because it is a dystopian sort of novel–don’t expect a Hunger Games or anything fast-paced like that. This story just isn’t that. It doesn’t have a loud rebellion but focuses on quieter “rebellions” and characters who might not try to fix their destiny or the world. If you are looking for a non-brainbusting piece of literary fiction that has elements of science fiction and dystopian society full of suspense and the inner workings of human beings, then I’d say go for it!

I’m reallllly getting into these dystopian novels! Any suggestions??

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Filed Under: Adult dystopian, book review, Dystopia, Fiction Tagged With: , , , , ,