3.5 stars
Brett fell in love with Charlie after a one night stand in college. Brett's best friend, Eli, is Charlie's brother and warns Brett against any sort of attachment to his flighty brother. As Charlie disappears from Brett's life, Eli begins to exhibit symptoms of a serious mental illness and is also taken away to numerous stays in mental hospitals. Years later, Brett has been reunited with Charlie and is married to him and living in his family's Cape Cod beach house when Charlie is brutally murdered. This happens in the very beginning of the book and the rest tells the story of how they all got to that point. This is not so much a mystery as a character study of different relationships. Charlie is the charismatic slacker whose only redeemable relationship seems to be with his brother. I liked this book...a lot, but it was truly hard to like the character of Brett. I think unlikable characters have to be done in such a manner to at least make reading about them interesting but Brett is a very weak main character and while I did at times understand her behavior, she was very hard to relate to. Besides my problems with the main character, I think this is a beautifully written book and an interesting look into the stress of dealing with a Schizophrenic family member. I received this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Soundless by Rachelle Mead
Pub. Date - November 10, 2015
3 stars
Fei lives in an isolated village at the top of a mountain where there are really only three occupations and everyone has lost their hearing. When villagers also start to lose their sight and the line operators at the bottom of the mountain start sending less food, Fei and her childhood sweetheart, Li Wei, decide to journey to the bottom of the mountain to find out why. Fei also is starting to regain her hearing and has to adjust to life with sound while all of this is going on. I liked the idea of this book and the characters but it was way too short to be a serious fantasy novel. There was almost no world building beside what was known about the village itself and the fantasy elements were quickly added with no real explanation. Also, for such a short novel it was surprisingly dull at times. Overall, I mostly enjoyed reading this but ended up wanting more. I received this from Penguin's First to Read program in exchange for an honest review.
An Unexpected Wish by Eileen Richards
Pub. Date - October 27, 2015
2.5 stars
Anne Townsend lives alone with her two sisters and has worked hard for the better part of her life to take care of them. All of her hopes rest on her beautiful younger sister marrying into a wealthy family. To help her cause she climbs to the top of some old stairs to cast a wish with the fairies. Almost immediately she meets Nathaniel who has no wish to marry and definitely no wish to marry a woman with so much baggage. I liked both of these main characters and they had great chemistry together but there were just too many inconceivable elements in this book. Anne has an extraordinary amount of low self esteem, especially for someone who is being constantly courted by a gorgeous man. She also has a comical belief in fairies that gets exceedingly old as the story progresses. Overall, I did enjoy some aspects of this book and ended up finishing it, but wished that some parts had been written differently. I received this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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