Weekend Review

Marlena by Julie Buntan

4 stars

This novel turned out not be at all what I expected.  It’s not so much about a death but instead about a small rural town and how pervasive drugs are in areas where poverty and boredom are strife.  The main character, Cat, moves to a small town in upper Michigan midway through high school.  Once a high achiever in a ritzy private academy, she now feels adrift after her parents divorce.  Marlena lives in a converted barn steps away from her house, and her life become inextricably intertwined with the troubled girl.  The friendship between the two girls is captures incredibly well and even while Cat feels as if she knows Marlena so well, she also realizes there are issues Marlena deals with in which maybe she shouldn’t turn a blind eye.  I don’t think the sections following an adult Cat were written quite as well which affected the flow of the novel, but overall this is a haunting and realistic novel.  I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

 

Insights on Bowie

David Bowie: a Life by Dylan Jones

3 stars

In all honesty, I am not the most devoted fan of Davie Bowie, but I love chunky biographies about singers from the sixties and seventies so I decided to try this out.  My first piece of advice would be to only pick this up if you’ve already read a chunky biography about David Bowie because this is not that at all.  This reads like a documentary, where it cuts to different people discussing different aspects of the artist’s life and career.  It is basically snippets from different interviews following a fairly close chronology of Bowie’s life.  It is not comprehensive, though, so for someone who is not already well-versed in his background, this was sometimes difficult to follow…and a little tedious.  I would recommend it to someone who has read Bowie biographies, is a big fan and is looking for additional coverage.  If you’re not that person, then maybe start somewhere else.  I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review. 

Book Reviews

Dear Fahrenheit 451:  A Librarian’s Love Letters and Break-Up Notes to the Books in Her Life

By Annie Spence

4 stars

The title pretty much sums this one up.  Annie Spence is a librarian and she has written an epistolary book to different books in her life.   Book lovers will find much to identify with here and the whole last third of the book include lists of books with synopsis.  I thought there were some really funny letters, although it occasionally veered to silly.  Overall,  any booklover will find something in this short book.  I received this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

3.5 stars

I don’t really read much YA any more, which is why I think I was able to enjoy this book so thoroughly.  It takes familiar tropes, enemy male and female forced to work together, and adds an interesting space/dystopian scenario with artificial intelligence and creates a really fun read.  I liked both of the characters, even though they needed a bit more depth, but what I really enjoyed was the world.  Earth’s population has forced immigration to other habitable (sometime barely) planets reached through worm holes.  While Earth continues to destroy everything it touches, one of the nicer planets, Genesis, decides to secede causing a thirty year war.  I honestly could have read about these politics forever (which makes me think I should explore more adult science fiction).  Overall, this was fun to read and I will probably read the next in the series.  I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Long Journeys

The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life

By Laura Markham

4 stars

Ernesto and Raul Flores fled the gang violence in El Salvador for a better life in Oakland, California with their brother, Wilber, who had been living in the United States illegally for several years.  This is both a very personal story of teenage twins and the bigger story of unaccompanied minors entering illegally from the southern border.  Ernesto and Raul made a dangerous journey to cross the border, and once in the United States their life became mired in other unforeseen difficulties.  The author worked with the twins at the Oakland International school and got to know them, their court case and their family story.  This is a well-told and nuanced account even though the Flores twins don’t always make the best choices (they are teenagers, regardless of circumstances), she writes of them with empathy and open mindedness.  At times, I felt that their story veered a bit too uncomfortably personal and many of the intimate details of the teenagers life probably weren’t absolutely necessary.  Overall, though, I think this is a timely book and one that explores the reasons that someone may flee their country and the difficulties that persist once they do enter the U.S.  I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review. 

Weekend Review

Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker
3 stars



Emma and her sister Cass disappear one night and after three years only Cass comes back with an incredible story of an island, a baby and a strange couple.   One thing that I can say for this book is that I never really guessed the complete story, which kept me compulsively hooked.  I did find the whole story very unbelievable and I felt the author tried to hard on the psychological component which made it unnecessarily convoluted.  As I said, though, I had a hard time putting it down which says something about the way it was written.  I received this book from the Goodreads First Reads program in exchange for an honest review.

Desert Rants

Rants from the Hill:  On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, A Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert

By Michael P. Branch

4 stars

The author and his family live in the far reaches of the Sierra Nevada desert where the wildlife, wildfires and harsh weather reign supreme.  This book is a collection of humorous essays depicting everyday life in this isolated environment.  Some of these are laugh-out loud funny, especially when he is grumpily despairing of the animals (both wild and domestic) that surround him.  All of these essays are very short and the entire book reads very quickly creating an incredibly fun reading experience.  I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.    

Radioactive Review

Radium Girls:  The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

By Kate Moore

4.5 stars

Besides being featured in a documentary and a play years ago, amazingly, this is a mostly untold story in industrial history.  Hundreds of young women were hired in New Jersey and later Ottawa, Illinois to be dial painters.  They used a radium based substance to paint luminescent faces for watches and instrument panels, often using their lips to point their paint brushes.  As the years passed, these women began to experience painful, grotesque and troubling symptoms that left them horrifically sick or dead.  This story follows some of the more outspoken of the young women, along with their doctors and lawyers, as they fought back against the companies that knowingly endangered them.  This book is extraordinary.  You can tell just by reading how emotionally connected that author became with her subjects and it only adds to the overall awe of these incredible young women.  I think this is an especially important book as the new administration is starting to do away with some of the industrial regulations.  There are reasons that these regulations are necessary and it is books like this that keep stories like this alive.  I receive this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Historical Fiction

The Hidden Light of Northern Fires

By Daren Wang

4 stars

During the years of the Civil War the small town of Town Line, New York decided to succeed from the Union making it a very unique place to set this novel.  The Willis family, Nathan, Mary and Leander are pillars of the society and even Mary’s ravings on abolition and women’s rights are tolerated.  At the start of the war, though, Mary decides to make her family farm a stop on the Underground Railroad with haunting ramifications for her family and the town.  I think the characters of this book are realistically written and even the really bad guys are multi-faceted.   I do wish that the history of Town Line was explored even further because I finished the novel without a firm grasp on why it succeeded and what happened to it after the war.  Otherwise, this is a really great novel and I’m a little surprised there hasn’t been more buzz around it.  I received a digital ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.