5. The Scoop
Mar. 21st, 2024 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tommycanyouhearmeI've had the headings and pictures set up since February 29th but haven't gotten around to writing my thoughts, sorry folks!
Alright, folks. Here are my book reviews for the month of February. Just a reminder, I am not an English or Literature major, I don't do literary reviews as a profession, and I am easy to please. I suppose you could say I don't have high standards or expectations. I just like to be entertained, and perhaps to visit other worlds and see another viewpoint. Apologies for any misspelled character's names, this was all via audiobook so I haven't seen names in print. Let's dive in.
Books listened to in February 2024:
1. No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall
Man, this book was chilling. It had me unsettled the entire time. I was fairly certain before reading anything but the description that this was going to be a tale of abusive parents, and that that's why they were killed, and I was fairly certain that of the three Palmer sisters, Emma was the least likely to have done it, and that if she did, it was in self defense. What I didn't expect was to be bouncing between the three sisters as to who I suspected, or thinking possibly two different sisters killed each parent due to the separate accounts of that night from each disjointed perspective, or Daphne and Juliet planned it and left Emma out of it, thinking she wouldn't have it in her to kill their parents along with them. That was the sense I got from it all, and that the other two had perhaps bigger- no, not bigger, different... perhaps more urgent- motives to kill their parents. They all had good reason, and as children, even teens, perhaps, PERHAPS, justification. I don't know if you can ever justify murder of even the cruelest of parents because it's murder, but. What I didn't see coming was the plot twist that Hadley killed the dad and tried to kill the mom. I didn't expect that Daphne killed her mother out of mercy when she found her like that because she was already dying. I was trying to sort out the whole time if Daphne was autistic or even perhaps a high-functioning sociopath, but she felt empathy so I was thinking more that she was autistic. It wouldn't have colored my opinion of her negatively, I simply wondered since Daphne herself, and Emma and Juliet in their flashbacks seemed to keep mentioning how "different" she was and how afraid they were that their parents were going to start noticing now that she was 12, and once she kept getting older. I found Daphne's own flashbacks and present day thoughts very clinical and detached, though seemingly affectionate towards her sisters, and animals. I could imagine in a home with parents like theirs, that Daphne would not fare well if she were neurodivergent in any way. Juliet, with her people-pleasing, seemed the most apt at survival. Emma was too rebellious. It stands to reason that she bore the brunt of both of her parents' ire when it reared its ugly head. Each flashback put me as on edge as the sisters all constantly felt in their household. I was pleased at Emma's reconciliation, finally, with Gabriel. I found that from the start, I didn't particularly like or hate Nathan, Emma's husband. I was shocked to find he'd been cheating, and for as long as he had been (since her car accident!!!). That he was planning to get custody of the baby and leave for the other woman. Ugh! I felt bad for him that he was murdered by Hadley when he started asking questions, but geez. The twists of this book just seemed to get uglier and uglier and I kept thinking my God, Emma just can't catch a break! Is she going to lose the baby? She's been increasingly unwell in her pregnancy. The ultimate reconciliation between the sisters, the closure and answers they got about that night by finally talking to each other to fill in the blanks of the parts they each missed before arriving on the scene of their dead parents, and even answers about the years following when they went separate ways... the fact that none of them actually did it (Daphne just mercifully sped up what was already happening, and I consider that euthanasia which is a bit of a gray area), the baby survived.... it was all just so satisfying. All of that trauma for the three of them finally, finally, could begin to heal, if not fully, then much more with each other back together again. They were forever changed from the kids they'd been, but they could finally embrace who they were.
2. Don't Back Down by Sharon Sala
One of two book series that I didn't realize was a series until I was reading it. I read book descriptions before I buy audiobooks! I saw no indication when I bought Heartbeat! That said, I bought Heartbeat first, read a substantial amount before I discovered it was part of a series, started reading Last Rites, then discovered that actually that was the second book, then started reading Don't Back Down. I was equally surprised that unlike the second and third book, which were narrated by Traci Odom, that this book was narrated by a guy. I wasn't sure it was the right book until I heard Cameron Pope's name, and eventually Rusty's, knowing now that the Jubilee series centers around members of the Pope family and their love interests. It was a unique experience reading the books in reverse order and then finishing the remaining chapters of each in order. I've discovered that really, each book operates well enough as a standalone. They make brief relevant nods to the previous books to establish familial connections and the like, but with said nods you'd be fine enough to follow the current book if you jumped into the second, or even the third like I initially did. Still, I'd urge you to read all three, in order, because they are all wonderful. This guy was mostly an excellent narrator, and did a great job with the heavy emotions, but at times he sounded ridiculous as the women when they got especially insulted or some such thing. Like when Liz did. At times, he sounded ridiculous being Liz or Aunt Patricia, and needed to kind of dial it back so as to not sound ingenuine.
That said, Sharon Sala weaves a very rich family history beginning with this book, as well as establishes compelling personal stories of the Pope family member she hones in on in each book, as well as their love interests, and even builds some interesting personal development of secondary characters. Annie Cauley and Ella Cauley (or was she a Pope? I forget) I especially liked, on the fringe of the narrations each story. She then throws in a captivating crime story that the family becomes central in solving and bringing justice to the criminals involved (though it usually wouldn't work like that in real life), all the while making so realistic her descriptions of the small town life of Jubilee, Kentucky, and Pope Mountain where the eponymous family's numerous members live. I found at times, in all three, the love stories of Cameron and Rusty, later Aaron and Dani and Amelie and Sean, to be almost sickly sweet and unrealistically perfect, challenged only by the dangerous circumstances that initially unfold at their meeting, and Sala's description of their lovemaking to just be too... well, also too sweet (although don't I wish it could always be that way!). And she used the same phrases over and over again, probably because she was trying to be tasteful and PG/PG-13 about it (I guess there's really nothing PG about sex), and probably because there are only so many ways you CAN talk about it without being tactless. It's too much the way I guess every girl hopes for love to be, and often not how it is, at least not all of the time. Part of it made me uncomfortable (okay, at times I had my 15-year-old daughter in the car with me which was part of it, and these scenes always came without warning, but at times it was also a bit cringe), and part of it I guess made me wistful. All of their weddings were just perfect too, and the FAMILY was too perfect. With that many living members all tightly wound in each other's lives in close geographical proximity, there is BOUND to be some conflict or in-fighting, or at least one black sheep, right? But no. The Popes, Cauleys and Glasses are just so... PERFECT. I don't hate it exactly, it was just the kind of feel-good relationships I guess I needed, but it's just so unrealistic. Plus the fact that none of the family ever outed or took advantage of the "PCG (Pope, Cauley, Glass) Group" that they formulated generations ago. I love that this family corporation exists to keep outsiders from buying up property, but it's just... unrealistic.
The story was great though. I enjoyed Cameron and Rusty's love at first sight, separated when he goes to war, she works for the FBI and they reunite by chance and (happily) work together because of his high security clearance, story. I love their takedown of the human trafficking ring. Not only are Rusty and Cameron on the case, but also Cameron's huge white German Shepherd, Ghost, with a keen sense of smell, who helped his unit sniff out IUDs on his second tour of duty. I love Rusty's relationship with her living relatives, Uncle Ray, Aunt Pat and Cousin Liz. I love Liz's personal growth and maturity, all the while being a warm person though, and that she gets this attention as a secondary character, and same, to a degree, for Aunt Pat and Uncle Ray. Sala has a gift to tell stories not even just from two points of view, but so many you lose count. Cameron Pope. Rusty Caldwell. Liz Caldwell. Ray Caldwell. Rachel Glass. Lewis Glass. The various members of the trafficking ring. By the time I'd already encountered her in Heartbeat, I'd never have guessed how Liz's character used to be. Sala really honestly set up a great world-building opportunity with this series, and you can see how she capitalizes and gains on that as the series progresses and the characters and their histories (and family) grow. This book, and its successors, kind of just gives you the satisfaction of "all is right with the world" by the end, no ambiguity. People find love connections and familial connections. Bad guys get justice. It's nice.
3. Last Rites by Sharon Sala
Now we meet Shirley Wallace, whose husband abused her and her 4 boys, Aaron, Sean, Wiley and BJ, and he goes to prison for it, finally. Shirley and the boys are shunned unfairly by their community by association. Aaron can't even get a job on the police force because of his criminal father. After Shirley's mother, Helen Pope, dies, Shirley changes her and her boys' last name back to Pope, and they move to Jubilee, Kentucky. They move into the family home on Pope Mountain that her mother left to her, and to start over, now surrounded by the love and support of their huge family. Aaron joins the police force in Jubilee, and because of my jumping around I'm not sure if Wiley has yet or not or is starting in a security job somewhere, Sean starts up his IT business, and BJ works for a distant.... cousin, Aunt (?) Annie, in Granny Annie's bakery, until he eventually finds his calling as a chef in NYC. Annie is someone else's grandma, she's of the Cauley family which, along with the Glass family, intermarried to the Pope family generations back (hence the mysterious PCG Group). Ya'll, their family tree is a whole separate thing I need to map out for myself. I was starting to formulate it and get the hang of it eventually, but having not been actively reading the story for a hot minute, I'm already starting to forget. Cameron Pope, from the first book, is a cousin of the 4 boys, or maybe a second cousin?
This story had a lot of beautiful themes to it, especially Shirley and Dani's tenacity and resilience after being through situations of DV (and the boys, too), and that of the family search lead by Cameron and finding the remains of Meg, the Chickasaw woman of their family from generations back who was murdered by Confederate soldiers and left to die in a cellar. The idea of laying family to rest next to her husband, finally at peace, was beautiful. It reached a very satisfying conclusion at the end, which tides you over until the next book.
4. Heart Beat by Sharon Sala
This was the book that started it all for me, accidentally. It was yet another lovely story of surviving your past and being stronger for it. I loved that Amelie and Sean were childhood friends, separated by Amelie being put back in the system after an incident of bullying where Sean stood up for her. I loved the whole plotline of Amelie and her father Wolfgang looking for living relatives via Ancestry.com and finding each other. I love that by her eventual engagement and marriage to Sean, Amelie found not just him, and her father, but an entire loving family after a life of being mostly alone. Although, let's face it, if you encounter Shirley Pope, you are instantly loved and cared for because she is just the absolute best. Total mama bear in the most loving sense. I love that she had the gift of the sight after her car accident, like Ella Cauley (or Pope? again, I forget). I loved that the crime committed by Wolf's current wife in an attempt to kill him and gather his inheritance also set in motion the chain of events that lead father to daughter, and his ability to see that he was Fiona's target all along. I love that Wolfgang successfully went after his ex-in-laws for hiding Amelie from him after her mother died shortly after she was born. Sharon Sala does these mystery crime stories so incredibly well, and the connections that are formed between characters and romances that bloom are just so heartwarming. The bad guys always get their just desserts, which is also much appreciated. Lack of kindness to the kindest of souls does not go unpunished in her books. I am so excited for July to read the next book, and see what's in store for Wiley and Linette, the nurse. I wasn't blind to Linette and Wiley's romance in the hospital scene with Sean when she was his nurse after the attempt on Amelie's life (that he bravely saved), hah. 3 ladies on speed dial my FOOT! Wiley's all about the nurse. :)
5. The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
This was another story I stupidly read out of order, even after reading the description of the second book and not seeing any indication that it was a sequel. As it turns out, the second one also fills the blanks in well enough to know what happened in the first book. It was interesting, seeing a couple of scenes coming, like the one where Lucy kills Michael, having seen that scene first through Rachel's eyes in the second book when she shows up at the vacation home. I guess in a way, the second book spoils parts of the first book, but in a way doesn't that also happen when you read a prequel? You already basically know how it ends, but you read it for the details?
In any case, this book was heartbreaking but so interesting, reading about Henry, Lucy and Libby and their intertwined history, and the trajectory their lives took moving forward. What a curious life, growing up in a cult as it takes form, and how seamlessly Birdie and David infiltrated the Lamb family's home life. How curious that in the end Henry and Lucy's parents basically just allowed it. I was so happy that Libby and Lucy could finally reunite 25 years after the tragic story of Libby's conception in the first place. I'm glad that eventually Lucy and her other two kids, and her dog, and Henry, and Libby could find a happier beginning to the next chapter of their lives. Libby seems to have had the best lot in life through her adoptions and normal upbringing, but still. To learn at 25, upon inheriting a large property riddled with tragedy that tells the tale of your birth, is something large to reckon with all at once.
Lisa Jewell's writing kept me in suspense to the end.
6. The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell
I read this book first, oops. It was a little confusing keeping track of the dates at first, the way the book jumped around a bit, and I suppose it would have made a bit more sense if I hadn't read this book first, but I was able to figure it out and make sense of it. It's especially interesting, looking back on both books, that Rachel's perspective, when she married Michael, is thrown into the mix, and Lucy's ties to him as his ex wife. I love that they eventually meet and bond as friends at the end. It's also interesting learning about all of the crimes that took place in Henry and Lucy's home with the cult through the eyes of the detective, and Henry's search for Phin. Because Henry is so peculiar at times, I couldn't help but wonder if he had killed Birdie (I didn't have enough context and didn't know it was firmly established in the first book) and David, and I was afraid he might be coming after Finn to do the same because of his obsession with him and his past crush, and because he essentially assumed Phin's identity after fleeing home. I had no idea he was just trying to reunite Phin with Libby, his daughter. I suppose, had I read the first book, and his heartwarming letter to his niece, I would have had that context. It was an incredibly great read, though. So tragic about Justin, Birdie's ex-boyfriend and his role (or lack thereof with lack of action) in the cult's story. I wish he'd found peace after all of that, rather than taking his own life, and maybe found and reunited with his children. They keep saying in both books that many children besides Lucy, Henry, Phin, Clemency and Libby came in and out of the house, and I'd like to maybe hear about their stories, too. I'm adding Lisa Jewell as another author I want to read more from. I'm hoping she might write more books specifically about Lucy, Henry, Phin, Clemency, Libby, Marco and Stella, but there may not be much left to say about them all. I just hope there will be, though!
Working on two others, The Cheating Culture by David Callahan, and Rubicon by Tom Holland (no, not Spiderman lol), but I haven't made it as far as I would have liked. I'm close to done with one, and just started the other. Both nonfiction. Perhaps I shall report back on those for March. :)
Alright, folks. Here are my book reviews for the month of February. Just a reminder, I am not an English or Literature major, I don't do literary reviews as a profession, and I am easy to please. I suppose you could say I don't have high standards or expectations. I just like to be entertained, and perhaps to visit other worlds and see another viewpoint. Apologies for any misspelled character's names, this was all via audiobook so I haven't seen names in print. Let's dive in.
Books listened to in February 2024:
1. No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall
Man, this book was chilling. It had me unsettled the entire time. I was fairly certain before reading anything but the description that this was going to be a tale of abusive parents, and that that's why they were killed, and I was fairly certain that of the three Palmer sisters, Emma was the least likely to have done it, and that if she did, it was in self defense. What I didn't expect was to be bouncing between the three sisters as to who I suspected, or thinking possibly two different sisters killed each parent due to the separate accounts of that night from each disjointed perspective, or Daphne and Juliet planned it and left Emma out of it, thinking she wouldn't have it in her to kill their parents along with them. That was the sense I got from it all, and that the other two had perhaps bigger- no, not bigger, different... perhaps more urgent- motives to kill their parents. They all had good reason, and as children, even teens, perhaps, PERHAPS, justification. I don't know if you can ever justify murder of even the cruelest of parents because it's murder, but. What I didn't see coming was the plot twist that Hadley killed the dad and tried to kill the mom. I didn't expect that Daphne killed her mother out of mercy when she found her like that because she was already dying. I was trying to sort out the whole time if Daphne was autistic or even perhaps a high-functioning sociopath, but she felt empathy so I was thinking more that she was autistic. It wouldn't have colored my opinion of her negatively, I simply wondered since Daphne herself, and Emma and Juliet in their flashbacks seemed to keep mentioning how "different" she was and how afraid they were that their parents were going to start noticing now that she was 12, and once she kept getting older. I found Daphne's own flashbacks and present day thoughts very clinical and detached, though seemingly affectionate towards her sisters, and animals. I could imagine in a home with parents like theirs, that Daphne would not fare well if she were neurodivergent in any way. Juliet, with her people-pleasing, seemed the most apt at survival. Emma was too rebellious. It stands to reason that she bore the brunt of both of her parents' ire when it reared its ugly head. Each flashback put me as on edge as the sisters all constantly felt in their household. I was pleased at Emma's reconciliation, finally, with Gabriel. I found that from the start, I didn't particularly like or hate Nathan, Emma's husband. I was shocked to find he'd been cheating, and for as long as he had been (since her car accident!!!). That he was planning to get custody of the baby and leave for the other woman. Ugh! I felt bad for him that he was murdered by Hadley when he started asking questions, but geez. The twists of this book just seemed to get uglier and uglier and I kept thinking my God, Emma just can't catch a break! Is she going to lose the baby? She's been increasingly unwell in her pregnancy. The ultimate reconciliation between the sisters, the closure and answers they got about that night by finally talking to each other to fill in the blanks of the parts they each missed before arriving on the scene of their dead parents, and even answers about the years following when they went separate ways... the fact that none of them actually did it (Daphne just mercifully sped up what was already happening, and I consider that euthanasia which is a bit of a gray area), the baby survived.... it was all just so satisfying. All of that trauma for the three of them finally, finally, could begin to heal, if not fully, then much more with each other back together again. They were forever changed from the kids they'd been, but they could finally embrace who they were.
2. Don't Back Down by Sharon Sala
One of two book series that I didn't realize was a series until I was reading it. I read book descriptions before I buy audiobooks! I saw no indication when I bought Heartbeat! That said, I bought Heartbeat first, read a substantial amount before I discovered it was part of a series, started reading Last Rites, then discovered that actually that was the second book, then started reading Don't Back Down. I was equally surprised that unlike the second and third book, which were narrated by Traci Odom, that this book was narrated by a guy. I wasn't sure it was the right book until I heard Cameron Pope's name, and eventually Rusty's, knowing now that the Jubilee series centers around members of the Pope family and their love interests. It was a unique experience reading the books in reverse order and then finishing the remaining chapters of each in order. I've discovered that really, each book operates well enough as a standalone. They make brief relevant nods to the previous books to establish familial connections and the like, but with said nods you'd be fine enough to follow the current book if you jumped into the second, or even the third like I initially did. Still, I'd urge you to read all three, in order, because they are all wonderful. This guy was mostly an excellent narrator, and did a great job with the heavy emotions, but at times he sounded ridiculous as the women when they got especially insulted or some such thing. Like when Liz did. At times, he sounded ridiculous being Liz or Aunt Patricia, and needed to kind of dial it back so as to not sound ingenuine.
That said, Sharon Sala weaves a very rich family history beginning with this book, as well as establishes compelling personal stories of the Pope family member she hones in on in each book, as well as their love interests, and even builds some interesting personal development of secondary characters. Annie Cauley and Ella Cauley (or was she a Pope? I forget) I especially liked, on the fringe of the narrations each story. She then throws in a captivating crime story that the family becomes central in solving and bringing justice to the criminals involved (though it usually wouldn't work like that in real life), all the while making so realistic her descriptions of the small town life of Jubilee, Kentucky, and Pope Mountain where the eponymous family's numerous members live. I found at times, in all three, the love stories of Cameron and Rusty, later Aaron and Dani and Amelie and Sean, to be almost sickly sweet and unrealistically perfect, challenged only by the dangerous circumstances that initially unfold at their meeting, and Sala's description of their lovemaking to just be too... well, also too sweet (although don't I wish it could always be that way!). And she used the same phrases over and over again, probably because she was trying to be tasteful and PG/PG-13 about it (I guess there's really nothing PG about sex), and probably because there are only so many ways you CAN talk about it without being tactless. It's too much the way I guess every girl hopes for love to be, and often not how it is, at least not all of the time. Part of it made me uncomfortable (okay, at times I had my 15-year-old daughter in the car with me which was part of it, and these scenes always came without warning, but at times it was also a bit cringe), and part of it I guess made me wistful. All of their weddings were just perfect too, and the FAMILY was too perfect. With that many living members all tightly wound in each other's lives in close geographical proximity, there is BOUND to be some conflict or in-fighting, or at least one black sheep, right? But no. The Popes, Cauleys and Glasses are just so... PERFECT. I don't hate it exactly, it was just the kind of feel-good relationships I guess I needed, but it's just so unrealistic. Plus the fact that none of the family ever outed or took advantage of the "PCG (Pope, Cauley, Glass) Group" that they formulated generations ago. I love that this family corporation exists to keep outsiders from buying up property, but it's just... unrealistic.
The story was great though. I enjoyed Cameron and Rusty's love at first sight, separated when he goes to war, she works for the FBI and they reunite by chance and (happily) work together because of his high security clearance, story. I love their takedown of the human trafficking ring. Not only are Rusty and Cameron on the case, but also Cameron's huge white German Shepherd, Ghost, with a keen sense of smell, who helped his unit sniff out IUDs on his second tour of duty. I love Rusty's relationship with her living relatives, Uncle Ray, Aunt Pat and Cousin Liz. I love Liz's personal growth and maturity, all the while being a warm person though, and that she gets this attention as a secondary character, and same, to a degree, for Aunt Pat and Uncle Ray. Sala has a gift to tell stories not even just from two points of view, but so many you lose count. Cameron Pope. Rusty Caldwell. Liz Caldwell. Ray Caldwell. Rachel Glass. Lewis Glass. The various members of the trafficking ring. By the time I'd already encountered her in Heartbeat, I'd never have guessed how Liz's character used to be. Sala really honestly set up a great world-building opportunity with this series, and you can see how she capitalizes and gains on that as the series progresses and the characters and their histories (and family) grow. This book, and its successors, kind of just gives you the satisfaction of "all is right with the world" by the end, no ambiguity. People find love connections and familial connections. Bad guys get justice. It's nice.
3. Last Rites by Sharon Sala
Now we meet Shirley Wallace, whose husband abused her and her 4 boys, Aaron, Sean, Wiley and BJ, and he goes to prison for it, finally. Shirley and the boys are shunned unfairly by their community by association. Aaron can't even get a job on the police force because of his criminal father. After Shirley's mother, Helen Pope, dies, Shirley changes her and her boys' last name back to Pope, and they move to Jubilee, Kentucky. They move into the family home on Pope Mountain that her mother left to her, and to start over, now surrounded by the love and support of their huge family. Aaron joins the police force in Jubilee, and because of my jumping around I'm not sure if Wiley has yet or not or is starting in a security job somewhere, Sean starts up his IT business, and BJ works for a distant.... cousin, Aunt (?) Annie, in Granny Annie's bakery, until he eventually finds his calling as a chef in NYC. Annie is someone else's grandma, she's of the Cauley family which, along with the Glass family, intermarried to the Pope family generations back (hence the mysterious PCG Group). Ya'll, their family tree is a whole separate thing I need to map out for myself. I was starting to formulate it and get the hang of it eventually, but having not been actively reading the story for a hot minute, I'm already starting to forget. Cameron Pope, from the first book, is a cousin of the 4 boys, or maybe a second cousin?
This story had a lot of beautiful themes to it, especially Shirley and Dani's tenacity and resilience after being through situations of DV (and the boys, too), and that of the family search lead by Cameron and finding the remains of Meg, the Chickasaw woman of their family from generations back who was murdered by Confederate soldiers and left to die in a cellar. The idea of laying family to rest next to her husband, finally at peace, was beautiful. It reached a very satisfying conclusion at the end, which tides you over until the next book.
4. Heart Beat by Sharon Sala
This was the book that started it all for me, accidentally. It was yet another lovely story of surviving your past and being stronger for it. I loved that Amelie and Sean were childhood friends, separated by Amelie being put back in the system after an incident of bullying where Sean stood up for her. I loved the whole plotline of Amelie and her father Wolfgang looking for living relatives via Ancestry.com and finding each other. I love that by her eventual engagement and marriage to Sean, Amelie found not just him, and her father, but an entire loving family after a life of being mostly alone. Although, let's face it, if you encounter Shirley Pope, you are instantly loved and cared for because she is just the absolute best. Total mama bear in the most loving sense. I love that she had the gift of the sight after her car accident, like Ella Cauley (or Pope? again, I forget). I loved that the crime committed by Wolf's current wife in an attempt to kill him and gather his inheritance also set in motion the chain of events that lead father to daughter, and his ability to see that he was Fiona's target all along. I love that Wolfgang successfully went after his ex-in-laws for hiding Amelie from him after her mother died shortly after she was born. Sharon Sala does these mystery crime stories so incredibly well, and the connections that are formed between characters and romances that bloom are just so heartwarming. The bad guys always get their just desserts, which is also much appreciated. Lack of kindness to the kindest of souls does not go unpunished in her books. I am so excited for July to read the next book, and see what's in store for Wiley and Linette, the nurse. I wasn't blind to Linette and Wiley's romance in the hospital scene with Sean when she was his nurse after the attempt on Amelie's life (that he bravely saved), hah. 3 ladies on speed dial my FOOT! Wiley's all about the nurse. :)
5. The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
This was another story I stupidly read out of order, even after reading the description of the second book and not seeing any indication that it was a sequel. As it turns out, the second one also fills the blanks in well enough to know what happened in the first book. It was interesting, seeing a couple of scenes coming, like the one where Lucy kills Michael, having seen that scene first through Rachel's eyes in the second book when she shows up at the vacation home. I guess in a way, the second book spoils parts of the first book, but in a way doesn't that also happen when you read a prequel? You already basically know how it ends, but you read it for the details?
In any case, this book was heartbreaking but so interesting, reading about Henry, Lucy and Libby and their intertwined history, and the trajectory their lives took moving forward. What a curious life, growing up in a cult as it takes form, and how seamlessly Birdie and David infiltrated the Lamb family's home life. How curious that in the end Henry and Lucy's parents basically just allowed it. I was so happy that Libby and Lucy could finally reunite 25 years after the tragic story of Libby's conception in the first place. I'm glad that eventually Lucy and her other two kids, and her dog, and Henry, and Libby could find a happier beginning to the next chapter of their lives. Libby seems to have had the best lot in life through her adoptions and normal upbringing, but still. To learn at 25, upon inheriting a large property riddled with tragedy that tells the tale of your birth, is something large to reckon with all at once.
Lisa Jewell's writing kept me in suspense to the end.
6. The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell
I read this book first, oops. It was a little confusing keeping track of the dates at first, the way the book jumped around a bit, and I suppose it would have made a bit more sense if I hadn't read this book first, but I was able to figure it out and make sense of it. It's especially interesting, looking back on both books, that Rachel's perspective, when she married Michael, is thrown into the mix, and Lucy's ties to him as his ex wife. I love that they eventually meet and bond as friends at the end. It's also interesting learning about all of the crimes that took place in Henry and Lucy's home with the cult through the eyes of the detective, and Henry's search for Phin. Because Henry is so peculiar at times, I couldn't help but wonder if he had killed Birdie (I didn't have enough context and didn't know it was firmly established in the first book) and David, and I was afraid he might be coming after Finn to do the same because of his obsession with him and his past crush, and because he essentially assumed Phin's identity after fleeing home. I had no idea he was just trying to reunite Phin with Libby, his daughter. I suppose, had I read the first book, and his heartwarming letter to his niece, I would have had that context. It was an incredibly great read, though. So tragic about Justin, Birdie's ex-boyfriend and his role (or lack thereof with lack of action) in the cult's story. I wish he'd found peace after all of that, rather than taking his own life, and maybe found and reunited with his children. They keep saying in both books that many children besides Lucy, Henry, Phin, Clemency and Libby came in and out of the house, and I'd like to maybe hear about their stories, too. I'm adding Lisa Jewell as another author I want to read more from. I'm hoping she might write more books specifically about Lucy, Henry, Phin, Clemency, Libby, Marco and Stella, but there may not be much left to say about them all. I just hope there will be, though!
Working on two others, The Cheating Culture by David Callahan, and Rubicon by Tom Holland (no, not Spiderman lol), but I haven't made it as far as I would have liked. I'm close to done with one, and just started the other. Both nonfiction. Perhaps I shall report back on those for March. :)
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