Fiction Books read in November

My Kindle and my Bible are both looking rough!! The Bible is old. I got it when I was a young teenager. The Kindle is new- I guess I need a cover or something for it? As for the book at the bottom of this picture, I read it along with another non- fiction book, but I´m not reviewing either of them here. I hope to do a more thorough review of it sometime.

Here are fiction books that I read in November:

Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

A new mom wakes up to go to work for the first time since having her baby. Her already emotional day turns out super wild as it appears that her loving and kind husband has randomly held three people hostage and killed two of the hostages. This makes no sense yet that is what appears to have happened. The book was well written and kept me guessing.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

I liked this book by Ann Patchett though I´ve liked other books by this author better.

I´m lifting this synopsis from an Amazon review because it sums up the book really well:

¨There is no seeing the ways this story will turn as we travel with the character, Mariana, a research scientist, who is working for a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota. She has been sent by her employer to the Amazon to seek answers about the circumstances surrounding the death of her friend and former office mate and to check on the research which is being secreted away by a brilliant, non- communicative scientist, whose research is being funded by the company. Mariana will be changed in ways difficult to quantify as she immerses deeper and deeper into this remove, tropical research, the secrets it holds, and the culture of the tribe they are studying. The story is riveting and the writing brilliant. One of the best novels I have read in quite a while.¨

(Yet the person who wrote the review only gave it three out of five stars??)

The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers

This was a pretty good book- two young women in a small town in Indiana find themselves in a similar and sad situation- both of their sisters disappeared without a trace years earlier. Little seems to link their disappearances even though they were only two weeks apart. The non missing sisters decide to solve the case of their missing sisters once and for all. There were so many twists and turns to this book- I enjoyed it quite a bit. Also, it takes place in a real town, Mishewaka, which isn´t too far from where I grew up. The author used some actual locations that I´m familiar with so that added an interesting dimension for me. One thing I disliked about it- I´m pretty sure it was this book- is that there´s some foul language. I dislike reading words that I don´t say and don´t like to hear. 

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tinera

I found this book to be really good- well written and the mystery held my interest. Listen to the Lie is the name of a popular true crime podcast by host Ben Owens. He sets his sights on a crime in a small town where a young woman was killed and her best friend was found wandering around the scene of the crime covered and blood and completely unable to recall what happened. The best friend, Lucy, was never charged for the crime but most of the town believes she had something to do with the crime. Lucy cooperates with Ben to try to uncover what really happened. I´m also pretty sure there was a lot of bad language in this book :(.

The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak

The main character is a fifty year old male UPS driver- a bit different than the usual main character- I liked that part about the book. He´s been estranged from his daughter for a few years. So when she calls him out of the blue to tell him that she´s getting married soon and really wants him to attend the wedding, he´s excited to be back in her life and to attend the wedding. His daughter ´s fiance is the son of a billionaire and every cliche about the evils of wealth are manifest in some of the wealthy family members! The book was pretty good- lots of cliches about the middle class and more moderate wage earners like a UPS driver as well- the author really tried (and succeeded!) in showing the dichotomy of the lifestyles of the normal and the super rich (though most people are fairly familiar with that I think!). Of course some in the billionaire family are ¨bad¨ (can you imagine a book where every rich person was heroic? Of course not!) but the twist that was fairly easy to see coming shows that it´s not just the monied who are corrupt and corruptable...

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

This book was character driven and more literary than most books I´ve been reading lately; the author won a Pulitzer prize in literature for an earlier work. That book wasn´t available at the library but this one was. I was hoping that I´d love the book and that I´d found a new author whose work I like. Alas, that was not the case. The eponymous Lila in the book was, for a good part of the book, a young woman completely on her own. Lonely after the only parent like figure in her life stabbed to death the man who may be Lila´s father, Lila, penniless wanders around looking for work and shelter. She meets an elderly minister in a small town in Iowa and they marry. During their courtship and marriage, they ONLY had deep, existential type conversations. Their conversations centered around Christianity and about Lila´s background of hardship/loneliness and they (the conversations) were so awkward/odd.

I read one review where the reviewer wrote about Lila and her husband´s conversations, ¨These discussions are so beautifully written, so powerfully spiritual, that you´ll find yourself reading and rereading whether you are a person of faith or not.¨ Uh, NO! Of course books hit different people differently. The odd conversations- here is an example of one-   

¨I believe you said it a minute ago. You can´t love me as much as you do love me. Something to that effect. Which I thought was interesting. All those years, were you as sad as you were sad? As lonely as you were lonely? I wasn´t. Me neither. I´d have died of it.¨

-definitely did not have me questioning my faith... but they did make me miss my lowbrow books a little bit :).

More or Less Maddy by Lisa Genova

I liked this book quite a bit- the author is a trained neuroscientist- gotta respect that brain and all the training to get there, plus she´s a good writer. I´d read one of her books before and really liked it.

In this book the main character is a college student in NYC who gets diagnosed with bipolar. The book details the highs and the lows that led to the diagnosis. The highs and lows seemed a bit hyperbolic (based on other right life accounts I´ve read of people with bipolar) but it´s a work of fiction and certainly not outside the realm of possibility. I thought it was interesting and seemed realistic, the ¨normal¨ struggle and stressors Maddy had being a college student. With having a daughter in college and one who just graduated, Maddy´s inner dialogue and relationships with those around her seemed pretty realistic based on how I understand some of college students´ issues/angst/stressors.  

I finished two non fiction books that I have more thoughts on than I have time to relay in this post. I´ll plan to either write an entire post devoted to them or add them somewhere to another post. 

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