Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

***Potential spoiler alert: The second paragraph contains potential spoilers. If you're concerned about potential spoilers, please skip to the highlighted recommendation line***

I'm just going to admit how I felt about Pretty Girls up front so you can decide if you want to read on. When I finished the book, I was taking my blogging break but still writing quick reviews at Goodreads. I opted not to give it a rating at all because I disliked it so much. However, if I were to rate the book only on the quality of writing, I'd give it a 4/5. Karin Slaughter is clearly a pro. Her characters were nicely fleshed out and some of the women were very clever, with terrific senses of humor. I found myself wishing the author would use her skill to write something less gruesome.

However, the storyline is about men (not just one) who torture women to death, a woman who finds out her husband was evil, and a family in which loss and not knowing what happened to a missing daughter/sister has torn them asunder. Had it not gone into such graphic detail about the torture and murder of kidnapped women and instead been the story of a family working together to solve a decades-old crime without the gore, I might have been okay with it. I was quite impressed with the author's skill in storytelling and characterization - and I loved the dialogue between them. Most of the family had a dry wit, so when some of the characters were interacting, the dialogue was often quite fun.

Having said all that, I just can't handle this kind of book and a part of me desired to rate it 1/5 just for being so damned revolting. I considered giving up around page 225 or so. The only reasons I continued: I wanted to see it through so I could know that the worst of the evil men would never hurt anyone again (it was predictable that something would happen to him in the end) and read the resolution in which the family finds its answers. And, yes, those two aspects were satisfying.

Not recommended unless you have a really strong stomach - If you can handle horrifically graphic detail, great. If not, avoid this book. The torture was just too much for me. I will not read Karin Slaughter, again.


©2017 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Still on a roll. This is the third review I've written, today. Sorry about that. I have to go with it when I feel like writing, these days.

Divergent by Veronica Roth is a book I just happened across at our salvage store in Jackson. I don't go there often and it's a rare day that I happen to find book stock in the store. In this case, there were a whopping two tables (each about the size of a card table) full of books and only two of the titles were even remotely interesting. My husband tried to talk me out of buying Divergent, a dystopian young adult novel that was just released in May.

I'm so glad he failed to convince me I should put the book back. In Divergent, society has been divided into five factions: Candor, Abnegation, Dauntless, Amity and Erudite. Each faction focuses on a particular type of lifestyle. The Candor faction is all about honesty, for example, and those in the Abnegation faction work to be totally selfless. Because of their selflessness, the leaders of this strange world all come from Abnegation. But, not all the factions are happy about that and war is brewing.

Beatrice has grown up in Abnegation but the time is coming for her to be tested and to choose the faction with which she'll spend the rest of her life. If she chooses to leave Abnegation, there's no going back. She won't see her family, ever again. In Beatrice's case, it's a matter of either staying with the family she loves or being true to her nature.

I don't know if it's a spoiler to say which faction she chooses, but I'm going to put a spoiler warning up, just in case.

****WARNING!!!! The following may be a spoiler. I don't think it will kill you, but skip this part if you're worried.****

Having warned you, I'm not going to tell you which faction Beatrice chooses, but I will tell you that she changes her name to Tris and has to go through some very dramatic changes because she does switch factions. What follows is a trial period that is not only difficult but potentially deadly.

****END SPOILER WARNING!!!! You can come out from under the dresser, now. Or, wherever you were hiding.****

Here's the plain-talk version: There's this teenager who loves her family and has to make a big decision. She chooses the difficult path and is challenged both mentally and physically, meets a totally cool guy named "Four" -- who is just mysterious enough and flawed enough that you can't help but love him in an illogical manner. And, she finds that she has an inner strength that is beyond her wildest imagination.

Divergent is packed with surprising plot twists. It's stunningly violent and massively creative. I really enjoyed the world Veronica Roth created for its uniqueness but it was the fact that I honestly never knew what was going to happen next that kept me riveted. I didn't realize it's the first in a series. Wahoo! I'm going to continue to follow this series.

Highly recommended but be aware that Divergent can be pretty shockingly violent at times. There's a lot of death and fighting and nastiness. But, it's tremendously fun reading. Beatrice is an awesome, butt-kicking heroine and Four is a terrific hero. I can't remember whether or not Divergent contains any bad language.

©2011 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

By Louisa Young

Copyright 2011

HarperCollins - Historical Fiction/WWI
336 pages

London, April 1916

Riley Purefoy was walking across Kensington Gardens in the sun, coming up from Victoria station, going home. He hadn't been in London for two years. It seemed very peculiar to him. There were no shells going off. No one was shooting. No gas-gong. No sergeants shouting. Firm clean ground underfoot. No corpses, no wounds, no huddled smoking men, no sweet stink of blood, no star shells waving beautifully through the sky. It was quiet. There were women. He was clean and dry in the flea-free uniform he had had pressed and steamed at the hotel in Dover. God, how shamelessly he appreciated the advantages of being an officer. It was worth all the little sneers in the mess, the sideways glances from aetiolated toff twats, the dumb attempts at mockery from chinless boys whose pubescent moustaches and public-school slang did not, it turned out, make them natural leaders of men. He fully intended to buy himself some decent-quality puttees, now that he was allowed such freedoms, and to have done for ever with the annoying little thin ones.

--p. 92 of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, Advance Reader Copy (some changes may have been made to the final print version)

I love several sentences in the opening pages of this book, so I'm going to mix them in with my own synopsis. Anything in quotes is writing by someone at HarperCollins. "The lives of two very different couples are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war."

Well stated. Riley Purefoy is from Paddington, a working-class part of London. Nadine Waveney is the daughter of a well-known orchestral conductor, a wealthy family into whose home he's allowed for visits as a friend of young Nadine after an accident in the park. But, as budding artists Riley and Nadine grow up, their class differences become a barrier to their growing affection, just as WWI is breaking out.

After a drunken evening leads to an incident that confuses and angers Riley, he impulsively signs up to serve in the army till the war's end. A year of service seems far too long. Little does he know how long WWI will rage and how it will change his life. The HarperCollins description: "In a fit of fury and boyish pride, Riley enlists in the army and finds himself involved in the transformative nightmare of the twentieth century." What a great way to describe the first World War.

Peter Locke is older, married to a beautiful woman, living a peaceful life. He could easily avoid the service but he doesn't feel right doing so. Because of his class, he is made an officer. Julia worries that she may have done something to drive him away and finds that she's not up to working in a munitions factory or nursing the injured. All she's good at is being pretty and keeping house. When Peter's cousin Rose joins the nursing corps, Julia is left at home with her fears while Peter is facing the kind of horror she can never even begin to understand.

As Riley and Peter fight for their lives, the reader is given a realistically harsh view of life as a soldier during WWI. When Riley suffers a disastrous, deforming injury and Peter finds himself sinking into the bottle to cope with loss, both must find a way to summon inner resources.

"Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight--and those who don't--and a poignant testament to the power of enduring love."

What I loved about My Dear I Wanted to Tell You:

There is so much to love about My Dear I Wanted to Tell You: The depth of description, the language, the characterization, the meaning and depth of the story, the themes of undying love and how terribly unimportant looks are if one is still living and breathing. Riley and Peter are both really likable, wonderful characters in very different ways. Riley is unexpectedly heroic, witty and intelligent. Peter has a huge heart and a love of classical music and writing. He doesn't act posh or superior but he's gratified when he meets someone who can relate to the things he truly loves. Rose and Nadine are both strong and determined, truly amazing women and fantastic examples of how so many women courageously stepped forward and willingly faced the horrors of war. Julia is one of only a few characters you really want to smack. The dialogue is perfect, in my humble opinion.

Here's one of my favorite little passages, Riley's response when Nadine asks him the meaning of the archduke's assassination:

'A Serbian shot the Austrian archduke so the Austrians want to bash the Serbians but the Russians have to protect the Serbians so the Germans have to bash France so they won't help the Russians against the Austrians and once they've bashed France we're next so we have to stop them in Belgium,' said Riley, who read Sir Alfred's paper in the evening.

'Oh,' she said. 'What does that mean?'

'There's going to be a war, apparently.'

'Oh,' she said.

Well, it would be over by the time they were old enough to go to Amsterdam, where he would put his hand on her waist again, and she would laugh and sing but not run away downstairs.

pp. 20-21, ARC of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

What I disliked about My Dear I Wanted to Tell You:

I thought the ending was a little rushed, especially given the detail in the rest of the book. When I closed the book, I recall thinking something to the effect that I was willing to overlook the rushed ending because I was so completely immersed in the story and loved it so much. I felt especially invested in Riley's life.

The bottom line:

Apart from the rushed ending, I absolutely loved My Dear I Wanted to Tell You. It's well-written, realistic, sometimes charming, often gritty. It can be gruesome in the way only a book about WWI can be, with its gas injuries and rot and horrors. The characters can be thoughtful at one time, clueless and harsh at another. In the end, it offers the one thing I find most important in a book about a time of tragedy: a light at the end of the tunnel. I always felt there were plenty of indications that there was hope, even when it appeared that Riley's situation was beyond horrifying. And it is, in the end, an uplifting story of undying love and hope. Highly recommended, but be aware that the ending is not fully wrapped up. Peter's story particularly feels incomplete.

Seems like a good time for a photo of sheep, doesn't it?

©2011 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.