Unflappable by Suzie Gilbert

"I have just demonstrated one of the many advantages of being a big woman," she said, loosening her grip. "Would you like me to let you up?"
"No thanks. I like it down here."
"You're lying in a pool of wine." 
"It's called marinating." 

~p. 113

When author Suzie Gilbert sent out a promo email about her first novel, I remembered her name and her nonfiction book about bird rehabilitation, Flyaway (link leads to my review), even though it's been literally a decade since I read it. I loved Flyaway that much. So, I was very excited to find out the author has written a novel with a character who is a wildlife rehabilitator. I wrote back to tell Suzie how much I still remember loving Flyaway and wish her luck on her new release. She asked if I'd like a copy of the new book, Unflappable, and I enthusiastically replied that I would. So, full disclosure, the author sent me my copy of Unflappable. I almost never accept books directly from authors because I'm honest about books, no matter where they come from, and in my nearly 14 years of blogging, a few feelings have been hurt (not my intent, of course). But, I'll make an occasional exception.

In Unflappable, Luna is a bird rehabilitator who decides to leave her billionaire husband, who is really not a very nice man nor a person whose businesses have been good for the environment. In order to try to lure her back, he has a bald eagle named Mars stolen. Mars was snatched from a nest and raised by an individual (illegally, I presume) so he can't be released into the wild. Luna is fond of the eagle and even wears a silver bead with one of his feathers around her neck. When she steals back the eagle her husband has had stolen, Luna knows he has the money and connections to track her down. So, she goes on a road trip using her network of wildlife rehab friends as an underground railroad of sorts. She plans to take the eagle where nobody can interfere with him.

A socially awkward guy named Ned has been told he needs to do community service by the IT company he works for and he coincidentally shows up when Luna is in desperate need of help stealing an eagle and escaping. In his classic car, they head out of Florida. But, Ned's car is a little too obvious. He'll need to pass Luna off to someone else and head home so they can't be tracked. In a comedy of errors, Luna and Ned find themselves having to constantly update their plans while a friend who rehabs cougars and keeps armadillos in his house has fun scaring Adam, the billionaire, soon-too-be-ex.

Meanwhile, it's not just Adam that Luna and Ned must evade. A Fish and Wildlife agent, the police, and Adam's henchmen are all trying to track down Luna. Most of these people don't really care about the eagle (although the story serves to delineate people who are driven by strict legal guidelines versus those who only have the needs of the animals in mind) so the concept of the road trip to get the bird safely to Canada and then reunited with its bonded partner is maybe a bit far-fetched but that doesn't matter. The ending is ultimately satisfying and the fun is in the chase, capture, escape, chase rollercoaster ride. There's plenty of action for those who love a plot-driven book.

Highly recommended - What a ridiculously fun read: part road trip, part escape thriller, part romance with a theme about the importance of caring for all life, even the individual animal that's been hit by a car or knocked itself out on a window. I loved the author's sense of humor and I particularly liked the character Warren. You have to read the book to appreciate him; he's a fun character. There was only one thing I disliked about Unflappable, and it was mostly down to an editing problem. Occasionally, there would be a flashback but it was not separated from normal text by italics or some other method to show the change of timeline, although the clue was usually a lack of quotation marks in remembered dialogue. No matter how many times that device was used it always, always threw me and I'd find myself rereading to try to figure out what was going on. It was annoying but not a big deal.

There was also a huge cast and you had to keep getting to know new characters but, again, that was a shift that happened now and then because of the lengthy road trip and, ultimately, I grew to enjoy meeting the various rehabbers as they were introduced. So, while it presented a challenge to the memory (as when a character at the beginning is suddenly brought back and you struggle to sort through all those characters to remember him or her) it was not a big deal. And, it certainly gives the reader an interesting peek into the variety of wildlife rehabilitating specialties.


Fiona Friday will be moved to Saturday because I thought it was important to review Unflappable, ASAP. I meant to get to it in May. My apologies to the author for the delay and many thanks for the review copy!

©2020 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.

Summary of The Mueller Report, Abridged and Introduced by Thomas E. Patterson

Corruptly. The word "corruptly" provides the intent element for obstruction of justice and means acting "knowingly and dishonestly" or "with an improper motive." The requisite showing is made when a person acted with an intent to obtain an "improper advantage for [him]self or someone else, inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others."

~p. 13

[...] the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns. 

~p. 58

During the summer of 2016, Cohen recalled that candidate Trump publicly claimed that he had nothing to do with Russia and then shortly afterwards privately checked with Cohen about the status of the Trump Tower Moscow project, which Cohen found "interesting." [...] Cohen said that at no time during the campaign did Trump tell him not to pursue the project or that the project should be abandoned. 

~p. 104

Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General's recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance. For example, the President's direction to McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed was followed almost immediately by his direction to Lewandowski to tell the Attorney General to limit the scope of the Russia investigation to prospective election-interference only — a temporal connection that suggests that both acts were taken with a related purpose with respect to the investigation. 

~pp. 120-121

Please note that this is an abridgment of Volume II of The Mueller Report, the part about obstruction of justice. There are 10 or 11 specific charges of potential obstruction noted. The first volume describes Russian interference, which is eye-popping, so I still recommend reading the full report if you can find the time and strength. If you can't, Summary of the Mueller Report is great for getting a good look at what the president did to:

A. Try to stop the Special Counsel's investigation;

B. Try to limit the investigation to future election interference; 

C. Try to get various people to do jobs they shouldn't, deliver uncomfortable messages, lie, fire people, and even break the law;

D. Try to not-so-subtly convince people not to "flip" and work with the government when they were caught lying, 

and more. 

The Summary of the Mueller Report surprised me. Having read the full report (both volumes), I'd already been through the material. What this book does for you is make the report more readable. Instead of having to read around the redactions and look back and forth between the text and the footnotes to get a full picture of what's in the report, this abridgment consolidates the information and makes it flow. During the reading of the complete version of The Mueller Report, I clearly became weary of the back and forth and having to figure out what was being said when there were redactions, often in mid-sentence, and missed a few things. So, there were times during the reading of Summary of The Mueller Report that I found myself thinking, "Huh, I don't remember reading this." It was probably because the full report occasionally made me weary and I'd lose my focus. 

Recommended - The benefit of this abridgment of Volume II of The Mueller Report is flow. There are no footnotes at all and very few redactions. I appreciated Summary of The Mueller Report for the continuity and ease. Because it's an abridgment rather than a summary, there's still some legalese that can be a little difficult to understand if you haven't experienced legal writing, but if you're unwilling or unable to read the full report, it's worth that slight/occasional challenge to understand how the Special Counsel's team evaluated any known obstructive acts by the president, looked for a "nexus" or connection to determine whether his action had potential to do actual damage and then established whether or not there was intent. It also gives Americans a clear understanding of their current president's erratic temperament and inability or unwillingness to abide by laws and norms, which is distressing but important for citizens to understand. 

I received a copy of Summary of The Mueller Report from the author in exchange for my unbiased review. Note: This is an exception, rather than the rule. I generally do not accept any books for review directly from authors. However, I made an exception because I think The Mueller Report is that important. Many thanks to the author!

©2019 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.

Mini reviews - The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by J. Dicker, Parson's Green by F. Bagley, Goodnight June by S. Jio

None of the following books were sent to me by publishers and none left a lasting impression, so I'm going to just give them quickie reviews.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker is a chunkster at 656 pages and I do believe it could have easily been edited down to a much more reasonable length but I still found it engrossing enough to finish within just a couple days. 

Harry Quebert is a famous novelist whose protégé, Marcus, has himself become a bestselling novelist. The deadline for Marcus's second book is looming and Marcus hasn't written a word, so he goes to visit Harry, hoping for inspiration. While visiting, Marcus becomes involved in a murder investigation. Decades in the past young Nola, the love of Harry's life, disappeared and now her body has been found with evidence that incriminates Harry. Marcus believes Harry is innocent and sets out to solve the mystery.

I found the fact that both writers became fabulously wealthy very difficult to buy into and grew weary of Harry and Nola gushing about their love for each other. But I was captivated enough to ignore the book's flaws, whip through the reading and give it a 4-star rating, if for no other reason than the fact that I dislike mysteries, in general, so I figure if a mystery can hold my attention for over 600 pages, it ought to get an above-average rating. For the most part, the French author's understanding of Americans is pretty impressive, as well. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is an award winner in the author's home country. Recommended, but you'll probably either love it or hate it.

Add caption

Parsons Green by Fiona Bagley was this month's selection for my F2F book group. Cricket McLean and her mother, Claudia, have always been able to see ghosts. Claudia is a travel writer and when she decides to spend a summer helping out in a friend's bookstore in Savannah, Georgia, she is not surprised to find that her rental house is haunted. But, at least the ghosts are friendly.

Cricket doesn't want to spend all her time in the bookstore, so she goes out in search of a job and finds a position working as a tour guide in a local mansion called Chartwell House. There, a baby was murdered, the baby's mother found guilty and hanged for her crime. But, was she truly guilty? As Cricket explores the house and its history, she is able to see scenes that lead her to believe that there are dark forces at work and she must solve the mystery to put at least one ghost to rest.

I thought Parsons Green was a pretty good story, apart from the fact that a few too many people believed in or saw ghosts. My biggest problem with it was the common self-published-book problem: Parsons Green is desperately in need of a professional editing job. Had the book been much longer, I probably wouldn't have made it all the way through the reading, but it's short and the story is compelling. Recommended with a warning that the sheer quantity of errors is exhausting.

Goodnight June is the first book I've read by Sarah Jio, although I've been hearing gushy praise of her books for several years.

June is a cut-throat New York banker whose job is to take over small businesses that are struggling and sell off their assets. June moved to New York from Seattle and has not returned home for several years. She has few friends, no romantic prospects, and she works long hours. June is so stressed that as Goodnight June opens, she's in the hospital to get her blood pressure under control.  She's only in her 30's.

When June finds out her Aunt Ruby has died and left June her beloved bookstore, June travels to Seattle intending to simply sell the store and rush back home. But, she meets a handsome restaurateur, finds a set of letters connecting the bookstore and her aunt to Margaret Wise Brown's book, Goodnight Moon, and decides she must stay to save the bookstore. The store is failing and June finds herself in the same position as the business owners whose livelihoods she has heartlessly ripped away.

Goodnight June is fluffy, sentimental, beachy reading. It was the right book for the moment -- I was swept away, at first, and I enjoyed the fact that it was a quick read. But, it's more than a little far-fetched and the many strands had a "way too convenient" aspect that pulled me out of the reading. In spite of the fact that I had trouble buying into the storyline, I finished Goodnight June, so I gave it an average rating. Recommended for a fluff break with a warning that the story is extremely far-fetched.

If you've already read Goodnight June, you might be interested to know that Margaret Wise Brown's New York writing cottage, Cobble Court, is under threat and may be torn down to make space for condominiums.

©2014 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.