Grace Winter is a newlywed and probably a widow. Grace thought she was going to live a life of
privilege; that was her plan and instead she is fighting for a place in a
lifeboat. She was on an ocean liner in 1914 when an
explosion blows her world to hell. Survivors in the boat have to make alliances,
they are crucial and might determine who lives and dies. Hardie, the only crew member on the lifeboat is at first
seen as a savior and the one capable of saving
them. He is able to grab fish from the
sea and he puts himself in charge of water rations. The boat is overloaded and
people must be sacrificed for the greater good.
As days go on and people are
more desperate Hardie is seen as evil
and the decision is made to let him go overboard---hard choices must be
made. This is a story that makes one
wonder what one would do to survive. The
story is all told from Grace’s perspective and any action takes place in the boat as people
fight for their right to live.
This is
an engrossing debut.
~Maggie
Request Lifeboat from the Bangor Public Library
Judith Blunt is from a broken home. She decided as a teen to live with her father,
a college professor and she moves from Vermont to Nebraska where she meets
Willy Blunt. He is a carpenter in his
mid twenties. When her father thinks
maybe she is maybe going to settle with Willy rather than pursue an education
he pulls strings and gets her admitted to Stanford. After some violence
connected with Willy’s work she decides maybe getting out of town is wise. She goes off to California abandoning her
great love and does not look back until she is a middle aged woman.
She seems to have a
good life and a happy marriage but when her daughter rejects the bedroom set
that Judith had as a child she decides to rent a storage unit to keep it. At any rate, she goes off the rails and decorates the storage unit like her teenage bedroom
bringing back teen memories of her lost
love Willy. She also has suspicions that
her husband might be having an affair. Judith
hires a detective to find her old beau and buys a throw away cell phone to receive private messages and spends time in
her storage unit/bedroom. Once Willy is
found, Judith decides what she needs is to reconnect with Willy. She makes some arrangements for someone to
cover her work and makes excuses to her
husband and off she goes to Nebraska to see Willy Blunt and find what he is up to--- obviously not a good idea. She reconnects with
Willy and they revert to their teenage selves.
I will say no more as I am getting into spoiler
territory. The story is told in
alternating chapters Judith as a teenager and Judith as an adult. The characters are well developed and while I
enjoyed the read I did not like the people at all.
~Maggie
Request To Be Sung Underwater from the Bangor Public Library
This is a graceful novel about an elegant American wife of a
British diplomat that is posted to Paris.
It all takes place in a single day when Clare Morehouse, a capable hostess, is having the most important dinner in her
husband’s career----her gracious entertaining will determine if her husband
gets the coveted assignment to be the ambassador to Dublin. Her husband thinks this is exactly what Clare wants since she is Irish American. Clare is ambivalent about the
assignment because of a youthful passion
that had her involved with an IRA member. She had unwittingly transported both
guns and money for the IRA cause. Clare
keeps her cool in her preparations for the perfect dinner---dealing with a
cantankerous cook, an ineffective housekeeper, a call from her son’s prep school
headmaster telling her he was being suspended and encountering her IRA guy that
she thought dead. Enough already, but as she is waiting for her
dinner guests she sees a terrorist on the television that is suspected of an
assassination that day. Clare knows that he is not the assassin since she was giving
him directions to a doctor’s office when the assassination took place. Does she
contact the police and risk her husband losing his new assignment?
This sounds melodramatic but it is not. It is
a well written and a delicious read and Clare is a well developed and likeable character.
~Maggie
Request An Unexpected Guest from the Bangor Public Library
If you read Reliable Wife by Robert
Goolrick you know that he writes very sinister fiction---Reliable was a debut
novel and a tough act to follow. However, Heading Out to Wonderful is just as
compelling and equally dark.
Charlie Beale arrives in Brownsburg with two
suitcases---one full of knives ,the other full of cash. We do not get any back story to why or how he
accumulated the cash. But he soon gets a
job and he is the best butcher ever---so
we know why he has the knives. He soon
falls in love with the wife of the richest man in town, Boaty’s wife Sylvan
Glass---Sylvan was not her birth name but we are never told that as it would
be according to her, unbelievable. Many questions are never answered: Where
did Charlie come from? What is his background? What about family and why did he
take a five year old for his meetings with Sylvan? Charlie also has a problem being contained in
a house and prefers sleeping on the ground by his river land.
In spite of unanswered questions and
unreasonable behaviors this is a great read---unputdownable.
~Maggie
Request Heading Out to Wonderful from the Bangor Public Library
Gone Girl is a page turner with well developed
characters. The story is told from
alternating his/her points of view. Nick
and Amy Dunn are a couple downsized from
big New York City jobs and they return to Nick’s down at the heels hometown for
a new lease on life. Nick and Amy are
about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary when Amy goes missing. Amy has left behind an extensive diary
and clues to her disappearance. Also, Amy is the child of famous authors, and as the
star of their books, the national media is interested in her
disappearance. As the diary is read and
the clues followed, Nick realizes it is all an elaborate hoax and that Amy is
setting him up for her murder while everyone else including Amy’s parents are
thinking he killed her. We soon find out
that Nick was not the ideal husband and Amy far from a good wife. Amy is not only a bad wife but a diabolical
person. I hope I have not given away too
much. I do not want to ruin an excellent read for you. There are no draggy parts and one
changes sides from Nick to Amy---as to who was the wronged party.
This is a great read and a suspense novel a
bit different from usual fare-----loved it.
~Maggie
Request Gone Girl from the Bangor Public Library
