At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen

A special thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't want to compare this book with Water for Elephants, I don't think that is fair to do...but...I didn't love this book and Water for Elephants is partly to blame because it was so fantastic.

Gruen tackles a historical time and fictitious creature in At the Water's Edge.  I enjoyed the setting for the book, as many other reviewers have said, this would make a great movie.  My problem is with the characters.  It's not that Gruen is a bad writer, quite the opposite, but I didn't overly like any of them.  I kept getting the Scottish girls confused, and didn't care for any of the men, save for maybe Hank at times.  I realize that the reader is not supposed to like Elis, he's very similar to the husband in Water for Elephants, but I found his character flat for the villain part.

The book started off great.  The best part of the book for me was the prologue and the New Year's Party.

Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova

A special thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I can understand why Lisa Genova is an award-winning author. I have devoured her other books, and was thrilled to receive this ARC.

Genova's novel does for Huntington’s Disease what her debut Still Alice did for Alzheimer’s. Joe O’Brien is a forty-four-year-old Irish Catholic police officer from Massachusetts. He is a devoted husband, and proud father of four grown children.

In the early chapters, it is clear something is amiss with Joe—he begins to experience the early symptoms of Huntington's Disease, a lethal neurodegenerative disease with no treatment and no cure. Joe receives the devastating diagnosis that he does indeed have Huntington's Disease, inherited from his mother. The story evolves though Joe's journey with the disease, and with the probability that some, if not all, of Joe and Rosie's children will inherit Huntington's. Genova changes gears and we experience what Katie, Joe's twenty-one-year-old daughter is going through.  Will she get tested?  Does she want to know if she has inherited this disease?  How will she live her life?

I adored the family and the family dynamic. Genova writes characters you care about and can relate to, while educating her readers at the same time.

LISA GENOVA graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. She is a member of the Dementia Advocacy, Support Network International and DementiaUSA and is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer's association.

Genova is also the New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice, Left Neglected, and Love Anthony. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Stewart. 

Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule by Jennifer Chiaverini

A special thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book rather dull, and the writing seemed a little basic. It read more as two separate books, one of which was regurgitating facts from the civil war battles, a topic which is not of any interest to me. I was hoping for more from the story of the women in the title, that was the part of the story that I enjoyed and wanted more of. Perhaps the author was trying to do too much in the span of the novel.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place. 

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

What can I say? I absolutely loved this book! Moriarty keeps the reader engrossed with her effortless prose and gossipy passages that introduce the reader to more characters and provide just enough foreshadowing to keep them intrigued. And it is so believable! She then takes the reader back in time to sort out all of the incidents which lead up to the big event—the murder. The witnesses’ descriptions of what exactly happened on the Trivia Night are amazingly comedic and distorted. There are three sides to every story; mine, yours, and the truth.

The characters are so varied and layered—Moriarty encompasses all types of mums and personalities. Many of these characters exhibit the type of schoolyard behaviours other characters' children are accused of (cruelty and bullying). Each character is also hiding something be it a personality trait, or a deeper, darker secret.

I highly recommend this book—a really fun read!

Adultery by Paul Coelho

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

I'm so torn...I wanted to love the book, I really did! There’s no doubt that Coelho is a fantastic writer, after all he does write poetry. However, I think this novel was a bit of a struggle. Was this done on purpose because the main character, Linda, a thirty-something journalist/mother/wife is struggling? Linda is going through her own crisis (albeit self inflicted). From the outside looking in, she has everything - she is married to a man who adores her (the "husband" as he's referred to in the whole book), a job where she is respected, money, a fabulous home, yet is not happy and feels that she is in a downward spiral.

Having interviewed a writer who talked about the meaning of life, Linda becomes manic in her efforts to find her own purpose and self-diagnosis. She treats what she thinks may be depression with a relationship (if you can classify it as such) with an old flame, Jacob, who is now a politician and known for his infidelity. Linda thinks this new found fling is just what she needs because it is giving her purpose and is thrilling because it is so out of character. Speaking of out of character, I think what she was planning to do to Jacob's wife was far fetched.

Another problem is that none of the characters were particularly likeable, especially Linda and Jacob. I thought this book would have been more interesting had it been penned from Jacob's wife.

The location seems to be of importance, it is mentioned several times and almost becomes like a character. Perhaps symbolic of the put-together, perfect world of Linda?

The novel is entirely written in first person and I think this did a disservice to the story. There was so much more to tell, I felt that Coelho only scratched the surface.

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard

A Stolen Life was such a hard book for me to not only to read because of the subject matter, but to rate. I really wanted to give her 5 stars - for a victim to be able to come forward and tell her story is so courageous, but I just couldn’t get past the writing. Her voice in the story was so childish and I don’t know if this was done on purpose to project how innocent she was, or because of the fact that she only had a grade 5 education, but it was very distracting for the reader. There were narratives that contained vocabulary well above what the average reader would encounter and I felt like her editor actually did the book a disservice by introducing these words that clearly are not the authors. There were also many inconsistencies with tense and timelines that were confusing when going from past to present so frequently in such a short book. 

This book is an astonishing account of a shocking act of cruelty and violence to a child/young woman. The fact that she remained and continues to remain so positive after everything that happened to her is a testament to the human spirit and is incredibly moving.