Sometimes you just love a book.....

Fireflies in December by Jennifer Elen Valent

Adolescent and Up Fiction

This is a beautifully written and haunting story of the pains of growing up and doing the right thing when it seems as if all the adults, your supposed role models, are doing the wrong things.  Really wrong things.

Jessilynn Lassiter's 13th birthday party should have been a moment of fun in her life, full of new beginnings, but instead ushers in a season of heartache and hatred.  When her BFF Gemma loses her parents in a house fire, the Lassiters take her into their home.  They knew it might raise some eyebrows. After all, Gemma is black and the year is 1932--well before the Civil Rights act comes into being.  The Lassiters are not prepared for the Ku Klux Klan involvement and a barrage of hate crimes with fatal consequences.  In addition to all that, Jessilyn is having trouble just turning into a young woman--first crushes and new dresses and high heels are just as difficult to maneuver at that age as social injustice.  At least, it seems that way to Jessilyn.  The setting is my favorite--full of oozy Southern drawls and heat just dripping off the page.

This one won the 2010 Christy Award and it is well-deserved!  This book had a very To Kill a Mockingbird feel to it (one of my favorite books of all time).  It is a coming of age story for any age.

Short and Creepy

Freaks:  Rizzoli and Isles 8.5 by Tess Gerritsen

Adult Thriller

This one is labeled a .5 because it isn't a full novel, but more of a short story.  However, it's so short it should be a .25 or a .10.  A super-fast read!

Rizzoli and Isles are called to an abandoned church on Halloween where they find an emaciated woman with bite marks on her neck.  Does this sound too trite, too cheesy, for the power duo? Ah, well, as in most of Gerritsen's stories, all is not as it seems at first glance.  Leave it to Rizzoli and Isles to find a perfectly rational, plausible explanation for what appears to be an unsolvable crime.

This is a fun story, especially around Halloween time.  This story is just for fun and a far departure from the usually gritty and gruesome detective stories you might be expecting. 

The Darker, The Better

Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

Adult Romance

I love books like this.  I love that feeling of giving in to my addiction and delving into a story headfirst with utter abandon.  Losing all sense of time and place.  Knowing that I must keep reading, must keep going, must know how this story ends and I don't care to eat, sleep or converse until it's finished.  Appointments for the day cancelled or forgotten.  It's like getting lost in a portal of some sort and so rare to find those books that do that for me.

In this second installment of the trilogy, Christian and Ana continue their relationship, though without signing 'the document' that will spell out her complete submission to him--mind, body and soul.  Ana seems willing to but wants to haggle over the details.  Christian just can't seem to wait.

This book was darker than the first one, as the title suggest--the darker side of addiction, the darker side of lust and a realization, for Ana, that loving Christian will mean accepting his past as their present reality.  Is Christian too damaged for redemption, too broken for repair?

I truly liked this one even better than the first.  It was filled with more delicious surprises.  I can hardly wait to inhale that last book!

A New Riordan to Love

The Kane Chronicles #1:  The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Adolescent Fantasy

Carter Kane and his sister Sadie only have one thing in common:  they have the same parents....that, and they are fiercely jealous of one another.

They have so many differences:  Carter resembles his African-American father; Sadie, their white mother.  Carter is careful and thoughtful; Sadie, impulsive and outspoken.  Carter lives with his father, flying all over the world on wild archaeological digs; Sadie, in London with her grandparents and only sees her father and brother one day a year.

Combine all that with a family mystery steeped in ancient Egyptain myth and you have a brand new series full of fun.

Like all Riordan's teen novels, this one focuses on mythology but Egyptian mythology rather than Greek or Roman.  I found the mythology fascinating but much more intricate and harder to understand (that, or I am clueless about this brand of mythology).  This series has all the earmarks of other good Riordan reads--adventures, mystery, teens who must save the world with their own wit and bravery.

What's not to love?  I can't wait for the next installment.

Good for Other Places

Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James

Adult Fiction

I am not ashamed to inhale books like this.  I inhaled Twilight. There, I said it.  And, I did the same with this series.  Some books are good for the brain.....and some books are good for other places. 

I was actually hesitant to read this series because of all the bad reviews and word-of-mouth reviews that focuses on the 'dirtiness' of it.  After all, I'm a girl who like a good story. So, the question was....was it a good story?  The answer--in abundance.

The plot (yes, there is one):  Ana Steele is a senior in college and is coerced into interviewing Christian Grey, a beautiful bachelor billionaire.  What's not to love about this guy?  Sparks fly right away but then....okay, so what makes this different from every other typical romance saga?  Well, Christian has some, um, issues.  Sexual issues with domination which, surprisingly, doesn't freak out the virginal Ana.  She rather enjoys those issues.

I read this book like I was getting paid by the letter and I was booking for overtime.  I loved it.  Everything about it.  Book snobs can keep to Charles Dickens but if you like a good story, you got one here.  I found the plot and characters to be highly addictive.  I totally read all 500+ pages in one day and wanted to go to a 24-hour bookstore to get the next installment.  A book drug or druglike book--so addictive.  A guilty pleasure and I'm fine with the addiction. 

I, too, rather enjoy issues like that.

A Weird Adventure

Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck

Adult Thriller

When a plane crashes into Antarctica, a search team in sent in.  When they also disappear without a trace, Alex Hunter, super soldier, is sent in with a team of scientists and commandos to find out what is going on and to retrieve any survivors.  The scientists, who are along for experimentation, and the commandos have a very different agenda and the tension within the group adds to the tension of the plot.

When I say that Alex is a super soldier, that isn't an exaggeration.  He has somehow been mutated and has super keen hearing, sight and reflexes.  Weird.  The book would have been just as good with a regular soldier.

And yet, I loved it!  Weirdness and all.  The time in to Antarctica and a possible Atlantis and ancient South American civilization was right up my alley and will be right up the alley of any conspiracy theorist or lost-world aficionado.

The book had just the right mixture of scary, thriller and gross with an open ending for a future series--which I will have to buy!  The setting and otherworldy/supernatural elements in the book did, at times, suspend belief a bit much but it was a fun suspension.

You Can't Trust Anything Here!

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson

Adult Thriller

This book will give you a very creepy feeling.  You are reading this book with a narrator that you're not sure you can trust, who also doesn't even trust herself!  As a reader, you have no idea what is real and what isn't.  You're not sure what's important in the book, what's a clue, what's a red herring.  After awhile, you can understand the madness of the narrator......or is she mad??? 

Is she reliable???  That is the question that will haunt you all the way through.

Christine wakes up every day as if it is her first day and her last day-because it is!  Years ago, she was the victim of an accident or crime and she suffers from a form of amnesia.  She only remembers her present day.  As soon as she goes to sleep, everything is erased and she wakes up with a blank-slate mind.

She soon finds a journal that her psychologist has asked her to keep.  In the journal, she finds a note that days, 'Don't trust Ben'.  Ben?  Her husband and biggest supporter?  What is going on?  Christine has to work at finding out if this note is reliable and if her mind is reliable and if her memories, such as they are, are reliable.  As a reader, you're working just as hard as she is to figure the whole thing out.

I absolutely loved this book!  I could not put it down.  I loved that I found out everything right along with the main character.  It's like a ball of yarn unraveling....right into the cat's mouth!