3 hours 53 minutes| Tor | Adult Fantasy | 9/24/2019
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Adult Fiction
What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan
12 Hours 2 Min | Crime/Suspense | Harper Audio | Release Date: 12/01/2015
I am one of those people who really got into true crime after listening to the Serial podcast. I like how true crime gives you a snapshot of people’s lives and how chance encounters and small moments can change lives forever.
Because I dive so much into true crime I don’t generally gravitate towards crime fiction however, I was in the mood for some plotty fiction with momentum and maybe some plot twists— crime fiction seemed to fit the bill and What She Knew was one of the top audiobooks on Scribd. It’s ominous background and san-serif text instantly told me it was suspense/crime fiction.
Set in the small city of Bristol, England What She Knew flips POV between Rachel, a recently divorced single mother and Detective Inspector Clemo; their paths collide when Rachel’s eight-year-old son is abducted in broad daylight. Rachel has an emotional outburst during a press conference that makes the public suspicious of her. As the case hits the national spotlight both Clemo and Rachel endure public outrage, dark family secrets and lies that threaten to crumble the investigation.
Because of the first person POV it feels in the beginning like there is some unreliable narrator stuff happening or that there was going to be a major plot twist, but honestly most of this book felt like a procedural with the kind of bonkers out of left-field reveals you’d find in a 2010’s episode of Law and Order SVU –that had nothing to really do with the main crime.
Audiobook narrators Penelope Rawlins and Dugald Bruce-Lockhart are a dynamic pair. They really work the silences in the text and give emotional moments room to breathe. They capture the hopelessness of the situation as everyone scrambles to find the missing child. Rawlins narration mimics Rachel’s fragility as she endures harsh accusations and is publicly shamed for losing her own child. Bruce-Lockhart gets that tough authoritative tone as Inspector Clemo, but I really liked his no-nonsense lilting portrayal of the Scottish police chief.
I like reading books that take place in other countries and it was a nice change of pace to read a British book that didn’t take place in London. I think my only real barrier to entry was trying to understand how their police system works.
When I finished this book I thought it was a little outlandish and that the portrayal of the media and police was over the top…then I listened toTrue Crime Obsessed talk about The Disappearance of Madeline McCann which just had a lot of rampant and harmful speculation, so I wonder if Gilly McMillian was inspired by the case at all ?
Suspenseful and a little head scratchy this is a book that will keep you on your toes, but doesn’t quite hit the landing.
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
12 hours 32 minutes | Adult SFF | Harper Audio | Audio Release Date: 11/10/2009
In this 1990 Sci-Fiction/Fantasy debut novelist Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett tell a satirical story about the end of the world. I went in knowing this book was about an angel and a demon teaming up to stop armageddon, but Good Omens also involves a book of prophecies, a witch hunter, the four horsemen of the apocalypse and…an 11-year-old antichrist.
I have a vague memory of a teacher talking about this book when I was 9th grade but I’d kind of forgotten about it. I was reading a lot of Left Behind books at that time so I can’t imagine what I would have thought about this tongue and cheek interpretation of the end days. The only reason I picked it up this year is so I could check out the Amazon Prime show. A show that I was Streisand Effected into knowing about. I had no idea this show was even a thing until the controversy.
I found this book to be imaginative and kind of weird and the humor felt very British. There are a lot of plots threaded into the story and I feel like some of it may have gone over my head. I’m sure this is a book like this holds up well to re-reading, In fact, I started the show and the show is essentially a scene by scene remake of the book and things kept clicking while I watched the show that I hadn’t noticed when reading.
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Adult Genre Fiction: A Curious Beginning and Kill The Queen
I remember being a teenager in Borders (RIP) and hating that one day I’d have to give up YA and read only boring “adult” books. But over the years I’ve discovered adult books are kind of awesome too and this year I’ve been dabbling in adult genre fiction.
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Book Review : The Care and Feeding of Ravenous Girls by Annisa Gray
304 pages | Berkeley | Adult Fiction | Release Date: 02/19/2019
I like a book with a really long title. Just throwing that out there.
The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is this blend of African-American, Women’s and Literary fiction that I’m starting to find myself drawn to more.
This is a very human story of the Butler siblings who are brought together after their seemingly perfect elder sister, Althea, and her husband Proctor are convicted of a crime that shakes up their small lakeside town.
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Bird Box by Josh Malerman
9 hrs. 8 min. | Horror | Harper Audio | Release Date: 5/13/14
From To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before to Crazy Rich Asians 2018 was the year more book adaptations skyrocketed into the pop culture zeitgeist. Bird Box came on the scene at the end of the year with the popular Netflix film that spawned its own memes and challenges.
Bird Box is a 20 Minutes Into The Future post-apocalypse story where people see something outside that makes them murderous. The book begins with Malorie and two 4-year-olds leaving an empty house and getting into a boat to head down the river blindfolded. Flashbacks from four years earlier are interspersed, showing how the panic started and how Malorie got to the house.
The tension builds as we learn how Malorie and her housemates have to suddenly navigate a world blindfolded. I liked the survivalist aspects of this book, I’ve kind of gotten into books that make me wonder how long I could survive on the canned food in my house.
What was missing for me was character development. It’s revealed early on there were once other people in the house where meet Malorie but they all felt like blank slates, I couldn’t tell any of them apart or what their purpose was. I don’t read much horror so I don’t know if plot over character is a convention of the genre or that is just this book.
The audiobook was done by Cassandra Campbell, I’ve enjoyed her in the past but this wasn’t my favorite performance of hers. It felt muted and didn’t fully bring me into the story.
I have watched some of the Netflix movie and I enjoyed it so much better than the book. Sandra Bullock is great and the movie fleshes out the motivations and creates connections between the characters in a way the book never did.
The guy who wrote Bird Box’s Netflix adaptation is also writing the Leigh Bardugo Netflix series and I can’t wait to see what he does with it. He seems to have the ability to capture the spirit of a book without making it literal.