We're an Open Book
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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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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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.
10 hrs. 39 min. | Hachette Audio | Release Date: 5/15/18
I love a good mystery thriller and I picked this one up because I saw Christine Lakin was the narrator. Lakin only performs the first chapter of this book and her performance of Kimmy Crepeaux, a guilt-ridden down on her luck, small town twenty-something opioid addict confessing her role in a double murder, was a stand out and chilling performance. Robert Petkoff takes the lead for the rest of the book and captures the anguish and heartbreak that follows the gruesome confession. They both commit to the distinct New England accent without overdoing it.
In most crime stories getting the confession is the end of the story, but for FBI agent Rob Barrett it’s just the beginning as he scours the small town of Port Hope, Maine to prove nothing about this crime is what it seems. Koryta makes excellent use of the setting and current events about class, false confessions, and opioid addiction to weave a mystery that forces Barrett to come to terms with what the truth really means.
I’ve never heard of Michael Koryta and based on what I’ve read online and seen in bookstores, at just 36 years old, he seems to be part of the new generation of authors behind the so-called “Dad Books” a la Dean Koontz, Lee Childs, and David Baldacci.
I also see on his website that Kroyta is an award-winning journalist, which is probably why Barrett’s journalist love interest was portrayed realistically, HOWEVER this means the book fails the Audie Cornishtest where the female journalist sleeps with a source.
Next time I need a page-turning read I know exactly where I’ll turn.
Release Date: 08/21/18 | Speculative Fiction | 9 hours 27 minutes | Penguin
Vox takes place in the near, near, near future where the government has limited women to 100 spoken words a day in an effort to Make America Great Again reinforce traditional gender roles. Dr. Jean McClellan is a cognitive linguist who has never quite adjusted to the new rules of society and brings the entire system down–which by the way isn’t a spoiler. It’s literally the first line of the book.
I added this book to my to-reads shelf the minute I heard about it on the What Should I Read Next podcast and was so excited to get into it…but this book really disappointed me. I think it’s because I went into this book thinking it was supposed to be this feminist dystopia but when you read Dalcher’s interviews you find out she’s a linguist who just wanted to write a book about her passion.
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