A Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny. I have read almost all the books in this series. I love them. I love the characters and the main police inspector. I dare to say these are almost as good as Martha Grimes’s books featuring Richard Jury. A few years ago I plowed through those at neck-breaking speed too, much like I am with these. Unfortunately this author has only written 9 books and I am on the 9th at this point (well when it gets returned to the library I will). This one though was my least favorite of all the books. It took me weeks to plow through it and I think this was 50% my lack of interest in reading and 50% that I didn’t like what was going on in the book. I tend to get attached to characters in series and when stories start moving in directions that I don’t like I get upset. That’s what happened with this one. I didn’t like where she was taking the story and I just wanted the book to end and for the story line to go back a different direction. I kept hoping that the ending would have some kind of redemption and make sense of the chaos she was bringing to the story & characters but that was not to be. I was left with “what the fuck just happened?”.
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny. Redemption! I loved this one as much as I disliked the other book. I just had to have faith in the author that everything was happening for a reason.
If you like mysteries where the violence and details are not gross with details (my mother-in-law hated the Kathy Reichs books for their very detailed description of wounds and such) then I would recommend these books. I became really attached to the characters in the first Book “Still Life” and they are a well written mystery series.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore I had so many friends on Goodreads that loved this book that I was anticipating loving it also. I wanted to love it and there were aspect that I did really love (like the message of the book) but for most of it I was pretty much “eh” about it. Which is weird because I love mystery/adventure/secret society books a whole lot. Maybe I just didn’t click with any of the characters. Maybe I just don’t love Google enough. ( Or Amazon…and I love me some Amazon). I guess part of it is that I couldn’t shake the feeling that this book was meant for a much younger audience than me. It would do well with the YA age group and even though I’ve loved tons of YA books this one wasn’t one of them. My husband, who is a bit of a computer nerd, might appreciate this story much more than I did. I have recommended it to him but I definitely don’t think this is a book for everyone.
Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham. This book is definitely for the Millennials out there. That’s not to say i didn’t enjoy it but she’s definitely part of the “share everything with the public” kind of girl, like most of the younger generation that grew up with social media, in their faces, all the time. But, I really enjoy her show, and I already knew she was a woman that put herself and her awkward/uncomfortable experiences out there. She definitely captures that awkwardness, of being in your teens/ early twenties, in this book. Many of the stories made me cringe. Many made me laugh out loud. Most of us though… we’ve been in her place trying to learn how to deal with sex and changing bodies and crazy hormones so even though her experiences were vastly different from mine…I could still connect (or at least my young 20-ish self could) with the stories she was telling.
Started: Instruments of Darkness. I won’t be finished with it by the end of this week though so I’ll include it in my November book post.
xoxoxo
Jen
