tbr pile reading challenge

The TBR challenges last year helped me check off a bunch of books so I thought I'd try it again this year.  I'll be returning to Bookish's challenge and you can sign up here!

I haven't picked my books yet, but I am aiming for the Firm Handshake level which is 5-10 books.  I'll figure out what books I'd like to check off and update this soon!

1. A Trick of the Light - Louise Penny
2. The Beautiful Mystery - Louise Penny
3. High Heat - Lee Child
4. Three Wishes - Liane Moriarty
5. The Other Side Of The Story - Marian Keyes
6. Heart Of The Matter - Emily Giffin
7. Four - Veronica Roth
8. Joyland - Stephen King
9. Darkfever - Karen Marie Moning
10. Just Listen - Sarah Dessen

high heat

high heat
jack reacher
lee child #17.5
fiction/novella/crime
delacorte press
published 2013

July 1977.  Jack Reacher is almost seventeen, and he stops in New York City on the way to visit his brother at West Point.  The summer heat is suffocating, the city is bankrupt, and the mad gunman known as Sam is still on the loose.  Reacher meets a woman with a problem and agrees to help her....but then the power grid fails and the lights go out, plunging the lawless city into chaos.  What does a visiting teenager do in the dark?  If that visiting teenager is Jack Reacher, the answer is plenty.

An interesting little snippet into Reacher's life more than 30 years ago.  There is absolutely no reason to write these stories about him as a teenager, except, I think to insert such events as the terror that David Berkowitz caused in the 70's.  I say this because there is no difference between him as a 16 year old and him as a 46 year old.  You would never think that you were in the mind of a 16 year old because he think exactly like he does as an adult.  He's basically the same size as he is now so even that isn't different.

Of course, that's not to say that this isn't a fun Reacher read.  He's coming to the rescue and the results are....surprising.  I was a little disappointed in the ending, but it is what it is.  Reacher's not really known for his happy endings, right?

never go back

never go back
jack reacher #18
lee child
thriller/suspense
random house
published 2013

Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP.  The old stone building is the closest thing to a home he ever had.

Reacher is there to meet - in person - the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, so far just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone.

But it isn't turner behind the CO's desk.  And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news, one with serious criminal consequences, and one too personal to even think about.

When threatened, you can either run or fight.

Reacher fights, aiming to find Turner and clear his name, barely a step ahead of the army, and the FBI, and the D.C. Metro police, and four unidentified thugs.

Combining an intricate puzzle of a plot and an exciting chase for truth and justice, Lee Child puts Reacher through his paces - and makes him question who he is, what he's done, and the very future of his untethered life on the open road.

Note: I finished this book over a week ago and I've been so distracted with other things I haven't gotten around to reviewing, which bugs me because I like to review books when they're still fresh in my mind so please excuse the shortness of my review!

Reacher finally makes it to Susan Turner.....kind of.  Things have gone bat shit crazy and all of a sudden Reacher finds himself back in the Army.

This was an unusual installment in the Reacher series.  We find Reacher contemplating his lifestyle in a way he never has before, including wondering if he missed out on things he never thought he cared about.  But Reacher is still there.  He's still the guy who needs to right the wrongs and take care of the people who can't take care of themselves.  Of course, Turner isn't necessarily one of those people.  I think Turner could take care of anybody, but things go easier with Reacher by your side.

So now that four book odyssey is over with.  Let's see where the road takes Reacher next.

Note:  I finished this book over a week ago and I've been so distracted with other things I haven't gotten around to reviewing which bugs me because I like to review books when they're still fresh in my mind so please excuse the shortness of my review!

always watching

always watching
chevy stevens
thriller/mystery/suspense
st. martin's press
published 2013

She helps people put their demons to rest.

But she has a few of her own....

In the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine Lavoie is in her element.  She has the tools to help people, and she has the desire - healing broken families is what she lives for.  But Nadine doesn't want to look too closely at her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that are black holes.  It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years.

When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her - and learns of some troubling parallels with her own life.  Digging deeper, Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island.  What happened to Nadine?  Why was their family destroyed?  And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the group's leader, bring complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today?

Note:  I finished this book over a week ago and I've been so distracted with other things I haven't gotten around to reviewing which bugs me because I like to review books when they're still fresh in my mind so please excuse the shortness of my review!

I was incredibly disappointed with Always Watching.  After Still Missing I went to Never Knowing and that was a disappointment.  But Always Watching was even worse than Never Knowing (which I didn't hate, but I really didn't care for Sara).

Nadine was the worst character in a book with terrible characters.  I felt no sympathy for anyone except for maybe Willow and Heather who are fleeting in this novel.  I couldn't relate to anyone and I don't think even Chevy Stevens did.  The writing felt stifled and amateur, nothing like Still Missing.  It's very sad.

I still have That Night sitting on my bookshelf.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

cross my heart

cross my heart
alex cross #21
james patterson
mystery/suspense
little brown & co
published 2013

Detective Alex Cross is a family man at heart -- nothing matters more to him than his children, his grandmother, and his wife Bree.  His love of his family is his anchor, and gives him the strength to confront evil in his work.  One man knows this deeply, and uses Alex's strength as a weapon against him in the most unsettling and unexpected novel of James Patterson's career.

When the ones Cross loves are in danger, he will do anything to protect them.  If he does anything to protect them, they will die.

This review will contain spoilers.

I find it slightly humorous that the synopsis talks about how much Alex Cross loves his kids and his family, but the truth is, he may love them but he has no time for them.  Damon is calling his father, something obviously wrong, but Alex brushes him off.  Jannie is pissed because he never makes it to any of her school events and they're letting 7-year-old Ali watch The Walking Dead.  Are you kidding me?

Nothing of interest happens for 80% of the book.  I looked on my Kindle when stuff started happening.  There is a case going on but it's resolved and you know there's a bigger thing going on.  And when it got to that point I thought it sucked that it was going to get wrapped up so quickly.

But he didn't.  He left us hanging.  For the first time that I can remember James Patterson wrote an Alex Cross novel with a cliffhanger.  So I can't really judge the book on the first 80% because that was useless.  So I'm reserving my review until I read the next book.

the cruelest month

the cruelest month
armand gamache #3
louise penny
st. martin's minotaur
published 2008

Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruelest month is about to deliver on its threat.

It's spring in the tiny, forgotten village; buds are on the trees and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth.  But not everything is meant to return to life....When some villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a seance at the Old Hadley House, they are hoping to rid the town of its evil - until one of their party dies of fright.  Was this a natural death, or was the victim somehow helped along?

Brilliant, compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is called to investigate, in a case that will force him to face his own ghosts as well as those of a seemingly idyllic town where relationships are far more dangerous than they seem.

Finally!  The Arnot case, which has been hinted at throughout the last two books has been revealed in its entirety and Armand's betrayers are exposed at last.  That's not to say the repercussions of the case are not over, but at least everything seems to be out in the open and as a reader I'm no longer wondering what it was all about.

I really want to go to Three Pines.  Even though in these three books a murder has occurred in this tiny town, it still sounds beautiful and charming.  The characters are rich and so full of life you can picture them clearly in your head.  There is so much more going on in the story than the murder Gamache and his team are investigating.

In the first books I wasn't the biggest fan of Peter Morrow, but with Clara I find myself rooting for her the most.  I think it's because Clara is truly good and honest and loves Peter absolutely.  Despite her own insecurities with her art she wants Peter to succeed.  Peter, on the other hand, while I don't doubt that he loves Clara seems to go out of his way to sabotage his wife's success.  And even when he feels guilty about it he does nothing to fix what he has broken.  I wonder if this will come back to haunt them in books to follow.

Penny has a way of weaving a murder mystery that keeps you from knowing the killer until she is ready to reveal that person.  It doesn't come out of left field like some authors write or become so obvious that you don't even care to read the rest of the book.  She just keeps you guessing until the end.

every secret thing

every secret thing
laura lippman
fiction/mystery
william morrow
published 2003

Two little girls banished from a neighborhood birthday party take a wrong turn down an unfamiliar Baltimore street and encounter an abandoned stroller with an infant inside.  What happens next is shocking and terrible, and three families are irreparably destroyed.  

Seven years later, Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller, now eighteen, are released from "kid prison" to begin their lives over again.  But the secrets swirling around the original crime continue to haunt the parents, the lawyers, the police - all the adults in Alice and Ronnie's lives.  And now another child has disappeared, under freakishly similar circumstances.

There was hardly a redeemable character in this book.  Alice and Ronnie, Alice's mother, her defense attorney, the young reporter, even the baby's mother.  None had qualities I found I could relate to or root for.  Near the end I found myself feeling sorry for Ronnie who seemed to have been screwed over the most.  For some reason the two I disliked the most were Alice and Cynthia, the mother of the baby in the stroller.  At first it was because who leaves her baby on her front porch unattended?  Then when that was explained I still couldn't find any sympathy for her because she just seemed like such a terrible person.  And who's to say that I wouldn't react the same way she did if that were my situation?  I probably would.

I did find the detective Nancy to be a genuinely good person who kind of got the short end of the stick in her rookie days.

But all in all the book was relatively disappointing to me.  Everyone got away!  The one who deserved redemption paid the price for all the idiots.  Some things I didn't understand the point of.  Mira's character?  Annoying and unnecessary.  And then she gets rewarded in the end?  When she didn't even have a story?  It was all so pointless.  I didn't need a happy ending, but I did want a justified one.

a fatal grace

a fatal grace
armand gamache #2
louise penny
minoaur
published 2007

Welcome to winter in Three Pines, a picturesque village in Quebec, where the villagers are preparing for a traditional country Christmas, and someone is preparing for murder.

No one liked CC de Poitiers.  Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter - an certainly none of the residents of Three Pines.  CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death.

When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Quebec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he's dealing with someone quite extraordinary.  CC de Poitiers was electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake, in front of the entire village, as she watched the annual curling tournament.  And yet no one saw anything.  Who could have been insane enough to try such a macabre method of murder - or brilliant enough to succeed?

With his trademark compassion and courage, Gamache digs beneath the idyllic surface of village life to find the dangerous secrets long buried there.  For a Quebec winter is not only staggeringly beautiful but deadly, and the people of Three Pines know better than to reveal too much of themselves.  But other dangers are becoming clear to Gamache.  As a bitter wind blows into the village, something even more chilling is coming for Gamache himself.

In Still Life I grieved with everyone over the loss of the murdered victim, Jane.  Penny wrote about her in life as well as in the memories of friends and she was someone the small village of Three Pines would miss greatly.  The victim in A Fatal Grace, CC de Poitiers was the exact opposite.  She was awful and there weren't many in the village who were sad to see her go, if anyone.

The murder was intricate, complicated and hard to pull off.  The suspect pool was large, but the number of people who had the means were few.  It made for an interesting story and the return of Nichol was an interesting side story.  But there was a lot going on that the reader isn't really privvy to yet.  It was almost as if the purpose of this book is to set up events that will happen later in the series.  There are many references to the Arnott case, which happened some time before the events in Still Life.

It was a little frustrating.  I don't like reading a book and feeling like I'm missing things, as if I've skipped a book somewhere or am reading something out of order.  So I suppose I should jump right into the next book to see if all my questions are answered.

This story, besides the Arnott stuff, felt pretty unbelievable in the way everything came together at the end.  It was a good mystery, but really a set up for another book.

tiger lily

tiger lily
jodi lynn anderson
ya/fantasy
harper teen
published 2012

Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair.... Tiger Lily.  When fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan deep in the forbidden woods of Neverland, the two form a bond that's impossible to break, but also impossible to hold on to.  As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants.  Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily.  However, when Wendy Darling, a girl who is everything Tiger Lily is not, arrives on the island, Tiger Lily discovers how far she is willing to go to keep Peter with her, and in Neverland.

The minute I saw this book I knew that I would love it.  Usually, when I see I cover I love I expect it will probably not stand up to my expectations, but this time I knew because it was Peter Pan.

Peter Pan has always secretly been my favorite of Disney movies.  And not because of Peter or Wendy, but Tinker Bell & Tiger Lily.  I thought Tiger Lily was beautiful in the cartoon movie.  I wanted to know her story and I wanted Peter to love only her.  I thought Wendy was bossy and silly and didn't deserve Peter.  Tinker Bell has just always been my favorite.  Feisty and animated.  She couldn't talk, but boy did you know how she felt.  Since then Tink has had her own series of movies and it's been so fun to see that world from her eyes, but still, the silent Tink holds a place in my heart.

Jodi Lynn Anderson has done an amazing job at making the story of Peter Pan the story of Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell.  She's weaved in bits of J.M. Barrie's tale into hers and reminded us of Disney's classic, but there is no humor and this is not a children's tale.

It is dark and dangerous.  And it feels real.  She took each and every character and made them as real as they could be living on an island almost impossible to reach by ship where hardly anyone grows old.  Captain Hook is desperate to catch Peter and in Disney's story I always wondered what would really happen if he did catch him.  In Anderson's tale I knew that when he did catch him Peter would die.  He isn't a bumbling captain to a ragtag group of pirates, but a madman looking not so much for treasure as much as he just wants to kill.  Smee isn't the sweet, reluctant pirate, but a dark and dangerous serial killer.

The tale is told from Tinker Bell's perspective as she has abandoned her own people to live with Tiger Lily whom she loves and admires but doesn't think knows she exists.  Able to read human's minds through their feelings she is the perfect storyteller.  The story is dark and beautiful and heartbreaking and I loved every word of it.

night film

night film
marisha pessl
fiction/mystery/thriller/horror
random house
published 2013

On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan.  Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise.  As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley's life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova - a man who hasn't been seen in public for more than thirty years.

For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence.  Though much has been written about Cordova's dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.

Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova's eerie, hypnotic world.

The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career.  This time he might lose even more.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked up Night Film.  It was one of those books that I first saw in the emails the library send out of book recommendations.  I'd never heard of Marisha Pessl.  I'm not sure that her acclaimed first book Special Topics in Calamity Physics (despite being described as a murder mystery) is a book I would necessarily pick up and enjoy, but the synopsis of Night Film intrigued me.  Then reader friends began reading the book and saying only vague mysterious bits of praise.  So I got the book on my Kindle and promptly forgot about it.  When it came time to compile my TBR lists for 2014 I decided I would get down and read Night Film and see what all the fuss was about.

Although....you don't really hear too much.  It's not a mainstream book.  It's not side-by-side with the James Pattersons and John Grishams.  It didn't even hit the type of frenzy that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo did.  It's odd.

Nonetheless, on to the review.  Reading Night Film was like experiencing A Clockwork Orange for the first time.  You're not entirely sure what's happening.  What is real and what is fantasy.  You're only sure that something is fucked up.  It reminded me of stories of Alfred Hitchcock.  I remember being pretty young and reading about Alfred Hitchcock giving a 6-year-old Melanie Griffith a wax doll replica of her mother Tippi Hedren in a wooden coffin as a Christmas or Birthday present.  It was the creepiest thing I'd ever heard of.  During the entire book I pictured Cordova as Hitchcock.  I spent much time wishing the movies Cordova made were real so I could run out and watch them.

And the book was terrifying in that you have no idea what's going on.  Like black and white horror movies where you don't actually see the monster eating the victim because it's off camera, but you know it's happening and somehow that's more terrifying than seeing it.  About two thirds into the book I was captivated by the insanity, worried I would have nightmares when I went to sleep.  (For the record I didn't, but I did read until 2 a.m.)

Of course there were things that bugged me.  If you've ever read my reviews of James Patterson books I hate unnecessary italics.  Marisha Pessl loves them.  They are everywhere and in the beginning I could barely get past it.  And then there were the obvious things that were happening that McGrath didn't pick up on.  Inez Gallo's nickname, the effects of the greenhouse & the repercussions of McGrath's missing research.  But I suppose with everything that was going on in McGrath's life at that moment things just got past him.

When I got to the rather abrupt ending it made mention of the Night Film app.  I wish it had mentioned that in the beginning so I didn't have to search through my ebook to find the places where I could interact with the app.  But I found the extra content to be kind of dull and cheap compared to the book.  The voice acting was awful and just ridiculous.  There is a 'diary' though that was quite a gem.

I'm not sure if this makes me a Pessl fan, but maybe someday if I see Special Topics in Calamity Physics at a used bookstore I might pick it up.

the spectacular now

the spectacular now
tim tharp
ya/contemporary
knopf
published 2008

Sutter Keely.  He's the guy you want at your party.  He'll get everyone dancing.  He'll get everyone in your parents' pool.  Okay, so he's not exactly a shining academic star.  He has no plans for college and will probably end up folding men's shirts for a living.  But there are plenty of ladies in town, and with the help of Dean Martin and Seagram's V.O., life's pretty fabuloso, actually.  Until the morning he wakes up on a random front lawn, and he meets Aimee.  Aimee's clueless.  Aimee is a social disaster.  Aimee needs help, and it's up to the Sutterman to show Aimee a splendiferous time and then let her go forth and prosper.  But Aimee's not like other girls, and before long he's in way over his head.  For the first time in his life, he has the power to make a difference in someone else's life - or ruin it forever.

Well.  That was depressing.

Sutter Keely is an alcoholic at 18.  There's no getting around that.  There is rarely a time during his narration that he is not inebriated.  There was rarely a time during his narration that I didn't want to punch him in the face.

I made the mistake of reading this as an adult.  One who still drinks, yes, but not one who drinks to excess pretty much ever anymore.  I forgot how I was in my 20s.  I forgot how I spent nearly every night for several years drunk.  How a good night was binge drinking with my friends and feeling like the only way we could have fun was if alcohol was somehow involved.  Work provided unlimited access to booze and we took full advantage of that.  I forgot what an asshole I was when I drank.  Not a mean drunk sort of asshole, but one who did stupid stuff and thought it was hilarious.

I know that had I stayed where I was during that time of my life I might not be alive today.

And I realize that the brilliance of Tim Tharp's novel is that the entire story is told from Sutter's point of view and you, the reader are (most likely) sober while reading it and so you can read between the lines.  We know Sutter isn't the life of the party.  We know he is being mocked.  We know he has no real friends because no one wants a friend like that.  We know that he's using Aimee just as he perceives everyone else in her life does.  So Sutter becomes this horribly pathetic character to us.

And there is a moment that we're all waiting for.  The afterschool special moment where something horrible happens that changes Sutter.  Makes him realize that he can't continue living his life this way.  And it happens, but not how we expected.  And it makes the story even more brilliant than originally thought.  Because not everyone has that afterschool special moment.  Not everyone realizes the error of their ways.  Some are lost and will always remain lost.  Some don't need that moment, they just sort of come to that realization themselves.

What Tim Tharp does is give us a big dose of reality.  This isn't a glossy YA novel that splits people into Team Sutter and Team Someone Else.  This is a PSA wrapped up in damn good writing.

reconstructing amelia

reconstructing amelia
kimberly mccreight
fiction/contemporary/mystery
harper collins
published 2013

Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career whens he gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter - now.  But Kate's stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance.  Bu then it's already too late for Amelia.  And for Kate.

An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death.  At least that's the story Grace Hall tells Kate.  And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe.  Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn't jump.

A parent's worst nightmare is the death of their child way before their time.  I sit here thinking about Reconstructing Amelia and how I don't know what I would do.  Could I survive that?  Could I continue on as Kate had?

I would like to think that I would search for answers as she does.  That I would not rest until I knew exactly what happened to my child.  But then, when you find out what do you do with that information?

I expected the story for Kate's POV.  A single, working mother who despite her busy hours tries to make time for her daughter.  I didn't expect to see things through Amelia's perspective.  It's heartbreaking.  To know how Amelia felt about everything that was going on around her, how she truly felt about her mother and Kate would never really know.

Of course, spanning out around Amelia is the hot topic of bullying.  I always thought about how much more vicious girls can be than boys.  Never is that more true than in Reconstructing Amelia.

There is much about this book that hurts to read.  When Kate talks about not being able to remember what Amelia smelled like despite searching desperately on pillows she hadn't washed I started to cry.  I remember once hearing a man talking about dealing with the death of his young son.  He mentioned that he was down in the basement laundry room where he had kept a bag of his son's clothes that he never washed.  Every once in a while he would pull something out of that bag to just inhale, hoping to catch a whiff of that little boy smell.  Even now, thinking about that man I cry.  It's like the last physical manifestation of your child who is gone is there for a brief time after they have left and you find comfort in being able to hold onto this proof that they had actually existed.

This is not a book that leaves you feeling relived.  There is no happy ending.  The people who should be punished seem to skate away unscathed while Amelia is still gone.  I suppose, like most things in life, it's meant to be not fair.

Kimberly McCreight flutters flawlessly between Kate's voice and Amelia's.  Both are believable and smartly fleshed out.  Sometimes both do something that just seems nuts, but then you remember that sometimes you do things that are nuts.  Some parts of the mystery were obvious, but it didn't deter me from wanting to continue.

But the whole time I was reading I kept thinking, Amelia isn't coming back.  This bright, beautiful, loved young girl isn't getting her happy ending.  And that was hard.

still life

still life
armand gamache #1
louise penny
fiction/mystery
minotaur books
published 2006

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter. 

I was so pleasantly surprised by this book.  I'll admit that I got the book because I loved the cover of The Beautiful Mystery and found out it was part of series so I picked up the first few.  Then I found the Cruisin' the Cozies challenge and I thought these would be perfect, might as well try one.

It is definitely a book that you want to curl up next to a cozy fire and cuddle up with.  It's charming, suspenseful and mysterious.  Usually when you read a mystery or thriller the victim is kind of unknown.  After all, their death is the catalyst for the book.  Without that there is no story so generally that person gets killed right away, before you get a chance to know them or care.  You care about the ones left behind (if it's a good writer), but you're not really invested in the victim.

Jane Neal is killed in the first sentence of the book, although we go back in time a little to the days before her death.  Still we don't get to spend a lot of time with Ms. Neal before she meets her demise.  And yet, by the time the killer in Three Pines is revealed I felt like I knew Jane Neal better than any other character in the book and I mourned her as such.  

Penny writes characters that glow with life on the pages.  And yet they still remain mysterious enough to keep you wondering who isn't true.  And she also writes the people you love to hate.  For me, besides the obvious Yolande Fontaine was Agent Yvette Nichol.  I loathed her.  It was such an interesting addition to the cast of characters.

The mystery itself was gripping.  I didn't know who the killer could be.  Just when I thought it was someone, something would change my mind or prove them innocent.  And there were all these little side stories.  The portraits of a small, close knit community.  I was hooked.

Once again, judging a book by its cover works for me!  

tbr pile from bookish

I've got a ton of books on my physical and ebook shelves that I just haven't gotten to.  I participated in the Off the Shelf challenge and got 30 books off those shelves.  Pretty successful!  This year I've found a couple of different To Be Read Pile challenges so I'm going to do them and try to do different books for each challenge.

Bookish has some extra goodies in their rules so you can read them along with sign up all here.

The levels for this challenge are:

1-10 - A Firm Handshake
11-20 - A Friendly Hug
21-30 - First Kiss
31-40 - Sweet Summer Fling
41-50 - Could This Be Love?
50+ - Married with Children

I'm going to start with A Friendly Hug and I'm going to use this challenge primarily for the loads of ebooks I have sitting on my Kindle not being read!

1. A Fatal Grace - Louise Penny
2. Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman
3. Never Go Back - Lee Child
4. Cross My Heart by James Patterson
5. Still Life by Louise Penny
6. The Hangman - Louise Penny
7. Always Watching - Chevy Stevens
8. The Cruelest Month - Louise Penny
9. Night Film - Marisha Pessl
10. Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
11. The Spectacular Now - Tim Tharp
12. Tiger Lily - Jodi Lynn Anderson