'Before the Fall': Suspenseful enough to make it a page turner

It's been awhile since I posted a book blog.

Just so you know, I've been reading.

Just so you know, the pictures with our new pug puppy, Basil, posing with the books, instead of our cat, Hamlet are coming.

Just so you know, I've read a bunch of good summery books that I think you would love.

As I look over my summer reading stack, the most out of my usual reading zone is 'Before the Fall' by Noah Hawley, so I want to start my summer catch up blogs with that one.  If you haven't heard of Noah Hawley, he's a big deal right now with huge accolades for his writing, executive producing, and show running of FX's Fargo.  'Before the Fall' is his 5th novel, but the first of them that I've read.

I'm not usually a suspense or mystery reader, but a good friend started reading this one and told me that it would pull me in and keep me turning the pages with good writing to boot.  The story opens like a disaster movie would.  A private chartered jet is about to take off from Martha's Vineyard on a foggy night which isn't ideal for flying, but not hazardous enough to question the safety of a short flight.  The reader is introduced to a slew of characters which are hard to keep straight in the first several chapters:

David Bateman - multimillionaire owner of a right wing news network that sounds similar to Fox News (he is the one who chartered the flight)
Maggie Bateman - David's younger, former school teacher wife
Rachel Bateman - Maggie and David's 9 year old daughter who just happened to be kidnapped when she was 2
JJ Bateman - Maggie and David's 4 year old son who is sleeping during take off

Ben Kipling - multimillionaire WallStreet dude who is good friends with David, but who is also facing possible indictment for money laundering
Sarah Kipling - the one dimensional wife of Ben who wants her husband to stop working so much

Gil - the Israeli born bodyguard of the Bateman family who has served them for 7 years since the kidnapping of Rachel

Scott Burroughs - the mysterious passenger invited last minute by Maggie Bateman, a struggling (failed?) artist who might just be getting his big break in NYC when the flight lands

A pilot who seems capable enough with his co-pilot and their strikingly beautiful, expert stewardess

16 minutes after the flight takes off, it crashes into the sea and only two people survive: Scott and JJ.  Even more amazing is that Scott swims hours in the dark with a dislocated shoulder, dragging JJ with him to save both of their lives.  This heroic act brings him into an unwelcome media frenzy that starts with praise and morphs into suspicion and conspiracy theories under the loud mouthed rhetoric of Bateman's Right Wing News Cable mogul, Bill Cunningham who has questionable morals and bends laws to get his version of truth out to his adoring fans.

The novel starts at a breathless pace capturing the tenuous moments after the crash and delirium of Scott and JJ as they desperately try to survive.  Then, the action slows down as Hawley takes readers inside the list of passenger names and gives the sordid details of their lives before the crash making each of the players a potential suspect to explain the reason for the crash.

Was it conspiracy? Was it an act of terrorism? Was there an illicit affair between would be hero, Scott and Maggie?

The backstory chapters are interspersed with chapters delving into the aftermath of the crash which might even be more dangerous than the shark infested waters that Scott Burroughs swam through in the pitch black.

Hawley shows us the ugly side of the media circus and speculation that so many of us are prone to believe after any disaster.  Sometimes random things just happen.  Random people come into our lives.  Random disasters happen even when multimillionaires are involved.

Or do they?

That is the central question of this book, and it takes until the very end for everything to unravel and the truth to be revealed.

I liked it.  I didn't love it.  I thought some parts were brilliant, but others were boring and repetitive.  Overall, though, it was suspenseful enough to make it a page turner. I'd be surprised if this one isn't made into a movie.

"In a Dark Dark Wood": A Bachelorette Party Gone Awry

Looking for a gift for someone who loved the book 'Girl on the Train' by Paula Hawkins?  Ruth Ware's debut novel 'In a Dark Dark Wood' might be the best gift ever for someone who loves a fluffy thriller in the same vain as 'Gone Girl' and 'Girl on the Train.'

Ware's hen party (the UK name for bacholerette party) gone awry tale garnered rave reviews and even won a spot as Amazon's top book pick for August 2015.  It was a bestseller and received lots of book buzz as a summer 2015 best books pick.

The story centers around Nora (formerly known as Lee by her school friends) who reluctantly decides to attend a hen party for her ex- best friend Clare who she has neither seen or heard from in over a decade.  Because Nora's friend Nina also decides to go, Nora makes the creepy trek to the isolated glass house in the English countryside for a weekend of unknowns.  Why would Clare contact her out of the blue even though she didn't even receive a wedding invitation? Who else would be there? What exactly were they going to do for the entire weekend.

Nora likes her privacy choosing a life of writing and running and living in a tiny apartment alone in London.  She is unprepared for the catty behavior of the women and man invited to the hen and even less prepared to find out that Clare is marrying the love of Nora's life who she never really got over.

Told in alternating past and present chapters and narrated by Nora, this book is very quick, but it's also very odd.  Do grown women really behave like middle schoolers when thrown together in a big glass house? Ouija boards? Truth or Dare? Playing with guns? Scathing and bitchy comments towards each other? Maybe some people actually act like this and talk like this, but I am glad that I am not stuck in a big old glass house in the middle of a creepy forest with them for an entire weekend.

I guess there was some suspense and the mood was ultra dramatic as well with the house almost taking on a personality of it's own. The dark dark woods also add to the scare factor symbolizing both freedom for Nora when she goes for her runs to clear her mind and also the suffocating fears of the unanswered questions.

People seem to really like this book, so maybe it's just me.  I don't get the whole "psychotic women who have troubled pasts and harbor ill feelings that turn them into mental nightmares who are okay with gruesome killing" thing.  I also have an issue with reading books that don't have even one likable character.  It's hard to care if someone is fighting for their life or sanity when you don't care if they live or die.  And that's exactly how I felt during this book.

Maybe for some people the revelations throughout the hen weekend and while Nora is in the hospital are shocking and thrilling, but for me, I felt the plot was weak and predictable.  Suspenseful? I'm not sure if that word works for this book.  It was more just a sad and twisted tale of women who have never grown up and resolved their issues from the past.  Stories like this always contain one super psycho mega bitch and this book does not disappoint in that regard.

Thrillers are never my go to genre of choice, but I am always hopeful that one will live up to the hype  and rave reviews of devoted fans.

This one just didn't do it for me.

"Luckiest Girl Alive": Mean Spirited and Darkly Twisted

I read yet another book that is capitalizing on the success of Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl" and yet another thriller with psychotic women at it's core that has the word "girl" in the title.  Even Reese Witherspoon has tweeted about how amazing Jessica Knoll's twisted novel "Luckiest Girl Alive" but does it live up to the hype and it's instant New York Times Bestseller status?

I'm a firm believer that just because everyone else thinks something is fantastic doesn't mean that it actually is.  I also don't always agree with the books that everyone thinks are amazing.  Page turning doesn't always equate to awesome book.  For me, "Luckiest Girl Alive" didn't have a soul or the soul of Ani (formally TifAni) FaNelli was as black as the rose on the front cover.

As the lone narrator of this book, Ani, invites her readers into her seemingly perfect life as she prepares for her amazing wedding in Nantucket to her amazing, blue blood fiancee who seems to adore her.  Ani works as a feature writer at The Women's Magazine in New York City.  Her main work revolves around sex tips for women and she aspires for something greater even though many would kill to have her job, and her fiancee, and her fancy labeled clothes (which she constantly references), and her ever shrinking, wedding preparation waist line (which she is obsessed with).

But Ani has a huge blemish on her past that she longs to forget and that the reader isn't really privy to until the last half of the novel.  The immensity of her teenage days as TifAni, an outsider who is plunged into the old money world of the very prestigious Bradley School and the privileged and ugly lives of her classmates, gave her the ambition to stop at nothing in order to make others believe she is worthy.  While at Bradley she was willing to sacrifice her reputation, her safety and in some instances her sanity in order to make the popular kids like her, but the mean spirited nature of the school sucks her in even further and further.  The bottoming out is horrific and maybe not as poignant as it should be?

This novel reminded me of the very dark and twisted movie Heathers (1988) starring Christian Slater and Winona Rider, but with even more disturbing aspects in it.  I quite liked Heathers (at least I did when I was a teenager, but I haven't seen it in many years), but found more of a distaste than a fondness for "Luckiest Girl Alive." Ultimately this novel felt like a mean YA novel full of spoiled rich kids who mistreat themselves and others while Mommy and Daddy's money protects them from consequences.  I guess that might be why the emotional weight of what happens to everyone didn't feel as heavy to me.  Each character in this book is contemptible in different ways.  Ani is an insatiable snob who doesn't really care about anyone but herself even after all the events play out.  Her best friend Nell is the same.  Ani's mother only cares how things look to others.  The popular students at Bradley are ridiculous stereotypes of every mean girl and mean bully movie ever created.  Ani's fiancee's cluelessness doesn't seem to fit and the scenes which feature his bland mother and father and overly racist cousin ring false.  The few characters who do garner compassion also disappoint as the story unfolds.  One becomes a monster, and the other a lewd predator.

I always have high hopes for any new thriller that promises to be entertaining and intense, but mostly I am let down by how psychotic and shallow everyone in many thrillers are.  I find myself drawn in more by psychologically complex characters who lose their way, or are aware of their darkness, or are  compassionate in some way.  For me, "Luckiest Girl Alive" lacked that sensitive side and ultimately felt bleak and heartless.

Reese Witherspoon has already bought the rights to make it into a movie, and it will most likely be very popular and many people will read "Luckiest Girl Alive" and love it.  I'm just not one of them.

"The Silent Wife": A terrifying and realistic portrait of a relationship gone awry

I was beginning to think that maybe I am adverse to thrillers - especially dark ones about domestic issues that end in very unsettling ways.  Although everyone I know LOVED "Gone Girl" and "The Girl on the Train," I found both of them okay at first, but stopped enjoying them about half way through the book.  What was missing for me in both of those books was a likable character.  They were page turners, though, and many people seem to judge books by how quickly they want to finish them.  I, on the other hand, judge books by how I would like them to never end (like "All the Light You Cannot See" . . . I would have been happy if Anthony Doerr tacked on another 200 pages to that book).

So, what was it about "The Silent Wife" by A.S.A. Harrison that intrigued me enough to say that I enjoyed it way better than either "Gone Girl" or "The Girl on the Train" when it hasn't received as much attention from the press or from readers?  For me the methodical, terse narrative about Jodi Brett and Todd Gilbert, a very antiseptic couple who are more quiet roommates who tolerate the others' faults to stick to a routine, felt way more plausible than the over the top follies of the characters in other thrillers that I have read.  On the first page, the narrative tells us that her marriage to Todd "is approaching the final stage of disintegration, that [Jodi's] notions about who she is and how she ought to conduct herself are far less stable than she supposes, given that a few short months are all it will take to make a killer out of her." This sets up the insidious tale of how Jodi becomes a killer.

In the every other chapter set up (one chapter is titled "Her" and the next is titled "Him", and it flip flops like that throughout the novel), we find out that Jodi never wanted to get married, but after 20 years together, she and Todd, at least in her mind, are married.  She allows him his infidelities knowing that he always finds his way back to her.  She spends her days counseling a few select clients, walking her dog, making gourmet meals and taking the occasional floral arranging class.  Her life seems cold, calculated and very controlled just like their beautiful streamlined, clutter free lake view apartment in Chicago.

Todd, on the other hand, is a self made successful real estate flipper.  He takes the edge off of his stressful job by having a daily joint, and one woman or another on the side. Although his little flings never seem to amount to much, he strays too far from Jodi after his young girlfriend (the daughter of his best friend) tells him that she's pregnant.  She's young and makes Todd feel alive after a crippling bout of depression.  Although he loves Jodi, she doesn't make him feel vibrant in his mid-40s the way his girlfriend, Natasha does.  The only problem, though, is that he doesn't know how to break it to Jodi that when he leaves her she quite literally will lose everything that they built together in the past 20 years since they are not legally married.  He also isn't prepared for the backlash from his best friend.

Maybe what I liked so much about this book was the psychological aspect.  Although I didn't love the flashbacks (written like a movie script) with Jodi's therapist Gerard, I did love the deep psychological exploration of what made Jodi tick. The other aspect of the book was the probability of it.  Relationships sometimes reach a tipping point even as both people involved are aware of the issues because no one wants to disturb the routine.  Sometimes it's the silence in a marriage that ends it, or the lack of passion, or dishonesty. Both characters in Harrison's book are smart, too smart really for what happens to them.  The writing is smart as well, and it's a pity that this debut novel from A.S.A. Harrison was her last novel since she died shortly before the release of "The Silent Wife."

If you liked "Gone Girl" or "The Girl on the Train" most likely you will like "The Silent Wife" as well.  If you are like me, though, maybe you'll like it even if you didn't enjoy the other two more popular, sinister books about dysfunctional marriages that end in tragic and unexpected ways.