Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt

ISBN:   9781400069408
Grade:  F

Mr. Chartwell is the debut novel from Rebecca Hunt with a creative concept that unfortunately fell flat for me.  Ester Hammerhans is a recently widowed librarian looking to rent out a room in her house who is connected to Winston Churchill on the eve of his retirement through a large black dog.  This walking talking dog named Mr Chartwell is also known as Black Pat, symbolizes depression and has come to rent the room from Ester for a large sum of cash.  Creative idea for a book isn't it?

There's not much for me to say about the plot of Mr Chartwell as not much of the book stuck with me.  The cover gave me high hopes as did the publisher's description, but the meat in between the covers bored me to be quite honest.  The idea for the book was so fascinating and I'm a sucker for any book with a dog as a main character.  This one I had to force myself to finish as only the character of Mr. Chartwell only mildly had my interest.  Ester was so 2 dimensional and flat to me that I never cared much about her.  The writing was drab and not my taste.

Anyone who is interested in reading this for themselves is more than welcome to my copy.  My copy is an ARC edition provided to me by the publisher.  Email me at shelleythebooksnob at gmail.com with your info and I'll send you my copy.  Hopefully someone else enjoys this more than I did.    

Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt

ISBN:   9780547152608

Release Date:  April 5, 2011
Grade:  A+ Recommended for: anyone who is a fan of YA lit, anyone who follows the Newbery awards, fans of The Wednesday Wars. Doug Swieteck is a bummed out 8th grader whose family is uprooted from Long Island to a small town near the Catskills after his father is fired from his job in 1968.  Doug is the youngest of 3 boys, his eldest brother Lucas is serving in Vietnam and his other brother Chris is full of anger and quite the bully.  Doug's dad is a jerk, plain and simple, as he rules the house with his fists - the same fists that got him fired from his Long Island job.  Doug's mom tries her best but cannot control the violent temper of her husband.  Doug meets Lil Spicer, the daughter of the town's deli owner and the two become good friends.  Since the teachers at school think of Doug as a thug thanks to his brother's alleged shenanigans, Doug finds solace in the town's library where he finds Audobon's book of birds.  Lucas returns from Vietnam with his face and eyes burned and his legs amputated at the knees and dad and his sidekick Ernie Eco wreck havoc on the town.  What unravels at the end proves how despicable Doug's dad and Ernie Eco are and will have you thanking you lucky stars that you (hopefully) didn't have a dad like Doug's.  Okay For Now is a touching coming of age story with heart and those who have read The Wednesday Wars will recognize a few characters. Obviously from my rating I loved this book.  The cover is fantastic and I fully admit to judging books by their covers.  The cover sets the tone for Doug's attitude throughout most of the story.  From the start the book captured my attention and it never dwindled.  The Audobon bird plates were expertly woven into the story and added so much emotion.  If ever there was a book deserving of a Newbery award, Okay For Now is that book.  Gary Schmidt is a wonderful YA writer who makes you forget that you're reading a YA book.  He transports the reader into their childhood with themes that are easily identifiable.  Even if you were not around in the 60s, there are common themes in the war in Iraq that generate almost as much contempt as Vietnam.  At some point most of us have felt like an outsider and could easily see ourselves in Doug's shoes.  There is just the right amount of humor and sadness and eccentric characters to keep the reader turning pages at a voracious pace.  There is not one other YA title that I would recommend nearly as much as Okay For Now.  Do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book, it's a must read and I dare you to come up with a better YA title for 2011. Thank you so much to NetGalley, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers and Clarion Books for my advance read of Okay For Now which is sure to be a Newbery winner. Read an excerpt for yourselves here.

Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America by Les Standiford and Det Sgt Joe Matthews

ISBN:   9780547152608
Grade:   A+
Recommended for: fans of In Cold Blood, true crime fans, anyone who remembers the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh

Thank you to Ecco Books and NetGalley for my advance read of Bringing Adam Home.


Bringing Adam Home is an eye opening account of what happened and did not happen during the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh.  If you were around in the 1980s you certainly remember the Adam Walsh case and remember the impact it had on the country.  Everything started at a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida where Adam and his mother made a quick stop to buy a lamp.  While his mother looked for the lamp, Adam went over to the video game section and started playing one of the display games.  There was an argument between Adam and a few other kids which resulted in the Sears security guard asking the kids to leave the store.  So Adam waited for his mom outside when the world’s most repulsive skeeve Ottis Toole approached him and led Adam into his car.  Toole used Adam as his punching bag and later decapitated him and threw his head into a drainage canal.

The investigation into Adam’s murder went wrong in every way possible. The Hollywoood PD could not have been more disorganized and the detectives assigned to the case were the poorest excuses for police officers.  This crime happened in the early days of DNA testing and long before Amber alerts and a national database for missing persons.  Detective Joe Matthews was on loan from a Miami PD and was the only cop who was determined to solve this case.  What unravels is nearly 25 years of police incompetence, police that looked out for their fellow officers no matter how much they screwed up and finally due to Matthews’ unrelenting diligence, a resolution to the case.

This book is so compulsively readable that once you start reading it becomes difficult to put down.  There are no lulls in the story despite the amount of time that it encompasses.  Ottis Toole is the vilest of the world’s skeeves and is described so well that you can’t help but imagine the stink of beer and onions that emanated from Toole.  What floored me most about this book was the apathy of the Hollywood PD detectives to close Adam’s case.  It had me wondering why, were none of these police officers parents and wouldn’t they want closure if it were their child instead of Adam.  More so, how could you sleep at night knowing that you’re not doing your best to give John and Reve Walsh closure that their son did not die in vain.  The long line of negligent cops is redeemed by Joe Matthews who was the only one within the police who wanted to know who killed Adam.  The actions of Matthews brought smiles and tears to my face as I was reading silently cheering him on.  The Walsh family should be applauded for their efforts to change the way law enforcement investigates missing persons.  Many children have been safely returned home to their families thanks to the legislature that the Walshes were instrumental in bringing to life.  While Toole may not have been formally charged in the murder of Adam Walsh, there is no doubt that he was the killer.

Bravo to Ecco Books for publishing yet another amazing book this year. This book is a must read for anyone who considers themselves a true crime fan and for those who enjoyed In Cold Blood. Bringing Adam Home is a topnotch novel that will have you glued to its pages. If you remember anything about this case, you need to read this book, and even if you’re not familiar with the case you still need to read the book. I highly recommend Bringing Adam Home as a must read of 2011.

  

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

ISBN:   9781442409057
Release Date:   March 22, 2011
Grade:   B+
Recommended for fans of YA series, fans of The Handmaid's Tale 


Thanks to the good folks at Simon & Schuster and Atria Books for my ARC.  No book before this was devoured by my book club and raved about as passionately as this debut effort from Lauren DeStefano.

Wither is the first installment in a YA dystopian trilogy set a hundred years or so in the future.  The book starts off with a bang throwing the reader right into the action while filling in pertinent background info as the pages turn.  We learn that there is a generation of super humans who are genetically perfect and cured of all tragic diseases.  This generation having their genes modified so much have gone on to produce children with seriously diminished lifespans due to a virus that they are not immune to.  The virus that affects the modern generation that causes girls to die at 20 years old and boys at 25.  This is causing young girls to be kidnapped by a group of people called Gatherers whose sole mission is to round up young girls to sell as teen brides to produce offspring to be used as test subjects to find a cure for the virus.  Rhine Ellery is kidnapped by these Gatherers and taken from Manhattan to somewhere in Florida where she is sold to a high society family as a bride.  Rhine shares a husband with three other young girls and is doted upon by her personal servant, one who runs luxurious baths and sews exquisite clothing for any occasion.  Rhine is resistant to this new lifestyle and dreams of escaping to be reunited with her twin brother.  We get to see the dynamics of sisterhood amongst the three wives throughout their unique relationships with their shared husband.  About a year goes by in this book where Rhine together with a servant named Gabriel plans her escape to freedom with the help of the eldest sister wife.

My first impression of the book was that it had better live up to its cover which has a young girl dressed in a fancy getup wearing what I know to be a shade of Urban Decay eyeshadow and a forlorn expression on her face.  My second thought was that this was going to be another YA book series that would become my latest reading addiction.  While I was not a fan of the way the book started by throwing the reader into the thick of the action, things quickly picked up within 50 pages.  From there it was hard to put the book down as I had an idea of what I thought would happen and wanted to find out if I was right.  In the beginning I thought that this book would introduce us to Rhine and she'd get pregnant and book 2 would be about the baby while book 3 would be about her death.  Suffice it to say that my assumption was totally wrong.  While this book may have been inspired by Margaret Atwood's dystopia The Handmaid's Tale, there are similarities but Wither is its own story geared towards the teen market.  That being said I think this series will definitely appeal to adults particularly Atwood fans.  What surprised me most was the fact that this is a book written by a debut author who is only 26!  The storyline is addicting and there is just enough darkness and mystery to keep you turning page after page wondering where it would go next.  Now I'm waiting with bated breath for the second and third installments of this trilogy.  My prediction is that this series is going to be huge, like Twilight huge, only a million times better written.  So if you're a fan of sci-fi, dystopias, YA or Margaret Atwood, give this book a try and I'm sure you'll be a fan.


Read an excerpt here.

Queens of All the Earth by Hannah Sternberg

ISBN:   97816108801900
Grade:   C+
Release Date:   June 15, 2011

Thanks NetGalley for my advanced read of this book!

Queens of All the Earth is the debut novel from Hannah Sternburg that takes its title from a gorgeous E.E. Cummings poem.  This is a story about a Cornell freshman named Olivia who has a complete mental breakdown upon starting college and finds herself in a catatonic state for some time.  Once Olivia starts to come around, her older sister Miranda thinks that a vacation is in order to help ease Olivia back into reality.  The two sisters take off on a European vacation to Spain to see Barcelona.  Once they arrive Miranda realizes that there has been a mistake with their reservation at a hostel and a hodgepodge of characters enter the story like a Baptist minister and his lost soul son.  This book is a pretty portrait of Barcelona scenery and gives a good look into what one might experience traveling abroad and especially staying in a hostel.  Queens of All the Earth is a coming of age story with a touch of mental illness thrown in and set in the lovely background of Barcelona.

I wanted to love this book from the NetGalley description and the GoodReads description but ended up just liking the story.  My issue was that I wanted more of an ending and felt that the one we are given was a bit too brief.  I wanted more closure between certain characters.  What I did really love about the story is the prose and the descriptions of various places in Barcelona that made me feel as if I were seeing these sights myself.  The book is rather short, clocking in at under 200 pages and likely will be finished in one sitting.  Once this book is released in June I will definitely give this a second read to see if the second time around is better.  Hannah Sternberg is an author that I will most definitely read again as I enjoy her style of writing.  Overall this book is escapism at its finest and perfect for those who want to go to Spain via a novel for a few hours.  

A Widow's Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates

ISBN:   9780062015532
Grade:  B-

Thank you to NetGalley for my advance read of this book!

The much anticipated memoir by Joyce Carol Oates is an unflinchingly honest look into her life as a widow and the writer many of us have come to love.  True to her short stories and fiction, A Widow’s Story has the same profound descriptive and sometimes harsh style of writing that she’s known for whether you love it or hate it.  If you’ve read anything JCO you probably have an idea of what she’s really like and reading her memoir will likely confirm those thoughts.  A Widow’s Story is the story of JCO in the months after her husband Raymond Smith’s untimely passing due to pneumonia and a story about the man behind the author. She and Ray had spent nearly 50 years together and both are well known names in the literary world.  The pair had started the Ontario Review which has helped further the careers of quite a few authors, not to mention all the JCO books and her teaching at Princeton.  What follows is a handbook of sorts pertaining to all the tedious “death duties” following the passing of one’s spouse and gives us an intimate look into her email correspondence.

The memoir starts off with JCO receiving a note on her windshield stating “learn to park you stuppid bitch” which feels so ironic that the person who left that note has no clue of the recipient’s identity.  The note was left in response to a haphazard parking job after taking Ray to the ER for respiratory symptoms.  Ray is diagnosed with pneumonia with E Coli in the lungs, a diagnosis that carries a 70% mortality rate.  Ray appears to be on the mend until a secondary infection on unknown origin takes over the other lung and ultimately kills Ray.  This takes JCO from our beloved author to being a regular person.  She deals with things in the hospital like a CNA from hell and the revolving door of medical personnel and goes home to a pair of cats.  She also reads, although not in bed and not titles that the every day reader would read like Ulysses.  Returning home after Ray’s passing, the house goes into an immediate shift with her two cats Cherie and Reynard (stars themselves in two children’s books) blaming her for Ray not being home when it really is the hospital’s fault for Ray catching the secondary infection.  This begins the journey through widowhood and trying desperately to pick up the pieces.

Normally I love JCO and have been an avid fan since discovering her in high school, but this book didn’t wow me like some of her fiction.  The book itself is well written and has its share of touching moments yet there was a certain coldness that didn’t endear the book to me.  From reading her fiction I had an idea in my mind of what JCO is like which included being peculiar and highly articulate and those were confirmed traits. The coldness was unexpected to me and for some reason I thought her to be a warmer person who just so happens to write about utterly horrific events in her fiction.  There are toucning moments in the memoir including JCO wondering what Ray’s last thoughts and words were as he died alone surrounded by strangers.  The second part that had me tearing up was the dream with her young parents and not wanting them to know that Ray was in the hospital.  The passing of her cat Reynard had me in tears as he like Ray died alone yet will be forever remembered in his book Where Is Little Reynard. Finally the last message Ray left for JCO saying love to her and his kitties.

This as a whole is a lovely look into the life of Raymond Smith that is new to many of us, a portrait of Ray as an avid gardener, the man who brought home two little motherless kittens from the pound and the man who never read any JCO fiction. This is also proof that the prolific powerhouse of literary fiction is human and grieves like any regular person would grieve. The 400+ pages make for a dense read but well worth it for the devoted JCO fan.

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

ISBN:   1439102724

Release date:   March 1, 2011

Grade:   B+

Thank you to the fantastic folks at Atria Books and Simon & Schuster for my ARC of Sing You Home! 

Going into this book I had my expectations set mighty low since the last Picoult book I read was My Sister's Keeper and I thought that was an abomination.  Sing You Home is different, it was quite readable and enjoyable and I didn't throw it across the room after finishing.

Sing You Home is a story about infertility, gay parenting rights and religion.  We meet Zoe Baxter a music therapist and her landscaper husband Max who want more than anything to have a child.  Both Zoe and Max have infertility issues unfortunately all to common like PCOS and have to deal with miscarriage after miscarriage after IVF cycles.  This seemingly endless struggle takes its toll on their marriage as most couples dealing with infertility can attest to both financially and emotionally.  After their last stillbirth Max has reached his breaking point and divorces Zoe who then finds solace in a woman named Vanessa, while Max finds it in booze and later church.  Zoe and Vanessa start off as friends and then Zoe realizes that she cannot live completely without Vanessa and they evolve into a lesbian couple.  When Max, now heavily into religion as a member of a very conservative church, is approached by Zoe to give his permission for her to use their frozen embryos a battle for custody begins and we get to meet some rather unsavory characters.  We get to see the hypocritical side of some religious zealots who cannot point their fingers at other sinners fast enough while sweeping their own sins under the rug. 

Maybe it's because this subject is so near and dear to my heart, or maybe it's something else but this story touched me deeply.  I felt for Zoe and have been there myself wanting something so badly that others get to experience effortlessly.  Her emotions were spot on and in particular her hoping Sirens at the bottom of the sea take her little boy home to sing him home, just melted my heart.  Picoult must have done some excellent research to nail these emotions down as Zoe felt like a fully developed character as did Vanessa and Max.  She showed the ugly side of IVF - the expenses financially and emotionally from having all sorts of hormone injections that insurance almost never covers.  The uber conservative church grated on every nerve as I have some people close to me who happen to be gay and it disgusts me every time I hear some religious loudmouth spouting off hate towards gays.

Most importantly, Picoult got the ending right if not perfect. I will not spoil it for those who have not yet read it, but what the ending does not do is pull any fast punches that leave the reader groaning and wondering why Picoult thought that twist to be necessary.  The ending had me cheering and I closed the book with a smile on my face and a satisfied feeling.  Literary fiction this is not, but Sing You Home is a marvelous effort by Picoult that has me thinking I might read more of her titles.

This book comes with a cd of songs written by Picoult which tie in to each section of the story, or at least the advance edition includes the cd.  This should be a hit with Picoult's army of fans and it would make a good selection for bookclubs.  I highly recommend Sing You Home and cannot wait to hear what the rest of you think of this book.