September Book Review

Welcome to the September edition of Beth’s Super Fab Book Review!  I hope you find something you’d like to read.

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova-Lisa Genova also wrote Still Alice, which I read in August and really liked (remember-- the links to my previous book reviews are over on the right). I was excited to read this novel, but was pretty disappointed.  Left Neglected tells the story of a woman who is in a car accident and as a result, loses the ability to not only use the left side of her body, but to recognize anything on the left.  So if there are two people standing in front of her, she only sees the person on the right.  Supposedly this is an actual medical condition, but the whole story seemed far-fetched, and quite frankly, I was bored after awhile with all the ways the main character had no left…can only read the right half of a page, can only see half a picture, can’t read her watch if it’s on the left arm.  It just got old fast.  Additionally, the other storyline, that of her being a busy working mother before the accident and now coming to terms with her having to be content staying home with her family as she can no longer work seemed thrown in there and could have been developed better.  It was an okay book, and you might definitely like it, it just wasn’t for me.

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay- This book has had a lot of buzz lately, and is even being made into a movie so I was excited to read it.  The setting of the book is Paris during World War II.  Sarah and her family are Jews who are forced to leave their home during a huge round up of Jews (the Vel’ d’Hiv’), however, Sarah, not realizing the seriousness of the round-up, and that she and her family would likely never return, locks her little brother into a hidden cabinet for safety, with the intentions of returning and letting him out.  A really great yet awful premise, and the book generally was a page turner.  Sarah and her parents are taken to a concentration camp and the conditions and storyline are truly heartbreaking.  I won’t tell you anymore, you have to read it to see what becomes of the family and the brother.   I only gave the book 3/5 stars however, because although that part of the novel is interesting, I didn’t enjoy the second storyline which is woven through Sarah’s story…Julia Jarmond, a reporter in modern days who is researching the Vel’ d’Hiv’, is a whiny American living with her French husband and daughter in Paris.  She’s pregnant, her husband cheats on her, there’s a dying grandma…really?  The author needed to add all that to this terrific story?  Also, I hate to say this, but the author is not the best writer in the world.  I think the Sarah/Vel’ d’Hiv’ story idea was great, but another author could have written this better.  (I feel so mean saying that, and I hope the author never googles herself and finds her way here, because I’d feel bad.  But I think you will probably agree with me.)

Smokin’ Seventeen by Janet Evanovich-If you haven’t read any of Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books, go get one at your library! (Although, maybe not the first one, Evanovich hadn’t hit her groove yet with the characters.)  The book titles are numbered (One For the Money, Two For the Dough) so as you can see, Evanovich has written 17 novels now about Stephanie and her sidekick Lula, Grandma Mazur, her two hot guys, and her hamster, Rex.  Basically, Stephanie is a bounty hunter…she goes after the people who don’t show up in court after her cousin’s bonds business bails them out of jail.  She is bad at this.  Her car gets blown up or somehow destroyed, sometimes multiple times, in every book (and in very crazy, creative ways).  Her sidekick Lula has the best lines of a sidekick, ever.  She is constantly going back and forth between her two hunky guys…Ranger and Morelli (I’m pulling for Morelli, but I also enjoy when she’s with Ranger).  The situations she gets herself into are usually hilarious (in this book for example, one of her captures is a self-proclaimed vampire, and three people are trying to kill her, which made for one of the best endings ever in the the Stephanie books this time!)  Is this great literature?  No!  Definitely not!  It’s very fun, light reading, and I can’t wait for number 18 to come out in November.  As soon as I see it, I will get on the waiting list, and will probably be something insane like #39, because the books are popular:  once you read a Stephanie book, you will be hooked! (Again, maybe not the first one.)

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson-Talk about your page turners!  I read this one in a day and a half, I really couldn’t put it down.  Christine, the main character, suffers from a tragedy induced disorder that makes her forget everything from day to day.  So when she wakes up every morning, she doesn’t know where she is, who that dude is in the bed next to her, or why she is almost 50 years old (she thinks she’s in her twenties, her age before her accident).  Her husband fills her in every morning on who she is, how she has this crazy amnesia, and assures her she is safe, and then he leaves her alone and heads to work.  The only thing is, every day she gets a phone call from a doctor who tells her that he has been secretly working with her, and to look in the closet, where she will find a journal she is keeping there.  When she looks for the journal and finds it (every single day) she reads what she’s been writing (which of course she forgets once she falls asleep at night) and discovers that maybe the story of her amnesia that her husband tell her isn’t quite right.  In fact, on the cover of her journal she has written, “Don’t Trust Ben” (Ben is her husband).   But can she trust the doctor?  He also seems in on things, and why are they meeting in secret?  I’m not telling you anything that’s not on the dust jacket, so don’t worry that you know what’s going to happen, because you don’t.  This is a page turning thriller and I bet it’s made into a movie in the next year or so!

Election by Tom Perrotta-I ran across Election because I was trying to reserve Perrotta’s newest novel at the library.  I’m very excited about his new one (The Leftovers), and am first on the list when the library gets it in.  Election and one of Perrotta’s other novels, Little Children (also an excellent novel),  were both made into movies.  Election was made back in the 90’s starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, I remember seeing it years ago and it was an enjoyable movie.  The book was good too.  A very easy, quick read, the story revolves around a high school student presidential election and is told in turns by the three candidates and the social studies teacher who is the election advisor.  It was a terrific story, very well told, the characters were spot on (high school angst and all), and the ending was a good satisfying wrap-up. 

Sneak Peek:  Now I’ve moved on to Confessions of a Prairie B*tch, Alison Arngrim’s autobiography.  And shame on you if you don’t know that Alison Arngrim played Nellie in “Little House and the Prairie”.  I am loving it, and will tell you about it next time!                                                                                                                                                                                      

Yes.  I wear reading glasses.  You got a problem with that?