LaRose
by Louise Erdrich – Landreaux, always so careful when hunting,
takes a shot at a buck and hits something else instead. With his
heart in the pit of his stomach he finds his best friend's son and
the best friend of his own 5 yr. old son, lying on the ground. The
death tears apart the two families and Landreaux falls back on his
heritage as a native american for a solution to the pain he has
caused and he and his wife Emmaline give their beloved youngest son
LaRose to Dusty's parents. Dusty's father, Peter, sees the damage it
is doing to LaRose and proposes sharing the boy and in this way over
the years the two families start to heal but it is rocky going as
Dusty's mother, Nola, half sister to Emmaline, is suicidal and his
new sister Maggie and LaRose take on the responsibility of making
sure she doesn't succeed. Meanwhile LaRose's two older sisters adopt
Maggie as a sister giving her the support she so desperately needs.
As the story develops we learn about the very first LaRose, sold to
the local trader by her mother Mirage, and her special abilities that
have been handed down through the generations to each subsequent
LaRose; we learn the story of Landreaux and Romeo, two boys taken off
the reservation and put in boarding school and the event that tears
these two friends apart and sets Romeo on his lifelong quest for
revenge. When Romeo lands a job at the reservation hospital he sneaks
and peeks and eavesdrops until he thinks he has the truth about
Dusty's death and finally something that will destroy Landreaux and
when he reveals to Peter the story he has concocted in his mind, it
very nearly does.
Earth
by Ben Bova – a sci-fi novel and I still don't get why he titled it
'Earth' as much of the the book takes place in space or Jupiter. And
the whole book is as unlikely a scenario as was ever written. Plus, I
think he must have written this for a much younger audience.
Backstory: Earth is in the path of a death wave sweeping across the
galaxy when aliens appear and give Earth the technology to build a
shield and survive as well as interstellar travel with the caveat
that they search for other life on other planets and give them the
shield technology so that as much life can survive as possible and as
a result humans have spread across the galaxy. Fast forward to the
present: Tray, a young man who is 1,000 years in the future from his
own time due to interstellar travel/suspended animation is the only
survivor of a starship that exploded killing all on board including
his fiance. Tray had been sent out in a pod to make measurements on
the other side of the solar system when the explosion occurred and
his pod put him to sleep until he could be rescued nearly 400 years
later. Back on earth he is in a mental hospital/recovery unit and the
doctors decide he is not overcoming his survivor's guilt and want to
wipe his mind of those memories. Tray doesn't want that, to lose the
memories of his fiance, and so after being invited to a party for a
member of the governing council (why would a nobody get invited to
this party?) where he meets the second highest ranking member of the
council who takes a shine to him as well as a wealthy young woman who
also takes a shine to him and he immediately forgets all about his
fiance (I've already forgotten all their names), he manages to sneak
away from the facility. Anyway, the next day, the President of the
council talks the #2 guy, the leader of the opposition against a plan
by the President to basically enslave all the other intelligent life
they have discovered, into a little vacation going into the ocean of
Jupiter to see the leviathans that inhabit it and Tray along with the
young woman and her 'boyfriend', get invited as well (?). Anyway, at
the last minute before the submersible leaves the ship, the President
gets an emergency call from the council and must stay on the ship to
deal with it but y'all go ahead on without me. The submersible
malfunctions and loses it's ability to rise back to the surface so
they must evacuate in special survival suits to be picked up by the
ship when, surprise, the opposition leader's suit leaks and he dies.
Back on earth Tray and his now girlfriend and her father work to
expose the President's murderous work by getting Tray appointed to
the council to fill in for the opposition leader (yeah like that
would happen) and blah blah blah. Don't waste your time.
I
know Who You Are by Alice Feeney
– When Ciara was born, her mother died leaving leaving her to the
care of her Irish father and brother, a dirt poor family. A week
before her 6th
birthday after being yelled at by her older brother who has just been
traumatized by their father, Ciara runs to the shop to look, once
again, at the red shoes she so desperately wants for her birthday.
It's late in the day and getting darker when she is kidnapped by
Maggie and taken to London where she is given a new name...Aimee
Sinclair. Aimee adjusts to her new, better life with her new
'parents' who run a betting shop and has no desire to return to her
real family. When she is 6 thugs kill her parents and she is put in
foster homes when she keeps her identity a secret. Thirty years later
Aimee is a rising star actress, getting her big break, and her
husband of two years accuses her of having an affair with her leading
man, they have a big fight, and the next day he has disappeared.
Aimee calls the police who turn over all sorts of evidence
implicating her in his murder. She is arrested when they dig up a
body but released when they show her a picture of the two year old
dead man who has her husband's name but is not her husband. The story
has a big twist/surprise ending but I got very tired of Aimee always
going on and on in her head about her secrets and how she is always
acting and no one knows her true self and she was finally getting
what she always dreamed of. It was OK.
The
Boy by Tami Hoag – either I
had a hard time getting into this book or I didn't have much time to
read because it seemed like the the part I had read never got bigger
but then I did get into it. Detective Nick Fourcade and wife
Detective Annie Broussard are awakened in the night to attend a
murder scene, the 7 year old son of Genevieve Gauthier who had been
brutally stabbed to death and the mother attacked as well. Soon after
arriving at the scene a rainstorm washed away any evidence there
might have been outside and inside nothing was found to point to a
suspect. As the investigation unfolds links are found between the
mother, the police chief, and the crime scene investigator while the
mother's own past raises questions about her possible involvement.
Meanwhile, Annie is conducting her own part of the investigation and
discovers that the boy's 12 year old baby sitter has gone missing and
in her attempt to question a friend of the missing girl, the son of
the police chief's fiancee, she realizes he and his mother are
physically and emotionally abused. The case seems to be going nowhere
with enough animosity between Fourcade and the police chief that
nearly gets the detective fired until the very surprising twist at
the end that I did not see coming.
The
Witness by Sandra Brown – the
book opens just after a horrible car accident that Kendall and her 4
month old son survive as does the driver but the woman in the front
passenger seat did not. Kendall gets herself and her son out and then
barely manages to pull out the unconscious driver before the car
continues to slide down slope and into the ravine and is carried away
by the water from the heavy rains they have been having. She flags
down a car after getting back up to the road and the three of them
are taken to the local small town hospital. When the driver regains
consciousness he has amnesia and Kendall claims he is her husband. As
she is sneaking out to disappear, her 'husband' who suffered a broken
leg among other injuries, confronts her and she is forced to take him
with her as she goes to ground. Flash back several years, Kendall, a
young liberal lawyer who moved to a small town in South Carolina to
take the job of public defender and who met and married Matt, was
thrilled with how his father embraced her into their family but as
time goes by she starts to resent how 'present' he is in everything
about her and Matt's life together. Then on the day that she plans to
tell Matt she is pregnant she goes to visit one of her clients and
discovers that Matt is having an affair. Big fight, Matt storms out,
and Kendall decides to forgive him and goes looking for him and
stumbles on vigilante justice as they castrate and crucify a young
asian man for having consensual sex with a white girl and all the
prominent citizens in town are participating including her husband
and father in law. Kendall flees for her life and after alerting the
FBI, settles in Colorado where the FBI finally find her and are
taking her back to testify when the car accident occurs. Her husband
and FIL eventually escape, find out about the child, and set out to
find the boy and kill Kendall. Will she escape again before the FBI
agent recovers his memory, will Matt and her FIL find her? It's an
OK book, portions of it held my attention better than others.
The Partner
by John Grisham – new partner in a law firm in an unhappy marriage
with a child that he learns isn't his after all discovers that the
other partners are aiding and abetting a client to defraud the
government for $90 million with their cut being $30 million and their
plan to fire him and not give him a share. He plans meticulously and
fakes his death and disappears to Brazil with the $90 million. Four
years later, he is 'found' by the firm hired by the intended
recipient of the money, tortured, and returned to the states to the
FBI for prosecution but he can't tell them where the money is because
as part of his meticulous planning, he doesn't know. His girlfriend
has managed that part. It's a pretty good story, all his planning and
revenge with a little twist at the end.