{read: psychological thriller} Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I am coming late to the Gone Girl party, and I suspect that many of you will not like what I have to say. This was one of the most hyped books of 2012, and I couldn't wait to read it. It seemed that everywhere I turned, people were reading it, loving it, and urging me to read it. I'd read Gillian Flynn before, and while I didn't fall in love with her books, I enjoyed them. I was expecting fireworks, something that was head-and-shoulders above her previous books. What I got was more like a sparkler.

Perhaps it was the hype, and perhaps no book could have lived up to it, but I disliked Gone Girl so much during the first third of the book that I almost didn't finish it. It sat on my table as I picked up another book and then another. The eager hopefulness in Amy's diary entries, contrasted with the contempt Nick showed toward Amy in his sections, turned my stomach. Yet, eventually I made it to the second third of the book, where the POV changed. Suddenly, I was intrigued. The change of narrator was interesting. I wanted to see what would happen next, what this person had to say. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm didn't last long. The plot felt contrived (although there are a few surprises), and while I briefly enjoyed pondering the difference between sociopath and psychopath and wondering which definition better fit these characters, in the end it wasn't a book that I'd recommend. It wasn't just that I didn't like the characters; it was that they weren't interesting. Beyond a few brief moments, I didn't much care what they'd do next. While the best books I've read have characters with voices so captivating that I'd listen to them do their Saturday chores and follow them down the grocery store aisles to see what kind of pasta sauce they'd choose, neither Nick nor Amy inspired this interest in me, and the plot wasn't exciting enough to make up for it. I was glad to be done with this book.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown, 2012)
My rating: 2.5 stars

{read: historical fiction} The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

This was another book on my fall TBR list, and I was eager to read it after hearing Chris speak about it on his book tour this summer. Pieces of it are autobiographical (he is Laura's brother) but the story itself, which revolves around the Armenian genocide that the Turks committed in WWI, is fictional. (It's not his grandparents' story that he's telling.) The genocide, however, is true, and it's amazing that we as a society have erased this from our collective conscience while we remember the Holocaust. The details of the genocide in the book are horrifying, but the storyline kept me turning the pages.

Some of the suspense was lost, however, because of the way the story was told. The reader knows from the beginning that Armen and Elizabeth both survive and get married, so the story is more about how they manage it. I thought the story would had more suspense if I hadn't known that, but it would have changed the entire structure of the plot, which is Laura (the granddaughter) investigating her grandparents' history. The book also felt a little stilted to me, pushing me away. Laura's sections are told in first person, but the sections about Armen and Elizabeth are in third person. Also, truth be told, I didn't find Laura to be that interesting as a character.

I think this is an important book to read because we should learn about the Armenian genocide and, for me, fiction is a more pleasant way to learn history than reading nonfiction. However, as a story, this was only average for me and didn't measure up to his previous work.

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian (Doubleday, 2012)
My rating:  3 stars

{read: Danish thriller} The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen

I was eagerly anticipating The Absent One after enjoying the first one in the Department Q series, The Keeper of Lost Causes, and it made my fall TBR list. While it was enjoyable, it wasn't the pageturner that I was anticipating. I felt like I was plodding through it, waiting for the action to pick up.

Carl, the new head of Department Q, returns from vacation to find that a case with a conviction has landed on his desk. This is odd because Department Q, located in the basement, was created to investigate cold cases, not ones that were already solved. But the more he and his trusty sidekick Assad investigate, the more they realize that all is not as it seems. On the personal side, Carl has his own problems to contend with — a shooting that left one of his colleagues dead and the other paralyzed from the neck down, and for which he feels guilty. To add more drama, Carl and Assad get a new colleague, Rose, who has feminist views, and Carl begins to realize that Assad has a complex past.

One complaint I had about this book, in addition to its pacing, is that a female character, Kimmie, is motivated by a vicious gang rape in her past.  This is a predictable plot device, and I expected more from Adler-Olsen.

All of that being said, I'll still read the next one in this series when it gets translated.

The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton Adult, 2012)
My rating: 3 stars

{read: mystery} And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman

Many people love the bestselling mystery author Laura Lippman and this August release is supposed to be a great read, but I was disappointed. I was expecting a mystery, a thriller, and a twisty plot in this standalone book. What I got was details about how a suburban Baltimore madam runs her business that bogged down the plot to the point where I would characterize this book more as fiction than mystery.

There was an interesting back story that I found more compelling than the present-day story, and I wondered if Lippman had to weigh the present story down with inner workings of the business side of prostitution to give her enough time to tell us the back story, since she switches back and forth between the two storylines. If so, I wish she had found another way to fill those pages. The back story was compelling, and I wanted the current story to keep up. Despite the high-profile cases in the news about other suburban madams, these sections ended up being boring reading. Finally, the ending was predictable. All in all, this was not one that I'd recommend if you're looking for a compelling page-turner or even a mystery.

Full disclosure: I haven't read any of Lippman's Tess Monaghan books, so I don't know how this compares. I did read her standalone novel Life Sentences a few years ago and enjoyed it.

For those of you keeping track, this is the first one I've finished on my fall TBR list. So far, I'm 0-1 in good reads.

And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman (William Morrow, 2012)
My rating: 2.5 stars

{read: hot fall books}

There's a lot of buzz over all the hot fall releases: new titles from Michael Chabon, J.K. Rowling, Barbara Kingsolver, and Junot Diaz. The shortlist of 6 titles for the Man Booker prize has also been announced. Yet my initial reaction when reading all of these lists was relief. None of these authors, none of these titles, none of these descriptions, grabbed me. After a summer filled with releases that I wanted to read as soon as they came out, this was almost a relief. Finally, time to catch up!




Here's what my fall TBR looks like:
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (I know, I know - everyone's already read this one!)
The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen
And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman
The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

And here are two on my TBR that were released a while ago:
A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin (this series was my summer series, now extending into fall)
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (and it has such a great cover!)

What are you reading this fall?