Book Review: ROLLING TOWARD CLEAR SKIES

Title: Rolling Toward Clear Skies

Author: Catherine Ryan Hyde

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Pages: 293

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Alex, a registered nurse, and Dr Margaret ‘Maggie’ Blount run Doctors on Wheels, along with a doctor couple, John and Lacey Bishop. The four voluntarily head out to areas affected by natural calamities, and offer medical aid to those in need, without charging a cent.

During one such trip to Louisiana, the site of a hurricane, Maggie treats two newly orphaned sisters, 16-year-old Jean and 13-year-old Rose, who are suffering from pneumonia. She finds herself drawn to the two girls and chooses to take them home.

Predictably, Maggie’s daughters, 16-year-old Willa and 13-year-old Gemma aren’t happy. Already in a conflict-ridden relationship with their mother, they lash out at their mother’s decision to foster/adopt the two girls and go off to stay with their father.

Will this group of conflicted individuals ever become a true family?

 

I have read this author’s work before and have found her writing to be engaging. Unfortunately, this was far from her best work. The story lacked depth and I found so many issues that didn’t sit right.

The doctors are supposed to be helping victims of natural disasters. Although the anchor, Eleanor Price, commends their bravery, we never get the sense of them being in any real danger. The book sees them through a hurricane and a wildfire, but the danger is always past by the time they get there.

Even the trauma that Jean and Rose suffer, of which we hear a lot, is not something that we see in the present, not even in a flashback. It’s just something we are told about.

 

The descriptions do nothing to make the scenes come alive. The dialogues were cheesy and banal in some cases, and unreal in others, sounding almost like a counselling psychology textbook. Utterly unlike the way normal people would speak.

I didn’t like any of the characters. Not one. They all came across as fake and flat. Jean and Rose have no flaws. They are just so perfect. On the other hand, there’s no let up to the selfishness of Willa and Gemma, no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Alex was so passive, he was totally unnecessary. Early on, he tells Maggie that Jean and Rose are his favourites among Maggie’s daughters.

Maggie was so ‘good’, it was unbelievable. Especially with the attempts to set the parents of Jean and Rose as being terribly flawed. The girls talking to Maggie as if she was some great saviour was off-putting.

The anchor, Eleanor, was so brash, I wanted to slap her. I couldn’t imagine why Maggie would choose to invite her to do follow up stories with her family.

The only character who stood out miles above the others was Sunny, the little stray that Rose adopts.

Maggie couldn’t seem to make up her mind about Jean and Rose. She flitted back and forth between calling them fostered and adopted. At one point, she told Eleanor that they had been officially adopted. And then, a few pages later, the word, fostered, was used again.

Maggie’s motivation for adopting or fostering the girls was unclear. Why was she so taken up with them? Naturally, her daughters were upset with their mother.

Speaking of the girls, miffed at their mother’s actions, they go to their dad’s house and return more than ten months later. During that time, there is no mention of school. Presumably, they went to school while at their dad’s house, but there was no mention of school for Jean and Rose during those nine months. No mention of the challenges they might have faced. Not even one sentence to say they even went to school.

Also, during that period, as Maggie informs Eleanor, she doesn’t go to work, apparently to help Jean and Rose to adjust. Adjust to what? Willa and Gemma are away, so there are no challenges. How does Maggie earn a living during that period? How does she sustain her lifestyle, including the big house with the swimming pool? She returns to her clinic only at the 88 percent mark in the book. So what does she do during those ten-odd months?

The first chapter, with the interview with Eleanor, is one long and elaborate ‘tell’ exercise. It is boring and the worst way to seek to engage the reader in the lives of the characters.

Maggie does not recognize her own mother just because she has had some work done on her face.

The book has its heart in the right place, the idea that family is irreplaceable and that nothing else matters quite as much, but it takes too long, and the most circuitous route, to establish that. Not exactly an engaging story.

Of course, there is a happy ending, but though the characters’ emotions are wrung through, I was just glad it was over.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: NEVER HAVE I EVER

Title: Never Have I Ever

Author: Harker Jones

Publisher: Self-published

Pages: 338

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 

 

A young student, Jess, disappears after a Halloween party at an abandoned farmhouse. A year later, she still hasn’t been found. In the run-up to the anniversary of her disappearance, the following Halloween, the nerves of the townsfolk, especially those of her classmates, are already strained.

When eight students, Chase, Kim, Beth, Johnny, Biff, Andy, Scott and Christa, receive an identical text from an unknown number, asking them to play the game, Never Have I Ever, or be prepared to face the consequences, at first they fear that Jess may have returned to wreak vengeance, though no one knows what grudge she might bear. Initially, the eight students take the threat lightly until one of them is killed by someone in a scarecrow costume. Or maybe it isn’t a costume?

For at the end of the town, on the edge of the forest, lives Susan Boyle, an old and nearly destitute hag who is rumoured to dabble in magic and who is accused of having murdered her own kids. Is it Susan killing the children of the town for the rhyme they all sing about her?

First one, then another of the eight students who received the text begin to get killed. As the numbers drop from 8 to 7, and then 6, then 5, nerves are frayed, and it seems that every one of them has secrets they are hiding.

The remaining students huddle together, hoping to find answers and stay alive. Will they figure out who is out to get them before the killer comes for them again?

 

The book, written in the omniscient past tense PoV, took a long time to get into the heart of the story. For far too long, the narrative remained caught up in the drama of the high school students’ lives.

Until the 19% mark, we were still getting to know the characters. Nothing had even happened yet. Even the Prologue, which had held out some promise, seemed like a waste of time.

Around the 24 percent mark, the author was still dishing out more inane high school drama—who is crushing on who, who is in a relationship, etc. The characters took too long to figure out that they had all received the same text. Things started becoming interesting only at the 25 percent mark.

Once the killings started, the author was on a surer footing, holding the pace fast and steady, and keeping us readers at the edge of our seats. I continued to read. The author’s confidence was evident in the quality of the writing. The dialogues improved, not hitting a false note. The descriptions, particularly those relating to the rural setting, got better.

 

What marred the reading experience for me was the large number of errors. The book needed better editing.

A boy was described as, “He was so shining.” In another instance, we see this line, “Why tempt fate of suspension?’ One character, we are told, “busted into laughter.” Another character feels an “alleviation of the heart.”

In Chapter 1, we meet Barrett ‘Biff’ Branigan. Then in Chapter 7, we meet Biff’s mother, Elizabeth Barrett, even though in Chapter 6, she had been referred to as Elizabeth Branigan. The author uses the word sphincter when perhaps the word, spectre, was more suitable.

At one point, the surviving students find a tiara in a grave, and the narrator tells us the name of the student that it belonged to. A few short paragraphs later, Johnny identifies the student who owned the tiara. Johnny’s statement is meant to be revelatory but isn’t as the narrator has already made the revelation.

The students also find another student’s cuff in the same place. The thought that the owner of the tiara and the owner of the cuff may be colluding together is raised, when one student wonders how the two objects could be found together. Once again, some chapters later, Kim comes up with the theory that the owners of the two objects might have been working together and Biff cries out, “Whoa, I never considered two.”

Two different characters, Kim and Christa, think of the school principal as creepy and weird respectively. But both think, individually, that he is not a ‘pedo’.

The fact that the school building was built in an H formation was repeated twice.

A good editor would have weeded out these issues.

 

Although I was drawn into the events of the plot, I didn’t actually relate to the characters, possibly because of the surfeit of information about each one of them. Too much is told to us about them. Despite all the information, they were all no different from high school students in any other book. The only character I would have liked to know more about was Susan.

There’s a subplot that seems to be making a big deal about Biff’s sexuality, when it is obvious from the beginning.

Other than Andy’s parents who show up at the fag end of a chapter, and Biff’s mother who makes an appearance, none of the other parents have any role to play.

I thought it was clever of the author to invoke the scarecrow, the scary creature that scares birds and people alike, while bringing in a reference to Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.

I also appreciated the author’s attempt to bolster an unlikely hero.

 

Even though I don’t really enjoy the slasher-fest sub-genre of horror, this book held my interest. I hope the author intends to build on the momentum raised by this one. The only way I could settle for that ending was if there was a Book II coming up. 

 

 (I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: A MOTHER'S BETRAYAL

Title: A Mother's Betrayal

Author: Louise Guy

Publisher: Boldwood Books

Pages: 388

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐1/2 

Thirty-six-year-old identical twins, lawyer Arabella ‘Ari’ and nurse Florence ‘Flo’ Hudson, have a tight bond. Though far from close to their mother, neuroscientist Julia, she is still a very influential figure in their lives.

After her sixty-sixth birthday, Julia takes a flight to Canberra, and meets with a horrible accident. At the same time, Kayden, Flo’s six-year-old son, falls ill mysteriously, and the family has their hands full, stressing and caring for both patients.

It turns out that Kayden needs a rare type of blood, known as the Bombay phenotype, which presumably he inherited from his father. A transfusion of his father’s blood could save him. The trouble is that everyone thinks Kayden was born out of a one-night-stand his mother had. Only Florence knows the truth about his parentage, and she fears that revealing that truth will destroy her closest relationship.

Meanwhile, as Julia lies in a coma, a man in his sixties, Scott Cohen, shows up, claiming to be her colleague and partner. The family is torn apart, fearing their mother has been leading a double life for years. Ari and Flo read through her journals, increasingly shocked at the truth they find in its pages. Had their mother been manipulating them all these years?

The Hudson family is left floundering as one after another, lies, betrayal and deception surface, threatening to destroy them all.

 

The book is set in Melbourne, Australia.

Initially, the language felt a little stilted, the dialogue unnatural. At one point, the father, Mike, told Flo that it was his wedding anniversary. Shouldn’t a daughter have known that? The daughter wishes him in a lacklustre manner.

Florence’s son, Kayden, spoke like no six-year-old ever does.

In the first few chapters of the book, there was very little to move the action forward. The action moved up a gear only at the 16 percent mark when Julia meets with a horrific accident.

Julia has spent upwards of thirty years, flitting between her home in Melbourne and her workplace in Canberra, spending a week in each city. It is hard to imagine any government permitting such an arrangement, let alone for 30 years.  

 

I found Julia as a character very annoying and unreal. It was a pain that everyone had to jump through hoops to please or accommodate her. Julia’s husband, Mike, going out of his way to mollify her every time, seemed like a douche of a man. The entire family was constantly tiptoeing around her moods. The family dynamic was weird.

 

While the women’s professions are talked about frequently, it is unclear what the men are doing. Mike plays golf, and is presumably retired, but what he spent his lifetime doing is unclear.

Much is made out of Julia’s work. It’s all top-secret and confidential, but the few scraps of information we are given about it makes it appear banal and boring. I got the sense that the author hadn’t thought this one through, cloaking it all in hush-hush speak to give us the impression that there’s more there than we understand.

The author seems to have no idea how age works. The daughters are 36, and their mother, at 66, is exactly 30 years older. We don’t know the age of Gigi, Julia’s mother, but assuming she was at least 20 when Julia was born, that makes her 86. But not a word is said about how she might be coping with living alone, driving around by herself etc. The news of Julia’s accident, we are told, makes her look 10 years older, but age doesn’t just manifest itself in looks.

 

SPOILER

I found both Ari and Ryan insufferable, both acting as though she has been terribly wronged. Agreed that what Flo and Kayden’s father did was wrong, but Ari is quick to forgive him, but treats her own sister as if she were the greatest betrayer ever. Kayden's father doesn’t even have to ask Ari for her forgiveness. Perhaps she remembers her own wrongdoing against him. But when it comes to forgiving Flo, she forgets the big lie she once told and the act of wrongdoing that she herself committed.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: SO I LIED

Title: So I Lied

Author: Chelsea Ichaso

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 300

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Rich Jocelyn Elliott, and middle class Rowan Castillo and Cadence Fletcher have been close friends since high school. Over the years, however, they have moved on, busy in their own lives. Rowan is a single mother, raising her child, now eight, after the death of her boyfriend, Jake Elliott, Jocelyn's twin. 

Now that Jocelyn Elliott is engaged to be married to Landon, her long-time beau, she decides to treat her two besties to an exclusive bachelorette party at the bed and breakfast run by her aunt and uncle in a small village in Wales.

There they meet Magnus from Norway and Valentina from Argentina, two backpackers who draw the three women into their circle. Soon Jocelyn, Rowan and Cadence are convinced that there is something off about their two new friends. They wish they had never come to Wales and encountered them. 

The trip, meant to bind them closer, ends up fraying their friendship. By the end of the trip, will the consequences be much worse? 

The book begins with the death of one of the two women, and the other two friends and the aunt and uncle of Jocelyn seemingly distraught. The novel is told from the 1^st person present tense PoV of the three women, in flashback, describing the events that took place in their lives before they got to this point, before breaking into single chapters on what transpires after the death of one of them.

At first, I could not tell the three accounts apart, but as they revealed more of their secrets, I got a better understanding of who they were. But the voice wasn’t very clear. I had to keep checking back to the first page of the chapter to find out who was talking. After the first set of three 1^st person accounts, the writing got marginally better.

The voices of the characters were still not apparent though. And because no one character stood out, I found it hard to like any of them. The thought of one of them dead was not something I could bring myself to care about.

I felt that the last first-person chapter of the character that is about to die should have been in the 3^rd person. In the first person, it was awkward and clumsy.

What made it interesting at first was that everyone had secrets, not just the women, but all the characters, but over time even that lost its novelty.

The men, Jake Elliott and Landon, are flat as cardboard. For one, neither is present in Wales, and we see them both only in flashbacks. Jake has been dead eight years when the story begins, and the flashbacks don’t portray him well or enough. Landon, very much alive, is boring. It is hard to see why he is considered quite the catch.

There was no buildup to the mystery. The red herrings were unconvincing and the plot twist didn’t seem natural. The reasons why a particular character was suspected and then subsequently considered innocent didn’t seem credible.

DI Collins, the investigating officer, was drab, completely devoid of personality. She was in charge but didn’t appear to have the confidence to figure things out. She kept asking questions but didn’t come to any conclusion at all. The odd thing was that it seemed as if she were conducting the investigation on her own. She didn’t have an assistant, no one with whom she could think aloud.

The friendship between the girls didn’t come across as warm and comforting. At one point, Rowan said that that Jocelyn provided her a sense of safety in high school and college. But safety from what? We never get a sense of what might be threatening Rowan.

The book needed better editing. Character A tells Character B her (B’s) mother’s name, in the vein of “Your mother, X.” Editing should have weeded out such clumsy sentences.

It is unclear why Jocelyn calls her mother’s sister by her first name, instead of calling her Aunt Helen, particularly when Helen’s husband is addressed as Uncle Paul.

 

The book was okay for the most part. But the resolution fell flat. It seemed forced, hurried, with characters coming to realisations about the truth in a way that didn’t feel natural. 

 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: MISSING IN FLIGHT

Title: Missing in Flight

Author: Audrey J Cole

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 285

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

At first glance, this book reminded me of the Jodie Foster film, Flightplan, where Foster’s character, flying home with the body of her husband who was killed in combat, wakes up from a short nap only to find that her daughter has disappeared from the plane, mid-flight, and no one has even seen her. But this book wasn’t a novelization, so I was curious to see how this one would turn out.

Makayla Rossi is flying from Hawaii, where her father lives, to New York, her home, when an hour or so into the flight, she returns from a trip to the bathroom to find her baby, Liam, missing from his crib.

Because Makayla’s mom, famous actor of the yesteryears, Lydia Banks, died in an accident caused after the sudden onset of Transient Global Amnesia, the FBI investigators, the crew and other passengers believe that Makayla is confused and that she might have contracted the same disease. Also, no one has seen her board with the infant. Nor has anyone seen or heard the infant.

The only person who believes Makayla is her brand-new best friend who is providing her support via text from New York.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Jack’s boss, Lionel, has trapped him into taking the fall for a lot of fraudulent activity on his own part. Lionel’s daughter, Sabrina, who is Jack’s childhood friend, is threatening to tell Makayla about a one-night-stand that never happened.

 

The book was written in the 1^st person present tense PoV of Makayla, Anna, the co-pilot, Tina, the FBI officer, and Jack. Anna's story is completely unconnected with that of Makayla, and was unnecessary. Instead the PoV of another passenger on the flight might have been more helpful. Most of the action takes place aboard a flight from Hawaii to New York, and simultaneously at other locations during the same period.

The premise, a missing infant on a flight, is strong and tugs at our emotions, and the image on the cover, a frayed seat beat, is a nice touch, but the pace in this book flags with the many flashbacks and the constant repetition. For a large part of the book, not much seems to be happening. Some of the flashbacks, as when Makayla’s mother, Lydia, teaches her how to ski, were completely unnecessary. The fact that Lydia loved her daughter was completely irrelevant to the story of Liam’s disappearance.

Once the baby is taken, there is no escalation in the conflict, no call for ransom, nothing. The stakes just don’t get higher. 

This was more women’s fiction than thriller. A big part of whatever thrill there was came from the weather conditions and the turbulence.

The resolution raised a number of questions and wasn’t properly explained.

The investigation lacked lustre.

Ultimately, this one didn’t hit the right spot for me. 

 

   

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: NEVER TELL

Title: Never Tell

Author: Liv Constantine, Loreth Anne White, Andrea Bartz, Rachel Howzell Hall, Ivy Pochoda and Caroline Kepnes

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

Pages: 281

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Never Tell, an Amazon Original Stories collection, was mostly interesting. The collection of stories by multiple authors plays on the theme, How well do we really know the people we love? Each story in this collection played on the theme, some better than the others.

Most of the stories are first person accounts of women written by women. Only the fifth story is written in the third person past tense.

 

EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK by Liv Constantine

Jade, a 28-year-old nurse, suddenly sees her father, the father who died ten years ago, on a busy street. She is about to kill herself when the sight of her father causes her to change her mind.

The story, written in the first person present tense PoV of Jade, begins in the present, then goes back in time to a month earlier, before counting down to a week earlier, when she gets evidence of boyfriend Benedict cheating on her, and then onward until the present day.

The story was well-written, and it was packed with secrets and revelations, but it wasn’t really all that tight or impressive. Partly because there were far too many revelations and they were revealed at such a fast pace that we got no time to process them individually, making it all seem unreal. There was no sense of danger at all. Nor any villains either. The sole baddie was rendered ineffectual. A non-starter of a story, but a quick read. The Benedict subplot was a joke.

 

THE GHOST WRITER by Loreth Anne White

Grace Logan, a widow, still broken after the death of her husband, Andy, is invited to Blackwood Island, the private estate of infamous horror novelist, Claudia Blackwood. Her task: to write Claudia’s memoir. Claudia has lived her entire life under the shadow of accusation. As a teen, she was accused of killing boyfriend Jacques Duvalier, his little brother, Danny, and classmate Jill Wilson, with whom he was cheating on Claudia.

A professional ghost writer, Grace could be assured of success if she were to succeed at this project. But it’s not going to be easy. Other ghost writers, it seems, have died while at work on the project. Grace has a feeling she might be in real danger.

The story is written in the first person present tense PoV of Grace. The book conjured an eerie sense of atmosphere. The setting, descriptions, dialogue, internal monologue were all on point. The names add to the mystique. There is Grace. The chauffeur is called December. Kharon, the ferryman, like the ferryman who leads the dead in Greek mythology.  

There was a great twist at the end.

There were some errors though. A few pages in, Claudia’s name changed from Blackwood to Blackwell, then changed right back to Blackwood again. This change is seen even a few paragraphs apart on the same page.

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET by Andrea Bartz

I liked this one the most. It was the only one with a twist that took me by surprise.

Kelsey and Lauren, married lesbians, have bought their first home. Kelsey is expecting their first child. Life couldn’t get any better.

Hank, their neighbour, who lives on the other side of the street, gives Lauren a creepy vibe. It’s the beginning of their troubles.

Hank was creepy from the get-go. He was the classic neighbour from hell. My heart was hammering as I read this story. It certainly upturned all my assumptions.

 

SCORPIONS by Rachel Howzell Hall

Francesca dropped out of Cal Poly to look after her depressed, alcoholic mother. Now, fresh out of a job as a nurse’s assistant after her 80-year-old client died, she has a deadbeat job as a diner waitress to look forward to.   

Ruben, her dead client, leaves her a note pointing out the whereabouts of $1 million that he stole in his youth and hid in an underground mine. The trouble is that in two weeks, the place will be swarming with people as demolition and construction crew work to build a casino in its place. Plus, the key to the safe is with Ruben’s son, Shane. Then Jocelyn, Ruben’s ex-wife, but not Shane’s mother, joins in.

Shane warns Francesca not to trust Jocelyn, but is he trustworthy himself? Or are they all out to double cross one another?

This one was a slow burn. At first, not much seemed to be happening, then suddenly it went boom, escalating at a tremendous speed. Unfortunately, the story should have ended with the climax. The Epilogue made me feel cheated. I wish the author hadn’t worked this ending in. It didn’t give me the closure I wanted after investing in Francesca.

 

JACKRABBIT SKIN by Ivy Pochoda

Skin Swan, a tattooist, moves to a friend’s container house in Miracle, Wash., an isolated desert town, after her marriage ends. There she meets Kurt, a man who lost his wife three years ago.

Soon after Lucinda, a town luminary, tells her she’s not welcome in Miracle, and Skin wonders if she made a mistake coming here. When Kurt asks her to tattoo a photo of him and his wife on his left shoulder blade.

Slowly the desert, and Kurt, grows on her. Until she becomes suspicious that he may have had a part to play in his wife’s death.

This one was a rich read, with evocative descriptions and good writing.

 

THE BAD FRIEND by Caroline Kepnes

It’s hard to encapsulate the plot of this short story but I’m going to try.

The book is written in the second person, which is rather tricky to pull off.

Ellen and Tanya, best friends since they were ten, become estranged after Ellen’s engagement with Troy. Ellen, missing Tanya deeply, tries to lose herself in her relationship with daughter, Abigail, but Abigail develops a friendship with best friend, Josie, who turns out to be the daughter of Ross, Tanya’s boyfriend, back when the girls were friends.

While Ellen and Tanya remain estranged, an unexpected meeting after decades spills the beans on how baseless have been all the beliefs that Ellen has spent nearly a lifetime holding on to.

 

What I liked about this story was the author’s way of jumping forward in time. It was masterfully done.

I would have preferred the ending to be less vague, more certain. 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE REAPER'S QUOTA

Title: The Reaper's Quota

Author: Sarah McKnight

Publisher: Indie

Pages: 199

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Grim Reaper #2497, or Steve as he likes to think of himself, is in big trouble. He is summoned by the Big Boss because he has not been meeting his quota of 30 Random Deaths each month. The Big Boss threatens him with dire consequences, complete annihilation, if he does not kill 30 random people over the next three days.

The premise seemed interesting at the beginning. People who have killed someone during their lifetimes become Grim Reapers after their death. But the premise was arbitrary; there was no explanation for why murderers were chosen to do this task. Steve doesn’t have an answer to the question, and thinking about it too much gives him a headache, he tells us. This lack of information causes us to lose the sense of novelty soon enough. The plot wasn’t particularly well thought out and the pace palled after a while.

There was a slapstick quality to the humour and the author steered clear of talking about deep philosophical questions or even themes like immortality, regret etc, which are inextricably bound with death.

An abysmal lack of diversity plagued the book. Considering that the Grim Reapers are supposed to work throughout the world, #2497 spends all his time killing people in America, mostly in Nevada, where he is based. Even the names of those who are selected to die are mostly of Anglo origin and parentage.

Granted the killings are supposed to be random, but the reasons should at least make sense. #2497 kills an African man because ‘Green is so not his colour’. Rude and racist.

Incidentally, Reapers International is headquartered in the US and operates as per US Central time.

Since each Random Death must take place more than a mile away from the Reaper’s previous killing, it gives #2497 space to hang around in Nevada. Very rarely does he venture outside the US.

Each random act of killing is preceded by a longish vignette on the basic nature and character of the chosen victim and how #2497 puts them to death in order to meet his quota. This is the only place where the author has put effort into researching various ways in which people have died. The methods of execution are not repeated, not once. #2497 is truly a death artist. He tells us that he likes to express his creativity through the manner in which he executes each Random Death.

Of course, the individual vignettes are interesting. But on the flip side, the exercise seems pointless because we are given details about people’s lives, causing us to see them as human and to relate with them, only for #2497 to sweep in and cut off their wicks.

Additionally, after a point, the story began to seem tiresome, because of the repetition involved. There were no real challenges that the protagonist faced, other than the threat of disappearance if he failed to meet his target. All he had to do, and even in the afterlife, despite being a skeleton, he was unmistakably a ‘he’, was kill people.

I found the whole deal about Heather, the only person to have had an encounter with a Grim Reaper and to have survived, a non-issue. There was a hint of romance that wasn’t called for. #2497’s final act was unconvincing. The twist at the end of the tale was totally unimpressive.

The author seems to have taken the idea of the Grim Reaper and run with it. There was no attempt to build an original world around it. The setting lacked lustre.

 

Spoiler: The scythe is supposed to cut off human wicks. How would it work on #2497, who is already a skeleton, and therefore has no human wick?

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: MORNING PAGES

Title: Morning Pages

Author: Kate Feiffer

Publisher: Regalo Press

Pages: 384

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

I loved the premise of this book, but I wasn’t satisfied with the execution.

Morning pages is a technique popularized by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way, where she encourages writers to write unstructured every morning as part of a process that helps them to get out of their own way.

 

Playwright Elise Hellman is commissioned by The Players Playhouse to write a play for the 25^th anniversary of the theatre; Elise is one of five playwrights, whose first plays were huge hits at the theatre when it first opened, to be selected for this honour. The earning of $50,000 for an original play is a huge motivation. But when Elise gets down to writing, she finds out that she can no longer write. She simply doesn’t feel inspired enough. There’s far too much going on in her life for her to be able to write the way she did.

Before long, her real life starts influencing the play she’s writing, until both are chaotic mirror images of each other.

Elise finds herself struggling. She cannot focus on her writing, particularly when her son, Marsden, won’t communicate with her, and her mother has dementia.

 

The writing is intentionally journal-like, stemming as it does from the morning pages. Each chapter of the book is a day of the Morning Pages. Interspersed with the journal entries are small snatches of the play that Elise is writing.

The letter from the theatre is dated January 5, 2013, and Elise is told that they need her finished play by December 1 that year. That’s a few days short of eleven months. And yet, on Day 1 of her Morning Pages, Elise informs us that she has 65 days to complete her play. She doesn’t tell us how she ended up losing so much time. Why did she start writing so late in the year?

We get to know of her problems in real time. We get drama with her mother, her aunt Rosemary, her cousin, Julie, her ex-husband Elliot and his girlfriend, Midge, and her son, who seems to have no motivation regarding his future.

With nothing but her morning pages to guide her, Elise’s play soon begins to run parallel with her own life. With fiction imitating real life, it becomes tricky for us to keep the characters straight. Because there are the ‘real’ characters and their close counterparts from the world of the play. And every character in the play is influenced by someone in Elise’s own sphere. For instance, her main character, Laurie, also has divorced parents, just like Elise.

With her dead love life, ex-husband and his girlfriend, and Elise’s father and his current wife, Nicolette, besides her mother and son adding their own antics into the mix, there’s drama aplenty in Elise’s life but no signs of the play writing itself out. So much for the morning pages.

One thing I must say. Her morning pages were more entertaining than the play which was literally based on her own life.

 

The play was dull for the most part. In one page of writing from the play, we read of Laurie staunchly defending her father in an argument with her mother. She says, of her father, he fell in love with someone else. And there’s not the slightest hint of irony when she says that. Does Laurie have no sense of loyalty towards her mother? How could Elise write such a line, considering that she is still cut up about Elliot falling in love with Midge?

We are told that Elliot made his fortune with a unique business model that he founded, one that matches consumers with an appliance based on their personality type. This was inane. It sounded like one of those dumb quizzes that aim to solve for you the burning question of How much of a Gryffindor are you? Or what breed of dog would you have been had you been a dog? I cannot imagine making money out of this business model.

Despite the basic plot hinging upon the writing process, there wasn’t much in the plot about Elise’s writing process or about dementia, which her mother has.

There were some parts I liked, many I didn’t, and large parts that felt disconnected. Marsden’s sudden change of heart and behaviour were unconvincing. The story, as a journal, felt removed from the reader. 

Also, I tried but I couldn’t relate to any of the characters. They were all unremarkable.

 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE FIRST ADVENT IN PALESTINE

Title: The First Advent in Palestine

Author: Kelley Nikondeha

Publisher: Broadleaf Books

Pages: 214

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The First Advent in Palestine was a beautiful book that stripped Advent of all the holiday revelry that pervades this holy time today and set it in the context of the conflict-ridden milieu in which Christ was born. It wasn’t a peaceful time by any means, and yet very few people point out the violence that that era of human history was fraught with.

The Palestine of the first Advent was just as conflict ridden as it is today. The types of dangers that people faced differed, but life then, as now, was unpredictable and frightening.

 

The author juxtaposes the past with the present. Most newspapers and TV channels won’t even talk about the truth of what people in Palestine are grappling with. The sheer trauma on account of Israel’s cruelty. Tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and an ongoing genocide are the reality of the people of Palestine.

The author draws parallels between then and now, helping us to see their humanity and empathise with their struggles. Shepherds, she tells us, were the “essential workers” of that time. Today’s tyrannical and insecure leaders is what Herod was.

The author upturns our long-held notions about how there was no room at the inn, telling us that’s not how Palestinians are.

Along the way, she introduces us to Israeli Messianic Jews, Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

The book is non-fiction, but the writing is literary and luminous.

One thing you can do in the dark is light a candle. Another is tell a story.

In fraught places, childhood is complex.

There is a fierceness that coexists with kindness.

I must admit that I haven’t read much of the Old Testament. But reading this book, I got a better understanding of the force of God’s promise of peace to the world. It helped me to understand the context of the Gospel, how Christ wasn’t born in a picture-perfect crib. Reading this book took away the tinsel and holly and made the season real.

It’s ironic how it’s now the Jewish state of Israel that is visiting death and destruction on others, namely, the people of Palestine. We don’t speak enough about the pain being unleashed and perpetrated in Palestine.

The book looks at the traumatised people of Palestine through the lens of humanity to acknowledge their suffering. It takes us along to bear witness to Zachariah’s story and Mary’s too, the former of disbelief, the latter of acceptance. Alongside these, we read the stories of Palestinians today, Sliman Mansour, Nafez Assaily etc.

The book forced me to think of things I hadn’t considered. Like how silent night, holy night doesn’t necessarily mean peaceful because nightfall brings dangers. Only privilege can equate silence with peace. I realised that as we go from year to year, from Advent to Lent and back, the need for that peace remains.

Flight to Egypt, a painting by Palestinian painter Sliman Mansour, has been used on the cover. The image of Mary, the infant in her arms, with a UN care package, reinforces how the Holy Family was seeking normalcy and peace in their lives.

This is the book I didn’t even know I wanted.

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.)