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.)