Little Girl Gone by Gerry Schmitt

While not my favorite genre, I do occasionally enjoy a good crime thriller, including everything Dennis Lehane has ever written. While I wasn't paying attention, a new subgenre has suddenly emerged, or at very least been named: "cozy" mysteries. And if you follow that link to its Wikipedia entry, it reads like an outline for this book, Little Girl Gone by Gerry Schmitt. Female protagonist is an amateur detective in a small community with good instincts and a relationship to the police department so she can get insider info to solve the crime, which is bad but not too graphic. While I'm not knocking this book for that or the job that the author did writing it, it seems a little formulaic somehow, as though she went through the "checklist" and made sure she had all the right elements.

Also, given that we know from the outset who did the crime, this book is about watching the main character, Afton Tangler (say what? Is she a hair product?), connect the dots and solve the crime by chasing down one dead end lead after another. Since I brought up the Dennis Lehane thing, lets compare a bit to Gone Baby Gone (which if he wrote it today would probably have to be called Gone Girl Gone because every title needs a "Girl" in it now for some reason). Same premise, little girl goes missing, detectives, amateur or otherwise, on the case trying to find her. And in Baby, you don't know who took her or why, so you're there in the minds of the detectives trying to piece it all together right along with them. In Girl, there really is no mystery, just a tangled plot with some halfway interesting characters. Final beef, I love that Afton (Really? It's a town in Wyoming, a river in Scotland, a chemical company, but a girl's name?) is a rockclimber, and Schmitt got a lot of details right, and then some crucial ones wrong. Nitpicky, I know, but whenever an author tries to take on my sport it really irks me to have to read incorrect climbing scenes. Will I check out Book #2 in the Afton Tangler series? (Tangler - to bring together in intricate confusion, which is an apt definition, and a 58 point word in Scrabble.) Probably, if only because it'll give me more opportunities to think of snarky things to say about her name.

Everything We Keep by Kerry Lonsdale

In Everything We Keep, by Kerry Lonsdale, Aimee is set to marry her childhood sweetheart, James, when he mysteriously disappears on a work trip to Mexico. They hold his funeral on what would have been their wedding day, and she is obviously devastated. Then a mysterious woman arrives claiming to be a psychic, and tells Aimee that she has proof that James is still alive, throwing her into a tailspin. How can she move on when the love of her life might still be out there, but if he is, why hasn't he contacted her? The rest of the book follows Aimee as she tries to figure that out, while also attempting to put her life back together and move on. She opens a small cafe, meets a hunky new guy, etc., and yet, could he really still be alive?

The premise of this book is fairly interesting, and Lonsdale delivers the story with good writing and well-developed characters. The final explanation goes deep into suspension-of-disbelief category, along with some unsavory Flowers in the Attic type story lines, but all in all it is a good "beach" read for your summer vacation.

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison is some creepy creepiness layered on top of more creep. All that said, it's kind of a good read, and I did that thing I do sometimes and stay up until 3 a.m., reading it all in one sitting. Maybe that was so the creepiness didn't "creep" into more than one day of my life! The book opens with a young girl being interviewed by the FBI. We learn that they rescued a bunch of teenage girls that were being held captive by a sicko who tattooed huge butterfly wings on their backs and encased them in resin on their 21st birthday to "preserve" their beauty forever. (I wasn't exaggerating about the creepy!) Now they've "flow" free of their prison, but this girl, Maya, is causing the police some trouble, refusing to answer all of their questions and leading them to believe she might be complicit somehow.

The book switches back and forth between her interrogation by police and her flashback narrative that answers those questions, with good effect. This is the kind of book I would have loved as a teenager (I was a huge Stephen King fan back in the day), and while it's more sexually gruesome than his work, it does embody some of the same dark and otherworldly feelings that his writing evokes. Another good comparison would be the pre-Gone Girl Gillian Flynn books. I see this being made into a movie somehow, though it won't be one that I actually go to see.

The Girls by Emma Cline

The Girls by Emma Cline takes a fictional twist on the real-life Manson family murders of the late 1960’s, telling their story from the perspective of fourteen-year-old Evie, a quasi-member of the troop. She was involved, but not that involved. She was there, but not for everything. And in a strange twist, she was more enamored with “the girls” than with Russell, aka Charles. This reflects Cline’s own apparent interest in the people that surround a cult leader, as opposed to the leader himself—and it’s always a him, right? What causes people to blindly follow, to do unspeakable things, and how does that look to a young teenager who is lost and discarded by her own parents. If the only people who want you are monsters, does that make you one too?

Cline doesn’t slap you in the face with these questions; instead they unfurl slowly, and yes, parts of this book are slow. We pick up with Evie years later throughout the novel, watching her interact with a young couple and seeing how life has slipped through her fingers. These scenes don’t actually lead to anything but an illustration of the damage done to her. Being so close to something so horrible at a young age affected her, but how? She seems stunted and lonely, as if nothing could ever compare to the intense months she had with the family, and so she doesn’t bother with anything. She didn’t end up in jail with the rest of the cult, but instead is in a sort of prison of her own making. This book gives you a lot of things to think about, and it’ll stay with you long after you’ve put it down (and spent a few hours on Wikipedia comparing all the details to the Manson killings, of course).

Intrusion by Mary McCluskey

Intrusion by Mary McCluskey jumps into the lives of Kat and Scott Hamilton soon after the accidental death of their only son, Chris. This is one of those books that I hesitate to read solely based on the subject matter, as being a mom of two boys myself this is like living out your worst nightmare, and who wants to do that? And this book delivers sadness mightily, from the abject despair and thoughts of suicide to the inevitable marital tension and strain. But I was intrigued enough by the premise of an old friend of Kat's who randomly comes back into her life to give this a go. Sarah Cherrington used to be Kat's best friend in high school and roommate afterwards, until her misbehavior caused Kat to cut her out of her life completely. Now Sarah's back, and attempting to play nice, or is she?

So begins the slow unfurling of a web of lies and deception. I won't give too much away, but even the back cover copy suggests that she's back for "one more thing," so you can assume that she is up to no good. The final denouement does make for good reading, though the twists and turn are not quite as developed or original as The Girl on the Train or any Mary Kubica novel, but still worth checking out. And it's another Kindle First title, so it's "free" for the rest of the month!

A Dangerous Age by Kelly Killoren Bensimon

 

A Dangerous Age by Kelly Killoren Bensimon (and Teresa DiFalco), is an enigma wrapped in a riddle stuffed into a hot New York City summer. It follows the lives of four long-time friends (let the comparisons to Sex and the City begin), as they each struggle with different issues in their middle-aged lives. Lucy, the main character, is a former model whose marriage to a renowned artist is on the fritz, Lotte is descending into a dangerous drug and alcohol induced spiral, divorcee Billy is having trouble making ends meet while dating below her age, and Sarah is trying to land a coveted role on a reality show. You can tell right off the bat that Bensimon didn't have to dig deep or use too much imagination for her material, having been a model, married to a famous photographer, and on the infamous Real Housewives series herself, and if the book had stayed in that fluffy "beachy" read place, I could have tucked it neatly away in that category and recommended it for your next vacation.

Instead, Bensimon does actually explore some interesting themes, from the value of art and the pressure put on "famous" artists, to what constitutes a happy and fulfilling marriage. A young ingenue comes to town and upends peoples' lives with her tell-all blog, and when Lucy is tasked with writing an article about her, she's shaken to her core by someone who seems to eschew everything that Lucy has built her life around. All these combine to make for a more serious book that provokes some deep thinking. But then there's the obligatory shopping scenes, and the banal descriptions of the fabulous clothes they're all wearing, all the time. I can't say that this book won't appeal to a fabulous few whose lives really do revolve around all of the above, but for the majority of readers I fear this will straddle a middle line that appeals to none - too serious for the beach, and not serious enough for the literati. However, with her name recognition and the hope that you might decipher some juicy gossip about "real" (housewives) people, I'm sure this book will sell just fine.

The Memory of Us by Camille Di Maio

The Memory of Us by Camille Di Maio is a touching "star-crossed" love story about two young Britons on the eve of WWII. Julianne is a well-to-do 18 year-old who seems to be living the perfect debutante life in Liverpool: she's organizing charity fundraisers, helping her father at his business, and is at her mother's beck and call. She does have an independent streak though, and is set to head off to nursing school in London at the end of the summer, but not before she spends some time secretly visiting her deaf and blind twin brother, who was kept a secret and institutionalized from birth. It's at his "home" that she meets the gardener, Kyle, a young Irish immigrant who is preparing to become a priest. They befriend each other, and their love blossoms slowly, and then all at once, until they elope the following year. Of course, her parents were not pleased and disowned her, and then the war struck, shattering everyone's lives.

We occasionally get glimpses into the future, where we know they are no longer together, and yet may have just run into each other. The story of their separation and reunion was not my favorite part - perhaps a little too implausible. Instead, I really enjoyed the scenes from her time in nursing school and through the start of their romance. Di Maio effortlessly captured the feeling of young love, and transported me back to a time and place I have never been. There were enough historical details to please any historian, but most importantly, the strong writing really transports you to another time to enjoy a good story.