A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena

While I didn't think Shari Lapena's last book, The Couple Next Door, was ah-mazing, it wasn't bad either, and I enjoyed it on the whole. I guess the same can be said about her latest release, A Stranger in the House. In fact, I could say exactly what I said in my review of Couple and still have it hold true: "After so many good books with unreliable first person narrators, to have the whole thing done in the third person ends up feeling cold and unpersonable." (me, a year ago)

It starts off with a car accident, and the woman who was driving the car, Karen, can't remember what led up to it, but she was driving frantically in a "bad" area of town. And there just happens to be a dead body near the scene of where Karen had her accident. Was she fleeing the scene? Did she kill someone? And why does she have no past before the few years she's spent with her husband, Tom. As the police start to connect the dots, her obsessed neighbor begins inserting herself into the situation, and, as they say, the plot thickens. Read this on the beach, by the pool, or whenever you want a distracting but not too captivating read, and expect a now "classic" Lapena twist at the end.

Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

A fifteen-year-old girl is dead, found lying in the snow one cold February morning, and a suburban Colorado town is turned upside down. One by one, members of the community are suspected of killing Lucinda: was it the janitor that found her, the weird boy who was stalking her, her ex-boyfriend, the list goes on… Told from the perspectives of that weird stalker, Cameron, another teenage girl, Jade, who saw Cameron outside Lucinda’s house that night and is carrying a torch for the aforementioned ex, and a middling police officer, Russ, who so happens to be the former partner of Cameron’s dad, before he committed a crime and disappeared. It’s a small town, obviously. While dead “girls” are a dime a dozen these days, in A Girl in Snow, the dead girl is more of an afterthought. We don’t really get to know her, and what we do see doesn’t leave much of an impression. Instead, it’s all about the three narrators, and, in a nutshell, how messed up they are.

Cameron is deeply affected by his dad's disappearance, and while he might have had some type of personality disorder regardless, his troubles manifest themselves in weird ways, like killing pet birds and standing outside people's houses at night. Jade is psychically and emotionally abused by her alcoholic mother, but seems to be holding it together better than anyone else, except for when it comes to her childhood best friend, Zap, who ditched her for Lucinda and popularity. Then there is Russ, who is going through the motions of life without much feeling, as he's chosen to bottle up his deepest desires. Danya Kukafka does an amazing job of exploring their pasts and current motivations, and while the final reveal was perhaps a little obvious, this didn’t bother me so much, as I was more intrigued by the strength of the writing and the characters. Some reviewers seem confused by this book, because most of the characters are teenagers but it is more maturely written and also quite lyrical. Is it YA, literature, or a thriller? Who cares! It’s truly great. 

A House for Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi

In A House for Happy Mothers, Amulya Malladi tackles some of the moral and ethical issues surrounding surrogacy programs in India. Priya, an American born half-Indian, and her native Indian husband Madu, are living the perfect life in Silicon Valley, save a child or two. After several miscarriages, and considerable strain to their relationship, they try one last time, via a surrogate in India. The baby is genetically theirs, but growing inside the womb of Asha, a poor but proud mother of two. Asha has been coerced into this by her family as a way to help secure their financial future and provide a better education for their gifted son, but struggles to remain detached from the life growing inside her.

This book explores all of the questions that surrogacy in a poor country raises. Yes, it’s providing a large sum of money to someone who probably lives on $2 a day, but at what cost? There is a lot of shame associated with this practice, and the women must pretend it never happened. They must go through all the toils and discomforts of pregnancy and labor, without the gift of a child at the end. We also see some characters coming back for a second or third time, as either the money was squandered initially or because for a poor person, there is never enough really. 

While there is a very hopeful and uplifting message to this book, having just read and watched A Handmaid’s Tale and its forced surrogacy program, it’s hard not to see some parallels. Apparently there are more laws in place now to help protect the surrogates, and efforts have been made to eliminate some of the worst offending “baby mills,” but it’s easy to see how this is a situation still ripe for exploitation.   

Finally, I listened to the audio version of this book, and it is wonderful! The narrator, Deepa Samuel, does an amazing job with literally dozens of different characters voices. She manages to create a unique Indian accent for each one, and her performance was truly stunning. This is definitely a book worth listening to.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson is a hard book to categorize. It's about teenagers, but is written for adults, with plenty of sex and drugs and shocking behavior. It takes place in a well-to-do suburb of San Francisco, following a group of kids as they grow from middle-school twerps to high-school aged perps. "Look at what awful things your despicable children could be doing!" This book screams this at every turn. First they gang up on a boy in middle school with unrelenting cyber-bullying until he jumps from the Golden Gate bridge. Then one has an affair with her teacher, another runs an SAT scam when not dealing drugs, a third runs away to star in gay porn films ... the list goes on, each chapter more tawdry than the last. At the center of it all is new teacher Molly, who wants to connect with the "cool kids" (she wasn't one herself), and thinks they're all angels and that she alone can make a difference. Molly is you, by the way, the parent who has their blinders on and thinks their child can do no harm.

Is this a cautionary tale of what parents might expect from their children these days? Besides the cyber-bullying, which wasn't available to us gen-exers, there's nothing in here that couldn't or didn't happen to teenagers a generation ago. We've just all glossed over those days, moved on to respectable adulthood, but then love to read about naughty teenagers in almost a cathartic way: "I was never this bad," or "My kids aren't doing this." Well, you might have or they might be, but do you really want to read a whole book about it? Still not sure what the answer is to that one.

Mrs. Saint and the Defectives by Julie Lawson Timmer

In Mrs. Saint and the Defectives, forty-something divorcee Markie uproots her son and her life after her ex’s very public affair. She lands in a new town next to an elderly French woman called Mrs. St Denis, or Mrs. Saint to all those who can’t properly pronounce her name. Mrs. Saint takes an instant interest in Markie and her current state of affairs, giving the term “nosy neighbor” a whole new meaning. From getting her “defectives” – a group of adults who have a variety of issues who seem to be supported by Mrs. Saint – to help her move in, to new patio furniture and a dog for her son, Mrs. Saint steadily works her way into Markie’s life, whether she wants her to or not.

This book is full of laugh out loud moments, as well as some darker and more touching turns later on when we realize the true reasons behinds Mrs. Saint’s motivations. What sticks out most for me about this book is that it’s about Markie re-connecting with herself and her son. Too many divorcee books feel compelled to include a new love interest along the way, as if that is the only way for a woman to get back to herself. Bravo to Julie Lawson Timmer for breaking the mold a little.

Everything We Left Behind by Kerry Lonsdale

This book takes us back to the majorly f-ed up Donato family, and if you haven’t read the first book, Everything We Keep, there is almost no point in reading this one, as it’s hard to pick up the threads of the plot – I even had a hard time in sections as I forgot some of the plot points from the first book. Long story short, it is five years later and James wakes up from his “fugue” state. He’s been Carlos for over six years, has two kids and a long-term girlfriend, but remembers none of it. He wants to go “home” to California and reclaim his former fiancée Aimee, and he uproots his family and discards his old life. But remnants of Carlos remain, and there’s some unfinished business with his cousin/half-brother Phil, who is about to get out of prison.

James needs to remember the circumstances surrounding his accident in order to know what kind of a threat Phil is to him, and he has to navigate the increasingly complicated web of his family: Aimee has moved on with Ian and has a child with him, his mother was pretending to be his neighbor for the last five years to get to see her grandkids, and he somehow fell in love with his dead wife’s sister. There’s plenty more sex in this iteration, and the book moves along at a fast pace, making it a worthy beach read. Oh, and there’s a hint at the end that there might even be a third offering in the future, though if James/Carlos changes personality again I might not be interested in the result.

Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner

When I reviewed the first book in the Manon Bradshaw series I said I couldn’t wait to see where Susie Steiner takes Manon next. Little did I expect it to be back to Cambrisdgeshire with not only young Fly in tow but also a bun in the oven. Turns out she wanted a fresh start for Fly, and hoped that by taking him out of the city he would not go down a bad path. Things weren’t going so well for them though, and then 12 year old Fly gets arrested for the murder of her sister’s son’s father. Of course, he didn’t do it, and this novel follows Manon as she waddles through the secret investigation she undertakes to clear her adopted son’s name.

Look, this is not a page-turning, action packed thriller. Much like Missing, Presumed, it’s a slow-burn with lots of well-developed characters and often funny twists and turns. A new character, Birdie, is down-right hilarious, and we get a close peek into the machinations of her mind. Schlumpy Davy is back too, and while it takes a while to get there, the final outcome is downright shocking. And once again I love how this book feels steeped in the UK, both in its tone and language. I don’t know if Manon will come out for round three, or what possible/impossible circumstances Steiner can put her in next time, but I’ll be eagerly awaiting it if she does.