The Confession by John Grisham

John Grisham's latest was the first book of 2011 for me. I'll be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I believe The Client was the last book I had read by Grisham other than The Painted House and Skipping Christmas. I just haven't been into his legal thrillers since then. I read The Appeal and was very disappointed by it. I had heard that The Appeal was "old school" Grisham, but I felt it fell far short of his first books.

So I was leery to say the least going into The Confession. And really, the only reason I did read it was because my husband's uncle gave me a copy of the e-book and I wanted to play with my new e-reader.

Turns out the book was pretty good! Now, I'm not sure if that's because I went in with really LOW expectations or if it just intrigued me.

Keith, a Lutheran pastor receives a mysterious visitor in his office. Travis Boyette, a convicted serial rapist, claims that he killed a girl nine years earlier and now the state of Texas is going to execute an innocent man. Boyette has a deadly brain tumor and wants to come clean at the last minute. He wants Keith's help and guidance on how to proceed. Keith struggles with what to do next. Meanwhile, in Texas we meet Donte Drumm, the man who has been on death row for all this time vigilantly holding on to the belief that he his innocent.

The first two thirds of Grisham's book describe a race against the clock to prove Drumm is innocent before they execute the wrong man. All of this kept my attention and I "turned" each page as fast as I could to see if the execution would happen. Now, I'm not going to give away what happens. All I'm going to say is that I wish Grisham would have written a slightly shorter book or pushed off the climactic scene. Having one-third of the book left seemed a bit much and I found myself skimming through the pages. I felt the very end was satisfactory and I'm really glad that Grisham didn't reek more havoc on the pastor's life toward the end of the book.

This would make for a really great vacation or beach read (ah, the beach, doesn't that sound nice right about now?).

Source Disclosure: This e-book was shared with me by a family member.

Caught by Harlen Coben

I'm always excited when Harlan Coben comes out with a new stand along book! And Caught was no exception. I even pre-ordered it!

In Coben's latest novel, we meet Dan Mercer a social worker who unfortunately gets caught on television camera meeting up with an underage girl whom he had a relationship with through the internet. Wendy Tynes is a mercenary reporter dedicated to bringing criminals to justice. Though Mercer claims innocence his life is ruined. Turns out several of his college buddies have run into trouble as well. His friend Phil lost his job because of embezzlement charges, a doctor friend also finds himself in trouble, and a third friend is locked away in a mental institution for schizophrenia. As Wendy begins to doubt her claim that Mercer is a sexual predator, she investigates further to find the truth. A missing girl also falls into the story here adding more to the mystery.

I'm not sure if I have too high expectations for Coben's novels now having read and enjoyed The Woods, The Innocent and Hold Tight. Or if this was one was just sub-par for him. I was a little disappointed. The characters didn't engage me as much. And I found the story to be a tad bit boring. I had to force myself to read along and frankly, the reveal wasn't that interesting. It wasn't a horrible book, I just didn't think it was as good as some others I've read by him. This is a good one to bring along on vacation, but if you have other books in your queue, Caught could probably wait a bit.

Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

With all the posting going on about Jodi Picoult's new book Handle with Care, I felt in the mood to read another of her books last week. I have amassed quite a collection of her books from friends and giveaways. I think I have 11 of them and I have only purchased one which was a bargain book. I decided to read Vanishing Acts this time.

I found it to be just as likable as the other books I've read by her. It obviously follows her same formula: controversial situation, multiple character viewpoints, a legal issue and courtroom drama.

In Vanishing Acts, Delia Hopkins is 32 years old, has a 5 year old daughter with her fiance, Eric (who she's known for 28 years, they grew up best friends). She has another great best friend in Fitz who also grew up with her and Eric. Delia's father, Andrew is an upstanding citizen and great father. He always gave Delia everything she ever needed, love, and attention. Until one day, the authorities show up at the front door to arrest him for kidnapping, HER kidnapping! It turns out this is the truth, Andrew Hopkins did kidnap his daughter from her mother and we find out why in the rest of the book.

There are some really interesting ideas and juxtapositions in this book. Eric is a recovering alcoholic who takes on the case when Delia begs him to help defend her father. It turns out that Delia's mother was an alcoholic as well and that is one of the reasons Delia's father takes her. Also, Delia's occupation is search and rescue with her trained dog. Ironic, since she had no idea she was lost herself.

While this book is not quite as engrossing as some of Picoult's other books, I still enjoyed reading it. There is a section about the Hopi and a character named Ruthann that seemed really thrown in there. I know Picoult likes to do a lot of research for her books and I felt like this addition was just her obligatory "I must show you I have researched Arizona and its native cultures and throw that in this book." Obviously, the addition to the story is a little deeper than that, but it didn't quite fit for me. I liked the character of Ruthann, but it seemed to not really be a great part of the story for me.

I'm number 37 on the request list for Handle With Care so I'm looking forward to getting that one soon!

My other Picoult reviews:
My Sister's Keeper
Plain Truth
Salem Falls
The Pact
Change of Heart

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

I just finished the latest book from Harlan Coben. The title "Hold Tight" refers to a parents grip on their kids and the struggle to let them go and at the same time protect them. This book is obviously a commentary on today's society where we tend to be overprotective of our children.

The book starts with several different storylines that Coben weaves together connecting them all at the end. Each storyline looks at familial situations where someone is trying to protect their family and what the lengths they will go to protect them. Mike Baye (pronounced "bye") and his family live in the suburbs with their son (age 16) and their daughter (age 11). Mike is a doctor, his wife, Tia is a lawyer who stayed home with the kids for many years and has just gone back to work. They are struggling with their son, Adam because he seems to have withdrawn even more than usual after the suicide of his best friend. They are so worried about him and his behavior that they install spyware on his computer to see what he is up to. They rationalize this invasion of his privacy by saying they don't want him to end up like his friend and they are just trying to help him. All of this leads to a crazy several days in the course of the book where Adam disappears, Mike gets beat up, the daughter Jill discovers her best friend has Columbine-type thoughts about shooting a teacher who said something completely inappropriate to her and ruined her young life. There are two smaller story lines about a guy killing a couple women because he is looking for a "tape" and a neighbor of the Baye's whose son has cancer and needs to find a donor. Aside from doing anything to protect your family storylines, Coben also delves into the issue of privacy and how much do other people really know or should know about other people.

Because I tend to only read a little at a time with books, all the different story lines annoyed me a little until they started coming together. I was having to keep track of all the characters and where they were in the story while trying to figure out where it was all going. Coben did bring all the tangents together nicely toward the end and I was very satisfied with how he closed everything up. I definitely think the second half of the book was better and more interesting than the first half. It did make me think about children's privacy a bit. The book makes a strong point about the difference between parenting children today and a generation ago. When I was a kid, children ran around their backyards and the neighborhood for hours on end. Parents just trusted that they would stay in the area and didn't know what was going on every second of their kids' lives.

It just seems the carefree days of childhood are gone. And I find myself falling prey to this mentality. I'm constantly wondering where my 5 year old is in the house and what she is up to. I try to give her space and trust her with little things. But its difficult. There are also so many more things for children to see on television and predators on the internet as well as the information available on the internet that children can gain access to. We can check up on our children at any given time just by giving them a cell phone or sending them email or text messages. So now, coming back to the book, even though it is fiction, I think Coben raises interesting questions here. How much do we interfere and try to protect our children? How far is too far? What's being too lenient?

Coben seems to ask all these questions in his book and in the end, one of the characters wonders what course the story would have taken if they had just left things alone to see where they went. The "problem" in the story may have just cleared up on its own. Who knows?

Sorry to ramble on in this review. I just think its an interesting topic to try and find that balance as a parent where you are keeping your children safe, but also letting them learn and find their own way and learn from their mistakes. Obviously, this one had quite a bit of food for thought for me. :-) I have not been disappointed in Coben yet and look forward to the next one I read.

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Picoult's latest endeavor tackles the issues of religion and the death penalty. I was really looking forward to reading this one. And I was not disappointed. It seems from the posts I've read about Picoult in the blogging world, you either really like Picoult or really DON'T like her. I am one of those who likes her quite a bit. I think her hot button topics make for interesting forays into fiction. While some of her books are definitely better than others, they all are quick and easy reads. I think it just depends on your interest in the particular topic at hand whether the books hit home with you or not. And I think perhaps now that Picoult has become so successful, there are high expectations for each new work. I feel a few people are unduly harsh in their critiques of her work. She at least entertains if nothing else, and I feel like I at least think about different topics from different viewpoints than I might have before reading her books.

I've never been a particularly religious person, but I'm always interested in reading different viewpoints on the topic and learning more. There were a lot of statements in this book that really hit home for me and helped me define things a bit more with how I see the world of religion. As for the death penalty topic, I've always seen both sides of that issue and its really difficult for me to pick sides on it.

I feel like so many people have reviewed this book, I don't really need to go into the details of the story, but in case you still haven't heard much about this one, here it goes. Shay Bourne was convicted of killing a cop and his daughter. He's been living on death row for 11 years and his execution date is fast approaching. He decides he wants to donate his organs upon his execution and wants the remaining daughter of his victim's family to receive his heart to save her life. This is about redemption among other things. And the great debate in the book is whether or not a single person can believe something so strongly that the court will find it as a valid reason for choosing an alternate form of execution under a religious freedom act. There is also the moral debate about whether the victim's family wants to accept something so personal from the man that took their husband/father and daughter. As usual with Picoult, the story is told through many characters viewpoints.

(***Spoiler alert***) It seems that Picoult's formula calls for some big reveal or surprise toward the end of the novel. My Sister's Keeper had a doozy at the end of it and one I never saw coming. The other books I've read by her hinted at the "surprise" before it actually happened. And well, I feel like this one was quite predictable. I figured out the molesting by the cop father at least half way into the book if not earlier. It just seemed logical to me. So I guess I always sort of believed Shay was innocent. And I guess the big reveal to me was that he did indeed kill someone in the end.

(Edited to add: Complete sidenote, but one of the characters names was Lucius Defresne. He was one of the prisoners on the same floor as Shay Bourne. Anyone else keep thinking Andy Defresne from Shawshank Redemption when you heard Lucius' last name? I wonder if that was a deliberate reference from Picoult or just a random coincidence?)

I'd say this one was one of the better Picoult books I've read. I think it falls smack dab in the middle of the 5 books I've read. I give it 4 out 5 stars.

Other reviews of this book:
Katie from 101 Books in 1001 Days
Alison from So Many Books, So Little Time
Julie from Girls Just Reading
Natasha from Maw Books
Susan from Bloggin' 'bout Books

The Innocent by Harlan Coben

I enjoyed reading Coben's The Woods last year and when I saw The Innocent and Deal Breaker in the Barnes and Noble bargain sale I snatched them up. I've spent the last couple days reading The Innocent and thoroughly enjoyed it!

The blurb on the back of the book does not really give you full insight into the story, which in this case was a good thing. The main character, Matt Hunter, accidentally kills a man when a fight breaks out at a party during college. Matt serves his time in prison and manages to still have a life afterwards with a decent job and wife with a baby on the way. He receives a couple startling photos on his cell phone that make him think he does not really know his wife and he wonders if he can really trust her. Thus starts a journey of discovery that lasts a couple days and is filled with suspense. This book also has short chapters which actually added to the suspense. It switched back and forth between characters' viewpoints leaving you in suspense with one while catching up with another. Eventually all the points of view come together at the end. It wasn't entirely predictable and had a few nice reveals toward the end.

I don't want to say too much and give anything away because I think this story is much better if you go into it blind. I thought it was well-written and Coben unfolds the story very well. If you're a fan of more serious mystery/suspense I recommend this book. I believe I enjoyed it even more than The Woods. And I'm looking forward to reading Deal Breaker which is the first book in Coben's Myron Bolitor series.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

I finished The Pact over the weekend while I was laying around recuperating from this cold/flu bug that has been going around. Again, as with her other books, it was a very easy, quick read. However, this one was not quite up to my expectations. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't as good as Salem Falls or My Sister's Keeper. I think Plain Truth was a bit better as well.

The story is about a teenage couple, both age seventeen, who have known each other all their lives. They lived next door to each other. They had a very mature relationship for their age and were apparently in love. Then one night the boy shows up in the hospital with a head wound and the girl winds up dead from a gunshot wound. According to initial interviews with the boy, this was a suicide pact gone wrong. However, we find out that might not necessarily be the truth. Aside from the boy and girl having a relationship, both their families are the best of friends. The boy ends up being accused of murdering the girl and the trial tears the families apart. As with other Picoult books, the last third plays out in the courtroom.

I think one of the things that bothered me about the book is that I didn't find the topic as interesting as some of her other books. The front cover of my copy of the book had an icon claiming, "Soon to be a Lifetime Original Movie!". Now, nothing against the Lifetime channel or their movies. I can definitely see where this book would fit their usual type of storyline. But I found it a bit sappy for my tastes. I felt the book was pretty contrived and I guess the characters didn't grow on me the same as some of her other characters have. I didn't have much sympathy for Emily, the character who commits suicide. And there was an underlying storyline of sexual abuse that I felt Picoult could have made stronger which might have made Emily a little more sympathetic or perhaps the courtroom scene more dramatic. I think it would have been more interesting if the abuse had been revealed to the boyfriend or the parents by the end of the book.

Not to say this book is a waste of time, because it is not. I'm just being more critical in comparing it to some of Picoult's other books. I'm looking forward to reading some more of her books that I have on my bookshelf and I think her newest release Change of Heart sounds like an interesting story. I think I'm just not a big sucker for romance. :-) If you are, you might like this more than I did.

Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult

This is the third Picoult book I've read. As with the others (Salem Falls and My Sister's Keeper), it was a quick, easy, and engaging read. A young Amish girl has a baby in the middle of the night without anyone knowing she was pregnant. The next morning, the baby is discovered dead in the barn and not hidden very well. The girl is the main suspect and put on trial for murdering her baby. In the middle of all of this, a high powered attorney from Philadelphia goes to her aunt's house in the country to relax and reevaluate her life. She ends up wrapped up in the Amish girl's life as her friend and attorney. Forced by the court to live with the Amish family, she spends months getting used to their beliefs and way of life, while building her case to defend the Amish girl.

The book is strong in character development. I felt the story was good, but did slow down in a couple sections. Maybe it was a little longer than it needed to be. And the ending was not too earthshattering. But I found learning about the Amish way of life interesting. And even though this is a fiction book, I take to heart that the author did her research and is protraying their world accurately.

End of the Year Reading

I finished up two books in the last couple weeks. The first, Momzillas by Jill Kargman was a quick entertaining read. Hannah moves from California to New York City with her husband and young daughter. She is thrown into the rich, socialite world of NYC Park Avenue stay-at-home-moms. It's a typical fish-out-of-water tale about how Hannah doesn't feel like she fits in anywhere in her new location and the ups and downs of that. It all comes together in the end. Nothing too profound. The rich moms are very annoying, but I think there is probably a small amount of truth to their behaviors just from my experience being a stay at home mom. At least, I can see how some of these characters could exist in real life. I would compare this book to The Nanny Diaries or The Devil Wears Prada in terms of the type of story and flow of the book. Typical chick lit. I signed up to receive emails from my library with a few chapters of a different book each week. I found Momzillas through one of those emails.

The last book of 2007 for me is The Woods by Harlan Coben. Again, another quick and easy read. This book is typical Bestseller fare. The story is not incredibly profound, but interesting and entertaining so worth the read. Twenty years ago, four murders take place at a summer camp. The main character's sister is one of the victims. He becomes a county prosecutor and things begin to pop up involving his sister's case that bring that summer back to him and a few others who were involved. Secrets are revealed. The truth of what really happened that summer comes out. This would be a great book to read on vacation or at the beach. It's very popular right now. I requested it from the library in August and I was #414 on the list at the time.

Happy reading in the New Year!

My Reading Marathon

I've actually finished three books in two weeks! Quite a record for me lately, I've had a hard time even deciding what book to pick up. A while back Allison sent me a box full of fun cozy mysteries, so I decided to take a look at those and try one out. I chose Murderers Prefer Blondes by Amanda Matetsky, the first in her Paige Turner Mystery Series. The book's heroine, Paige Turner, works for a detective magazine in New York City when she stumbles across what she hopes to be the perfect story to jump-start her writing career. The story takes place in the mid-1950's in New York City. As I was reading, it seemed like my mind was watching an old black and white detective film. I could picture all the characters. I got a little annoyed by Paige's best friend and her tone in conversations. I'm sure the slang was accurate to the time period, but it felt a little forced in that character for some reason. Although, I enjoyed the novel, the ending was very anticlimactic and predictable. But if you take it for what it is, a cozy mystery, this was an entertaining read.

I spent last week visiting my mom with the kids and spent the better part of any free time I had reading. It was great to be away from the house so I didn't have the guilt of "I should be doing this, oh, I'll just read a few more pages...." I could read to my heart's content and it was fantastic. I brought My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult with me. Whenever I mention Picoult to anyone, this seems to be the common book that people have read. I read it in about 2 days. For those unfamiliar, the story is about Anna, a 13 year old girl who was conceived to be a perfect genetic match for her older sister sick with leukemia. Throughout her life Anna undergoes various procedures that help prolong her sister's life. Finally, she decides she will no longer be a guinea pig for her sister and seeks medical emancipation from her parents. The book is told from the different viewpoints of all the characters and flows really well. It's a pretty heavy book because of its topic and you spend the whole book waiting for the inevitable. Picoult surprises with quite a twist at the end that shocked me. I wasn't very thrilled with it actually. I think because I had spent the majority of the book expecting a completely different outcome. Picoult covers the medical ethics topic well and from many angles. And I plan on continuing to read her other books. This was the second Picoult book I have read and both were told alternating the characters viewpoints. I'm curious, does she do this with all her books? Is this her signature writing style?

The last book, I just finished this morning: Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man who Dared to See by Robert Kurson. This is our November book club pick. I have to say, the topic did not intrigue me much and I toyed with the idea of not even looking at the book. I just figured I'd be bored to tears. But part of the reason I like being in a book club is because it makes me consider books I would not normally read on my own. So I thought I should at least look at the book. I got it from the library and figured I'd just sort of skim through it enough to make a comment or two at the meeting. Well I was very wrong, the book really pulled me in. It's the story of a man, Mike May, who lost his sight at age 3 and spent the next 43 years of his life blind. One day, he was with his wife at her eye exam and the doctor just looked at his eye on a whim. Then his colleague took a look. They told May he would be an excellent candidate for a new stem cell surgery and he might be able to see again. I was curious about how May lost his sight, how he gained it back, and whether or not he would keep it. And continued reading to find out. There were some very technical sections that read like an Intro to Biology textbook. I tended to skim or skip these sections all together. But everything else was very interesting and flowed very easily. May's tenacity and attitude are amazing. It was fun to read about his journey and see how it ended. If anyone is interested in nonfiction books, this was a quick and enjoyable read.

Sidenote: I'm also on Library Thing now. You can find my library here. I started one for my daughter as well, to keep track of what books she really likes. I also added books I think might be good for her in the future too. You can find her library here. I updated the Links in the blog sidebar, added a few new book blog links, and added book covers from my library. I thought it was time to spice up the blog a bit. :-)

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

I've been a fan of Jodi Picoult's for several years now after first reading The Pact.

I found this latest book of hers to be particularly disturbing, primarily due to the timing of its release and my own timing in reading it. In the book, 17-year old Peter Houghton takes several guns to his high school and kills ten people, injuring many others. As the story unfolds, we learn that Peter was a favorite target of school bullies, dating back to his first day of kindergarten. His attorney takes a novel approach to his defense, describing him as having acted in self-defense due to post traumatic stress and suffering from school bullying syndrome. He likens Peter to the battered woman who kills her husband.

The school violence in this book supposedly happened on March 6, 2007. Obviously, Ms. Picoult could not have known that the Virginia Tech massacre was about to occur, but the commonalities between her fictional account and real-life events left me wondering whether Seung-Hui Cho had read her book and used it as a "how-to" guide. I realize that is unlikely, but it still rattled me. I'm left asking myself whether an actual victim of school bullying would find some sort of rationalization for retaliation imbedded in these pages.