March 23-29, 2014

Killer by Jonathan Kellerman - the 29th Alex Delaware novel. A child custody case turns into murder and kidnapping. Very surprised by who did it.

3 stars
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Still Foolin' Em by Billy Crystal - Billy laments turning 65. Sometimes funny but I found it rather crude. And it must be hard to write about the highlights of your life without sounding like you're bragging. Still...

2 stars
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Carry On Warrior: Thoughts On Life Unarmed by Glennon Doyle Melton - the creator of momastery.com brings her blog post openess to a book. She feels we should go through life with our armor off in order to be vulnerable and open to other hurting people. The book doesn't really follow a timeline so that made it a little difficult to follow for me.

3 stars
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The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly - a  12 yo boy is having trouble adjusting to the death of his mother when he finds himself in an alternate world seemingly based on his fantasy books. The story takes place in England at the beginning of WWII. I was hoping this was going to be a 4 or 5 star book. But it takes 75 pages for the story to really start. And I thought the author put too many modern day sensibilities into it. It was also rather gruesome.

3 stars
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Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger - a woman discovers her entire life is not what she thought and is put in danger. Some sex scenes but they can be skipped by going to the end of the chapter or paragraph break.

3 stars
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Guilt By Association by Marcia Clark - a D.A. in Los Angeles looks into the supposed murder/suicide of one of her colleagues. I didn't realize when I put this book on my list that it was written by one of the prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson trial. A little too much time dwelling on the diet and clothing choices of the main character but the plot was pretty good.

3 stars
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Anatomy of Fear by Jonathan Santlofer - an interesting plot, following a police sketch artist as he begins to develop a picture of a serial killer. But filled with too many of the elements that I find irritating. Multiple points of view, at least six,  sometimes changing viewpoints from paragraph to paragraph. If there had been pets in the story, they would have had a viewpoint too. Then there was the thrown in Santeria, Spanish with no interpretation, corrupt police officials and the obligatory romance. I did like the actual sketches by the author.

2 stars
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Don't Know Jack by Diane Capri - a different take on the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. Two FBI agents are sent on a covert operation to find Jack, but they're not sure why. They go to the setting of the first Jack Reacher novel and meet many of the same characters from that book. Their view of Jack is very different from those of us who have read the series, hence the title of the book. Lots of action but I really couldn't follow all the money talk.

3 stars
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Cry Wolf by J. Carson Black - a man is found dead in the parking lot of a park and the detectives investigating soon find that he was a compulsive liar. This means they have to follow many dead end leads before finding the truth. This is the fourth in a series but the first I've read.

3 stars