TWO-CENT TUESDAY

Below are a few somewhat brief $.02 opinions about books I've read or listened to recently but don't have the time, inclination, or opportunity to review in full. Their appearance often here has little to do with merit. Many of these titles I enjoyed as much or more than those that got the full court press. I hope you'll consider one or two for your own TBR stack if they strike your fancy whether they struck mine or not.

Although I generally try to slip some books in here that I wasn't too thrilled with, that isn't the case this week. Whether I read a physical copy or listened to an audiobook, each of these titles was a winner. Some were known authors I knew were unlikely to let me down, a couple were shots in the dark based on my gut that paid off tremendously. 

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy, by Kliph Nesteroff

I thought this would be an important, yet maddening, read. It was all that plus very well done and some great blasts from my past. It had me down a rabbit hole of old late night talk show clips (going back to Johnny Carson) to find old comedy bits. Look up Charlie Hill if you get the chance. He was the first Native American comedian to appear on The Tonight Show and also ended up writing for television. It is one of Hill's bits that inspired the title of the book: "My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York. We had a little real estate problem.” 

Nesteroff has been called "The Human Encyclopedia of Comedy" and "The King of Comedy Lore," and after a bit of a slow-moving start, the material kicks up several notches when it hits "modern day" comedy (i.e., when my old ass was alive). A highlight of the impact Native Americans have made on the comedy world despite their historical denial of representation, this is a great (and sorrowful) read well-worth the time and education. 

 

What's Done in Darkness, by Laura McHugh

Since I fell in love with her debut, The Weight of Blood, McHugh has become a must-read author. Her latest continues her hot streak. In this one, 17-year-old Sarabeth's abduction is less than believable since she had been rebelling against her strictly religious parents when she was allegedly taken and then released a week later. Despite her torment, the abduction does give her the chance to finally escape the Ozarks.

Five years later, FBI Agent Nick Farrow calls, asking for Sarabeth's help. Another girl has gone missing under circumstances Farrow thinks may be related to Sarabeth's abduction and her memories may help the case. 

Reluctantly, Sarabeth agrees to help, and delving into her own kidnapping releases memories and a past full of evil just waiting to be uncovered. McHugh is a wonderful writer who tells a great story. When those two elements come together, an intriguing read results, even if one might not be into some of the plot arcs (i.e., religion). It really doesn't matter, I'll read anything McHugh writes. If you've not read her work, I highly recommend it.

Local Woman Missing, by Mary Kubica

Mary Kubica is another author who blew me away with her debut, The Good Girl. I've read everything she's written since and have only been slightly underwhelmed once. She remains an auto-read and when I hit her latest on audio my mind didn't wander at all (which it almost always does when I'm listening to a book while multi-tasking). 

Meredith, a doula, and her six-year-old daughter go missing. Meredith's car is found at a local motel, where it appears she committed suicide. Her daughter is nowhere to be found. The anxiousness in the neighborhood is amped up due to the recent disappearance of another local woman who turns out to have been one of Meredith's clients. 

Told in the usual rotating timeline, alternating POV that Kubica does so well, this one is well worth a listen despite some far-fetched plot points.

The Mighty Oak, by Jeff W. Bens

I was won over by a cool cover and a short plot summary and found a true gem inside. Tim "Oak" O'Connor is a goon for the El Paso Storm of the West Texas Hockey League. As a hockey hitman, he's paid to be violent and his body is basically jelly held together by a skin suit. He's also been away from home for a long time; long enough to lose his wife to his best friend and miss out on his daughter's life.

When he returns to Boston for his mother's death, he begins to confront all he's given up for a sport he still can't imagine giving up, even as he crunches oxy to keep upright. He also makes new connections with a haunted attorney and a young boy facing issues of his own. Bens writes wonderfully and The Mighty Oak had me entranced from the start. 

THE OTHER MRS. :: Mary Kubica

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

"I'm not going to tell you everything. Just the things I think you should know." These thoughts from the mind of a Mary Kubica character perfectly encapsulate her maddeningly tantalizing style. The Other Mrs., her fifth standalone thriller, solidifies Kubica (When the Lights Go Out) as a master of the multi-perspective mind-twister.

Sadie and Will Foust leave plenty behind in Chicago when they relocate to Portland, Maine--most of it bad: Will's affair, Sadie's legal problems at work and oldest son Otto's expulsion from school. Unfortunately, their "fresh start" is marred by its own troubles. The home bequeathed to them by Will's sister, who hung herself in the attic, comes with his openly hostile teen niece. There's history they just can't shake, including threatening messages, inklings of Will's infidelities and Sadie's random disappearing acts. When a neighbor is murdered, all signs point to something amiss in the Foust home.

Kubica dangles bits of bait only to yank them from view and replace them with three more. Despite the swirl of characters and activity, past and present, the narrative always feels under control. Its outlandishness is a purposeful, compelling level of chaos that Kubica deftly manipulates. Through the voices of Sadie, Camille (Will's former mistress) and a mysterious, mistreated girl nicknamed Mouse, Kubica doles out a psychological whopper of a tale. The Other Mrs. is a roller coaster with tracks that dip from view and turn unexpectedly, creating unease enhanced by a compulsion to race forward for an answer to the burning question: "Who is Mouse?"

DON'T YOU CRY :: Mary Kubica

"I have this pesky feeling that I don't know who Esther is anymore."

Mary Kubica is quickly becoming one of my favorite multi-POV authors. This time, the reader is tossed between Quinn and Alex—Quinn an admittedly flawed twenty-something who wakes one morning in her Chicago apartment to find her beautiful, smart, church-going roommate Esther missing; Alex an 18-year-old living an hour away from Quinn in Michigan, working as a dishwasher and trying to keep his alcoholic father afloat.

When a mysterious stranger appears in the diner where Alex works, he falls hard and begins trying to find out who she is and what she’s doing in his small, seemingly boring town. Kubica uses Quinn and Alex to wind around both mysteries and ultimately bring them together in a satisfying conclusion.

The more Quinn tries to find out what happened to the girl she calls "Saint Esther" (did she climb out her window and take off, or was she taken?), the more she begins to question her relationship with Esther and who Esther really is. Is Esther sweet or sinister?

A mere hour away, Alex knows he doesn't know the beautiful stranger, and the more he finds out the less he understands. Both Alex and Quinn begin to feel the tug of danger in their guts, as secrets new and old come to the surface.

Kubica has a great knack for leading readers’ judgment about her characters, only to turn those conclusions on their head. Despite knowing that, she gets me every time. I'm too sucked in by the mystery to wonder what is true or the result of being taken in by the narrative. It's just fun to go along for the ride.

I've enjoyed all three of Kubica's novels (The Good Girl and Pretty Baby preceded Don't You Cry), and while I think The Good Girl may remain my favorite overall, I think Don't You Cry may be the best at pulling off its conclusion. Are there annoyances? Sure, but minor ones. We're in the minds of two young people, where that's bound to happen. My only real complaint is just a personal nit, but if I had to read the description of a character's hair as ombre one more time I was going to throw a clot. If that's my biggest complaint, I think we've got a winner here.

STREET SENSE:  Fans of Mary Kubica's work will be happy to know she's still got more up her sleeve. If you've not read Kubica's work, I recommend it. It's engaging, entertaining, and wound in a way that always gives me at least one good surprise. Don’t You Cry isn’t perfect, but it’s a fun, twisty ride, and I will pick up Mary Kubica's books as long as she keeps writing them.

A FAVORITE PASSAGE:  I was hooked from the opening, so here it is:

In hindsight, I should have known right away that something wasn't quite right. The jarring noise in the middle of the night, the open window, the empty bed. Later, I blamed a whole slew of things for my nonchalance, everything from a headache to fatigue, down to arrant stupidity.
But still.
I should have known right away that something wasn't right.

COVER NERD SAYS:  With Don't You Cry, the publisher has returned to a cover image that is undoubtedly for a Mary Kubica book. Along with The Good Girl, her covers are almost so recognizable it doesn't matter if you can read the title. I think it's smart to have covers that readers automatically associate with an author, and with the paperback of Pretty Baby the publisher kept with the feature of having one letter out of whack, which I also like. I'm not often a fan of face close-ups on book covers, but these seem to work in that while the women are beautiful, they don't distract from or outweigh the whole. A partial face, a face turn, and gauzy lighting help that. Alone, these covers are nice. As a group they really shout "Mary Kubica wrote this!"

PRETTY BABY :: Mary Kubica

"The first time I see her, she is standing at the Fullerton Station, on the train platform, clutching an infant in her arms."

I found Mary Kubica's The Good Girl to be a pretty stellar debut last year (you can read my thoughts here), so it was with great anticipation I dove into her sophomore offering, Pretty Baby. Just as with The Good Girl, I was sucked in immediately by Kubica's writing style and structure. I'll be interested to see if she continues to write in the same format, for despite some minor issues with both works, Kubica is quickly becoming an author I can count on for a compelling and worthwhile read.

Heidi and Chris Wood live in Chicago with their twelve-year-old daughter Zoe. Polar opposites, they are having trouble connecting. Chris, driven by the almighty dollar, works long hours and is rarely home. More troubling is the new "femme fatale" co-worker Heidi is convinced has eyes for him.

Chris isn't blind, he sees Cassidy Knudsen, how different she is from his wife. After fourteen years of marriage, Chris feels Heidi, a bleeding heart who works at a literacy non-profit, has more concern for the well-being of stray cats and her refugee students than for him. His thoughts about a photo of their wedding day tacked to the bulletin board in his office speak volumes:

But there was something telling about that photograph, I thought; our protective glass frame shattered and now here we were, punctured with microscopic holes that might one day tear. Those holes all had names: mortgage, adolescent child, lack of communication, retirement savings, cancer. 

One cold, rainy day, Heidi sees a young girl on the train platform, holding a baby and standing by a battered suitcase, soaked by the rain and obviously malnourished. The girl and the baby fill Heidi's thoughts from that moment on, feeding directly into her need to make everything right. She wonders about their story, how she can help them, ashamed she didn't take action.

When Heidi crosses paths with the girl again, she is bound and determined to help, and soon enough Willow Greer and baby Ruby are staying in the Wood condo, much to the consternation of Chris and Zoe. Who is this girl? A simple runaway? A killer or con on the run? As Chris asks Heidi, "How much can you really know about another person?"

Mysterious and secretive Willow and baby Ruby settle into the house, and with no end to their stay in sight, the stress begins to crack the already fragile family veneer. Chris and Zoe want nothing to do with Willow, want her gone. Heidi, meanwhile, is drawn deeper and deeper into Willow and Ruby's lives, using them to fill a void from her past, and the dynamic threatens catastrophic consequences. It's apparent early on that things go wrong, and the twisty ride to the truth is well worth taking.

Pretty Baby is written from three alternating chapter perspectives: those of Heidi, Chris, and Willow. What I love most about Kubica's style is how she spins the story through each character's perspective and keeps the reader guessing about actual motives, intentions, facts, and past history. You think you know what's going on, who these characters are, only to have that perspective is turned on its ear. It keeps the narrative quite compelling and doubles as a lesson in not judging characters, good or bad, too quickly.

Although a number of the plot devices in both of Kubica's books have been seen many times before, for some reason they don't feel impossibly gimmicky in her hands. Perhaps because she builds credibility with nifty nooks and crannies in her character and story development and also throws in great, authentic twists, I forgive the arcs that toe the cliche line. I'll take strong character study and evolution over a few unique plot points any day.

STREET SENSE: Fans of psychological thrillers and multiple character narration will be well-served by Pretty Baby. Other than a few short side-trips, Kubica keeps the pace steady and her characters engrossing, spinning the story around the various perspectives to a satisfactory, if less than explosive, conclusion. Pick up Pretty Baby, The Good Girl, or both, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

A FAVORITE PASSAGE:  "Whipped cream?" the woman asks, and Willow looks to me for approval. Funny, I think, how in that split second she becomes a child, just at the very mention of whipped cream. She strikes me as an optical illusion, like the famous Rubin's vase: depending on how one looks at it, one of two scenes appear, two profiles, placed face-to-face, or the vase which lies perched between them. They flip-flop before your eyes. Profiles, vase. Profiles, vase. Strong, independent young woman with a baby; helpless young girl with an affinity for hot chocolate and whipped cream.

COVER NERD SAYS: For some reason, I find Kubica's cover art more attractive once I've finished the book. It's almost as if the story informs the images. I would not likely have been drawn to this cover if I didn't know the book was written by Mary Kubica. I can't deny they are beautiful covers, just not up my normal alley.

THE GOOD GIRL :: Mary Kubica

Twenty-four-year-old Mia Dennett is a free spirit, the black sheep of her blue blood family. Daughter of a powerful judge and a socialite, her only sibling a doppelganger of her father, she wants nothing more than to maintain distance from her family and continue her work as an art teacher at an alternative high school. But when Mia is abducted by a man she meets in a bar and later returns home from captivity, she and her family are forced to deal with the pre- and post-abduction fallout as the reader is taken through the mystery of Mia’s disappearance and the repercussions that shake her family.

Mary Kubica’s The Good Girl is written in a terrific format which serves to ratchet the suspense to levels that truly kept me hooked from the get-go. The story is told in “Before” and “After” timelines as well as from four alternating chapter perspectives: Mia, her mother Eve, her abductor Colin, and Gabe Hoffman, the detective assigned to Mia’s case. The culminating event to which the “Before” and “After” are pinned is the recovery of Mia from her abductor, an event she can’t remember, along with her name (she now calls herself “Chloe”).

Mia seems to be a different person with different mannerisms and traits. Even as her mother struggles to understand Mia and help her through her PTSD memory-loss, she realizes she perhaps never really knew her daughter at all:

My eyes stray to a family photograph we had done years ago: James, Grace, Mia and Me. Everyone else looks as if they were forced to be there, with artificial smiles plastered to furrowed brows and rolling eyes. Even me. But Mia simply looks happy. Why? I wonder. We never gave her a reason to be happy. 

While the style might sound confusing, it’s in good hands with author Kubica, and I was never lost as to where I was in the story or which character I was listening to. The perspective switches, paired with short-ish chapters, made the book all the more compelling, a “just one more chapter” type of read. A psychological thriller of the first order, The Good Girl asks all kinds of great questions, then lets the answers play out over the two timelines and through the multiple narrators:

Why did Colin abduct Mia, only to take her to a remote cabin in Minnesota rather than turn her over to his cohorts as planned? What was the purpose of the abduction in the first place? Why is Mia’s mother so removed from her daughter, when it’s obvious she regrets the distance between them? Is Mia’s father always such an asshole, or just when it comes to Mia and the effort it might take to get her back and deal with her issues? Is her family really that bad or is Mia the one who’s a bit off? What really happens when abductor and abductee are holed up in a cabin in the frigid Minnesota wilderness?

The strength of The Good Girl is in the format and the character profiles, each well-drawn in its own right. I enjoyed getting into the minds of four different characters, who all had a different purpose, in and to the story. They also each had different pasts and motivations coloring their actions, some quite surprising. Eve’s and Colin’s chapters in particular were written with such emotion the pain emanating from the words was almost palpable. I may not have liked each character, but I liked reading about them, which is the important part, and Gabe Hoffman is one of my favorite characters of 2014.

Where the book lost me a bit was with the ultimate unveiling of how Mia was recovered and what was behind the abduction, which felt a bit formulaic. That being said, the let-down wasn’t enough to detract much from my enjoyment of the telling of how we came to the end. I’d still highly recommend it if you like a good, page-turny psych thriller.

STREET SENSE: Despite a bit of a let-down from the ultimate reveal (for me), I thought this book was really well done and recommend it for those who like a fast-paced mystery with a psychological bent.

A FAVORITE PASSAGE: I’ve been following her for the last few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where she has her dry cleaning done, where she works. I’ve never spoken to her. I wouldn’t recognize the sound of her voice. I don’t know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she’s scared. But I will.

COVER NERD SAYS: I’d heard good things about The Good Girl, but wasn’t taken in the by cover. For some reason, the photo read to me as a much younger girl, not a young woman, and it just didn’t leap out at me. Now that I’ve read it, and can better see the young woman of the photo,I appreciate the cover a bit more for its subtlety.