MORE READING

I started this month with a bang – one good book after another - almost. The first had me “on the edge of my chair” from page one.

Blood Harvest – S. J. Bolton – This is the third of her books I’ve read, and by far the best. I had to stop reading every so often because it was so tense – but I had to go back almost immediately to see what was going to happen next!

The Fletcher’s new house – built between two churches in a small village – out to be paradise, but they’ve barely settled in before they find that someone seems to be trying to drive them away with increasingly dangerous threats targeting their oldest child, ten-year-old Tom.

Bolton has won various awards for her thrillers, and with good reason. She keeps you guessing and keeps you from reading late at night with her tales. Scary!!

Tomorrow River – Lesley Kagen – I bought this ARC from our book sale at the library because I had read one of her books before and liked it well enough. I had a hard time at the beginning hearing the “voice” of Shenandoah Carmody. Shenny and Woody are twin sisters living at Lilyfield – a beautiful home in the country, but Woody has become mute since their mother’s disappearance, and Shenny has to speak for both of them. The girls start searching for their mother with very little help from their father who has become a drunken, mean person, and not the loving father he had been. The search includes a varied group of friends of Shenny’s, but no one can really help her – or will. The family seems to disintegrate and Shenny faces many heartbreaking times ahead.

I See You Everywhere – Julia Glass – I liked The Three Junes when I read it several years ago, so looked forward to this new book. It was a book that held my interest, but I had a hard time identifying with the two sisters who tell the story in alternate chapters. Both Louisa and Clem are very flawed people, and not too fond of either each other or of their parents. Louisa has always been jealous of her younger sister, and through the years the jealousy continues. Early in the book is a chapter about a great-great aunt who is ninety-eight. Clem comes to be her companion for a summer. I could have read a whole book about Clem and her aunt Lucy! There are chapters about ecology and conservation that involve Clem, and chapters about art and Louisa, but overall the book doesn’t hold together very well – at least for me. Sometimes if felt as if I was reading a lot of short stories.

Now to see what the next book will be!