The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

 Addie LaRue, the principal character in V.E. Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (#958), is three hundred years old in the New York City of the last decade.  Funny, it felt like it took me that long to read this book!  Groundhog Day kept flashing across my mind as the plot crawled and repeated, crawled and repeated...  I know it's on the NYT's Best Sellers List, but it only reminded me why I have such a low tolerance for books in vogue.

It's listed under Science Fiction, but I would argue with that.  Girl in early eighteenth century France (Addie) doesn't want to get married and live and die her whole life in the tiny village of Villon.  So what does she do?  She sells her soul to The Dark.  He's not exactly the devil, but it is your typical Faustian bargain; in return for Addie's soul when she's ready to surrender it, she gains immortality.  She feels everything, but can't leave a trace - as soon as she's out of sight, she's literally out of mind.  She becomes functionally invisible.  It takes three hundred years before she meets someone who finally remembers her.  Care to guess why?  It only takes five hundred plus pages of large print type to find out why.  I kept slogging, but I'm not sure the final payoff was worth the time spent.  Sorry I wasted my time on this one.

Jingle All the Way

 Debbie Macomber's latest Christmas novel, Jingle All The Way (#957), was a Christmas present, so I saved it for a bit to read after all the decorations and lights were put away, and I could use a little bit of Christmas cheer.  I wasn't disappointed.  In many ways, it's not your typical Christmas novel with mountains of snow and everyone baking cookies far into the nights (well, all right, there was cookie baking and a sleigh ride) but rather an adventure on the Amazon river.

Everly Lancaster is too good at her job as an online real estate mogul.  In fact, she's so good that her business partner has gradually sloughed off his responsibilities onto her shoulders.  When his spoiled niece sabotages an important presentation, Everly loses it.  Jack orders her to take the entire month of December off to de-stress and asks Annette, her assistant, to arrange a nice tropical cruise for her.  A few days later, Everly finds herself in Brazil on the Amazon Explorer.  This eco-adventure tour certainly wasn't what she had in mind, and there's no way off for two weeks.  Lucky for her, Asher Adams, the handsome naturalist on board manages to keep her out of trouble while she's deciding that perhaps this revenge cruise might be the best thing that ever happened to her.

Since my husband and I are exactly the kind of retired couple who enjoy these small group tours immensely, I could sympathize with Everly being the only under-thirty aboard (except for the crew, of course!)  Debbie Macomber says in her intro letter that she got the ideas for a couple of books from tours that she and her own husband have taken, and it showed.  It was delightful.

A Christmas Resolution

 Anne Perry's annual Christmas novel is a present I always give myself, so even though I wasn't able to get it until after Christmas this year, I still read it with enjoyment.  A Christmas Resolution (#956) delivers, as it always does, a finely-wrought moral tale wrapped in a Christmas time mystery.  

This is no snow-filled, cookie-baking piece of fluff; it's set in Victorian London with familiar characters from Ms. Perry's William Monk series.  Celia Hooper has learned that her good friend is engaged to a well-to-do man from their small parish on the fringes of London.  Celia's dislike of Seth Marlowe is instinctive and mutual, although she knows nothing to his discredit.  He is a widower with a daughter who has run away from home.  Perhaps marriage to Clementine Appleby will be the making of him.  But when Seth Marlowe forbids Celia to continue her friendship with Clementine, and accuses her of writing him anonymous poison pen letters, things take a sinister turn.  John Hooper feels compelled to investigate the truth behind the threats.

The theme of repentance and forgiveness are strong here, the perfect Christmas message.  It's good reading for the soul.

V2 - A Novel of World War II

 I found Robert Harris' latest novel V2 - A Novel of World War II (#955) very interesting.  I had heard of the V2 rocket in passing, but I didn't really know how the Nazis used them, mainly against the British,  in the waning days of World War II.  The handwriting was already on the wall that the Germans were going to lose the war, but they were so determined to go down fighting they even named their rockets Vengeance and used their most radicalized members of the SS to enforce their use even though it was a risky and dangerous business for their own people.

Harris has humanized the story by introducing us to Erik Graf, a German rocket scientist and colleague of Werner Von Braun.  Erik has already figured that there is no point in continuing the bloodshed, and is carrying out his own campaign of defiance at the launch site at Scheveningen on the Dutch coast.  His counterpoint is a British Section Officer from the WAAFs, Kay Caton-Walsh.  She was in a British townhouse with her high-ranking RAF lover when a V2 falls in their neighborhood.  Although she survives, she has a personal interest in volunteering her math skills to help pinpoint where the V2 launches are coming from.  And so she finds herself stationed with a secret analysis unit in Mechelen, Belgium, not seventy miles from Graf's location.

Tracing the back stories and development of the V2 rockets ,and leading to the moment when Erik and Kay's paths meet makes for a compelling story.  Recommended.

The Art of Drowning

 I've been dipping into Billy Collins' poetry again with his 1995 collection The Art of Drowning (#954).  He certainly has converted this non-poetry lover to a fan.  There are so many wonderful things here to savor and re-read, but I think my favorite in this collection is Keat's Handwriting.  I'm not sure just what  it is about this poem which makes it so appealing to me.   Maybe that's the point; it doesn't speak to your intellectual and analytical side as much as the emotional, empathetic part of you.  It just tickled me.  Isn't that the point?  Find out for yourself if you don't believe me.

In fact, the only thing I did not like about this book is the cover art.  It was a little creepy for my taste, so it just goes to prove you can't judge a book by its cover.

Unrestricted Access

 Unrestricted Access (#953) is a collection of short stories by James Rollins, one of my favorite thriller authors.  Most have been in print elsewhere prior to this collection, but since I hadn't seen any of them before, I didn't care.  Except for a story told from a dog's point of view (Rollins is a veterinarian by training.) the characters are all familiar from the author's novels.  Many are prequels to his best-selling Sigma Force novels, so if you are a fan, it's not hard to get into these short stories.

I have to admit that my favorite among them turned out to be a short story called Ghost Ship.   In the opening scene, the characters ride horseback across a remote beach in Northern Australia, watching a large saltwater crocodile make its way from the Daintree Rainforest across the sands to the open waters of the ocean.  I've been on that beach with its fabulous view of Cape Tribulation, so named by Captain Cook when his ship ran aground on a reef there.  However, the small group I was with was on foot, and I was praying that we wouldn't come across a crocodile on the beach!  Not for us some luxury hotel in Port Douglas with hot stone massages in its spa, as Seichan yearns for here.  No, we stayed in an eco-lodge in our own little tree house surrounded by thousands of bats right in the rainforest itself.  It was truly unforgettable.

Anyway, it was great to have Unrestricted Access during a busy season since it was easy to pick up and put down as I had the time.  Always entertaining.

News of the World

 I just finished Paulette Jiles' western adventure, News of the World (#952).  It was a fast and enjoyable read.  It concerns an older gentleman who roams throughout northern Texas reading an aggregation of news stories from around the United States and further afield.  His aim is to inform and entertain these isolated folk, and for the most part he is trusted and accepted.  So much so that he is pressed into service to return a white child captured by the Kiowas four years earlier to her relatives not too far from San Antonio.

Captain Kidd is not very happy about being forced to take the girl, Johanna, but if he doesn't, who will?  This odd couple finds a way to communicate and find themselves united against common enemies on their travels through dangerous territory.  When they finally arrive at Johanna's aunt and uncle's home, her reception makes Captain Kidd reluctant to leave his charge there...

I can see why this book was made into a movie, which I have not seen.  I'm sure Tom Hanks has done his usual excellent job, but I have to admit that the actor who sprang into my mind to portray Captain Kidd was Donald Sutherland - older, tall, with shining white hair.  I look forward to seeing what they've done with such exciting material.