Shauna

My Last Kristin Hannah

Revisado: 08-20-20

Kristin Hannah is a bestselling author who gets mostly 4 or 5 stars on Audible. I tried this Kristin Hannah book based on those stars. Technically, Kristin Hannah is a good writer. I read Between Sisters down to the last chapter because I was determined to see what others did. Because the characters had so little depth, there was nothing there for me.

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Enriching story, highly recommended

Revisado: 09-17-18

Sam Hell is about the life of Sam Hill from elementary school through his early forties. Sam was born with ocular albinism and as a result, has red eyes. Sam has two other worries: a dangerous bully named David Bateman, and the principal of his parish church who prevented his enrollment in a Catholic school because he is called Devil Boy. This prejudice is counterbalanced by Sam's friendship with Micki and Ernie and his love for his parents but, even as an adult, Sam's actions are influenced by his eye color.

The book is both heart-wrenching and heart-warming. The characters are engrossing.I thought about the story when I wasn't listening. The narrator was not from California where the story takes place. Some familiar words were mispronounced. Beyond that, he did a good job.

If you like "coming of age" stories, you will love The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell.

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Bring Me Back

Revisado: 07-06-18

Bring Me Back is about a man who experiences the disappearance of his girlfriend but, years later, is lined up to marry again. Once the wedding is announced, the couple is subjected to some strange occurrences that pull the protagonist into his past.

The storyline has some ups and downs. In places, it was predictable. I stayed with the book because I liked the protagonist and wanted to see what would come of him. B A Paris excels at connecting the reader with the main characters. She kept the characters to a minimum in this book, making it very easy to follow. Because I was able to predict some behaviors, the book was less suspenseful than her other two.

I would put this book in the category of "light entertainment".

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Still Me Narrator Ruined it for me

Revisado: 02-07-18

This is my third Jojo Moyes audiobook. I love the character Louisa, both for the way she is written and the way the narrator voices her. Unfortunately, Still Me is almost ruined by the narrator's other performances..

This book mixes people from London, New York, Krakow, and other cities. The narrator, Anna Acton, did a good job with all the accents except for the New York/US accents, especially the males. The way she portrayed them was grating, cringeworthy.

In other cases when I have been bothered by the narrator, I just hung in, eventually getting past it. As much as I like Jojo Moyes and the story, there was no hanging-in this time.

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A New World -- Right Next Door to Me -- IQ

Revisado: 11-16-17

Writers will tell you that creating a world and putting your reader in that world is what makes a book successful. IQ by Joe Ide did that for me. Thank you, Michael Connelly for recommending it. I've lived in Southern California all my life, just a few miles from where this book takes place, yet I was transported to another culture by the argot of Joe Ide. Joe Ide must have lived in SoCal, perhaps Compton, south central LA, or thereabouts to have captured that scene so well.

IQ is about a homeboy detective, Isaiah Quintabe, who evolved into the role out of grief and necessity. Of course, he is brilliant and strategic, sort of a Sherlock Holmes, but rather than in London, he lives inside the world of rap music and the beat of the neighborhoods that spawned it. IQ and every other character in this book come alive through Ide's pen. This is much more than a thriller. This book was so good it made me want to go back and adjust some of the five-star reviews I have given to other books.

Some people should not read IQ, especially if offended by street slang and four-letter words. For example, the N-word is used many times in this book, but I believe it is within the context of the story. The narrator is amazing and also handles the language well.

I am giving IQ five+ stars because of the brilliant writing of Joe Ide.

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Phil Knight and Shoe Dog

Revisado: 10-31-17

This book is about the birth and nurturing of Nike into one of the world's most familiar brands. Phil Knight, Nike founder, is the author.

In the early 70's Phil Knight gathered a motley crew of employees and then, more or less, let them do their jobs. Building the Nike brand was not easy. The company started out as an importer of shoes called Tigers manufactured in Japan. Phil called his distribution company Blue Ribbon; The Japanese factory owner took advantage of Blue Ribbon, forcing Phil Knight and crew to go in another direction, hence the birth of Nike.

Phil Knight is a master storyteller. Shoe Dog reads like a thriller, with many plot twists. I don't recommend this book as a how-to on starting a company because Nike hung by a thread for the first several years of its existence. I do recommend this book for its life lessons. Phil lays out his mistakes and what he learned from them. He is an amazing man. I loved the book.

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Mystery or fantasy?

Revisado: 04-09-17

Behind her Eyes is well written and plausible to a point but the writer uses an unusual construct to advance the plot. I found that offputting.

The protagonist is an unassuming woman who goes to work as an assistant in a law firm. Just prior to starting this job she has an encounter with a man who she later discovers is her new boss. The boss is an enigma--warm enough to suck her into a relationship and then abandoning her. He's married to a very beautiful woman who befriends the new assistant. The story gets complicated from there as the love triangle plays out. A plot twist reveals that wife is omniscient thus allowing her to manipulate the assistant. That's when the plot broke down for me.

If you are good at suspending disbelief and you want a mystery with an element of fantasy, then go for it!

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Broadened my view of the criminal justice system

Revisado: 01-01-17

Most of you know that Adnan was a 17 year old who was convicted and sentenced to life + 30 for the murder of former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. In 2017, Adnan will have lived 1/2 of his life behind bars.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is very well structured considering the writer, Rabia Chaudry, is not an author by profession. Rabia tells Adnan's story through his letters and her personal experiences as one of the few who stood by Adnan from the outset. Rabia also does a very good job as narrator.

The first part of the book is about Adnan's and Hae's life as high school students and lovers. It lays out the state's case against Adnan leading to his conviction, his first ten years in prison and the exhaustion of Adnan's appeals and retrial requests. .

Adnan's conviction is sealed and he is nearly forgotten until Sarah Koenig's NPR podcast Serial creates a tsunami of interest in the case. Here Adnan's Story takes a turn when Rabia and a few among the Serial crowd, work together to debunk the "evidence" against Adnan, most of which depends upon eyewitness testimony and corroborating cell phone data. That takes us to the present.

In the last part of the book, Rabia reveals what she sees as a conspiracy by a few Baltimore police detectives and the prosecutors who defeated Adnan. She presents an argument and data so compelling that you should not read this book if you want to believe the criminal justice system is usually fair and impartial. It certainly changed how I would analyze evidence if I were selected as a juror in a criminal trial.

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Who's been shamed?

Revisado: 08-22-15

This book was not what I expected it to be. I mistakenly believed that the title represented the contents, but no so!

I wanted to find out what to do if an average (and innocent) person was shamed via social media. By "you" I thought Mr. Ronson was referring to the readers. In fact, it was as much about people that Mr. Ronson had shamed as anything else.

It didn't make me understand why people have resumed the shaming culture. In fact, it made it sound like public shaming was justified.

After previously falling for the title "The History of Rock n Roll in Ten Songs" I guess I should have known better. Shame on me.

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About a woman, not a coal mine

Revisado: 07-25-15

As compared to other Grisham novels, Gray Mountain didn't receive the highest reviews from readers. I believe that is because this book is a departure. The putative course of this novel would be a David v. Goliath struggle between the protagonist, an unpaid intern working in a poverty law center, and a major coal mining conglomerate. That's not it. This is a book about an ambivalent 29 year old woman, Samantha Kofer, who must conquer her own soul.

Gray Mountain is a place where strip mining has destroyed a natural landmark owned by the family of two of the leading characters: Dominick and Jeff. These two have devoted their lives to fighting "big coal". Samantha comes into the picture as the missing piece of the team that could win a big payoff for readers. She is torn between staying in Appalachia and returning to safe harbor in New York. The book is about Samantha's struggle.

If you want to read a book about the kinds of choices that lawyers make, this is a good book. If you want a typical Grisham, this is not your book.

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