A Robbery Gone Bad

 Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Our faculty book club that was started while we were all quarantined back in the springtime is back, and this is the first selection of this school year. The librarian at one of our feeder schools (who used to be one of the librarians on our campus until they foolishly decided we didn't need two librarians on a high school campus) recommended this to our librarian. She even wants to join in our book club discussion, which will be cool.

This book, in a way, reminded me of the movie, Clue, and a little of the book And Then There Were None except that no one died. It jumped around a lot, and just when I thought I was finally figuring it out, the author threw a curveball. It was a fun read because of this.

So, this book is about a bank robbery, but not really. It's about a hostage situation, but not really. It's about an apartment open house, but not really. It's about people and how they interact with each other. This gives the here and now of the characters but also gives their background. 

If all Backman's books are this good, I will read them all.

A Modern, Young Adult Take on my Favorite Book

 Bookish Boyfriends: A Date with Darcy  by Tiffany Schmidt

I'm in the middle of a couple of books. Books that are either sequels or companions to other books I have read and enjoyed, but for whatever reason, I am having a hard time getting through. I decided to peruse Overdrive from my local public library to see what I could see. The title led me to believe it would have something to do with my favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice, and I was not wrong.

This is about sixteen-year-old Merrilee. She has an older sister who is marrying a local politician's son, and a younger sister who is an angsty artist. She lives next door to her best guy friend, and lives reasonably close to her best girl friend (conveniently, her two best friends don't really like each other). She is an avid reader and has proclaimed that book boyfriends are the best. 

The book starts on Merri's first day of her sophomore year at a private high school. She, her best girl friend, and her younger sister are all new students there. On the very first day, she sees a young man looking swoony against a tree, and gets belittled by another cute guy. By the end of the week, swoony guy becomes her boyfriend. 

She has to read Romeo and Juliet for her English class, and she feels a certain kinship to that tale, particularly with her boyfriend having been cast in the school play as Romeo. But he is a bit over the top and doesn't always play by the rules, which ultimately leads Merri to get into trouble (and leads to her breaking up with him). Her English teacher is in charge of Merri's punishment, and she assigns Pride and Prejudice to Merri. 

Merri becomes engrossed in the book (who could blame her?) and sees the characters in people she knows around her. If Merri is Lizzy, then who is her Darcy? 

This was a cute read, and I wouldn't mind reading more like it.

A Worthy Successor

 The Next Person You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven several years ago, and liked it. In truth, everything I have read by Mitch Albom has been worth my time. They are generally quick reads, but they always touch the heart. This one was no different. 

This was the story of Annie. Annie was injured in an amusement park accident when she was a child (the same accident mentioned in the previous book), and the scars, both physical and emotional, left an indelible mark on her life. 

At the beginning of the book, Annie is marrying her true love, Paulo. They met in elementary school, lost touch for fifteen years when his family moved to Italy, then found each other again. Their love was meant to be. On the night of their wedding, they saw a man stuck on the side of the road in the rain changing his tire, and they stopped so Paulo could help him. The man was appreciative and gave him a business card. He owned a hot air balloon company. The next morning, Annie decides that they should go for a hot air balloon ride.

Instead of the man they helped the night before, his assistant took them up in the balloon. He was not as experienced, and they ended up caught in electric lines. The balloon pilot was ejected from the basket, Annie was thrown out by Paulo, and Paulo fell. They ended up in the hospital, and Paulo's injuries were such that he was going to die if he didn't receive a new lung. Annie offered hers, and despite everyone not wanting to honor those wishes, she gives a lung to Paulo.

Then she wakes up in Heaven, meeting five people who touched her life in some way. Annie always felt that she made mistakes, to the point that everything she did was a mistake. The five people she meets help her to see things in ways she never thought to.

This book was beautiful--sad, but beautiful. I highly recommend it.

What Would You Do For a Friend?

The Request by David Bell

Ever since I discovered Mr. Bell's books a few years ago, I can't wait to get my hands on his new release every summer. There's only been one that I wasn't the biggest fan of, and it was still a good book. This one, however, is more in line with his earlier books, and I loved those. 

At the beginning of this one, Ryan is leaving money in the mailbox of a family of the victims of a drunk driving accident. He leaves money every year because he was the one driving the car, although someone else did the time for the accident. An older sister of the victims catches Ryan and blackmails him to give her $10,000 in a couple of weeks' time. He doesn't have it, but what can he do?

As a reader, you think this is the request referred to in the title, but Bell goes a step further and adds another one. 

Ryan's friend, Blake, surprises him when he is checking in on the bar he is part owner of, and asks him to talk. They go across the street for coffee, and Blake has a request of his own. Blake needs Ryan to go into the house of a woman he recently broke things off with and retrieve some letters he'd written to the woman that told the truth about the drunk driving accident all those years ago. Blake gets Ryan to do it because Ryan knows if the truth gets out, his life will be ruined. 

So Ryan goes over there. While attempting to retrieve the letters, he finds the woman dead on the floor. He flips out and leaves. What happens next is a roller coaster of Ryan trying to find out who killed this woman. Was it Blake? Can he trust his friend?

Like all of Bell's books, I can't recommend this one enough. Find it and read it. You'll thank me later.

An Irish Companion To Italy

Love and Luck by Jenna Evans Welch

A year or two ago, I read Love and Gelato by the same author and enjoyed it, so I was happy to see that there was a companion book to it. As it turns out, there will be another one sometime in the next year, and I will read it too.

This one is about Lina's best friend, Addie, and Lina doesn't actually turn up in this book until the last chapter, which is why I am referring to it as a companion rather than a sequel.

Addie is the only girl in her family. She has four older brothers who are all amazing athletes. Addie thinks of herself as only mediocre, and hates that she is often referred to as Walter/Archie/Ian's little sister at school. She is very close to Ian, in fact, aside from Lina, he is her best friend. They have had a falling out over a guy Addie was seeing, but broke up with. Ian wants Addie to tell their mother about the guy, Cubby, but Addie is adamantly against it. So against it that she pushes Ian down the hill side of a cliff and gives him a black eye while they are at their aunt's wedding in Ireland. Addie and Ian are supposed to go to Italy to visit Lina for a few days while the rest of the family tours Ireland, but this little skirmish between siblings has angered their mother. She has decided that they have to get along while they're in Italy, or they will have to quit all of their sports. This terrifies Addie because she knows that a) Ian will make that difficult and b) sports are the only way she will get to go to college.

So, imagine Addie's surprise when she wakes up on the morning that she and Ian are supposed to leave for Italy only to find him gone. She finds him getting into a sketchy looking car in their hotel parking lot, but tackles him to the ground. She manages to get Ian to explain what he is doing, and it turns out that he is traveling across Ireland on a pilgrimage of sorts to see the final concert of his favorite band. Addie tags along with the intent of going to the airport to go see Lina in Italy, but misses her flight. What ensues over the next couple of days is hilarious--think a combination of National Lampoons European Vacation and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown. 

I enjoyed this immensely, and can't wait for the next one to come out.

Still Not Your Everyday Fairy Tale

Beauty's Punishment by A.N. Roquelare

I was even less impressed with this one than the first one in the trilogy. Why would Beauty deliberately choose to be punished more severely than she was in the palace? I don't think that question is ever satisfactorily answered. What we do know is the first thing she does when she gets in the cart to go to the village for punishment, the first thing she does is screw another slave, one she is seeing for the first time ever. Who does that?

So, they go to the village where they are auctioned off and get new masters. Yea.

This disturbs me because gang rapes are almost celebrated. At one point, Beauty is servicing several men at once and enjoying it, even though it wasn't her choice. Somehow, I have my doubts that, if Beauty were real, this would be something she enjoyed. Worse, Tristan, the slave Beauty screws in the cart, falls in love with his "master" who literally treats him like a pony.

Yes, I am going to read the final book. I spent the money, and it would be a waste to do otherwise. I am not sure what I expected, but what I got wasn't it.

Snow Always Lands On Top

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

I liked The Hunger Games trilogy when I read it eight and a half years ago, some better than others.  So, when I heard this was coming out, I pre-ordered it. It's a prequel and about President Snow.

I had hoped that, as a prequel, we'd find out what happened that caused the districts to go to war with the Capitol, but as details were released, it increasingly became clear that this would not be the case. Instead, we were going to learn why President Snow was the way he was. For the most part, that's just what we got, though I feel the ending was rushed and didn't answer the pertinent whys.

As previously indicated, this was about Coriolanus Snow before he became President Snow. For the first two thirds, he is in his last year at the Academy, which is the equivalent of his senior year of high school. He is poor, and both of his parents are dead. He lives with his cousin, Tigris, and his Grandma'am. His only hope for greatness is to be awarded a scholarship to attend University, and in order for that to happen, the tribute he is mentoring in the Hunger Games needs to win.

And, poor Snow, his tribute is a small girl from District 12. What chance could she possibly have to win? What conspires is the tenth Hunger Games.

This wasn't a terrible read, but I don't think it was nearly as good as the original trilogy. Still, it was worth the time put in.