Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn
419 pgs

When Gone Girl came out a couple of years ago, a lot of people that I know wanted to talk about it. Then last year, when the movie was released, those same people wanted to talk about it all over again. Not having read it myself, I had to impose my will over the conversations each time and make sure they didn't say anything that would spoil the book for me, until I could get around to reading it myself. Well, feel free to talk away now.

I don't know that it makes a lot of sense to summarize the story, since I think most people have a general idea of what it's about. But just in case...man and woman meet and fall in love, honeymoon period ends and times get rough, woman disappears under suspicious circumstances, all believe it was the husband that killed her. The rest is what made this book so popular for so long.

This was the first of Gillian Flynn's books that I've read, but it won't be the last. I thought the story was exceptionally well thought out, and her main characters were fascinating. But what I thought was the most successful aspect of the book was her method of telling the story through an unreliable first-person narrator. That was brilliant. It was the perfect method for telling the story Flynn wanted to tell, and in the way that it needed to be told. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins
323 pgs

With the runaway success of Gone Girl, it was inevitable that others would try to recreate its success themselves. It's pretty clear that Paula Hawkins took note of what made Gillian Flynn's book so popular, and then used some of those same elements and methods of storytelling for her first novel. Fortunately she did so remarkably well. Like its predecessor, The Girl on the Train uses alternating narrators, with Rachel, the primary narrator, offering an unreliable account of what takes place in order to keep the reader guessing and making assumptions till the end.

Rachel is recently divorced and losing her fight against alcoholism, which destroyed her marriage, and is continuing to derail her life. Every day she rides the commuter train into and out of London for her job. Each day the train has to make a brief stop behind the street where the house she once lived in with her ex-husband Tom resides. So twice a day she has to spend a brief minute trying to avoid looking in through the rear windows of the house, where Tom and the woman he left Rachel for, live with their new baby daughter. Instead, she tries to focus on one of the houses a few houses down the street. It's owned by a young couple, obviously deeply in love and living the type of life Rachel always thought she'd end up having.

One day, while the train is stopped, Rachel sees something take place at the house she's been watching, and soon after, she sees on the news that the wife has disappeared. She's convinced that what she saw take place in the house is connected with the wife's disappearance and she tries to insert herself into the police investigation, and into the lives of those involved. Unfortunately, her binge drinking and subsequent blackouts make her at best, an unreliable witness.

In a genre typically dominated by male protagonists who are strong, assured, and powerful, this newly-popular breed of thrillers is a welcome change, and Paula Hawkins has shown that she has every right to stand right next to Gillian Flynn there.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Gone World

by Tom Sweterlitsch
388 pgs

In Tom Sweterlitsch's book The Gone World, mankind is not limited in its ability to travel across both space and time. The Naval Space Command runs a covert space and time-traveling program that sends Navy personnel across the galaxy and across time.

A world-ending phenomenon called Terminus has been discovered, and Naval Space Command is working nonstop to find a way to prevent it. Navy personnel who have witnessed Terminus are forever changed. Among those is Shannon Moss, an NCIS agent who experienced the Terminus first hadn't during a mission to the year 2199. During that mission she saw a version of herself, crucified mid-air in a wasteland of a world. She She was able to return to the present (1997), but no unscathed.

Once back, Shannon is assigned to a team of agents trying to find a missing girl. The girl's family was brutally murdered in their home, and it appears the person who committed the murders was a naval officer who had been participating in the time-travel program. Moss begins jumping back and forth between 1997 and 2015, trying to solve the murders and hopefully learn something that will help the team find the girl back in 1997. But Moss also learns that there's a connection between the Terminus and the missing girl and her family. A connection that is becoming more and more important to discover, since the Terminus appears to be getting closer to the present timeline of earth every time it's encountered.

The mystery part of Sweterlitsch's story is interesting, but where the story really stands out is with his exploration of the potential consequences of time travel. Each time Moss comes back to 1997 and acts on information she learned in 2015, things have changed the next time she returns to 2015--sometimes inexplicably and drastically. It makes for a complicated story that if you're not very attentive to, can easily become confusing.

Ultimately, I enjoyed the book a lot, almost enough to start over as soon as I finished it to pick up on all of the things I'm sure I missed the first time around.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

by Fredrik Backman
372 pgs

I almost plan, when I like an author’s first book a lot, to be at least mildly disappointed with their next one. The term “sophomore slump” exists for a reason. So, when an author’s next book is just as good as its predecessor, I get very excited about the author, and more than likely, will read everything else they write from then on out. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry puts Fredrik Backman solidly into this category.

Elsa is a seven-year-old girl who has a special relationship with her granny. Granny lives in the same apartment building as Elsa and her mother and Granny understands her better than everyone else in Elsa’s life. Elsa’s precocious nature and granny’s disregard for societal rules have isolated each of them from their peers and resulted in a special bond between the two of them.

As early as Elsa can remember, Granny would tell her fairy tales from the Land-of-Almost-Awake. A land containing six kingdoms Elsa can go to in her mind and not have to worry about her classmates, her divorced parents, or the new half-sibling her mom is expecting soon.

Elsa doesn't know her granny is dying from cancer. But granny, knowing her time was ending soon, devised another brilliant and emotional journey for Elsa to take when she's gone. Granny has written a series of letters to others who live in the apartment building, and tasks Elsa with delivering them after she's gone. These letters are part apology to the recipient, and part treasure hunt for Elsa. Each one reveals to Elsa the origins of the stories she's been told since she was a small child. 

Both of Backman's books have dealt with death and the emotions that accompany it. His first book, A Man Called Ove is about a cantankerous old widower, who misses his wife terribly and is ready to join her in death, and this one deals with a young girl who continues to feel the love of her granny, long after she's gone.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Woman in the Window

by A. J. Finn
427 pgs

Last year, A. J. Finn (not his real name) made his presence on the literary scene known with the publication of his first book The Woman in the Window, a psychological thriller that shares a similar narrative style with books like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Finn also probably owes a portion of his book royalties to the estate of Alfred Hitchcock, as he makes no effort to hide where he received the inspiration for his story.

Anna Fox is a child psychologist who has been confined to her townhouse in Harlem ever since the onset of a severe and near crippling case of agoraphobia. She spends much of her time chatting online with others who suffer with the same condition, and while she knows she shouldn't, she regularly mixes the drugs her doctor prescribed for her with alcohol.

It's in this condition that Anna witnesses--or believes she witnesses--a murder while spying on her neighbors through their window. She tries to report what she saw to the police, who investigate, but find no evidence of any crime. There doesn't even appear to be anyone missing. The woman she says she saw get stabbed doesn't seem to have ever existed.

The references to Rear Window are obvious and I found myself wanting to rewatch it while I read Finn's book, but eventually the story becomes completely Finn's. He does an admirable job of inserting a series of misdirections and keeping you guessing as to the reliability of Anna and what she believes she saw. Not all of Finn's twists come as surprises by the time they're revealed. I was pretty sure I'd figured out a couple of the big ones well before they were confirmed. But it was still a fun read and I'm excited to see what he writes next.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Farm

by Tom Rob Smith
352 pgs

I was a little hesitant to pick up The Farm by Tom Rob Smith. Having enjoyed his "Child 44" trilogy as much as I did, I was worried I would inevitably be disappointed by this stand-alone story and would have to take him down from the pedestal I'd placed him on in my mind. Fortunately, my worries were unnecessary.

Daniel is a 29-year-old man who lives in London. He is the only child of his Swedish mother Tilde and his English father Chris, who, years ago sold their business in London and moved to a small farm in Sweden.

The story begins with Daniel receiving a call from his father informing him that his mother had recently experienced a psychotic episode, was committed to an institution for treatment, and had subsequently disappeared. Very shortly afterwards, his mother shows up at his London apartment carrying what she tells him is evidence that his father had gotten involved with a group of men in Sweden who sexually exploited young women and is among those responsible for the disappearance of a teenage girl named Mia.

Daniel listens as his mother tells him about the circumstances around Mia's disappearance, and as he does, he can't help but find her story more and more believable the more he hears. What he hears does not sound like the delusions of a broken mind. His mother is meticulous and comprehensive as she lays out the evidence against his father and the other men, and she claims they tried to institutionalize her in order to discredit her and protect themselves.

The Farm was written a few years ago, back when there were a lot of authors trying to capitalize from the success of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and her use of an unreliable narrator to tell the story. Even though The Farm was written during that time, I don't think Smith was jumping on the bandwagon when he wrote it. This has an entirely different feel to it.. But the result is very similar. For most of the book, you're left questioning the veracity of Tilde's claims and wondering whether they should be believed or not. It' snot until Daniel decides to travel to Sweden himself to learn the truth that things are ultimately made clear.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

A Review of 2014

At the end of every year I like to look back and call out some literary highlights and "lowlights" of the previous year. To start with, I like to list the ten best books I read during the year. That's proved to be a little difficult for 2014 because while I rated three books as 5 stars, there were 22 that I rated as 4 stars. Some of them I had to cut from the list. Here it is:

1.  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
2.  Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
3.  The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
4.  The Abominable by Dan Simmons
5.  A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
6.  The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
7.  Lock In by John Scalzi
8.  The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
10. The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

The worst book I read in 2014 - Innocence by Dean Koontz. I had stopped reading Koontz's books years ago and apparently had forgotten why. Innocence reminded me why.

Number of books read during the year - 51

Signings attended - The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore, Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk

Books I'm looking forward to that will be published in 2015:

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson
Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
The Martini Shot by George Pelecanos
The Last American Vampire by Seth Grahame-Smith
The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly
The Tournament by Matthew Reilly
Funny Girl by Nick Hornby
I Am Radar by Reif Larsen
Inspector of the Dead by David Morrell
World Gone By by Dennis Lehane
The Patriot Threat by Steve Berry
The Border by Robert McCammon
Last Train from Perdition by Robert McCammon
The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells
Finders Keepers by Stephen King
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
The Bone Labyrinth by James Rollins
The Map of Chaos by Felix J. Palma

Gwendy's Magic Feather

by Richard Chizmar
333 pgs  (Gwendy series #2)

If I'm going to be entirely honest, even though there were two authors' names on the cover of Gwendy's Button Box, only one of the names mattered to me (guess which one it was). Not because I didn't like Richard Chizmar, I'd just never read anything by him before. That being said, I enjoyed the story so much, that when I learned that Richard Chizmar had written a sequel by himself, it didn't really matter to me that Stephen King's name wasn't going to be on the cover. I wanted to know what happened next.

Gwendy's Magic Feather continues the story of Gwendy Peterson, now a 37-year-old, first-term congresswoman from Maine. Her life since the events of the first book has been relatively charmed. She's found success as a novelist, a filmmaker, and now in D.C. representing her constituents back in Castle Rock.

When the button box reappears inexplicably in her townhome one evening a few days before Christmas, without a note or another appearance by the mysterious Richard Farris, Gwendy is left with only the temptations of her own thoughts as to whether the box, and the powerful gifts it dispenses, could, or should, be used again.

When Gwendy flies home to see her parents for the holidays, she takes the box with her. But she returns to a Castle Rock currently under a dark cloud. Two girls have recently gone missing, and the police have no idea what's happened to them. Soon after her arrival, a third girl goes missing, and Gwendy, with her box, might be the only chance any of them has for surviving.

Any disappointment I might have had with Stephen King not being an author of this book were quickly forgotten when I started reading it. Richard Chizmar does both the character and town King created justice. Like the first book, it's a novella, and with its short chapters, it makes for a very quick, but satisfying read. I enjoyed it enough to place an order for another of Chizmar's books as soon as I finished this one, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else he has to offer.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆