Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Before I Go to Sleep

This was such a difficult book to read!  I squirmed, my heart fluttered, I couldn't breathe at times.  That's how effective it is.

Christine has a rare form of amnesia.  She wakes up every morning not knowing anything.  And we wake up with her.  We see her world through her eyes.  Who is she? Who can she trust?  There is a man in bed with her.  Who is he?  Does she have friends?  Does she have children? 

Something doesn't feel right to Christine.  Her doctor suggests she keep a journal and he calls her every morning to remind her of it so she can read about her life.  But, there is a message on the first page warning her not to trust her husband.  Why?  What has happened?  How did she lose her memory?

We see Christine's life through the fog of her brain.  We are her.  We have to finish this book in one gulp or we won't sleep.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

The Silent Girl

Good morning.  Did you see the full moon last night?  Two friends and I took a quick trip to the beach to watch it rise over the ocean.  So beautiful!

The Silent Girl is an interesting novel because it is full of Chinese mythology.  It stars two of Tess Gerritsen's most popular characters, Laura Isles and Jane Rizzoli.

In this one, they are looking for the murderer of a woman whose hand fell from a roof in Boston's Chinatown.  It leads them back twenty years to a murder/suicide and the disappearance of young girls. 

As usual I enjoyed Gerritsen's writing and always look forward to her books.

It's cloudy, here, on the Maine coast today.  Sounds like a good reading day to me! 

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Think of a Number and A Stolen Life

I thought for sure I'd like this book.  A diabolical bad guy sends letters to someone he hates telling him to think of a number between 1 and 1000.  After coming up with the first number that pops into his head, he then has to open another envelope and it reveals that very same number.  My kind of book, right?  Nope!  I just couldn't get into it.

The writing is kind of old fashioned and I didn't like the characters.  There was too much introspection by the main character, a retired detective.   I don't know; maybe it was me and I just wasn't in the mood for this kind of book but I was very disappointed.


So, I moved on to this book, instead, and read it quickly. It's partly written from a young girl's point of view and partly from Jaycee as she is today twenty years after being abducted and turned into a sex slave for the demented Phillip Garrido.  How Jaycee survives is an astonishing story. 

I so admire her attitude and ability to endure and come out the other side fairly intact.

Her remarkable spirit shines through.



The last couple weeks have been crazy.  We watched my mother-in-law's health deline quickly from independence to not even being able to walk.  She ended up in the hospital twice and is in a rehab facility, now, to help her get stronger.  All the tests came back negative so, hopefully, she'll recuperate.  In the mean time, we have to care for my father-in-law who suffered a mild stroke last year and lost his short-term memory.

We also had a wedding in the middle of all this.  My brother's son got married.  It was a beautiful ceremony. 

So, I haven't had an awful lot of time to read.  So, I'm giving myself a kick in the butt to get off this computer and do just that!