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Up for review this week are two titles: You Believers by Jane Bradley, and Finding Emilie by Laurel Corona:
Title: You Believers Author: Jane Bradley
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Releases: May 3, 2011
Hardcover, 416 pages / ISBN 10: 1609530462 / ISBN 13: 9781609530464
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When 30-year-old bartender Katy Connor goes missing on a shopping trip, Shelby Waters of Rescue Effort Volunteers joins in the search for her. Shelby, from the small town of Suck Creek, lost her own sister Darly to a killer and has made it her life's work to bring either rescue or closure to families of the missing.
If you read the description alone, you might think that this book is full of darkness, and while there ARE bad things that happen, this book is so much more. This is a stunning novel, told in multiple POV's, including those of the "takers", that really brings home the myriad ways other lives are affected when someone goes missing. Shelby is a tough backwoods girl who made it out, and Katy's mother Olivia Baines (Liv), is, by coincidence, also a woman who came from Suck Creek.
The characters in this story all have flaws, including Katy, who was engaged to Billy, a pot-smoking guy with a steady job and his own house. Katy still pined for Frank, her ex-boyfriend, a coke dealer, and has another beau on the side named Randy. She was going to visit Randy when she disappeared.
As the reader, you know what happened, and you find out the motivations of the takers, and you feel Liv and Billy's heartache as months go by with no progress and no "closure" (I really don't like that word). But you understand how knowing is infinitely better than not knowing.
I felt the anxiety and the heartache of Liv's loved ones, and Shelby's questing drive, and Katy's bewilderment and all of the emotions of all of the central characters. I was still thinking about this one after I read it, and that is the mark of a great read.
QUOTE: Katy Connor thought she was safe. She was supposed to be safe at three o'clock in the afternoon in the parking lot of a strip mall on one of the busiest streets in town. She did nothing wrong. She bought a bag of clothes and walked to her truck.
It can happen like that.
You think you're going home. And some picture of your face ends up on a grainy black-and-white flyer tacked to a telephone pole.
Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Author: Laurel Corona
Publisher: Gallery Books, a division of Simon and Schuster
Released: April 12, 2011
Paperback, 416 pages / ISBN 10: 1439197660 / ISBN 13: 9781439197660
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In real life, Emilie du Chatelet, married to one man, long-time mistress and friend of Voltaire, gave birth to Stanislas Adelaide (Lili), child of yet another of her affairs, at the age of 43 and died 6 days later from a sudden illness. Lili died before her second birthday.
This novel is a fictionalized account of Lili's life had she lived, growing up with her godmother Julie de Bercy, who was in the house when Emilie died, pregnant with her own daughter Delphine. Her father pays a living stipend, but never visits, and her progress is monitored by her father's sister-in-law, Baronne Lomont, a strict adherent to society's protocols.
Lili is loyal, questing, and intelligent in an age when female intelligence and knowledge is still an affront to a proper society - a society where only the working class, not nobles, pay taxes, and she is shielded from the knowledge of her true parentage and her mother's scandalous life.
Lili's scientific mind and refusal to simply "be satisfied with being ordinary" are at the center of this novel. In her search to find her mother's story, she finds herself as well.
QUOTE: "I've tried to explain to her that her intelligence was charming on a girl, but not in a young lady. I've told her more than once that no man of quality will choose to marry someone whose head is buried in a book all day and every time she insists she'd rather have the book than the man"
Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
That's all for this week. As always, you can click the Amazon or Goodreads links to find other reviews.
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Disclosure: I received complimentary eGalleys of these titles through the publishers to facilitate my reviews. No other compensation was received and I was not required to post positive reviews.
These books are listed as titles for my 2011 ARC Reading Challenge
1 comments:
You Believers sounds great! I like flawed characters - they're more believable.
Finding Emilie is on my wishlist - I'm glad to see the 4/5 rating.
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