Side note:
Had posts for the blog ready to go...just uploading pictures. I then reached for something across my desk and spilled my water...right onto my computer. (badwords badwords) It wouldn't start. Long story short. I got it dried out by blowing into the computer air holes, which brought on hyperventilating, which, in my book was A-OK because it come back on! Phew!! Unfortunately though, all my pictures didn't load...so had to start once again.
Back to work...Lately, I have been reading like a crazy lady, ignoring my blog and my house! Once this book got going, I could not put it down! Loved it!! It's not a suspense, it's not a thriller, it's just a really good story with unforgettable characters.
Reeling from a personal tragedy, 14-year-old Kevin Gillooly and his mother seek sanctuary with her father, Pops, a shrewd, veterinarian whom his fellow citizens often turn to for guidance. Kevin finds companionship in Buzzy, a half-wild teenage boy; together they roam the mountains and hollows that surround Medgar, exploring caves and canoeing lakes and basking in Pops's jokes and stories.
Medgar is beset by a massive mountaintop removal operation that is blowing up the hills and back filling the hollows. Kevin's grandfather and others in town attempt to rally the citizens against the "company" and its powerful owner to stop the plunder of their mountain heritage. When Buzzy witnesses a brutal hate crime, a sequence is set in play that tests Buzzy and Kevin to their absolute limits in an epic struggle for survival in the Kentucky mountains.
It's a long book, 480 pages, but it is amazingly written. The author sets the up entire setting in the first part of the book which makes the reader see and understand the very difficult and hard life some of the people in the Appalachians endure. Then Buzzy witness a terrible crime and the author does an great job on how he struggles to deal with the situation. Pops decides to take Buzzy and Kevin on a "tramp" into the mountains to get away from everything going on within the town. At one point, Kevin tells Buzzy, "Let's just live these next two weeks. Let's just focus on what is here and not what is happening in town." The writer actually makes you forget what the town is dealing with...so much so that once the characters are back in town, I found myself having to remember who was who! If you enjoy a good story, I would highly recommend this book to you!
The next book that I read, in 24 hours, was We Were Liars. It is a Young Adult book (which I recently found out there is a book club at the library for people that read young adult books!) and was definitely an easy read. Plus, I wanted to find out what happened at the end.
Cadence Sinclair Easton comes from an old-money family, headed by a patriarch who owns a private island off of Cape Cod. Each summer, the extended family gathers at the various houses on the island, and Cadence, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and friend Gat (the four "Liars"), have been inseparable since age eight. During their fifteenth summer however, Cadence suffers a mysterious accident. She spends the next two years—and the course of the book—in a haze of amnesia, debilitating migraines, and painkillers, trying to piece together just what happened. Lockhart writes in a somewhat sparse style filled with metaphor and jumps from past to present and back again—rather fitting for a main character struggling with a sudden and unexplainable life change.
I liked this book. It was hyped as a huge surprise at the end that will haunt readers for days. Well. The ending surprised me, but didn't haunt me for days. I was more like: Oh. Really. What I did like about the book was that the family went to Martha's Vineyard and I actually knew a few of the places mentioned in the story. That was fun!
There were a few things that were left unfinished and that's what haunts me. At one point, the main character sees her Aunt walking around the island by herself. She mentions it to her Aunt the next day and she replies, "I don't know what you are talking about." That was never answered why the Aunt didn't remember wandering the island and taking with the main character.
If you want a quick read with a "surprise" ending, then this is your book. But, overall, I think there are better reads out there.
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