The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones is the chilling and heartbreaking story of a young girl who was too innocent for her own good. Susie Salmon was murdered one day on her way home from school and is now telling the story of her new life from heaven.

Susie watches everyone on earth keep living their lives. She watches as her friends and family try to figure out what happened to her and her killer tries to cover his tracks. Susie's family is rapidly falling apart after her disappearance as they struggle to come to terms with what happened to their beloved daughter. Her father has frantically taken the investigation of Susie's murder upon himself in a desperate need to know the truth. Susie watches from above as her father uncovers clues to what happened that day she walked home from school.

Author Alice Seabold delivered a truly triumphant story that is both horrific and beautiful. I strongly recommend giving this a read.

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is an incredibly well crafted piece of fiction. I found it a little tedious at first to get really hooked on the story but as I kept reading I could see where all the rave reviews were coming from. I loved how the book started with such an intense action scene. I couldn't stop reading until young Theo found his way out of that museum. Although I struggled a little bit to maintain my initial awe with the book as Theo slowly came to terms with his new life, I eventually gave into the characters and found myself desperately needing to know what would become of them all.

From there on, I had a love/hate relationship with the book. Theo is such an amazing character. Parts of him were so strong and yet other parts of him made me so angry. These were the parts I constantly tried to justify with his past and hope that he would eventually get a break in life.

My favorite part of the storyline was the relationship Theo developed with Hobie, the business partner of a man who died near Theo in the bombing at the museum. Hobie was such a kind and selfless man and he kept a sort of foundation to Theo's life.

This book is truly great and highly recommended. It's quite long but you won't regret putting the time in to read it. Tartt created an entire world of characters and events that are not easy to forget.

The Martian

The Martian is an amazingly captivating novel. I was a little nervous about reading this book because it is so heavily worded with math and science and I was weary about feeling like I was reading a textbook. But author Andy Weir brings main character Mark Watney to life so quickly that I couldn't help but want to read the entire book in one sitting. I love the voice of Watney, he is hilarious. Reading his journals, he just sounds like a normal guy. I liked that he was so relatable in that sense. Even just a few pages in I was completely hooked and was rooting for Watney to make it off Mars alive. 

In a talk that Weir gave at Google in August 2015, he mentions that he did all the research himself and had no contact with NASA until after the book was published which makes the amount of detail and accuracy of his work all the more astounding.  

What's really great about this book is the way Weir makes you feel like you're really there with Watney. You can feel how isolated he is that made it all the more compelling. I was in awe of how Watney was able to survive. Sure, he's a professional astronaut for NASA, but I couldn't get over what a riveting tale of survival this was. The isolation and lack of communication are normal for any tale of survival. But once communication was made, it was the idea that he may still not be able to survive that kept me glued to this book until the end. 

This was one of the first books I chose to get me out of my rut of reading only murder mystery novels and I couldn't have picked a better one. I can't recommend this book more highly to anyone looking for a great read, regardless of genre. 

Every Secret Thing

Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman tells the story of two young girls whose lives change one day when they get kicked out of a birthday party and take a wrong turn down a street on their way home. Just eleven years old, Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller come across a baby in a carriage, seemingly unattended. They commit a crime that leaves them both in a detention center for the next seven years of their lives.

Ronnie Fuller is portrayed as the bad child of the duo. She seems to be the one always getting into trouble and dragging along good girl Alice Manning with her. Alice is the timid one, the one who everyone believes is easily influenced by terrible Ronnie. It is now seven years after the crime and the two girls, now eighteen, are being released from their respective detention centers. After the girls are released, more babies begin going missing from the neighborhood, always turning back up within a few hours. But when one child goes missing and is not returned, Ronnie and Alice are the first to be questioned because of their past.

We soon start to learn things about the girls and the day the baby they found in the carriage seven years prior turned up dead, leaving them responsible. While there is no shocking twist in this book that will leave you reeling, there are definitely a few twists and turns to keep it interesting.

The hardest part about this book is that not one of the characters are likable. Each person has some quality that makes it impossible to know who to root for. But that also made it more interesting for me. I didn't find myself focusing on rooting for one character, I was just focused on figuring out the story and getting into the minds of these disturbed girls. This was my first Lippman book and I look forward to reading many more from her!

All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is one of those books that you start trying to read slower because you don't want it to end. The writing is really what makes this book. It reminded me a lot of The Book Thief. All the Light We Cannot See tells the story of two young people growing up during World War II.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris with her father right near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of all the locks of the museum. At the age of six, Marie-Laure goes blind, inspiring her father to build an exact miniature replica of their entire neighborhood. Marie-Laure memorizes it and learns to find her way around town just by touch. She knows exactly how many storm drains to count to get her from the museum back to her house. When Marie-Laure is twelve, the Nazis occupied Paris and Marie-Laure and her father fled to Saint-Malo to live with her great-uncle who hasn't left his giant house in years. Her father brought with him the most valuable and dangerous jewel that the museum had housed. When Marie-Laure's father is captured and taken to a camp, she is left in the house alone with her reclusive great-uncle wondering and worrying about what is going on outside as the Nazis continue to take over.

Werner is an orphan with a great talent for building and fixing radios which lands him a spot at the academy for Hitler Youth and eventually a position tracking the resistance. Werner struggles with his own actions as he moves through the war. His job finally leads him to Saint-Malo where his path crosses with Marie-Laure.

This book takes a fantastic new look at the war, telling it through the eyes of two young kids. I loved that one of the characters was blind because it added a new depth to the story. Trying to hide from German soldiers without actually being able to see them or their whereabouts was incredibly nerve-wracking. Beautifully written and impossible to put down, I highly recommend this book to all!

Faithful Place

The third installment in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad Series lives up to the standard of the previous two. We see another returning character as the narrator in Faithful Place - Detective Frank Mackey.

When Frank was just nineteen years old, he and his girlfriend Rosie planned on running off to England together. They were to meet on Faithful Place one night, bags packed and ready to go, and head off together to live the life of their dreams away from the people on Faithful Place who were stopping them from doing so. But when Frank showed up at the house that night, Rosie was not there. And she never showed. Everyone, Frank included, assumed that she had run away on her own.

Frank went on with his life, but he never forgot about Rosie. Decades later, he is brought back to his old neighborhood and to the family he hadn't spoken to in years because a suitcase is found in one of the houses on Faithful Place - a suitcase believed to have belonged to Rosie. When Rosie's body turns up days later in the house where she and Frank were supposed to meet, Frank dives into the case determined to solve the decades long mystery of what happened to the life he could have lived with Rosie.

In true keeping with Tana French's skilled mystery writing, she delivers another satisfying read with Faithful Place. Stay tuned for a review of the fourth installment, Broken Harbour!

Betsy-Tacy

I think all book lovers have that one book that they accredit with getting them hooked on reading. For me that book, or books, is the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace that were first published in the 1940s.

Young Betsy lives on Hill Street, but there are no other children her age. She has no one to play with. But then one day a new family moves in across the street and they have a little girl named Tacy who is just Betsy's age. When the two meet at Betsy's fifth birthday party, they instantly became such close friends that people started referring to them as one person: Betsy-Tacy. Betsy and Tacy had the most fun together. They made a playhouse out of a piano box, they would get dressed up and go calling on the neighbors together, and they would make paper doll clothes by cutting them out of their favorite magazines.

It actually wasn't until very recently that I found out that the Betsy-Tacy books were highly autobiographical for author Maud Hart Lovelace. As a young girl, she met her best friend at her fifth birthday party and the two of them shared the same adventures that Lovelace wrote about in her books. "Deep Valley" really exists in the town of Mankato, Minnesota. Lovers of the Betsy-Tacy books can go visit Betsy and Tacy's houses, sit on the famous bench at the top of the big hill, and recreate memories of one of the most beloved childhood stories. You can learn more about the official Betsy-Tacy Society here!

These are great books for any new reader, or for someone just looking for a fun story about the best of friendships with a fantastic historical setting. I look forward to readings these books over and over countless more times.