Top Ten Reread Books

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Thistle

I’m a huge fan of rereading. HUGE. There are some books that I will read and reread many times in a row (I call these multi-reads), and there are some books that I will revisit every few years. There’s a pleasure in reading a book the first time, not knowing anything about it, and then reading it through a second time with all the information up front! Not to mention the pleasure of revisiting characters you really loved.

I don’t believe in rereading everything. Not every book is worth revisiting for me. There are some, however, that beg to have more than a once-over. Today’s topic is really about books you want to reread, but at the moment, I don’t really have any rereads on my list. (I’m sure, come December, I will, since I usually spend that month with rereads.) So instead of telling you what I want to reread, I’m going to list my top ten rereads – those books I’ve revisited many times in the past, and will certainly revisit again in the future. In no particular order:

theoldmanandthesea1. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway – First read in 2001, reread every few years since then, including once on audio (Donald Sutherland!!). I get something new out of this one every time.

2. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde – Another first-in-2001, and I’ve revisited this one so many times: in print, in audio, in graphic novel form. Remains a favorite reread.

3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson – First read in late 2006, and read half a dozen times since then. This one is perfect for revisiting any time I want a fast, atmospheric book.

belljar4. the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson – One of the newest on my list, this has become a modern reread favorite.

5. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – First read in 1999, this is one I’ve revisited every 4-5 years. It’s just as powerful every single time. And the audio version is amazing.

6. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynn Jones – Another newish reread that I seem to already be listening to every single year.

7. the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling – These were multi-reads originally, reread on repeat for about nine months in 2005/2006 when they were the only books I had unpacked. I’ve revisited them every single year since then, until this one…huh.

Catch228. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – Didn’t even necessarily like/understand this one when I first read it in college, but something about it gripped me, and I’ve read it another 3-4 times since. This one has some of my favorite quotes in it.

9. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – This is one of those books I’ve revisited in as many forms as possible: print, illustrated print, graphic novel, audiobook, various movies… Each time, it gets better.

10. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – I’ve read this every fall since my first read in 2011 (until I missed it this year, boo!) and I’m sure I’ll continue revisiting the circus every year for quite some time.

topten

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 15 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Wrapping Up RIP

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Thistle

coffeeThe RIP season has officially come to a close. The last two months have been wonderful. Ten of my thirteen read books in September and October have been of RIP substance, and I have enjoyed every delicious moment of it. Now it is time to wrap everything up, and move into my normal winter hibernation reads (ie, I tend to read very little in Nov/Dec, and when I do, it’s rereads and comfort reads).

My initial RIP possibilities list had sixteen candidates on it. Of those sixteen, I only read or listened to four (though I tried-and-abandoned three others). Six of this year’s RIP-reads were unexpected, including my favorite(s) of the season. I wanted to take a quick moment this Sunday to briefly revisit all ten of my RIP books, plus say a word about the three I abandoned, and take an early peek-forward into next year’s RIP season.

Read and Loved
I didn’t complete a single book for RIP this year that I didn’t enjoy. There were, of course, favorites. Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle series pretty much dominated my brain for all of RIP and were by far my favorite reads of the season. All the rest were pretty good, too, however! Here they are, in order of when I read them:

  1. The Supernatural Enhancements – Perfect opener. Creepy, strange, absolutely unpredictable. Loved it!
  2. The Raven Boys – Oh boy. After having once abandoned this book only in the second chapter, I didn’t expect a second trial to lead to a very strong new obsession.
  3. Love is Hell – Fun little collection of shorts by several authors I love.
  4. The Silkworm – Great dark detective novel, with a perfect gritty feel for the season.
  5. The Dream Thieves – More Raven Cycle. Oh Maggie Stiefvater, how I’ve fallen in love with these books…
  6. The Whispering Skull – Wish I could have had this one on audio, but still very much enjoyed this sequel.
  7. The Secret Place – RIP wouldn’t feel complete without Tana French.
  8. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Revisiting an old friend for the half-dozenth time.
  9. Storm Front – Not my favorite of RIP season, but still good. Dark and gritty and creepy in places.
  10. Blue Lily, Lily Blue – It seems only fitting to end RIP with the next installment of the series I’ve loved best this season. Love love love.

Abandoned
There were several books on my initial RIP list that I tried out and decided to skip (or save for a different time) after a few pages. I don’t considered these abandoned so much as aborted/postponed trials. If a book doesn’t work from the beginning, I don’t tend to read on. Abandoned books, on the other hands, are books I gave long, fair trials to, and gave up after I was a huge chunk into them. There were three of those during this RIP season, and because none of them were bad books – rather, just not for me books – I thought I’d take a moment to highlight them today as well.

  • Rooms – I was expecting Lauren Oliver’s book about a haunted house to be RIP-ish, but it wasn’t. It was far more literary: slow and purposeful, without any real creep at all (at least up until I abandoned it). I may have loved this one if I’d read it at a different time, going into it with different expectations. As it was, I slogged through the first half of it over a week, and decided to return it to the library. Perhaps I will revisit it again one day, not during RIP season.
  • Shadow of Night – I was on the fence about the first book in Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy, and tried to listen to book two during RIP. Two things got in the way. First, this was historical fiction, with the characters moving far into the past, and I just had no interest in the history or story. Second, I had just finished listening to the first two Raven Cycle books, and wanted more than anything to relisten to them already. It was, perhaps, unfair timing, but after several disks, I abandoned this one and indulged my multi-read needs instead.
  • Night Watch – This Russian novel by Sergei Lukyanenko comes highly recommended from several good friends, and I was really excited about it. I read over half of it before I quit. I could have gone on, yes. The book was interesting enough that I could have finished it. I felt too frustrated to finish, however. I felt like I was losing so much in translation, like there was a wall between me and the characters, making it impossible to fully connect with them. There was also the book’s format. This is actually three related novellas instead of one novel – never my favorite structure – and after the first story ended and a new plot began, I lost interest completely.

For Next Year
There were waaaaaay too many books that I didn’t get to this year, mostly in the category of “RIP Books to Revisit.” The Monk. Good Omens. Rebecca. The White Devil. Anything by Shirley Jackson. The one I regret most is The Night Circus, which I’ve either read or listened to every year since 2011. I broke that tradition this year, mostly because The Raven Cycle books have dominated from beginning to end, and soaked up all my brain. They sort of drowned all the rest out. But I’m still sad that I didn’t get back to the Circus for 2014. Next year. Maybe next year I’ll dedicate RIP entirely to rereads.

lavinia-portraitRIP1That’s a Wrap
It was a good season, altogether. I love this time of year, and read nearly a quarter of 2014’s books during these two months. I discovered previously-unknown, now-loved authors and books. I enjoyed highly anticipated sequels. I revisited old character-friends, and made new character-friends. While I may not read as fast or extensively as I used to – many years, I’ve read double this year’s RIP total – I read more purposefully, and that has led to far greater overall enjoyment than before.

Thanks again, Carl, for all you do hosting this!

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Blue Lily, Lily Blue, by Maggie Stiefvater

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Thistle

bllbThird book in the Raven Cycle, after The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves.

I cannot review this one in regular fashion. I just love these books too much to formulate coherent thoughts. Instead, I will simply list out some of my random thoughts along the way. Page numbers here refer to the library hardback version that I read. And yes, I will definitely acquire my own copies of all these books in the very near future.

– Page 36 – I don’t believe I’ve ever read a scene of this much young, bittersweet longing. Amazing. I won’t admit how many times I reread it over the course of a few days.

– This book makes me want to learn Latin, something I’ve never wanted before.

– Page 76 – Whoa. Unpleasant chills running up and down my skin. Really, really creepy.

– Page 131 – Aw, Ronan, that was sweet.

– Oh man, turns out the murder squash song is fictional only. Boo. Fruitless google searching yields fruitlessness.

– I’m rather fond of Jesse Dittley. Later: And I love the phrase “little ant.”

– Page 191 – I feel very, very strongly about these words about ties to a family home. Go, Ronan!

– Chapter 27/28 – Whoa. WTF-moments galore. And some interesting insight to Stiefvater’s sketches that have been showing up on Facebook. Maybe. I’m guessing.

– Page 298 – YES! Adam, yes  yes yes! Thank you!!! Finally!

– Chapter 41 – Oh no… 😦

– Page 342 – NO!!!!!

– Hm. Not what I expected from Colin Greenmantle. Interesting.

– Page 377 – Oh my god there are only 14 pages left and this is going to end on the worst kind of cliffhanger isn’t it…

– Well, maybe not the worst cliffhanger. Not completely. But still. How long do I have to wait for the next book??

– Also: I wish this series was twenty books long instead of four. Because Blue. And Gansey. And Adam Ronan Noah Mr. Gray Maura Calla Persephone…I am so in love with all of them, even more so now. Character development = perfection.

– Also: Absolutely perfect way to end the RIP season.

– Also: As soon as I finished reading the book, I read it a second time. Now that that’s done, it’s time to reread the series from the beginning, again, and then again, and maybe another again. Yes, I know. It might be overkill, but that’s just the way I approach these kinds of books. Multi-reads. Gotta binge-read until my brain is saturated with them. I did the same thing with the Hunger Games series, and Harry Potter, and Howl’s Moving Castle, and the Mistborn trilogy, and…yeah. The list could go on. And yes, I love love love when I find the rare book/series that makes me multi-read. They are the best!

Revisited on audio December 2014: Will Patton reads the audiobook of Blue Lily, Lily Blue, just as the last two books. I did not enjoy this performance as much, mostly because of his interpretation of Gwenllian. Granted, she does a lot of singing and mad cackling in the book, so I imagine I wouldn’t have liked any performance of her part. I don’t really blame Patton for that. The rest of the audio performance was fantastic as usual.

Posted in 2014, 2015, 2017, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Storm Front, by Jim Butcher (audio)

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Thistle

storm frontHarry Dresden is a professional wizard, meaning that yes, he can perform magic – such a thing does exist, along with vampires and demons and various other paranormal phenomena – and yes, he does so for a fee when you need something done.

My friend Stephanie loves this series, so I decided to give it a try. I listened to it on audio, and I’m of mixed minds about it. On the one hand, the audio production was great. James Marsters was the perfect narrator for Dresden’s wry speech. I doubt I would have finished the book if not for Marsters. Because that’s the other hand. It wasn’t that I disliked the book. I just didn’t find it particularly noteworthy. Maybe that’s just timing, since I really wanted to be reading/listening to something else (*coughbluelilylilybluecough*). Maybe it’s because I found the plot predictable in places. Maybe it’s because Dresden makes a lot of chauvinist comments, and after awhile I wasn’t quite sure if it was Dresden or the author who looked down on women.

So I’m on the fence. I feel I should give the series a further look, both since the narrator was so good and because I feel like it’s the kind of series that might improve with time. At the same time, I won’t be rushing out to collect the next book. Perhaps one day.

Posted in 2014, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Top Ten Halloween-like Books

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Thistle

This week, the Top Ten topic is books/movies that get us in the Halloween spirit. Since I’m not really a huge movie person, I’ve decided to go with books. That, of course, means that this list will read kinda like a list of my favorite RIP books, to be honest. Shrug. That’s okay, right? In no particular order:

night_circus_cover1. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – Atmospheric circus-horror. Doesn’t get much better than this one.

2. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – Classic ghost-like story, with crazy villains and lots of creepy fun.

3. Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux – To be honest, I have a lot of issues with this book, and a weird love-hate relationship with it, but it still makes a wonderful Halloween book.

4. Coraline by Neil Gaiman – Book, graphic novel, movie. All three are fantastic for the Halloween season.

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde – Another macabre classic that’s perfect for Halloween horror-lite.

6. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka – This one opens with a man turning into a giant insect. Come on.

devilish7. Devilish by Maureen Johnson – Demons, curses, and Catholic school. Yeah.

8. Ghost Cat by Beverly Butler – Okay, so this one is a general class of books. I don’t mean this one specifically. I mean the general: childhood books that creeped the pants off us back when we were kids. They’re perfect for rereading before Halloween. Ghost Cat was my particular creep-book.

9. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – Actually, most Shirley Jackson will do. The Haunting of Hill House, or even better, her short story “The Lottery.” *shudder*

10. Amphigorey by Edward Gorey – Or Amphigorey Too. Or either of the next couple Amphigorey books. They’re all perfect for Halloween.

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Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 4 Comments

Sunday Coffee – NaNoWriMo

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Thistle

museNational Novel Writing Month. November. Fifty thousand words in thirty days. A tradition for me now since 2009, an event I love to pieces. And yet, I debated whether or not to participate this year.

Moving across the country has really torn me apart. I don’t know anyone here, and I feel very much an outsider. My intentions, long before I actually moved, were to get involved in the NaNo community here come November. After all, NaNo is where I’ve really found my people in the past. Some of my very best friends have come from the NaNo season.

As the season approached, however, I was no longer sure I even wanted to participate. My brain is not in the right place. I have a bare sketch idea for a story to work on, and no real desire to work on it. October – sometimes even September – is normally a time of frenzied outlining, planning, dreaming up scenes. By the time November 1st arrives, I’m like a cork waiting to pop out of a champagne bottle. My ridiculous speed/volume has become a joke in the San Antonio NaNo group. It’s never taken me more than fifteen days to hit the 50k mark, and once it only took six days. I wrote two novels one year because I finished the first so quickly and didn’t want the frenzy to end. Last year, I wrote 141,000+ words in 20 days (that was exhausting!).

This is not because I’m some fantastic writer or anything. All these words are NaNo words – words that are rough and need to be rewritten in a better form later. I use NaNo to create what I call a glorified narrative outline, fleshing out a story that I already have bones for, and then rewriting from scratch later on. It’s like really intense brainstorming, and the reason I go so fast and write so much is because I love love love the collective writing with all of my wonderful Wrimo friends. Wrimos are my people, and they make the event for me. I can’t do it alone. Proof? I’ve tried NaNoing alone in other 30-day months, and I rarely hit the 50k mark, and if I do, it takes ALL month to get there, with painstaking difficulty and no fun at all. It’s the people, the community, that really makes NaNo shine for me.

I am no longer with my people. My Wrimos are 2000 miles away, and I’m depressed, anxious, and brain-scattered. It just…doesn’t seem like fun this year, and I considered not participating at all. But, as I said above, it’s tradition. I’ve been doing this for five years now, and I didn’t want to skip out in Year 6. So I decided on a story, signed up, and dubiously RSVPed for a Meet & Greet that’ll be later this afternoon with over 100 Wrimos from the Boston area. Yikes. I hope I don’t drown in that crowd…

Maybe meeting other writers from this area will help get my excitement up. I still have five days before November 1st. I can build an outline in that time, if I’m really motivated. Maybe this Meet & Greet will make me feel a thousand times better about everything. Maybe. I’m trying to hope.

In the meantime, if you’re a fellow Wrimo and we’re not already writing buddies, look me up! My username is pookasluagh like always. I’d love to journey with you!

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (audio)

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Thistle

jekyll hyde audioI have read the story of Jekyll & Hyde so many times since my first read eight years ago that I really cannot just review it like a normal book. Even my first review – my third read-through, and one of my very favorite reviews ever – said absolutely nothing about the book itself. I just love this one. I love its atmosphere, and the cheesy word-play, and the way it gets me giddy-excited about the process of writing.

This last one, actually, is the reason I chose to revisit the book for the half-dozenth (or so) time. NaNoWriMo is coming up very soon, and my brain/heart has just not been in it this year. I’m living in a brand new part of the country, feeling immensely homesick, missing all my fellow Wrimos in San Antonio, knowing absolutely no one around this area, and that’s on top of the fact that moving across the country is stressful and pretty much threw my writing plans for the year out the window. I wasn’t even sure if I would attempt NaNo this year, but decided that I needed to, because it’s pretty much the only way I’m going to meet My People here in the Boston area. Wrimos are My People. At least, they were in San Antonio, and I hope they will be here, too.

The point of that rambly paragraph is that I decided to attempt NaNo, and I needed to read something that got my writing-juices flowing again. Jekyll & Hyde has done that in the past, and so I thought it would be perfect to pair with RIP, and to listen to while I did banal chores around the house. Short audiobook, just over three hours long, half that when listening on double-speed. Perfect, right?

Except I really ought not to have listened to this book.

I am not saying the production was bad. Scott Brick, the narrator, is one of my very favorite audiobook narrators. I have loved his work in the past, and he did a fine job here as well. The problem, instead, lies in the fact that I’ve read this book so many times that it already has an audio soundtrack in my head. These characters have specific voices and inflections already. I usually don’t listen to audiobook productions of books I know well, for this very reason. No matter how good those Harry Potter audiobooks are, I refuse to listen to them. I don’t want my personal mental audio file of Harry Potter changed by someone else’s interpretation. And while this audiobook didn’t necessarily change the way I heard Jekyll & Hyde, it also didn’t capture that same atmospheric, writer-juice-inducing quality that print-reading does. I found myself…tuned out.

Again, the production was good. The narration was good. It was a very solid audiobook, and I would definitely recommend it. Personal circumstance just happened to get in the way for me, and I suppose I’ll need to find some other writer-juice-inducing book to read or listen to before November 1st. *eyes audio and/or print copies of The Night Circus*

Note: In looking for a cover image for this post, I discovered that there are many, many audio versions of this book around, including one read by another of my favorite narrators, Martin Jarvis. This makes me want to do lots of listenings and comparisons…god I’m such a geek.

Posted in 2014, Adult, Personal, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Afterworlds, by Scott Westerfeld

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Thistle

afterworldsEighteen-year-old Darcy Patel can’t believe the dream is really happening to her. Her novel has been picked up by an agent, and a publisher. She’s received a huge two-book-deal advance. She’s moving to NYC. She’s going to be a real author.

Lizzie is the only survivor of a terrorist attack in the Dallas airport, but the attack leaves her with more than just psychological scars. Her near-death experience turned her into a psychopomp, a collector of souls with access to the Afterworld. She has to figure out how all this works with the help of a very hot millenia-old Indian psychopomp, the ghost of her mother’s murdered childhood friend, and a creepy old man who enjoys ripping up ghost-souls.

The catch? Lizzie doesn’t actually exist. She’s the protagonist of Darcy’s forthcoming book, Afterworlds.

Oy. October must be my month of reading-books-by-beloved-authors-and-not-enjoying-them-as-much-as-previous-books-by-said-author. Afterworlds was a solid book. There were many good things about it. I loved watching Darcy try to simultaneously navigate the publishing world, her first relationship, and the perils of becoming an adult. I also loved reading Lizzie’s story – in alternating chapters with Darcy’s – particularly because the narrative sounded like Darcy’s writing rather than Westerfeld’s. He captured that brand-new-writer, first-ever-book feel perfectly, and also managed to make the narrative sound the way Darcy spoke and thought in her sections. That is really difficult to do, and props to Westerfeld for pulling it off.

So why was the book disappointing? Well…because I couldn’t figure out the point of it. When I first heard of this book, I knew it was going to alternate between Darcy’s and Lizzie’s stories. I thought there was some reason for this, that Darcy would discover that Lizzie was a real person, or Lizzie would be aware that her story was manufactured, or Darcy would write something into Lizzie’s world only to have it start happening to her. Something. Something that tied the two together. Certainly, Darcy’s story was tied to Lizzie’s, in that she spent a lot of time rewriting, and worrying about things like using her parents’ religion to make a love interest, etc. But Lizzie’s story was not affected by Darcy’s at all, except the fact that she was written by her. There was a relationship between the two, but no interaction, if that makes sense. In the end, it just seemed like two books, side by side, both interesting enough on their own, but with no real reason to be put together into one.

I feel like I’m missing something, I guess. Because again, the stories themselves were interesting. I was far more interested in Darcy’s, probably because I’m a writer myself, but I enjoyed both. I just didn’t feel any real coming-together of the two narratives, and that prevented me from getting swept away like I have with Westerfeld’s books in the past, which in turn left me a bit disappointed by the end.

Posted in 2014, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Utter Readathon Fail

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Thistle
flowers

(See? Slytherins can make lovely friends who send them flowers when they’re struggling…they’re not ALL mean people…)

Um…I was supposed to participate in Readathon yesterday. I haven’t participated in quite some time, and I was looking forward to it this fall. I knew it was going to be hectic, and busy, because yesterday was my oldest son’s 14th birthday. Originally, I wasn’t even going to sign up, with the whole birthday thing going on. But then Morrigan wanted to sign up, and asked if he could spend most of his birthday doing Readathon, and so I said sure, we can do that. That was cool…except then yesterday morning came, and he decided he didn’t want to do Readathon after all. Oops.

I thought about doing some reading anyway, but in the end, it wasn’t worth it. We had lots of party stuff to get together. Things to cook. Games to plan. Etc. I spent the day with my family instead of with a book, and that’s totally okay, I think. I just kinda feel bad since I signed up and then bailed. Especially because I did the same thing in April (except in April, I bailed because I had an all-day write-a-thon instead), and I didn’t even sign up for either Readathon in 2013. It’s been two years now since I participated.

So…April. I’m looking at you. It’s long past time for me to rejoin my fellow book-people.

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The Secret Place, by Tana French (audio)

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Thistle

frenchStephen Moran has been working cold cases since his appearance in Faithful Place. Holly Mackey, who has aged seven years since Faithful Place, comes to him with a postcard from a wall at her private girls’ school. The wall is known as “The Secret Place,” an anonymous place for girls to put up their secrets. This secret, however, is police-worthy. It references Chris Harper, a boy from the neighboring private boys’ school, who died the previous year, and asserts that the writer knows who killed him. Armed with this new lead, Moran works with murder squad detective Antoinette Conway, both to find a killer, and to possibly break his way into the murder squad itself.

The Secret Place is unlike other books in this series so far. It splits the narrative into two competing stories. There is Moran’s story, narrated in the audio version by Stephen Hogan, that goes through the detectives’ moves throughout the day that Holly brings in the postcard. The second story, narrated by Laura Hutchinson, starts nearly a year before Chris Harper’s death, following the movement of Holly and her three best friends up through and past the murder. The detectives figure out the tapestry that led up to the murder at the same time the reader experiences it through the eyes of four teenage girls. It was an interesting experience, and I think Tana French pulled it off well.

The Secret Place is the fifth book in the Dublin Murder Squad series, and it falls right in the middle for me in terms of enjoyment. I liked it more than the first two books (In the Woods and The Likeness), with which I had some issues, but not nearly as much as Faithful Place or Broken Harbor, books three and four. I certainly found myself listening to the audiobook almost obsessively – enough that Stephen Hogan’s Detective-Moran-voice entered my dreams and narrated them for me one night, ha! – but I didn’t feel the same pull as I had with the last two books. I’m not sure why there was that disconnect, but I just didn’t feel quite as compelled as with the last two books. The Secret Place felt slower.

Slower could have been beautiful – I like slow – except that it was coupled with one thing that I had conflicted feelings about. This goes into very minor spoiler territory, not related to the case in any way. Feel free to skip this next paragraph if you’d like.

The Dublin Murder Squad books, thus far, have been realistic books, in terms of genre. There haven’t been any, say, paranormal elements that have come into them. All of a sudden, though, this book strayed into psychic-like territory. The girls are suddenly making lights turn on and off by opening and closing their fists, making objects burn just with their anger, making things move without touching them. I kept waiting for there to be an explanation, but it never came. The closest it got was Holly mentally commenting, long after the girls stopped doing these things, that she could already tell that as an adult, she wouldn’t believe they’d really happened. And in a way, that makes sense. I remember back to high school, and the psychic-like things that I saw, things that make no logical sense in the world. If they have explanations, I have never figured them out. In that light, I actually really like this part of The Secret Place. At the same time, my adult sensibilities sort of rebel against them, and I find myself wanting that logical explanation, especially in a series that has stayed relentlessly realistic before. End minor spoiler.

Beyond the conflicted feelings, I enjoyed the book, just not as much as the last two. I will definitely keep listening to Tana French’s books as they appear, and I can’t wait to find out who the narrator will be for the next volume (I hope it’s Conway!).

Performance: Stephen Hogan’s performance was pretty convincing, obviously, if he was narrating my dreams one night. I found it much improved from his reading of Broken Harbor, and didn’t have trouble keeping his character-voices straight this time. Laura Hutchinson’s performance was fantastic, and I admit, her Irish accent was so thick I had a hard time adjusting to it, and had to listen to those sections a little slower (single speed instead of double speed). Both narrators managed to make the teenagers sound mostly like teenagers without sounding silly (as many narrators of teens do). It was a very solid audiobook overall.

Posted in 2014, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments