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Before you crack open this book, understand something vital: Whatever you think you know about these characters, you’re, at best, only half-right. That doesn’t mean that this is a mind-bender of Murakami proportions, though there are some pretty significant twists. It means that the characters have depth.

This is the warm, sometimes whimsical story of Amy Rook and the people she left behind. There is Arthur, her shattered husband; Mona, her erstwhile best friend, the girl who always cleaned up after her; and Oneida, Mona’s quirky teenage daughter. On their periphery is Eugene/Wendy, boyfriend of Oneida and son of Astor, a security guard with a surprising extracurricular activity.

Mona runs a boarding house populated by quirky side characters and fondant cake creations. She makes a decent living baking wedding cakes, but has a hard time living down her spotty reputation about town (the fictional Ruby Falls, New York). As the story progresses, however, we learn that all is not as it seems, and Mona’s reputation is built upon a foundation of rumor and misunderstanding that she has done nothing to contradict. When a lost and grief-stricken Arthur shows up at her boardinghouse seeking answers about his late wife, she realizes that her days of truth-dodging are over.

The story unfolds from four alternating points of view: Arthur’s, Mona’s, Oneida’s, and Eugene’s. All we have of Amy are the artifacts and people she’s left behind, so all we gain is an incomplete picture of a woman who, for better or worse, was quite complex. It would be easy to dismiss her as a selfish, heartless woman who probably drank too much (several flashbacks feature her in a tipsy or drunken state). But all we have are a handful of memories and revelations that paint a rather fuzzy picture. Did I like Amy? Not particularly. That said, I also recognize that my experience with her was extraordinarily limited.

This is quite a debut. It’s difficult to categorize This Must Be the Place, with its mixed bag of young adult, chick lit, and romance elements. Racculia’s writing is simultaneously smart and warm, and her characters are remarkably well-developed. And the banter snaps, crackles, and pops, as all good banter should.

(Disclaimer: Henry Holt and Company sent me a review copy of this book.)

Annexed was a bold undertaking. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is a pretty sacred Holocaust memoir. To explore Peter’s point of view in a novel constitutes a huge literary risk. On some levels, it paid off. But, as you’ll notice throughout this review, this book raised a lot of questions for me.

The novel introduces Liese, Peter’s fictional first girlfriend and a personification of his sexual awakening. He longs for her while trapped in the annex, and the narrative does not shy away from some of his more “vivid” dreams of her. Was she necessary? It’s hard to say. In all likelihood, Peter would have had to grapple with teenage hormones while confined in close quarters with so many other people. Is it fair to put words in his mouth and thoughts in his head, to take creative license with a real person’s private thoughts, though? I’ll leave that one to the biographical literary critics. The fictional Liese was effective in her role here, driving home just how much Peter was missing while cooped up in the annex.

It was the interactions between Peter and Anne that felt a bit off to me. Anne came off as rather daft when seen through his eyes. I never got that impression of her from the diary, but I also read it twice when I was a teenager, when I was around her age. We know from the diaries that Anne saw the beauty in many things, but Peter’s point of view made her appear annoyingly optimistic. In this regard, I felt that the book sometimes missed the mark when it came to characterizing Anne. She was a teenager, yes, but was she really that spoiled, careless, flirtatious, annoyingly optimistic, etc.? Would she and Peter really have been that frank with one another about sex? I feel like I need to reread the diary now to make a fair evaluation of this book.

In some scenes, Peter asks Anne not to write about something in her diary. This feels like a cop-out, a way to introduce fictional conversations and events into a true story chronicled quite closely in a daily diary.

The most poignant part of the book was, for the most part, pure fiction. In Part II, which doesn’t begin until close to the end, we experience the concentration camp through Peter’s eyes. Dogar tells us in the epilogue that she has constructed this section from secondhand accounts and pure imagination. Again, this proves effective. Part II does a good job (arguably, too good a job) of depicting the concentration camp experience. Dogar also provides a nice reading list at the back of the book for further study (I’ve already put the Five Chimneys memoir on hold at the library).

A side note: I wasn’t a huge fan of the chapter headings in this book. They were rather dry (e.g., “Peter feels hope,” “Peter wants Anne, Anne wants to write,” “Anne and Peter are in his bedroom,” etc.). Because they are so straightforward (essentially one-line chapter summaries), they don’t add much to the narrative.

I’m the rare reader who actually enjoys present-tense narratives, and I understood why it was necessary here. Because the novel merges Peter’s present-tense life in the annex with his past-tense reminiscences while in the concentration camp, uniformity of verb tense isn’t really possible. My only stylistic complaint was that the writing felt a bit staccato. Lots of sentence fragments. One-sentence paragraphs. A disproportionate number of simple sentences. This was effective in times of suspense, but sometimes made it difficult to connect with Peter during more contemplative moments in the story.

Overall, I give this book points for bravery. It does read somewhat like fan fiction at points (an inevitable danger in any creative nonfiction/historical fiction novel) and sometimes stumbles in the execution. But it is also a nice attempt to lend voice to a figure who, across the decades, has remained secondary to the story. And there can never be too many novels to remind us of what people are capable of doing to one another.

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review.)

Wow. Let me begin by saying that this book, quite relentlessly, ripped my heart out.

The jacket of Hate List asks some tough questions: “What if you wished someone would die and then it happened? What if the killer was someone you loved?” This book sets out to answer those questions, using the aftermath of a school shooting as the narrative vehicle.

Valerie and Nick were once inseparable. Both damaged and a bit angry at the world, they found refuge in one another. But Valerie didn’t know Nick as well as she thought she did. She never saw his final act of outrage coming, and the book makes it pretty clear that she will never stop paying for it. On a May morning, he came to school armed with a gun and began to target people from their “hate list.”

There isn’t a one-dimensional character to be found in this book. Everyone is flawed. Everyone is in unspeakable pain. Valerie must trudge through her senior year at a school that blames her for the shooting. And you can’t entirely blame the people who blame her. It was, after all, her list that Nick used when plotting his final act. But, as popular girl Jessica tells the police and her clique, Valerie “didn’t shoot anybody.” In fact, despite a long-standing feud between them, Valerie saved Jessica’s life during the shooting. She took a bullet in the leg, the last bullet Nick shot before turning the gun on himself.

The shooting itself, recapped throughout the book, was harrowing. But it was the ostracization of Valerie that actually got me choked up while reading. Her own parents believe the worst of her, and her father treats her like something scraped from the bottom of his shoe. (Quite frankly, I loathed her selfish jackass of a father from beginning to end.) She is invited to a party by Jessica, with whom she has forged a fragile friendship, where she is threatened at gunpoint by a classmate. Her lifelong best friend, Stacey, abandons her and is all too ready to believe the worst about her.

But there are characters who are supportive of Valerie, who are just as quick to believe the best about her as others are to believe the worst. There is Jessica, the girl who once made regular appearances on her hate list, the girl she saved. There is Bea, the artist who takes her under her wing and gives her a safe place for artistic expression. There is Dr. Hieler, her therapist, who is more of a father to her than her own father has ever been or will ever be. Even Briley, her father’s secretary-turned-lover, is supportive of Valerie when her own father is not.

There’s not much else I can say about this book, except the following: This is how you characterize. Make your characters something more than caricatures. It’s okay to let your protagonist be a little (or a lot) imperfect, or even sometimes unlikable. It’s okay to make a villain a little likable, to add layers rather than present some lazy, black-and-white cardboard cutout. It’s okay to try a little harder and give your story some depth.

In fact, it’s advisable.

I love stories like this. A tragic event happens, and we are left with conflicting accounts of what really happened. Truth becomes subjective, if not completely unattainable. It’s what I loved so much about Akutagawa’s Rashomon (perhaps better known in its Akira Kurosawa adaptation).

Before her tragic death, Raquel was a virtual non-entity in her school. Shy and overweight, she flew under most students’ radar. After her death, her classmates try to make sense of their own mortality by latching onto their fallen peer posthumously. Classmates who never gave her the time of day show up to shed tears at her wake. Her best friend and father agonize over what they might have done differently to prevent the accident. Miscellaneous other characters (including a school janitor and eyewitnesses to the accident) provide insight into what may have actually happened the night of her death.

Remembering Raquel is a quick read (weighing in at a light 137 pages), but not a fluffy one. There are important details to absorb and characters/events to understand. After reading, we have a fairly good idea of what may have caused Raquel’s accident, but enough evidence lingers to cast reasonable doubt. Did she step in front of the car on purpose? Did she stumble while goofing around on the sidewalk? Odds favor the latter, but there is also enough evidence to suggest the former. We’ll never know for certain.

And that’s the point.

When Jace Witherspoon shows up on his brother’s doorstep, he doesn’t need to say a word. His bruised face and fat lip speak for themselves. Christian, his older brother, is all too familiar with their father’s wrath–for years, he took punches for his mother and brother, until the beatings landed him in the hospital and a friend’s family helped him escape. This left Jace as the human buffer zone between his abusive father and downtrodden mother.

The problem is, Jace’s and Christian’s father is no ordinary abuser. He is a judge, one of the most respected in Chicago. He knows the system better than anyone. He is diabolical enough to have devised a defense in the event his beatings ever kill his wife.

But Jace, bruised and broken as he is, isn’t entirely innocent himself. He carries with him a dark secret from his past life, one that the story reveals to us gradually. Living with Christian presents an opportunity to start over, but he realizes quickly that he can only run so far from the life he has left behind. Can he break the cycle his father set in motion years ago?

I won an autographed copy of this book from the Goodreads giveaway. I read another J.J. Murray book, I’m Your Girl, about two years ago. What I find so enjoyable about his books is their fairly apolitical exploration of interracial relationships. Murray never makes a big hoopla out of two people from different backgrounds falling for one another–he simply lets it happen without any sociopolitical commentary. The conflicts are, instead, interpersonal.

The Real Thing is no different. Christiana, a journalist, manages to get an interview with the elusive Dante, a boxer staging a big comeback. Over the course of their three days together, they fall in lust/love. The root story is refreshing, as the protagonists are over 30 and independently successful. Christiana, however, is sometimes prone to fits of jealousy, impulsiveness, and narcissism/vanity. She has an extraordinarily compelling back-story, and I sometimes wished that the book had explored it in more depth. I think that some more concrete links could have been forged between her tragic past and her sometimes ridiculous behavior.

Overall, this book makes for a fun beach read. The characters are fairly interesting (though I found Dante’s ex-wife, Evelyn/”Evil Lyn,” to be somewhat of a caricature) and the tone remains generally humorous throughout.

This is the first Kushiel’s Legacy book I have three-starred. It was hard not to tack on an extra star for loyalty’s/consistency’s sake, because I truly loved the first seven books. What I loved about Naamah’s Kiss was its ability to introduce a completely new cast of characters while maintaining the essence of the Kushiel saga. Naamah’s Curse, however, felt like a pale imitation of Phèdre’s trilogy.

The parallels are many: the diamond that exerts considerable control over Moirin (much like the diamond Melisande had Phèdre wear), Jehanne’s lingering power over Moirin and left-behind child (Melisande/Imriel, anyone?), etc.

But the primary problem for me in this book was characterization. In the original trilogy, we never needed to be told that Phèdre was awesome. She exemplified awesomeness. She lived it and breathed it, and no one had to say it aloud to make it known. In Naamah’s Curse, however, we are constantly beaten over the head with how awesome Moirin is. We are told, not shown, that she is the most amazing woman who ever lived by multiple characters. Yes, she’s capable of some impressive magic tricks and underwent a difficult journey to find Bao, but she is also prone to self-indulgent wallowing the likes of which would have appalled Phèdre.

Here are examples of some more “Mary Sue”-esque passages. Warning: There are many.

“Bao sighed, ‘Moirin, you possess a gift the likes of which no one outside your strange bear-folk has ever seen. You possess a strange beauty the likes of which no one has ever seen. You are descended from three different royal lineages’” (87).

[commence whining-cum-boasting] “The quest I had undertaken in Ch’in to free the princess and the dragon should have been enough for anyone’s lifetime. But oh, no! Not for Moirin. The great Khan had betrayed me, the gods had scooped me up and tossed me back onto the gaming table, sending me to Vralia, where the Patriarch of Riva dreamed of destiny, dreamed of a Yeshuite empire built on bloodshed and loathing. I had put an end to his dream. I had armed my sweet boy Aleksei with the courage of his convictions that he might continue the fight against his uncle’s vile legacy, raising a voice in favor of love, compassion, and understanding, altering the course of his world. And yet it wasn’t enough. No, now I must be shaken and rattled and tossed once more, hurtled back into the fray, pitted against this legendary Falconer and his bedamned Spider Queen with her unknown charms that held grown men in thrall. And it was not enough that I find the missing half of my soul, too. A boy-monk with kind, gentle, ancient eyes was depending on me to rescue the reincarnation of one of the Enlightened Ones. And that, he had informed me, was only the beginning of my journey. I had further oceans to cross. It was a considerable weight to carry, a considerable weight to place on the shoulder of a young woman who had grown up in a cave in the Alban wilderness. And I felt very alone beneath my burden” (364). [/end whining-cum-boasting]

“‘And as sick as you were, you still looked like you’d stepped out of an ancient tale from when gods and goddesses roamed the earth’” (468).

“‘You are wise for one so young, Moirin’” (491).

“‘You would be desirable beyond bearing … You already incite powerful desire. Were you to don Kamadeva’s diamond, I think no one would be able to resist you, for the diamond would reflect your own considerable passions back at them. Men would walk through fire for the chance to touch your skin–and women, too. Men would gladly fight to the death for your favor without being asked. I daresay you couldn’t stop them from doing it’” (520).

“…I didn’t know how to be an ordinary, mortal lover anymore” (528).

There are others, but these were some of the more striking examples. Bottom line: It was easy to get behind Phèdre. This was a young woman born to be an outlet for mankind’s basest instincts, and she sometimes hated what she was. Moirin, on the other hand, comes off as a rather boy-/girl-crazy schoolgirl at times, complete with giggling. Perhaps the concept of Kushiel’s dart was developed better than that of Naamah’s blessing. I understood why Phèdre ended up in dalliances with various characters. But Moirin’s “gift” is undiscriminating–all anyone need do is cast her an intense gaze, and she’s putty in their hands.

What saved this book for me is Bao. As I said to another friend who just read this, Bao is Bao. In my eyes, he has no parallel in the other trilogies. He’s more impish than Joscelin, more impudent than Imriel. He is, at times, genuinely funny. He may just be the strongest element of the entire Naamah trilogy.

So, overall, three stars. I’m not sure where Naamah’s Blessing will take us, which is strange. When I finished the second books of both other trilogies, I had a clearer sense of what was to come in the third books. Naamah’s Curse, however, ends with a wedding and the vague hint that Bao and Moirin will return to Terre d’Ange, likely to meet the late Jehanne’s daughter. Where the conflict will lie is anyone’s guess.

Vestments was a pleasant surprise. I opened the e-galley expecting to receive a crash course in Catholic doctrine and the priesthood. But Reimringer is smart–he assumes that his reader knows the nuts and bolts of the Catholic faith and, instead, allows his characters to occupy the spotlight.

James “Jim” Dressler is a priest in turmoil. He received his calling, if you can call it that, fairly young. His is not a tale of religious vision or teary-eyed salvation. No, Jim finds allure in the more sensual aspects of the Catholic church–the weight of a robe on his shoulders, the scent of burning incense. This should come as no surprise; after all, this is a man who has never quite vanquished his more sensual urges. His weakness for women permeates the narrative at various junctures, and we see that he has broken his vows with several women.

So why would this veritable ladies’ man sign up for lifelong celibacy? Because, for Jim, Catholicism is less a spiritual outlet than it is refuge from his dysfunctional family. His father is a heavy drinker, and his mother is never entirely present, emotionally speaking. When he announces his his desire to enter the priesthood, his father scoffs in skepticism. On the day of his ordination, the best compliment his father can muster up is “‘We’ll see how you do.’” Perhaps, then, it is sheer defiance, a desire to prove his father wrong, that propels him.

As Jim struggles to stifle his sexuality–which becomes increasingly difficult to do when he crosses paths with his first love, Betty–he must also contend with a certain alienation that accompanies the priesthood. Family members hide things from him for fear of being on the receiving end of a sermon or lecture. Hugs are few and far between. But his family need not fear him–he is no ordinary priest. He’s a little lustful, a little profane, and he shares his father’s dangerous love of “spirits” (the fermented kind).

There is also Jim’s grandfather, Otto, on the brink of death and still haunted by wartime demons. We never know exactly what he saw and/or did during World War II, but the historical innuendo creates a rather haunting undercurrent in the story.

Vestments is a rewarding read because, ultimately, it takes no sides. The book offers an honest portrayal of the modern-day Catholic church, mourning the loss of community therein and raising important questions about the priesthood. Again, Reimringer doesn’t weigh down the narrative with doctrine. The characters’ respective struggles are heavy enough.

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from Milkweed Editions for review.)

Burned was an apt title for this one. I felt burned and a little exploited after reading it.

I love Ellen Hopkins. Her “Crank” trilogy is one of my favorite YA series because of its rawness. I feel like I say this in a lot of reviews, but what works about “Crank” is that it doesn’t resort to cheap sleights of pen to evoke a thrill. It puts forth, in experimental verse form, a candid view of crystal meth addiction.

This book’s greatest misstep is its failure to recognize that Pattyn’s crisis of faith, her father’s abuse, and her relationship with Ethan are compelling enough; the story doesn’t need cheap twists and shock value to be effective.

Perhaps the most tragic element of this story, though, was its ultimate betrayal of its own ideals. Pattyn’s aunt spends so much of this book teaching her that there are options for women beyond marriage and motherhood. But, ultimately, Pattyn finds her self-worth and purpose in a man (albeit, a very kind-hearted, loving one). In this regard, she isn’t all that dissimilar to her mother, who chose “true love” over college. It isn’t that Ethan is unworthy of “forever love,” as the book calls it, but Pattyn is just seventeen. The love story is touching, if not somewhat rushed, but also a bit hard to take–in a matter of weeks, she can’t live without him and finds self-worth when she regards herself through his eyes.

As for the ending? Talk about narrative contortionism. This is a spoiler-free review, so I won’t comment further on that.

I’m not worthy of reviewing a book like this. Really. Seven Types of Ambiguity is huge, both physically and contextually.

Read this book if:

–You like Rashomon-like explorations of the subjective nature of truth.
–You like overlapping narratives that do more to obfuscate a given event than illuminate it.
–Deep characterization is your bag.
–You have ever harbored even a passing interest in critical theory.
–You love Billie Holliday.
–You are are passionate about health care issues (this book explores Australia’s shift to managed health care).

Do not read this book if:

–You like morally unambiguous characters who are always on their best behavior.
–You have a short attention span.
–You hate ambiguity (and, really, the title should tip you off there).
–You like concrete, “big-red-bow” endings.

What else can I say, really?