A Better Place by Barbara Hall

This book revolved around the mid-life crisis of a failed actress who went to Hollywood to pursue an important life, and as it became clear that she wasn't going to experience the level of success that she felt entitled to, she begins obsessing about the small town life she left behind.

As the former Queen Bee of Maddock, her return stirs up all sorts of feelings in the people she left  behind, including her parents, best friends, ex-boyfriends and random townspeople.
The local deputy calls it the "dog days of summer" and continues to blame all of the strange happenings on this phenomenon rather than adults in the throes of a mid-life crisis behaving badly.

As I was reading this book, Thoreau's quote "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation....." kept popping into my head.  This was an interesting book, and a good read, but the overwhelming mood in the book was yearning and despair.  A little too realistic to be a fun beach read, but really hit the thoughts that go through this middle aged mom's head.  One character, an infertility specialist, Dr. Ross says, "Because you see, children prevent you from doing anything.  They completely occupy your time and attention.  You can't address your concerns and desires because you're so wrapped up in the children.  And they also provide a very nice reason to think in simplistic terms.  How many times have you heard people say, 'I didn't believe in the death penalty until I had children'?  They have the right, now, to believe in retribution and bloodletting because it's all wrapped in this sacramental blanket called children.  Children make it easier for us to be less questioning., less demanding of ourselves intellectually.  Passing out clean hypodermics to drug addicts?  Sorry, can't think about it.  I've got the children.  Poverty, world hunger?  Sorry, children.  And the more children you've got, the less you have to apply yourself to any other question."

Yikes.  I like to read to escape these type of thoughts going through my head, but this book definitely wasn't escapism.  Good book, brought out a strong emotional response in it's reader.

I received a free copy of this book via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell.....or Family....the Ties That Bind and Gag

Your family are the ties that bind, and in the case of this book, the ties that gag.  The House We Grew Up In grabbed me from the first few chapters as it told the story of a family that started out picture perfect, living in a beautiful house.  A hippy, earth mother, a quiet, loving father and four cute children searching for Easter eggs.  Looks perfect from the outside.
However, after an unexpected tragedy hits them, you see how delicate the bonds that held this family together really were.
The story followed the disintegration of the family over the years, but it was told in such a pitch perfect voice, that you never felt like there were villians or angels.  Just a group of imperfect people, bound together by blood, but maybe not meant to be in each other's lives.
I was given a free copy of this book by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.  I honestly loved this book, and will be watching for this author in the future.

Night Garden by Lisa VanAllen.......

*spoiler alerts on this review*

After my last nail biting, gritty read, Fiend, I wanted to relax and read a book that wouldn't stress me out.  It felt like some magical realism was in order.  So out came Night Garden, a book I had received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This is the second book that I have read by Lisa VanAllen, the first being The Wishing Thread.  The first book was okay - it never felt like it really hit it's mark.  Her second offering has definitely improved in terms of storytelling.
Olivia is a lonely gardener who grows a garden maze, but keeps herself isolated, refusing to let anyone touch her.  Sam is her childhood sweetheart, who has just returned to town.  They want to be with each other, but both are hiding secrets.  The first half of the book dragged a bit, and overall, I would say it's about 50 pages too long.  It felt like the descriptive set up dragged on a bit too long, but it was still interesting.
Once Sam and Olivia admit that they still love each other and start trying to overcome their obstacles, the book picked up, and it felt like the story moved at a good pace.
The magical realism was done very well, much better than her first book.  The ending felt a bit abrupt, but maybe it was just that I wished I knew if Olivia weaned herself off of her poison garden at the end, or if she and Sam still couldn't touch - the baby was a surprise, that I wish I knew more about.
This book should be on the list of any fan of Alice Hoffman or Sarah Addison Allen.
I give Night Garden 3.5 stars.

Fiend by Peter Stenson..or.....WTF did I just read???

To an ER nurse, there's many patients worse than a meth head, especially one who is spun and has no desire to get clean.  And not many meth heads desire to get clean - the old joke, how do you know a junkie is lying? He's talking.
So when I received a copy of Fiend from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review, I was a little taken aback, because I don't have much interest in junkie monkeys, but then I figured why not try my first ever zombie apocalypse book.
I loved I Am Legend, I'm a Walking Dead fan, but I've never read any of the books - and I know the book is always better than the movie.  The difference between these movies and Fiend is that Fiend has no clear hero.
Chase Daniels is the anti-hero.  The meth head who looks out the window while tweaked one day to see a little girl munching a Rottweiler.  And so the story begins........
Chase and his friend, Typewriter begin a their journey of survival, taking a detour to rescue Chase's ex-girlfriend and true love, KK, who dumped him because he wouldn't stay clean. The real kicker is that now she isn't clean either, but she still didn't come back.

Chase figures out pretty quickly that the antidote to the zombie virus is meth.  He tests his theory on KK's new junkie boyfriend, and a injection of meth brings him back from the brink of zombiehood.  Why would Chase bother?  Good question.  The answer is because Chase still has a trace of hero in him.
The positive is that the zombie apocalypse has made chasing meth legit because it's the only way to stay alive.  The negative is that now you're chasing down drug dealers while dodging the "Chucks", so named because they giggle as they try to eat your face.
This book was completely unlike anything I have ever read.  It was completely intense, and I felt like I was holding my breath most of the time while I read it.  But I also felt vaguely dirty reading it, as if I was plunged into the mind and reasoning of a junkie - which I was, because the character was really well written.
My next read is going to be a nice, sweet, chick lit book.  Because this was a gritty read.  But very well done.

Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet

I think being a writer must be one of the most difficult and personally challenging careers you can choose.  It is truly staggering when you consider the amount of yourself that has to be invested in putting your ideas on paper, and creating characters that you then put out for strangers to either love, hate, or worst of all, not care about. 
Save Yourself is the strangest kind of book for me.  It's technically well written.  The story line draws together to what should be a shattering conclusion.  And yet it was missing that essential spark that takes it from a well written book that I am reading to being a story that I am drawn into.
None of the characters inspired any strong feelings in me.  The evangelical Christian parents, the goth-vampire aspiring cult leader, neither of them stirred up any strong feelings in me. I think because the author showed their good characteristics and only mentioned the bad in past tense, almost as a throwaway fact.
The brothers and Caro were obviously the losers of town.  But the best books make you care about the losers and passionately want them to win, even if it's just one thing in their life.  I felt a low level of despair reading about the three of them in their dead end lives, because you could see it wasn't going to change.  No one was trying to better themselves.  Even the love triangle was a bit puzzling to me, as I couldn't see why Caro, with her desire for stability, would choose the brother who worked night shift at a convenience store over the fully employed brother.  Neither option was a good one, but it wasn't like she was trading up.
The sister's story  was equally depressing.  Even if their parents had sued the school district, I find it hard to believe that all teachers would turn a blind eye to the kind of bullying that included setting a girl's hair on fire.
The older sister, Layla, starts grooming the younger sister, Verna, to join the little band of freaks she runs with, at the instruction of her boyfriend, wanna-be vampire, Justinian.  They are able to suck her in pretty quickly, and that doesn't really make much sense.  To go from stuffing prayer brochures to letting a someone cut you and drink your blood is a pretty radical change, and since it didn't change how she seemed to feel or make the bullying she was experiencing stop, I couldn't understand her motivation, or get invested in this story.
The obvious flaw I saw in the showdown at the convenience store is that Verna had a shotgun, knew that the cult leader planned to murder her parents, and that she just didn't turn around and shoot him, but rather went through this pages long debate in her head on what she should do.  By the time the conclusion came, I didn't care anymore who died, I just wanted to be done with this book.
Early on, I thought to myself that this book was about 100 pages too long.  And I still feel that way.  All those words, and I still left with no feeling.
One thing I will say, is that I wish I hadn't known about the author's relationship to the King family.  She's married to Owen King, and DIL to Stephen King.   I'm not sure if that colored my expectations or not.  If anyone can make you care passionately about a loser, it's Stephen King.  His writing is probably less technically good than this author's but he tells a story.  And that's what I felt like I was missing here.
I would read her again, because there were moments in the book where I almost felt it, it was so close.  But the spark never caught in this book.  I'll have my sister read it and see what she thinks.  I'm interested enough to want to hear someone else's opinion.