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Book Review: The Woman in the Woods

Books lined up for book review

4.6 out of 5 stars

Cover of The Woman in the Woods from Amazon.

I finished this book last night after several frantic hours of reading. And, when I say frantic, I mean it – my palms were sweaty and my heart was racing because of the volume of action packed into this one. 

I came across this book in the most unlikely of ways – it was free in a newsletter sign-up! For real though, if you go to the Simon & Schuster website and sign up for their newsletter, you can download this book or your choice of about twenty other books for FREE. 

They do require that you download an app called Glose to read the book, but this isn’t a big deal. It’s an e-reader app similar to Kindle, but it has other features – you can set reading goals and join communities too. I found the app easy to read and enjoyed the added features. 

Here’s a no-spoilers thriller book review for you!

Book Summary

This book is number sixteen in the Charlie Parker series by John Connolly. Charlie is a private detective and I wish I could give you more background on Charlie himself, but this book is light on that. Considering this is the sixteenth book in the series, I guess I see why. 

You don’t have to know his background though, Connolly does a decent job in catching you up with the elements of Charlie’s character that you do need to know. Basically, he’s a tough nut to crack and he’s eternally sad because of the untimely death of one of his daughters. 

Charlie is hired by an attorney to find a missing child. A woman’s body was found buried in a shallow grave in a Maine forest and she had recently given birth based on the state of her body. But the child is not with her, indicating that either the baby died and whoever buried the mother buried the baby someplace else, or the baby is alive. 

The search for the name of the woman in the woods brings up some rather unappetizing characters. A British man named Quayle and a woman named Pallida Mors show up looking for the child as well. These two are quite a pair and Connolly does an excellent job of describing just how despicable and unholy they are. 

There’s a sideline story that has to do with Charlie’s associate Louis. Within the first few chapters of the book, Louis, a black man, causes the explosion of a pickup truck decked from bumper to bumper with confederate flags. It’s difficult to see at first, but this sideline story does eventually merge with the main storyline, although it’s a long merge. 

My Thoughts

Reading this book was like taking a literary journey unlike any I’ve ever taken. The story weaves together like a tapestry. At first, you can’t see how any of it has anything to do with the rest, but by the end, it all comes together as if summoned by magic.

There is a supernatural element to this story which was totally unexpected. I assumed this would be similar to every other psychological thriller where the good guy chases the bad guy and eventually catches him. In this version, the bad guy is playing with an unfair supernatural advantage. There are legit monsters, and demons, and ghosts in this tale – and that made it all the more interesting!

Connolly’s descriptive powers are beyond words. He has the words, I don’t. This goes for mundane things like describing the make and model of a car to building a character up from scratch. The panache involved in his writing is second-to-none.

Speaking of characters… This book is literally driven by the characters. There are so many of them and each one, from the waitress at the diner to Charlie Parker himself has a fully-fledged background story to tell. It’s really remarkable. I left the book feeling like I actually knew these people.

There’s a cliffhanger! Yes, I said it, there’s a cliffhanger. The story isn’t finished, not by a long-shot. The reader gets only a taste of closure in this one. 

Overall Impression

There are a total of eighteen of these Charlie Parker books. This is my first one, but it won’t be my last. I’m planning to read the next one (damn that cliffhanger!). If you love thrillers and are looking for something outside the typical thriller box, this is one to check out. The supernatural elements are well-done and powerful and the rest will have you on the edge of your seat! 

Check out my last book review right here. And if you haven’t already, sign up for my newsletter, The Queue, for some great extra audio content and a monthly update on my reading and writing progress. 

Thanks for stopping by!

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Book Review: Undertow by Michael Buckley

Books lined up for book review

Book Review Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars

Cover of Undertow by Michael Buckley

There’s a lot to unpack in this book review. I’ll start with why I picked up this book in the first place. I found this one on the Overdrive app which is an app I use to check out ebooks from my local library. If you aren’t doing this, I highly suggest it – it’s the kind of app that will transform your world, really. 

(If you’re looking for more easy ways to incorporate reading into your day-to-day life, check out my three tips for how to read more books.)

This book came up in my Overdrive suggestions. It caught my eye because a) I was intrigued by the story idea and b) it’s a young adult science fiction novel with a female protagonist. This happens to be my writing genre so, as a writer, it’s important for me to read books in my genre. Plus, it has a great cover and we all know what they say about books and their covers…

A Brief Book Summary

Lyric Walker is a high school student whose world turns upside down when a race of water-dwelling beings called the Alpha show up on the beach near her home on New York’s Coney Island. The actual arrival of the Alpha occurs about three years before the events of the book and they’ve been living in a tent city on the beach since their arrival. 

As the book goes on, it flashes back to fill in the gaps of who the Alpha are and why they arrived. The Alpha live in the sea, but they have been chased out of the ocean by another race of beings called the Rusalka, a far nastier form of sea-dwellers. 

Lyric’s mother, Summer, is a member of the Alpha sent twenty years earlier to scout out the human population on Coney Island. Summer is a Sirena, basically a mermaid who can pass as human when not in the water, and she falls in love with Lyric’s father, a police officer on Coney Island. This makes Lyric half-Alpha, half-human. The backlash against the Alpha’s presence on the beach causes serious racial tensions to arise on the island (us vs. them) and the family realizes it’s best to keep Summer’s true identity a secret. 

The US government makes a deal with the Alpha to start integrating them into society by allowing five of their royal children to attend the same high school as Coney Island teenagers. This integration causes the human population to go bananas and riots break out. 

Lyric is recruited by the school principal to befriend one of the Alpha, a boy named Fathom who happens to be the Alpha prince. Predictably, Lyric and Fathom start off hating each other but eventually fall in love. Of course, this is made more complicated by the fact that Fathom is already betrothed to an Alpha girl named Arcade. Lyric doesn’t get the opportunity to tell Fathom about her hidden secret (the fact that she’s half-Alpha) before everything hits the fan. 

(Note – a bunch of things happen in a very short time at the end of this book. For brevity’s sake, I’m going to skip over much of it and give you the gist of what’s most important.)

The Alpha realize that Lyric has a strange ability to move water when she wears a special metal gauntlet. Yes, a gauntlet, like the metal glove Thanos wears in The Avengers. She fights alongside the Alpha as they take on the Rusalka, who have found the Alpha’s hiding spot on the beach. During the fight, Fathom saves Lyric by breathing air into her lungs after she’s tossed into the ocean. He doesn’t make it out and is lost beneath the waves. Lyric survives with several of the Alpha leaders and she’s determined to find Fathom and take revenge on the Rusalka.

Book Review: My Thoughts

The author does an amazing job putting the reader in the middle of some serious racial tension. His fight is not between people of different colors and backgrounds, rather being of different species. But it’s the same principle of racism we live with today and I think an incredibly important idea for young people to understand that “Us vs Them” is not an acceptable way to live life. 

There’s a scene in this book that is literally pulled out of the pages of history. The governor stands in front of the school doors to bar the Alpha students from entering and mingling with the humans. People riot and protest in support of the governor, heckling the Alpha students and demanding they leave. It’s a haunting callback to George Wallace standing in front of the doors at the University of Alabama in 1963, and frankly, it made me shiver.

There are some things about this book I would change. I felt it was about fifty pages too long. Much of the beginning of the book is full of the lead-up, which is fine, I like a good lead up to a dramatic event, but this one had a bit too much of it. There were times when I contemplated giving up on it. But I’m happy I stuck with it. The end was action-packed and worth the wait. The writing is good too – very descriptive, the way I like it.

Overall impression: Pretty good. Interesting storyline that does a good job of illustrating how toxic racial prejudice can drag society down into the depths of chaos. A bit boring during the first half of the book, but it takes off in the second half. Will I read the sequel (this is a series folks)? Maybe in the future, but not right now. 

Have you read this one? If so, leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Looking for my last book review? Here’s my review of The Andromeda Strain. Want a pared-down version of my reviews mixed with a little bonus, exclusive content? Sign up for my monthly newsletter, The Queue!

Thanks for stopping by!

Rebecca

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How to Read More Books: 3 Easy Tips to Get Started

All book lovers raise your hands!

You’ve raised your hand, you’re officially a book lover. But there’s a small problem… you haven’t read a whole book in many months. 

“I just don’t have the time to read!” you say. 

No worries – you’re not alone and this doesn’t mean you must relinquish your book-lover status. Finding the time to read is easier than you think. Here are my top three easy tips for how to read more books.

Tip #1: Ditch the Paperback

Okay, I know what you’re thinking… That’s blasphemy! I refuse to give up my paperback!

Before you dismiss this one, hear me out. If you want to read more books, your first step is to make reading more accessible. It’s not easy to haul around a big printed book with you at all times. 

But you know what you do have with you at all times? Your phone! 

Today’s huge phone screens and top-notch eReader apps (I prefer the Kindle app) make it easier than ever to read from your phone. You can adjust the size and style of the font, change the background color to make it a little easier on your eyes, and make marks and highlights as you go along.

Reading from your phone gives you the ability to read anywhere, not only when you’re sitting on the toilet (it’s okay, we’ve all done it). And reading anywhere is the key to reading more books… which is a fabulous segue into my next tip.

Tip #2: Find the Nooks and Crannies

Reading a whole book can seem daunting. You think, “How will I ever find enough time to read all 400 pages of this book?” Or all 900 pages if you’ve selected a Stephen King… 

The answer to that question is to find time in unexpected places. You don’t have to dedicate a whole hour every day to reading. Simply read when you can. 

What does this mean? Read on your morning bus ride. Read while you’re waiting in line at the DMV or the grocery store. Read while you’re in that tiny exam room at the doctor’s office. Read while your chicken casserole bakes in the oven.

Even if you only get five minutes in at a time, that’s more reading than you would have gotten done had you mindlessly scrolled Instagram instead.

And, of course, you can always opt for an audiobook. This way you can “read” while you drive, while you clean, and while you’re mowing the lawn. 

Once you begin to examine the nooks and crannies of your life, you’ll realize there is actually lots of time to read! 

Tip #3: Choose the Right Books

If you start a book and it doesn’t grab your attention within the first thirty to fifty pages, it may not be the right book for you. And that’s okay! Cut your losses and move on to the next book. 

This may be a reading faux pas in the mind of some book snobs. But I’ve found it’s the only practical way to enjoy reading and get the most out of your reading time. There’s nothing worse than forcing yourself to power through a book that doesn’t interest you. 

You might be saying, “But Rebecca, I bought the book! I can’t just quit!” I get this argument. But there are some ways around this. 

First, utilize a library app (I use the Overdrive app) to check out books from your local library. All you need is a library card. Check with your local library to see which app they use. Hello – all the free books you can get your hands on!

Another way to workaround wasting money on books is to opt for cheap. Many Amazon books go on sale throughout the month. If you only spend $1.99 on a book, it doesn’t make it so bad when you realize halfway through that it’s not your style and you’d rather move on. 

Before you spend your cash on a book, utilize the reading sample. Most Amazon samples are at least twenty pages long which gives you ample content to decide whether or not the book is worth your money. 

How to Read More Books Like a Reading Rockstar!

There you have it – my top three tips for how to read more books. Implement these and you’ll be reading like a rockstar in no time!

Looking for more reading tips? Subscribe to my newsletter, The Queue! It’s got a little bit of everything – reading updates, writing updates, and my special tips section, Queue Tips! (See what I did there? Haha!) I hope to see YOU on the list for next month’s episode!

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Book Review: The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

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THE QUEUE Reading List Rating: 3 out of 5

It pains me to give any book written by the late, great Michael Crichton less than five stars. If you’ve ever read Jurassic Park, you know how Crichton gets the science fiction award for turning the world around on its head. I added this one to my reading list because I’ve enjoyed so many of his other works.

He injects his hard science fiction books with energy and pizazz, tackling the toughest of topics including mental health issues gone amok (Sphere), medical technology overstepping its boundaries (Terminal Man), and the ethical issues behind genetic testing (Jurassic Park… duh).  

The Andromeda Strain is one of Crichton’s earliest works, written in 1969, and like the old clichéd “fine wine”, he got better with age. The novel poses the question of what we as humans would do in the event that an alien organism, in this case, a strain of bacteria, would make its way to the surface of our planet. How would we react? What would happen to us? What would happen to the organism?

Crichton’s take on this situation is… bizarre. Let me explain. Beware, spoilers ahead.

The organism in question, the Andromeda Strain (not named so because it came from the Andromeda Galaxy, rather a name produced at random by a computer program) is brought to the Earth’s surface by one of our very own space probes. The probe lands in a tiny town in the middle of the Arizona desert and promptly kills off every person in the town with the exception of two – an old man with a failing liver and a six-month-old baby.  

At the discovery of the crash site, the government puts together a team of doctors and scientists to study the organism. These doctors travel to the remote location known as Project Wildfire, a state-of-the-art facility built deep into the ground of the desert, the Nevada desert this time.

The doctors and scientists, all men – this was 1969, of course – spend the next few days making their way through the meticulous levels of quarantine to the very bottom level of the Wildfire facility. Once there, they spend run tests on the sample taken from the space probe trying to figure out what the heck this thing is. 

What they find is what really makes this story bizarre, in my opinion. The strain kills people by clotting their blood, either causing them to go crazy because of brain bleeding or causing them to die instantly as the blood clots in their hearts. The two survivors had special health circumstances that kept them immune to the strain. 

But here’s the real kicker, the doctors realize that the strain has mutated and it’s totally harmless to humans – but it can now eat through rubber. Yes, you read that correctly – it can now eat through rubber. 

Most of the action happens at the very end of the story when the strain eats through the rubber seals that guard the facility against contamination. Since the contamination has spread, the Wildfire computer puts into action the “self destruct” mechanism – an atomic bomb that will blow the Wildfire facility and all of its scientists to smithereens.

As you probably guessed, Crichton’s scientists figure out a way to prevent the atomic explosion and save everyone’s lives. The Andromeda Strain goes about its now-harmless way and eventually settles in the upper atmosphere in its mutated, rubber-eating form. 

That would be the end of the story if not for the Epilogue which tells the brief story of the mutant, rubber-eating bacteria dissolving through the hull of a manned space vehicle, thus killing the astronauts as they tried to re-enter the atmosphere. The continuation of the story is yet to come and I would imagine that the sequel – The Andromeda Evolution – must pick up at that point. I’ll certainly let you know when I’ve read that one. 

The idea of this story intrigues me, but the delivery of the story falls flat. There’s lots of science here, which, don’t get me wrong, is something I love. But this one goes a bit too far with scientific explanation making up the bulk of the writing. There’s barely room for the story. 

One positive – Crichton does an excellent job of keeping you wondering. What is the strain and how will they eventually stop it? But the answers to those questions seem like an afterthought. The strain turns benign and only affects rubber? I’m sorry, but where did that come from?

I didn’t love this book. But it is very well-written and researched, as all Crichton books are. And it did keep me interested before falling flat at the end. There were some dead spots in the middle where I had to skip over big paragraphs of science just to get through to the next exciting part. 

If you’ve read The Andromeda Strain, I’d love to hear your take on it. Leave me a comment and let me know!

And if you’re looking for a pared-down version of my book reviews, subscribe to my newsletter, THE QUEUE. I give you a short-and-sweet book review and discuss what’s up next in my reading and writing queue. I’d love to have you on board as a subscriber!

Thanks for stopping by!

Rebecca

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Excerpt from the Professional Log of Dr. Tess Avrakotos (A Bite-Sized Bit of Fiction)

I have seen many interesting cases since I became a doctor over two decades ago.  The case of Eta Shepard remains the most intriguing case I have ever come upon. (For reference, Eta is pronounced with a long e – “Eeta”.  As in the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. )  

As for a brief explanation of my background, my full name is Dr. Tess Maria Avrakotos.  I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Biology and received my doctorate from Johns Hopkins University with a specialization in Family Medicine.  I did my residency at Sentara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk, VA and continued to work there after I completed my residency. I started with NASA after the end of the war as part of their physiology department, studying the effects of microgravity and radiation exposure on the human body.  

Manned space programs have been indefinitely suspended since the onset of the war but, in an effort to rebuild the international space flight community, research has resumed which is how I came to be at the agency.  After about six years with NASA, I came across Eta Shepard.

In an effort to understand her unique physiology, I have done an extensive investigation into Eta’s background through multiple interviews with Eta herself, as well as former NASA staff who would have been familiar with the Delta Space Station and, more interestingly, familiar with Eta’s mother, Millicent Shepard.  In addition, and included in this report, are journal entries and transcribed voice entries recovered from the Delta’s primary computer database before the station was destroyed. Finally, Millicent kept detailed medical records using the stations medical testing equipment on both herself and on Eta.  Regular medical testing had been the practice on space stations in the past and Millicent kept up with this, well after communication was lost with the ground. Medical records were retrieved from the station and are submitted here as well.

Eta is one of the most significant physiological discoveries of our time in that her case showcases the direct effects of long term space exposure.  She kept a detailed verbal log of her life starting at the age of six. This is believed to have been the idea of her mother, Millicent, who, as a scientist herself, certainly understood the importance of keeping a record of such a life.    

I have pieced together the logs and included information taken from my own interviews as well as from interviews with the team at NASA that worked with Eta on the station after she was discovered there.  Her entire life is interesting, of course, however, the most interesting details begin, coincidentally, on Eta’s 18th birthday.

This is her story.