Where She Went

In If I Stay by Gayle Forman, Mia was involved in a tragic car accident that killed both her parents and only brother and left her in a coma that she barely survived. It was a book that really stuck with me, which is unusual because I don't usually remember many details of what I've read for more than a month. When I saw that the author was coming out with a sequel, I quickly added my name to the waiting list.

Where She Went picks up three years later. Living separate lives on different coasts Mia and Adam, her high school boyfriend, have not seen each other since Mia left Oregon just months after the accident. Mia is a successful up-and-coming cellist and Adam is a rock star (the story is told from his point of view). Despite his current success, Adam is not happy and still struggles with the promise he made to Mia while she was in a coma: he would do anything if she stayed, even if it meant letting her go.  Adam is in New York for one night before he heads out on a lengthy European tour and it just happens to be the night that Mia is performing at Carnegie Hall. Adam attends, planning to sneak out, but Mia spots him. They spend the night visiting Mia's favorite parts of the city, and coming to terms with their past.

Sequels can frequently be disappointing for me, but not this one. Once I started reading, I didn't want to stop. Just like If I Stay, Where She Went is heartbreaking but the ending is satisfying and makes me smile thinking about it.

The Devotion of Suspect X

The Devotion of Suspect X is the American debut of Keigo Higashino, a best-selling Japanese crime novelist.  Yasuko Hanaoka is a single mother working hard to create a better life for her daughter after finally escaping her abusive ex-husband. That quickly changes when he tracks down Yasuko at her new place of employment. When he drops in on Yasuko at her apartment things quickly get worse and he ends up dead. Yasuko's neighbor Ishigami, a math genius, overhears the situation and steps in to help create the perfect alibi.

Faced with solving the apparent crime and not able to crack nor complete believe Yasuko's alibi, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi turns to his friend, the brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa. After hearing the details of the case, Yukawa discovers that Ishigami is a long-lost friend from school, and if not for this connection between two geniuses, the true details of the crime may never have been discovered.

While you know from the beginning that Yasuko Hanaoka killed her ex-husband, that doesn't prevent you from being shocked at the conclusion and the depth and detail of the alibi Ishigami worked so hard to create. I listened to this book, and while I found some parts to be a little slow in the beginning, I still find myself thinking about it and hope that more of the author's work is translated.

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman is a modern teen book perfect for fans of Jane Austen. Julie Lefkowitz’s best friend Ashleigh is an Enthusiast. She has random obsessions that last a few months at best, ranging from the music group Wet Blankets to Harriet the Spy. Her latest is Julie’s favorite book Pride and Prejudice. Along with dressing in frocks and learning quadrille (a dance Elizabeth Bennet practiced), Ashleigh decides she and Julie need to find True Love. Suddenly Julie finds herself crashing a dance at the prestigious all boys academy. With little trouble, the girls bump into their very own Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley. Too bad they both have fallen for Mr. Darcy. Polly Shulman writes a dazzling story about loyalty, friendship and love. The book is full of fantastic characters that will have you laughing and swooning as you read!

Composed: a Memoir

Singer, songwriter, performer and eldest child of Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash has been a musician for over 30 years. In her memoir, Composed, she writes of her upbringing in southern California. She tells of growing
up with and without her father. When Cash became successful he purchased a mountain top in California. Unfortunately the property had rattlesnakes on it!

Rosanne and her sisters usually only saw their father when he wasn't touring. His well known battles with addictions not surprisingly caused her mother to become bitter and unhappy. Rosanne attended strict Catholic schools as a child and hated them. As a teen she spent summers with her sisters and father in Tennessee. 

Ms. Cash recounts her journey to becoming a successful songwriter and recording star and tells of how proud her father was of her success. She includes the loving eulogies she gave for her parents and stepmother. This memoir is candid and compelling and you may find yourself looking for certain passages again as they pertain to the universality of love and loss.

Nashville Chrome

When I read a book, I want more than information (altho’ I do love information!). I like a type of impartation…something that will change me, transform me, help me see something spectacular, or at least in a new way.

Nashville Chrome, a new historical novel, by Rick Bass, does all this.

If you love music, and especially “Older” country, you will delight in this book. The story is about Jim Ed Brown, and his sisters, Maxine and Connie. Much of the setting is in Arkansas, where their parents run a saw mill to keep food (and drink!) on the table. As the youngsters grew and continually harmonized the lights and “chrome” of Nashville, glitter, twinkle, and beckon. We delight in reading how their lives intertwined with the great musician Chet Atkins, and singers Jim Reeves, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, the Beatles and many, many more. There were several hit recordings, but the most famous was “The Three Bells” an old French song that had plaintiff lyrics about “Little Jimmy Brown”.

Overall, I would say the childhood chapters of this novel will mesmerize you.

Is it possible that Daddy Floyd, who runs the saw mill actually sharpens the blades by listening to the perfect pitched voices of his three singing children?

Is it true that the secret to the quality of Floyd’s lumber lies in the fact that his fully tempered saw is sharpened perfectly and only because his offspring can discern pitch?”

Is it a fact that Jim Ed, Maxine, and Bonnie not only have high caliber solo voices, they have a harmonic resonance that is unreachable by any other singing group and indescribable by most people?

Read more: their complexities of fame, the celebrity that did not last very long, where they are now.

Rick Bass writes a terrific, true and fictional book.

Oh yes, and if you really, really, listen, you may actually hear the song that starts, “Oh the chapel bells are ringing….”

Reviewed by Linda Ladd Messer

The Informationist

Who do companies turn to when they need detailed information about foreign countries? In the novel The Informationist by Taylor Stevens that person is Vanessa "Michael" Munroe. She always delivers accurate, and expensive, information and is the best at what she does. But her new client is looking for something different: his stepdaughter who has been missing in Africa for four years. Munroe hesitates to take the case. She is in need of a break, and she has never searched for a missing person before. Plus, having been born to missionaries in central Africa, Munroe hasn't been back to the country since she escaped nearly ten years ago.

However, the money Richard Burbank is offering is too much to turn down. Munroe takes the case and returns to Africa, and the personal demons she left behind so many years ago. A character reminiscent of Lisbeth Salander of the Millennium trilogy, Vanessa "Michael" Munroe is a prodigy with languages and another strong female character in a suspense novel that will not disappoint.

April Mystery Book Club

The Library's Mystery Book Club will meet at 6:45 p.m. April 14 to discuss mysteries by Donis Casey. Casey writes historical mysteries featuring Alafair Tucker, a pioneer woman raising ten children on an Oklahoma farm in the 1900s. Copies are on display in the library so stop in and get one!

Instruments of Darkness

“The instruments of darkness tell us truths” is a quote from Macbeth by Shakespeare and the title of this first book in a series by author Imogen Roberston. Set in England in the summer of 1780, the book’s lead characters are Harriet Westerman and Gabriel Crowther. Harriet is the wife of a naval commander. She has given up sailing with her husband to make a home for her children and younger sister. When Harriet finds a man with his throat cut on her property she asks for help from Crowther, a recluse with an interest in anatomy. Harriet suspects there is a connection between the murdered man and nearby Thornleigh hall. Living at the hall are Lord Thornleigh, old and in failing health, his young, pretty wife and Captain Hugh who fought in the Revolutionary War in America and came home maimed.

There is also a second setting in London near Soho Square.  Living there are a music store owner, Alexander Adams, and his son Jonathan, age six, and daughter Susan, age nine. Adams is a widower who has broken off all contact with his birth family. How do all these characters fit together? Readers who are patient and enjoy forensic historical fiction should enjoy this novel.

A Corner of the Universe

Our April book of the month, selected by Beth, is A Corner of the Universe by Ann M. Martin. Hattie Owens is content to spend her summers sticking to the same routine in Millerton, her small hometown. But the summer of 1960, the summer Hattie turns 12, is different. That is the summer she meets her uncle Adam, an uncle she has never heard of.  The school (really an institution for the mentally disabled) Adam has been living at closes and he must return home.  Hattie's life is forever changed. Adam teaches her what it is like to be different and that you can lift the corners of your universe.