The God of Animals: A Novel

by Aryn Kyle

"Wow!" is all I can say about this wonderful debut by Aryn Kyle. This breathtaking book, the kind you cannot put down, is narrated by Alice Winston, a lonely, poor, twelve year old girl living on a Colorado horse farm. Her father is rugged, handsome like a marlboro man, and tireless in his efforts to turn their floundering farm into a lucrative business that trains, breeds, boards, and shows beautiful horses. Alice's mother has been very depressed since Alice's birth and rarely leaves her bedroom. Her beautiful older sister Nona has just runaway to marry a rodeo cowboy even though she's only seventeen, devastating her entire family and creating a huge scandal. Alice misses her sister desperately; Nona was her best and only real friend. An extremely talented equestrian, Nona was her father's favorite and his only hope for saving their farm. Alice's life begins to change after a classmate drowns in a nearby canal and her father is forced to give riding lessons and boarding other people's horses to make ends meet. New people begin to show up at the farm and each one affects Alice in some unexpected way.

Two of Kyle's greatest strengths are her expertly drawn characters and the ways their lives all intersect. The author brings you right back to the miserableness of adolescence and creates a unforgettable setting in dusty Desert Valley with her vivid descriptions. The momentum of the story builds slowly to an amazing ending as all the interwoven plotlines reach a climax in the final scenes. Kyle's brutal honesty shattered all my preconceived romantic notions about life on a horse farm, just like most of her characters end up shattered in one way or another by the end of this book. A wonderful story about families, horses and lost love; one of my favorite books ever.*****

Helpless: A Novel

by Barbara Gowdy

Publishers Weekly summed it up best when they called Helpless "...chilling but not always believable." Celia is a young single mother working two jobs to make ends meet. Her nine year old daughter Rachel is smart, mature for her age, and strikingly beautiful with mocha skin and light hair. Ron is a lonely, demented, small appliance repairman who spots Rachel in the schoolyard one day. He quickly becomes obsessed with the little girl and soon begins to renovate a room in his basement from storage for his old vacuum cleaner collection into a perfect bedroom for a little girl, complete with big screen tv, dolls, videos, and an enormous dollhouse. One night, Ron snatches Rachel from her home during a blackout.

The narration of the story shifts among each of the main characters and as the story progresses we learn about the point of view and past of each person. One of the main problems is that Ron is super creepy and I didn't care about his troubled past or his strange thought processes. Rachel is very mature at the beginning of the book but a few days later, the reader is supposed to believe that she really thinks Ron is protecting her from slave drivers roaming the streets of Toronto in search of little girls to send back to Africa. Suspenseful at times but just not believable to me.

Fly Me to the Moon

by Alyson Noel

A light, breezy tale about a flight attendant in search of the love of her life. Publishers Weekly called it "Sex and the City at 37000 feet." Haley Lane thinks her pilot boyfriend is about to pop the question but she gets the surprise of her life when she arrives home early from a trip and finds him in a very compromising position with a male flight attendant. For a while, Haley is single, homeless and miserable but with the help of a couple of good friends, she gets herself together. Although she kisses a few more frogs along the way, Haley gets her happy ending at the end of the book. A fun satisfying read, ideal for a long flight or a day at the beach.

Body Surfing

by Anita Shreve

After enjoying several of her previous novels, I've come to look forward to Anita Shreve's next book. This one was a major disappointment. The plot about a young woman torn between two brothers on Cape Cod was very intriguing. However, I just could not get used to the style of writing, which was in present tense and jumped suddenly from scene to scene, kind of like a long poem. Loved Light on Snow and The Pilot's Wife, but this is not her best work.

Blue Water

by A. Manette Ansay

A somber story about Rex and Meg, a middle aged couple trying to heal themselves and their relationship by sailing around the world, after the devastating loss of their six year old son in a drunk driving accident. Well written with interesting characters, this book asks important questions about forgiveness, family and love. Recommended.

The Year of Yes: A Memoir

By Maria Dahvana Headley

A few years ago, author Maria Headley realized that she was tired of dating losers and desperate to fall in love. Since it never seemed to work out with the type of men she usually dated - intellectual, creative types- she decided that for one year, she would say yes to every man who asked her out in the hope that she would find love where she least expected it. As you can imagine, Maria ends up dating a LOT of weirdos. Highlights include:

• a graphic designer who eats only raw vegetables, makes her a cake made of birdseed, and never lost his virginity
• a homeless man who believes he is Jimi Hendrix
  
• a handsome bicyclist from Cyprus with a great body who wants Maria to bite his penis


• a fellow film student who takes her to a really tacky strip club & later tells their entire class all the gory details of their horrific date
  
• a lesbian who is only using her for her womb


• an gorgeous actor who is "mostly" gay and engaged to another woman
  

The list goes on and on. This book reminded me how elusive love is and how lucky I am to have a wonderful husband so I never ever have to date again. All along, I predicted that Maria would eventually end up with her roommate or have one of those corny moments of self realization that it's ok to be alone because you have to learn to love yourself first or some other b.s. So I was pleasantly surprised by the last pages when my predictions turned out to be completely wrong. Also liked this passage on the final page:

"Love is hard to pin down. There is no language for it. A glorious sparking inside you, an alchemy. All your hurt suddenly turned into joy. Love is inexplicable...Nothing could have prepared me for it. All I could do was open my heart. I didn't understand everything that I was holding. I only knew that it was right."

All the men become a little monotonous after a while and I still can't decide if I like Maria or not, but I still found this book somewhat amusing. ***

Be Mine

by Laura Kasischke

This novel was so bad that I'm embarrassed to add it to this blog. I think it was supposed to be chick lit crossed with suspense but it was just STUPID! On Valentine's Day, Sherry finds the first of a series of love notes in her mailbox at the community college where she works as a professor and they aren't from Jon, her husband of twenty years. Jon is all turned on by the fact that some stranger is stalking his wife so he keeps asking about the notes and encouraging her to be with this secret admirer. NOTE: spoilers ahead-- stop reading now if you don't want to know the big ridiculous ending. So, after Sherry has tons of crazy sex with her kinky husband and also with the "hot" auto mechanic teacher at the college, Jon starts crying and claims he was only kidding! Ooops! The real kicker is that the secret admirer turns out to be Laura's once beautiful but now frumpy and overweight best friend Sue, who says she was just trying to cheer her up. What a waste of paper!

Speaking of bad books, here are two others to avoid at all costs:

The Ruins by Scott Smith


Stephen King RAVED about this one in Entertainment Weekly and although I'm not a big mystery person, I didn't want to miss this great book. It was HORRIBLE! I thought it was supposed to be scary but the entire plot was ridiculous and the characters were totally stereotypical and bland. Instead of feeling scared as I read it, I just wanted to laugh because it as sooo bad!! My only consolation was the fact that most readers on amazon.com agreed with me.


User I.D. by Jenefer Shute


This book was so bad that I think I blocked it out! The plot about identity theft sounded intriguing but then more and more bad things happened to the victim and it was just excruciating to read. Hated it!