Great book. Important book. I learned so much and it's the kind of book that made me do outside research and check up on random things Chang didn't spend much time on, which is exactly what I want from a nonfiction history book. This book made me want to know more and educate myself further. I consider that alone a pretty high compliment.

I think the only reason this book got four stars instead of five was just my own personal taste. I much prefer books that take an in depth look at small events, and this book is instead intended as an overview of the whole Rape of Nanking that lasted for weeks. Add to that, the book comes in at less than 300 pages and more than 50 pages of that consisted of notes, and it's just a lot to cover in very little time. This book isn't trying to do anything else and it's great at being an introduction, just not my personal preference. It's made me really want to look into more nonfiction on the subject.

In terms of readability, this book is both easy and difficult. It's intended for an audience who knows little to nothing about the Rape of Nanking, so it sets up the whole history of the event and gives a great overview of the key players and events. It's never hard to follow and works as a great starting point on the subject for an average layperson. I assume it would also be pretty decent if you already had a decent understanding of the events, as well.

But it's painfully graphic. I'm not usually one who's bothered by graphic descriptions of horrific events, but this was getting to me. It's disgusting. Like not through any fault of the author. I'd so much rather read something awful and know what happened than get some watered down version, but it is incredibly hard to get through. My version also had pictures and I may have done better to skip those, if I'm being perfectly honest.

I'd definitely recommend picking up this book if you think you can handle it. It's tough, but incredibly worthwhile and if you're like me, an average American with an average American's education (can't speak for elsewhere in the world, but Chang seemed to suggest that level of knowledge holds true in other countries as well), you will learn so much.

I usually like Lisa Gardner in general, but not so much her earlier books and definitely not this one.

One of my favorite things about Gardner's thrillers is how readable they are. I can't help but notice writing styles and if I'm not a fan, it's really distracting for me in a book. Even if I like the writing style, half the time I wind up thinking about it. But Gardner's writing flows so well and is so, I don't know how to describe it, out of the way? That I'm only thinking about the story itself. And I mean that as a compliment. It takes good writing to not be noticed. But this book was weird because it didn't feel like her usual style. Especially early on it was so fragmented and distracted. It felt like I was struggling just to read it and keep up with the random thoughts. This is one of her earliest books so at least it's interesting to see how much she's grown as a writer.

As far as plots go, I wasn't a fan of this one. There was a lot of insurance fraud and playing games over past crimes, but not a whole lot of real drama in the present day. It felt very manufactured and obvious, but at the same time it didn't make sense. I figured out pretty early what the plot twist was (before we evening got to the big red herring plot twist which was so painfully obviously not the truth), but half of the characters' motivations didn't make sense. There was a big discussion on profiling at one point early on and technically there was a motivation assigned to everyone at the end, but it was so outside of what their personalities were described as. It didn't make sense.

And speaking of characterization, this book did one of my least favorite things. It introduced the main character Melanie as someone stoic and strong who hated crying, especially in front of others. She then proceeded to spend half the book collapsing in tears, mostly into the arms of the big strong FBI agent. I don't care if a character cries a lot, but for the love of god don't describe her one way and then spend three hundred pages completely contradicting that initial description. Just write a character who cries.

This book was also real heavy on the romance which I wasn't expecting. Gardner's books usually include romance as a side plot (although not always), but this felt almost more like romantic suspense than straight thriller. Like the romance felt equally important to the story itself as the murder plot. Which isn't inherently bad, just not my general thing.

A lot of just unrealistic things too. Like I get that with thrillers, you gotta suspend a little disbelief to have the main character in a cop book be involved in the investigation, but there aren't going to be multiple professional federal agents just including her on a call about an active murder case that she is personally involved with, both in terms of her family and her present day victimhood. Also at one point someone (spoilers) made a plan to drug a nine year old to make her forget the first nine years of her life. Pretty sure there aren't drugs that can do that with any sort of reliability or consistency. At least not enough to rely on that keeping you out of prison.

It definitely held my attention, if only for the cheap thriller drama and figuring out all the little details of what happened. One of the reasons I like thrillers is that even when I don't think they're good, I'm usually still along for the ride. But this wasn't one of Gardner's better books. She's definitely written some good ones and I feel like most people could give this a pass without missing much. Unless you're a hardcore fan and reading through all her works like me. In which case it's definitely not the worst thing I've ever read. Just one of those not very good books that I'll probably forget pretty quick.

Have I mentioned how much I hate short chapters? Like not in a "they're inherently bad and authors who write them are trash way." Just like, my brain does not work that way. It takes me so long to get invested in a story when I feel like I'm being jolted around every five minutes and it feels like it takes a million years for anything to happen in the story. When the chapters are long, a hundred pages can go by with nothing happening but I'm endlessly fascinated. This book jumped between the present (2002) and the past (1942) pretty much every three pages and I just can't. It's not the author's fault, it's just me. So I figured I'd start with that because that alone pretty much ruined any possibility of the book becoming a favorite.

But it was honestly pretty good. I read it in two days, despite working more than twenty hours between the two. It's pretty short and quick, but I wanted to know everything that happened. And once it stopped jumping to the past (at a point it was entirely focused on the present), I could actually get invested in the main character's life and story.

One thing that did bother me a little bit about this book was that it felt almost purposeless. The main character discovers that her in laws moved into an apartment of a Jewish family who had been rounded up by Nazis, and she decides to track down the young daughter who possibly survived the Holocaust. I get wanting to know what happened, but it didn't seem like the main character really had a good reason for wanting to find the girl personally. Like solve the mystery to know what happened, sure curiosity is a good motive. But she really wanted to talk to the girl and like make it up to her or something. I never really felt like there was a good enough reason for that apart from it needed to happen to propel the plot along.

I loved that this book felt more realistic than a lot of novels. In stories, a lot of times realism is kind of thrown out the door in favor of closure. Even if things don't end happily, they often end neatly or with everything resolved. It's more satisfying to readers that way. But there were a good few times in this book where de Rosnay took a different route and wrote things in a way that was more likely to happen in real life than a story, and I was surprised. Not like big plot twists or anything like that, just the way the story unfolded. It felt more real and personal and painful to me because of that. I love that in books. That alone was enough that I'd want to check out more from this author.

If you like WWII historical fiction, I'd recommend this. If you like people looking into the past to solve mysteries, I'd recommend this. I don't think this will stick with me for a long time, but I am glad I finally picked it up. It was so sad, but also really enjoyable overall (when I convince myself to forget about the short chapters).

I adored this book for so many reasons. The writing style flowed incredibly well for me. I loved Alice's voice throughout the book, and I loved how carefully it was all written. It sounded like someone who'd had a lot of practice speaking in public and knew word choice was important. Normally that's something that would bug me in a book because I do like a casual feel, but it worked so well here because it sounded like the character.

My favorite kinds of books are usually character studies and that's a hundred percent what this was. You follow Alice throughout her life, spending a lengthy period of time on a couple of different sections with long gaps in between. I just like getting to know characters. It doesn't have to be big and dramatic, just their lives and personalities and perspectives. I thought that was so incredibly well done.

The things I didn't love so much boiled down to two main points. First of all, the ending. The ending felt kind of overdone to me. Most of the book is just Alice being Alice and living her life, and then the ending felt like all of a sudden we need a point to this book and some overarching meaning, which just didn't seem necessary to me. I kind of would have been okay if it had just ended with Alice continuing to live her life without some greater commentary. It also felt kind of rushed. Like halfway through writing it, Sittenfeld realized she was four hundred pages in and needed to condense the second half of the book into 150 pages. It felt like around that point the book started trying to wrap up which made the whole ending feel overlong to me.

The other thing that made me very uncomfortable was that this is based off Laura Bush. Sittenfeld has obviously taken a great number of liberties and she's not trying to pass this off as Bush's life or the truth or anything, but it's still undeniably Laura Bush. The whole time reading this book, especially as I got further in, I couldn't stop thinking about Laura Bush and her husband. As much as I tried to distance it in my head, I couldn't. I don't know how exactly to describe my discomfort with that. In a shallow sense, part of it was definitely the sex scenes. They weren't overly graphic and wouldn't have normally bothered me, but I promise you I didn't want to be thinking about George Bush's penis.

But it was more than just that. It feels kind of wrong to speculate on all the salacious details and personal thoughts of someone's life, including their sex life and abortion and personal flaws and private worries and just every detail of their lives. I can't imagine the discomfort I would feel if someone wrote a novel like this inspired by my life. I get that Laura Bush is a public figure so it is slightly different, but it just made me uncomfortable and I wished throughout the book that it was just pure fiction. Knowing the innermost feelings of fictional characters doesn't make me uncomfortable, but publicly speculating on real people/playing with what might have happened to them in a thinly veiled fiction format (like this President Blackwell was elected in 2000, they had to recount the votes in Florida and it went to the Supreme Court, then 9/11 happened and he invaded Iraq- you can't get much more thinly veiled than that; it lacked all subtlety) makes me cringe.

But when I can get past that discomfort, I loved this. It's exactly the kind of book I enjoyed reading and it was so compelling from beginning to end. I love how fully formed Alice was with all her strengths and all her flaws. I loved her voice and reading about her life. I loved seeing her messy marriage and personal relationships and I don't think there was a single time in this past week that I didn't want to pick up this book. I could've done with another few hundred pages, if I'm being honest. I just loved it.

If you like slow, character study-type novels, I'd highly recommend this. I definitely plan to pick up more from Sittenfeld. Hopefully find something with all her wonderful writing and maybe without the uncomfortably close to real life characters.

But first- the title. Can anyone who read this book and might happen to see the beginning of this review please tell me what the title means? Like dear lord, I did not enjoy this book, but this is a genuine question. How did "Killer Smile" relate in any way to the story? Did I miss something? Okay sure I can get the killer part because murders did happen, but did I miss something about the significance of smiles? Because as far as I could tell, it was completely unrelated to anything and I'm so confused. The characters smiled on occasion as characters tend to do, but I don't remember it ever being important?

I feel like I almost need to add an asterisk when tagging this book as a thriller because it was not particularly thrilling. Patent law, especially decades old patent law, is not the most exciting basis for a story. That's fine with me when it's a character centric book, but thrillers tend to be more plot driven. A 60 year old case where everyone involved is dead that centers around patent law didn't really do it for me.

It didn't make sense. Like at all. At one point they decide someone might be targeting the main character for her investigation so they suggest she take a bit of a vacation. Her vacation is related to the case, but also over a thousand miles away so everyone is happy. Then an actual murder that is probably related to the case occurs, and they literally suggest she come back. Like if a break in is scary enough to send someone away, why bring her back when it's upped to literal murder? Logic seems to have failed these characters completely. (That wasn't the only example, just the one that pissed me off the most.)

Everyone was flat. None of the characters had real personalities so much as little dramas. The father's dialogue was written in all caps because he was shouting which is such a pet peeve of mine. God forbid we use description. I don't like Scottoline's writing style. I don't like what little personalities the characters do have. It was way too long and could have been easily edited down into something that dragged a little less.

I dunno, I didn't like anything here. This is the second one of Scottoline's books I've rated one star and I thought maybe the first one might just be a fluke, but yikes. I'm apparently not a fan. The best thing about this book was that I finished it last night and it's already fading from my memory.

I hate writing reviews for books I read so long and adored because I really can't do this book justice. My memories of it aren't fresh enough or specific enough to write any decent thoughts. It deserves so much more than I can give. But this book was absolutely fantastic. Gay's writing style is gorgeous and I was spellbound for the whole thing. I highly, highly recommend picking this up.

It took me longer to pick up this book because I worried it would be triggering (since a lot of the book is specifically focused on her body) and it really was, but incredibly worth it anyway.

I will be picking up more from Roxanne Gay for sure.

I read this book eleven months ago and have not thought about it since and don't remember a single thing about it. It was kind of mediocre? I didn't hate it, but I didn't think it was all that good either. This is why I need to write reviews while they're still fresh. But I think remembering literally nothing in a year where I haven't read all that many books is pretty telling.

I went into this book thinking it was a memoir (definitely my bad, I should have done more research) and I think that shaped some of my expectations and disappointments.

For starters, it felt like Black wasn't overly interested in this book. He may have been incredibly excited for it, I don't know, but it felt like he didn't offer enough personal insights. Like he was giving Saslow the bare minimum needed to write this book. I wanted to be more in his head. I wanted to know his thoughts. We got a little of that, but it felt mostly based on his actions and public statements at the time rather than his inner turmoil. Which again, I expected a memoir initially so perhaps this aspect would always have disappointed me.

I also thought this book would be more focused on his current life/growth/antiracist activism, but it took a very long time to get there. I get that Saslow was setting the scene and showing his slow progress, but it was hard when 80% through the book he was still hanging out with David Duke as bros and insisting that he's a white nationalist, not a white supremacist. There was a little while where I genuinely thought he was just going to become less racist rather than have a true change of character. But thankfully that wasn't a case. I wished more of the book was set after and we got more of his mindset post becoming an antiracist. I cared a lot less about all his specific racist views and podcasts than I did what happened after, and it just seemed like the book was much more concerned with the former.

All in all, good for Derek Black for changing. It's really hard when you've grown up in a family like that and been completely homeschooled and brainwashed. I hope he leads a long life of being an antiracist activist. But the book itself was kind of mediocre. I have a number of nonfiction books on my audiobook tbr about white supremacy and racism, and listening to this kind of made me wish I'd picked a different, more worthwhile one.

This book was intense. I read this over a year ago and it still feels so visceral. I picked this up on a whim, knowing some people who'd liked it and just needing an ebook, and wow I did not expect to love it so much. I demolished this book in a single night and I could not put it down.

I loved the way Russell handled Vanessa's character. She was allowed to react negatively, and make the wrong choices, and not be the "perfect victim." She was so real and that made her feelings and her pain that much more real too. I loved her rationalizations and her insistence that she wasn't a victim. They weren't fleeting, but rather deeply ingrained in her character and self identity. Everything about her was so well constructed.

The abuse was romanticized in the best possible way. I know that sounds weird, but Vanessa romanticized her own abuse and her own rape, and it would have been so easy for Russell to cross the line into the narrative romanticizing it as well, but she didn't. It was beautifully written and added so much depth and nuance to the story.

I think a lesser writer could have easily botched this book with all the difficult topics and sensitive themes, but Russell did so amazingly well and I desperately want her to write more books so I can devour all of them. This was fantastic and I can't recommend it enough. I still want to acquire a physical copy of this book because I can see myself coming back to it for rereads for a long time.

I was pretty bored by this one. Definitely not the worst thriller I've read, but everything that happened was so predictable and obvious, yet it took all the characters hundreds of pages to get there. And when I say obvious, I really just mean if you follow the most basic logic, you will arrive there about three pages into the book. Irini's parents sent her away to live with family when she was three. They kept her sister Elle. Irini considers Elle to be toxic, dangerous, and abusive, even calling her a sociopath, and spends most of her life moving and changing her phone number to hide from her. Irini goes on to spend basically the entire book wondering why her parents sent her away. I truly cannot fathom how that answer is not incredibly obvious to everyone involved, even without all the details of the situation. And also why the adults didn't just tell her early on. There are other secrets, sure, but pretty much everyone knew there was something wrong with Elle. There are some easy, obvious choices here that none of the characters made.

I also felt unsatisfied with the ending. It wasn't awful and explained enough of everyone's motivations, but I felt like I wanted more. There were so many more answers to be had and details that were never uncovered. It kind of ended with a shrug and Irini deciding that she guessed she knew enough. I could be more okay with that kind of ending if I was at all invested in the characters, but I really wasn't. The thrills were all that was going for this book.

It just dragged. Nothing much happened throughout the book until near the end, except for Elle bullying and gaslighting Irini. It felt like all of the drama and thriller-y aspects were secondary to Irini's internal struggle over why her parents gave her up (which again, was perfectly obvious and boring), so I didn't care.

Overall not a terrible book. It held my attention enough while I was reading it, but I doubt it'll be one that sticks with me for more than a day or two.