I was very down when I thought this was going to be a story about two people who'd lost their daughters and their relationship. Instead it turned into the white savior trope. That was the whole plot of the book.

Julia's daughter died in a car accident five years ago (which may or may not have been suicide, but who cares because it's never really discussed) and she meets Roberto, who lost his daughter when he was crossing the border from Mexico to the States. Roberto's daughter's whereabouts are unknown, although she is presumed dead, so Julia decides to help him track her down. Although "help" isn't really the correct word. Roberto has basically no agency in this book and just goes along with Julia.

But mostly it's the ending. I can't get too specific because of spoilers, but essentially there's no closure to the story of Julia and Roberto. Their relationship doesn't matter. It doesn't pull any heartstrings. There are other plotlines that get closure, but nothing for the main couple. Just a whole boatload of white savior trope. Like this book could have worked and for a second I thought it did. It was interesting to see them bridge culture gaps and work to help one another in their grief. But then Julia's grief stopped mattering (I think Rice forgot to keep bringing it up) and the whole book became about her finding Roberto's daughter and treating them both as objects. I felt nothing over their relationship at the end.

The characters are so flat and bland. The writing is dry. There's no chemistry between Julia and Roberto. I'm not looking for a steamy romance here, but I need to at least believe they love each other since it's allegedly changing the trajectory of their lives. I tried so hard to get into this and for a moment in the middle, I really thought I would.

There are some weird perspectives in this book. Outside of Julia and Roberto, there's an old movie star and a former border patrol agent (and some others). Particularly with the movie star, I saw no point to his inclusion in the book. He's a friend of Julia's family, is in love with her happily married aunt, and cares about Julia like a daughter. That's his entire character, emphasis on in love with the aunt. His character has no growth, his subplots go nowhere, and at point they just stop mentioning him in the story. I have no idea what he was supposed to add. His entire character could have been cut and it wouldn't be noticeable.

Wouldn't recommend. Mostly I'm mad that this book tricked me into thinking I was reading something worthwhile.

I loved this. This is set in my hometown and it feels so real. I've read other books set near me, but I don't think any of them have spent so much time capturing the setting. It's not just that Cosby is local and obviously knows his way around, it's the gorgeous writing that makes it so real and visceral.

I love the characters and their growth. Ike and Buddy Lee are both excons who had estranged relationships with their sons due to their homophobia. When those sons are murdered, they get together and decide to avenge them, in part to make up for their failures as parents when their sons were still alive. For all the mystery and action elements, the book was about their growth more than anything. They've started this journey long before the book starts, but you see that evolution in their guilt and shame and working to do better. You also continue to see their shortcomings.

The writing felt a little abrupt to me. I don't know what exactly it was, or if it was as simple as too many short sentences and too many repeating phrases, but something kept me from being completely immersed in the story. There was a slight disconnect. Like it was still wonderful, don't get me wrong, but just a little shy of completely blowing my mind.

I also found this a little bit too over the top in terms of action. It's kind of a lot, and I think that's on purpose for this style of book. It's just not too my preference. I prefer slow and dull and boring every day of the week. I also wish I hadn't guessed the ending so early. It was such an interesting book with so much complexity, and the answer to the mystery was just a little too easy to me.

But this was fantastic overall. I plan to read everything Cosby has written. This was a gorgeous book and my favorite of the month. I'm so glad to read something that not only met my expectations but exceeded them by so much.

I love books like this. Really slow, drawn out multigenerational family studies. I found it so interesting to hear Valerie's story and the story of her whole family. It centers around her husband's abuse and her life story, culminating her trial for his death after more than forty years of marriage.

Mostly I just found this fascinating. This whole book was engrossing from page one and I never wanted to put it down. I love a book that draws me in like that.

The final third lost me a bit. It kind of felt like the book lost focus and was trying to get too exciting, but it really just wound up being a bit unbelievable and less interesting. It also focused a lot less on Valerie in favor of one of her children.

It also felt a little too short. Like this is a lengthy book for sure, but with how much time it covered, it didn't really have the space to fully develop all the characters the way they deserved. It was a little flat sometimes.

But I had such a great time reading this. I love interesting books and this held my interested the entire time.

This is a really well done book and I appreciate Gillies's perspective, but I don't think I ever once wanted to be reading it. I personally lived through a situation similar to what Gillies did here (I was not the primary caregiver, but old enough to have plenty of caregiving responsibilities). My grandmother with dementia moved in with my family in my late teens and stayed there through her decline until her death. So much of what Gillies described in this book rang true, sometimes it almost felt like she was describing my situation instead of her own. But I'm not sure it really added anything to me. I don't think I got much out of this. It mostly just made me think about my grandmother's last days which made me sad, but not in a productive way.

I'm not entirely certain who the correct audience is, who I should recommend it to. I feel like because of how well done the book is, there ought to be someone, but I can't think of any. It's not really offering instruction on how to be a caregiver, nor is it offering a particularly unique perspective. It's well written and captures what it's like to be a caregiver, but for what purpose? I don't mean this as a negative to Gillies or her writing because I think she accomplished what she was trying to do (paint a portrait of her own experience), but I'm just missing the point for myself.

I think she did a wonderful job of writing about the negative aspects of caregiving, and the abuse you experience. I also think she did a good job of portraying the constant guilt, the depression, the wearing down of yourself as everything becomes about caregiving.

I do wish she'd included a little bit more of the rest of the household. This book is primarily focused on her (as primary caregiver) and her relationship with her parents in law, especially Nancy who as Alzheimer's. But her husband and three children also live there and their exclusion from so much of the book makes it feel like you're missing a large part of the story.

I should also add that there are long sections specifically about the science of Alzheimer's and I mostly wound up skipping those. Science is not my forte and those sections were nearly always separate from the parts about her life.

I'm not really sure about my overall feelings on this book. I didn't enjoy reading it and I don't think I gained very much from reading it, but I do think it's well done. So if you're interested, perhaps this will do more for you than it did for me.

This book felt so generic. It's about the main character's toxic friend. It follows pretty much every thriller about toxic friendship that exists without adding anything new or interesting. Like this book wasn't terrible, it just didn't do anything I cared about.

I mostly gave it three stars because some of drama and plot twists at the end were kind of cool. Once I got to the near climax, I wanted to see it all unfold. But this is the kind of book I'm just going to forget immediately.

I'm not entirely sure what this book was. Like it was so basic and obvious in terms of the plot and the characters had no development, but so weird that I don't know if I can describe it. It read like a jumbled mess, but the weirdness kept me interested to a degree that I feel like I ought to give this three stars.

This book asked so many questions and offered so many weird elements, but gave no answers. It's literally called The Somnambulist and the Somnambulist was a major character from start to finish, but I couldn't begin to tell you anything about him. He existed? And apparently a somnambulist, by modern definition, is a sleepwalker, but I'm not entirely sure what that had to do with the Somnambulist? I was trying to google for different definitions because sleepwalker didn't seem quite right, but I got nothing.

There's also a character who experiences life backwards, like Benjamin Button-esque, but weirder and more time travel-y. But that was never explained? Or really delved into? He existed on the periphery and you just kind of have to take him at his word and ask no questions. You'll get no answers or resolution. There wasn't even much use for it in the story.

There were a couple of random English schoolboy prefects who were magical assassin things. I'm not sure why or what their purpose was.

There's a narrator who turns out to be a bit of a plot twist and that could have been cool, but it felt like it had no bearing on the story whatsoever. Like the narrator could have been anyone and it wouldn't have made a difference. I quite liked the idea of that plot twist, but in practice it felt lacking.

I just don't know. It felt messy and weird and jumbled, but it also felt like all of those things lacked purpose. Like he was just making things as weird as possible for the sake of making them weird. Which I kind of appreciated because there was nothing else in the book that drew my interest. If it hadn't been so weird, there wouldn't have been anything even remotely interesting about it.

So I wouldn't recommend this book. I feel like I'm in more agreement with a lot of the negative reviews than the positive ones. It wasn't a well constructed book and I don't really understand what Barnes was going for. But I had to give this three stars because if I'm being honest, it was just so absurdly weird that I couldn't help but enjoy some of the jumbled mess of it.

The second half of this book was the most enjoyable Christie I've read so far. While Tommy and Tuppence aren't as enjoyable to me as Miss Marple, I thought they made a pretty fun duo. I quite enjoyed seeing their lives and following them along for the ride. And the second half of the story was a lot fun. Enough, in fact, that I contemplated giving this book four stars.

But the first half dragged for me. I couldn't get into it and I had to force myself to keep picking up the book. It wasn't bad because I did like the characters and the overall story, but I was just so bored. It took much too long to become interesting.

This book has made me want to read more Tommy and Tuppence, perhaps to see if they have a better plot because I was quite fond of them in this. Worth it for the second half, but I'm still not as impressed with Agatha Christie as I wanted to be.

This book is an amazing feat in research. There's so much information over three generations of the Sackler family and Keefe puts it together so well. This was fascinating start to finish.

This is exactly what it says it's going to be, a history of the Sackler family from Arthur Sackler who basically ran his brothers' lives and businesses to the second generation who pioneered Oxycontin to the third generation who were born into obscene wealth and privilege. I'd read other books about Oxycontin and Purdue pharma, but nothing specifically on the Sackler family so I had no idea how involved they were and how much they spearheaded a lot of the illegal moves, all the way back to Arthur Sackler pushing Valium. I knew about their marketing for Oxycontin in the 90s and 2000s, but I didn't know they'd used that same marketing before.

My only real gripe on this was that sometimes the flow of the book seemed a little choppy. Like he'd focus too much on an outsider's story, probably because that outsider was his main source of information, and then he'd jump to an entirely different issue. I get that it's just a limitation in information which isn't on Keefe, but there were a few times where this flow of information was a little jarring. (An easy example is how thoroughly he covered Arthur's childhood and then started on his relationship with Marietta, skipping over his first marriage and first two children.)

This whole book is just an example of how screwed up capitalism and the pharmaceutical industry are. Like we all know and it doesn't come as a surprise, but it's different to really see all the different ways that corruption and greed led to where we are now. Like after being repeatedly sued in America for the illegal and morally wrong ways that they marketed Oxycontin, once sales started dipping, they decided to go ahead and start marketing it the exact same way in other countries. It's really astounding.

I'd highly recommend this. It's fascinating and I learned so much. I will say, if you're looking for something specifically about the opioid crisis, this book is not that. It's very much focused on the family themselves, and I think it's a triumph. I am so glad I picked this up. And I think the audiobook is fantastic as well.

I don't really love con artist stories generally. They're pretty popular right now so there are a lot, but this one was so well done. It's such a great example of how you can take a pretty generic and currently popular concept but write such an interesting and worthwhile story with complex characters and detailed backstories. I read this in a day because I didn't want to put it down.

I think the ending left a little bit to be desired. It wasn't terrible, just kind of a nothing ending. And a lot of the actual cons didn't seem well thought out. Like fool a few randoms who don't know what they're doing, sure, but this book was written like she was doing months of research and was a brilliant con artist. They all seemed kind of half baked and unrealistic.

But the characters were the strength of the story. I really cared about both of them, but especially Meg. I loved hearing about her past and working the way to the future. She was such an interesting person and to be honest, I could have read a whole book just about her.

This was a fun book and I'd definitely recommend it if you're looking for a female con artist story. Just a good ride from start to finish.

This was such a good story. So often thrillers that are dual timeline feel disjointed or jarring, but this one flowed so smoothly. I loved both the past events and current events equally. They wove together beautifully.

And the story itself was just fascinating. It's pretty easy to guess where it's going, but it's such a good ride getting there. All the characters are great, but it's the plot that pushes this forward more than anything. Just wanting to watch all the events unfold.

The podcast didn't work for me at all. I don't usually like when a character's creation is included in a book (their art, podcast, writing) because often it just doesn't fit. Either I don't think it's good so it's hard for me to get behind a story that insists it's amazing, or it's random and out of place. This was the former. I'm hoping the podcasts that were included were just excerpts that left out the good bits, but they were so vague and bland and pointless. Like she'd having interesting interviews with people and include literally none of the information. Maybe Goldin was trying not to be repetitive? But it seemed terribly researched and lacked basically all pertinent information. And Rachel didn't even seem like she was putting that much effort into the podcast in the story. She'd skip out on the trial to go do something unrelated.

I'd highly recommend. This was a great thriller and I had a such a good time reading it.