A reluctant three stars, because this was a bit of a slog for me. I certainly know far more about the state of Phelps' ulcers over the past few years than I ever, ever wanted. Much like his TV show, there's no neat wrap-up in Dangerous Ground, no feeling of justice having finally be done. You feel as defeated as he does getting to the end, worn down to a nub. So that emotional leakage, while exhausting, excellently captured his time with the serial killer Jesperson.

I do take issue with the way it ended - after twenty some-odd years, he finally decided to revisit his murdered sister-in-law's grave again, in an attempt at closure, but he can't find it in cemetery now that so much time as passed and more bodies have been interred. How does he finally come across it? His daughter fucking ~hears~ her deceased aunt's voice, showing her the way.

In a book about the psychology of a serial killer and the investigative reporting thereof, this was very much a "wut" moment for me.

3.5 stars.

"Having played to her heart's content, Chibi would come inside and rest for a while. When she began to sleep on the sofa - like a talisman curled gently in the shape of a comma and dug up from a prehistorical archaeological site - a deep sense of happiness arrived, as if the house itself had dreamed this scene."

Review to come.

"The 'attitude' often attributed to Black girls casts as undesirable the skills of being astute at reading their location - where they sit along the social hierarchy - and overcoming the attendant obstacles. These were lessons learned through generations of struggle, and these lessons sit at the apex of what provides Black women and girls the audacity to demand being treated with dignity. However, when the way of the world includes a general lack of cultural competence and an aversion to valuing the unique considerations of gender, these survival characteristics are degraded and punished rather than recognized as tools of resilience." (p. 20)

I want to give this to every educator I know and all the ones I don't.

This was not nearly as good as the blurb makes it out to be. The stylistic choice of not having quotes around dialogue occasionally difficult to discern speech from prose. I didn't find Rose to be relatable at all.

He's got some weird, complicated feelings about goalies, but the breakdown of NHL stats and analytics was very helpful.

"... it did seem that the thing we are most proud of and the thing we are most ashamed of are but the front and back of the same coin. They torture and thrill all at once."

I suppose it would have been too on-the-nose to call this book Monstrous instead.

On the inauguration: "Then it was done and he was our President.

"That was some weird shit," George W. reportedly said with characteristic Texas bluntness. I couldn't have agreed more."

This was hard to read, emotionally speaking. Every day I sat down to get through a chapter of this memoir, I would get a twitter alert or a news update about the most recent atrocity Trump had perpetuated or helped create.

On losing: "I wear my composure like a suit of armor, for better or worse. In some ways, it felt like I had been training for this latest feat of self-control for decades."

I think about this line a lot.

A Piece of Cake was my choice for "character of color goes on a spiritual journey" for the Book Riot Read Harder challenge this year. This is a memoir, in conversational tone, of a woman named Cupcake Brown. I always find it difficult to rate memoirs - this is a real person's life, how do you quantify that? But still, I persist and four stars was born out of my deep, deep thinking. This was a fucking trip, with a freight train of emotional impact.

It opens with Cupcake at eleven, the time when her life began to fall apart with her mother's death, and continues through to foster care, the sexual, physical and emotional abuse she suffered there and her descent into drug addiction, prostitution and alcoholism with a little gangbanging mixed in.

I was constantly amazed that she lived through her experiences - there were just so many drugs, taken in such high quantities, so constantly, that it seemed like a supernatural event that her body was able to handle them and not die immediately. Cupcake, during the process of her recovery, looks back on her life and truly starts to feel like something was looking out for her. The relationship she developed with her version of God helped Cupcake maintain her sobriety when she felt at her lowest. She never subscribed to any religion, or really joined any church at all - God was just the name of the higher power running the universe and listening to her when she needed it. The trappings and words of specific theologies could hang, for all she cared.

It takes a long, long time for Cupcake to ask for help or even to believe that she needed it in the first place. There were a lot of justifications over the years. If she could maintain a job, she wasn't a junkie, she just liked to party. She definitely wasn't an alcoholic - how could she be, if she had never once gotten a DUI? Cupcake admits later that her hubris blinded her; even during recovery from drug addiction she still was in denial of also being an alcoholic. Her sponsor sets her straight:

"Pride gets us drunk. Ego keeps us drunk. Humility allows us to ask for help; it enables us to get honest about what's really going on inside."

There was constant foreshadowing as to how much worse it was going to get in the future, in the next chapter. Once she became an adult and really started to party, I felt a sense of racing anxiety wondering when it was that Cupcake would hit rock bottom, what it was in this crazy life of hers that made her sit up and take notice and think, "I need to change." Once that happened (a four day bender of dope, drinking and turning tricks behind a dumpster), it was such a profound relief that she was finally, finally able to start being honest with the people in her life. Cupcake becoming sober, meeting supportive people and finally realizing that she had dreams, let alone could actually achieve them, was the perfect ending to this memoir that started out so harshly.

They think I'm outstanding? They think I have character? Don't they know who I am?
The quiet Voice responded.
Of course they do.

3.5 stars.

Only someone with Patterson's publishing clout can scribe a book of 140 pages in less-than-standard size and still have a co-author. These bookshots are him really fulfilling his destiny as the "idea man", truly living The Dream.

This one in particular read like an action film - cold open scene of some rich dude being Terrible and Cruel with his wealth and influence. It cuts to our intrepid hero determined to find his old commanding officer after a year's silence. He is approached by MI5 with information; armed with this intel, he will Stop Them At All Costs. Will he succeed? (Of course he will, this is an action movie bookshot.)

Our hero is David Shelley, former SAS and recovering alcoholic, who likes monologuing his Elite Skillz at any tracksuit who looks at him cross-eyed while maintaining an "aura of danger". He's managed to scrape a real life together after leaving the service, "with a wife and a dog". At least Lucy gets some decent screen time; shame about Frankie.

Despite these tropes (or perhaps because of - I've never claimed to have sophisticated taste), it was an easy, entertaining read. Mission objective complete in more than one way.