Maybe closer to 2.5 stars. The Child Finder follows Naomi, a sort of freelance private detective who is really good at finding missing kids, as she searches for two missing children. Madison is little girl who disappeared a couple of years ago in the freezing Oregon forest. The other is the baby of an autistic mother who is being charged with the death of the child. Naomi also has her own demons from her past to deal with.

This book was hard for me to read because you get Madison’s perspective and story as she’s held in captivity and abused (including sexually) by a much older man. I don’t think anyone likes to read about sexual abuse of a child. Just a warning in case you’re sensitive to these types of things.

This was a quick mystery/thriller. It’s one of those books where you don’t have to be really concentrating to understand and follow it. I’d say it’s somewhere around 3 stars for me, which means, “it was fine”. It looks like this is going to be the first in a series about Naomi, and I might read more because I like reading about the search for a missing person and rooting for them to be found. I wasn’t heavily invested in Naomi’s own story, though, but I could read more about her and be fine. These types of books are never my faves but I like them for what they are.

3.5 stars, review to come.

2.5 stars. Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates was my first by her. It’s about a girl, Kelly, who is a 26-year-old “good girl” who works in politics, who meets a senator at a party on the Fourth of July. This senator happens to be a senator she wrote her honors thesis on and has admired always. They hit it off, leave the party together, and he drives the car off a bridge into a creek and leaves her there to drown. Also thanks to @literarylauren_ for sending me this book.

This story is based off the story of Ted Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick Incident where he drove off a bridge into a lake and left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown. Somehow I never knew about this event so I definitely fell into a Wikipedia rabbit hole after reading this - it’s nuts! He didn’t call the cops for 12 hours!! And he just got to go on being a senator with basically no repercussions... horrifying.

This book is a really short and fast read. It has a somewhat stream-of-consciousness style that was a little bit repetitive and hard to follow for me. But, after I finished it, @hayhails told me that Oates purposefully wrote it to be read in about two hours, because that’s how long it took Mary Jo to suffocate. Knowing that made it more affecting and even more devastating, because she maybe could have been saved.

Although I didn’t absolutely love this one, I still want to give Oates another shot. She’s such a prolific writer! I’d recommend this if you want a short read with a touch of history and you like a stream-of-consciousness style. It just wasn’t quite all the way there for me.

4.5 stars. I read Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson on the plane back after Christmas. I didn’t realize it was nonfiction or that it was poetry until I started reading. I always say that I’m not a poetry person but I never realized poetry could be like this: loose and story-like.

This book is about the author’s experience growing up black in both the south and New York City in the 1960s and 70s. It is accessible and easy enough for middle schoolers to read, but insightful and interesting enough to keep adults engaged too.

Woodson’s writing is honest and lovely. Her story is moving and will stick with you. She paints a beautiful portrait of her family and her life, and I could picture everything she described so clearly. I’d recommend this to everyone!

3.5-4 stars. I finished my first book of 2019! So thankful to @penguinpress for sharing The End of Loneliness with me. I really enjoyed this book and the past few days I found myself looking forward to evening reading even more than usual! It’s always a good sign when you end up really prioritizing a book, and that’s what happens with this one. I’m also excited that my first read of the year was a translated book!

The End of Loneliness is about a boy, Jules, his sister, Liz, and his brother, Marty, who were growing up in Munich in the 70s, when they tragically lose their parents. They’re sent to live at a state-run boarding school, and the book follows their lives, through the perspective of Jules.

The years at the boarding school were my favorite part of the book, but I always love a book set at a school. Maybe it’s the Harry Potter nostalgia that sort of defines my reading life, ha. Jules makes a good friend at school, Alva, who he is really in love with. They end up drifting apart for many years after they graduate. The siblings are also well developed characters, and I enjoyed their stories too. All the characters felt like they could be real people.

The pace of the book sort of picks up at the end. The reading experience reminded me a bit of The Heart’s Invisible Furies in that way, although the characters were completely different. There were some melodramatic times, for sure, which knocked off a star for me, but overall I really loved this one! Definitely recommend giving it a try if you like books that follow characters over the span of their lives.

3.5 stars - thanks to the publisher for the free copy. Y’all... I read The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker IN ONE SINGLE NIGHT. THE DAY I GOT IT. I never do that with books that aren’t really short... that should speak to how unputdownable this book is. I was hooked from the first page, and found the writing to be completely gripping.

The Dreamers is about a small college town where people start falling asleep and not waking up. The sickness starts at the college and, as illnesses do, eventually spreads beyond until the town is overwhelmed with the sleepers. Doctors do brain scans and notice that the sick people have lots of brain activity and appear to be dreaming, hence the title.

This book follows lots of people in the town, and I love when a book tells stories of a lot of different people like this. I ended up attached to certain characters and very concerned about what would happen to them. I was mesmerized by the story and the writing. This book is binge-readable but still so well done.

Parts of this reading experience reminded me a lot of Blindness by Saramago, but much less brutal - still unsettling, but easier to stomach and less graphic overall. You witness a town succumbing to an illness and wonder, if everyone falls asleep, who will take care of the sleepers?

This book is so far up my alley - i am all about dystopian type plots like this. This book started off with a strong five stars... unfortunately, it started to flounder a little bit by the end. The first two thirds of the book were amazing, but i felt like the ending left me with lots of questions, but not in the best way. There were some unrealistic details that bugged me, like how contagious the illness was yet only people in the town got sick, even though people who had been exposed were going in and out at the beginning. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but the story kind of dropped off for me a tad in the last third.

Regardless, I absolutely could not put this book down. If you like the sound of this at all, I absolutely recommend picking it up. I really loved the reading experience, and it’s been a long time since a book gripped me so much that I kept reading until I finished it.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie was one of those books that a lot of my trusted book friends LOVED, and some of my trusted book friends really didn’t like! I started out feeling like mehhh it probably wasn’t going to be for me, but then it got better and better and the ending just totally surprised me and knocked it out of the park, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Home Fire is a modern take on Antigone, although I would recommend not looking up what Antigone is about (unless you already know in which case you’re clearly much more up to speed on your super old classics than I am) until after you read, if you want to keep the ending a surprise. This version takes the classic story and puts it in the context of immigration issues, jihad, and the identity of Muslims in Britain. It’s told from the perspective of five characters in five parts, and the perspectives kept getting better. I found the first perspective a bit confusing to follow, but then when I got in the groove, it all came together. Particularly the Antigone-like character of Anneka - her part was quite poetic.

Although the start of this book was slow for me, it picked up and became suspenseful, and I was fully invested in the story. It gives you an inside glimpse into how someone might become a jihadi, and really made me feel for their family. The ending scene is incredibly moving and shocking, completely memorable and I did not see it coming. I’d definitely recommend this book, and encourage you to stick with it if it starts off slow for you.