Book Review: Bengali Girls Don't by L.A. Sherman

I was born in the United States in 1971, a stroke of luck that I may have taken for granted over the years. I could be anything I wanted to be, could live anywhere in the country that I chose, and would not be forced to marry against my will. I could vote and go to college. In fact, I started college at the same age Luky, the protagonist of Bengali Girls Don’t: The True Story of a Muslim Daughter, found herself in an arranged marriage. Luky was also born in 1971, but into very different circumstances: on the run during the revolution that created the country of Bangladesh.

I found this memoir by L.A. Sherman fascinating for a number of reasons, the least of which was our common birth year. I cannot evaluate it as I would a piece of fiction, because to do so is to dismiss the heart of the work. This book represents a real life. Luky truly walked this path, even when the steps seem illogical or “out of character.”

The story is choppy at times. The author’s use of italicized first-person commentary can be a bit distracting, and the reader never really figures out who Luky is talking to. Is it a psychologist? A friend? A lover? On the other hand, these conversations give an adult perspective to her story that seems necessary. Thankfully, the book has been carefully edited; I found fewer than twenty typos in the book.

In the end, Bengali Girls Don’t is a compelling read. Luky is the kind of woman I would be honored to have as a friend – a survivor who overcame long odds to become the woman she is today.

Book Review: World-Mart by Leigh M. Lane

Imagine, for a moment, that you aren’t reading this review through the power of the internet, because the internet no longer exists. In fact, most of the “modern conveniences” – including transportation and electricity – are rationed, all as a result of previous generations’ mismanagement of resources. Everything, including religious faith, is a corporation. This is the world in which World-Mart, a dystopian tragedy by Leigh M. Lane, is set.

The protagonists of the novel are a family of four: George and Virginia Irwin and their two children, teenager Shelley and seven-year-old Kurt. George and Virginia both have good jobs in the corporate sector and are able to provide corporate-level educations to both of their children. The children have been raised to see themselves as better than the mart sector workers, who fill the service-industry jobs. Below them, are the deviants – a genetically mutated race no longer seen as human at all. These beings are relegated to menial jobs or a life of crime.

Lane has created a world that is horrifyingly recognizable to the modern reader. The Irwins are presented as the typical family, representing just how close most middle-class Americans live to the edge of destruction. Just one instance of bad luck can put a family into freefall, as it does with the Irwins.

There’s a lot to like about this novel. The writing is, for the most part, smooth, and the plot is engaging. The Irwins are well-developed characters, as are most of the others with whom they interact. Their world, with all its prejudices and violence, comes to life through Lane’s words. This is social commentary in the vein of Ayn Rand, and Lane touches on everything from global warming to eugenics.

Unfortunately, I felt that the characters of Nadine and Mr. and Mrs. Conrad lacked depth. Speaking as a writer, I suspect that Lane may have cut a couple of pages from this part of the novel and lost some of the characterization that would have made these characters pop off the page. As a result, Virginia’s actions in relation to them didn’t feel authentic. The angst-filled teenage poetry attributed to Shelley felt real enough, but I think it could have been summarized in a line or two instead of forced upon the reader in its entirety. I found myself stumbling over the author’s odd word choices in a couple of instances, and there were a handful of typos (less than ten).

At a time when everyone seems to be reading about zombies, vampires, and other supernatural killers, I found it refreshing to read a novel that made monsters out of humanity instead – a much more frightening proposition, in my opinion.

Book Review: What Stays in Vegas by Beth Labonte

Beth Labonte’s first novel, What Stays in Vegas, is the literary equivalent of biting into a chocolate candy and discovering it has a caramel center – in other words, like an old favorite.

Following in the tradition of many “chick-lit” writers before her, the storyline is somewhat predictable: think Bridget Jones’ Diary or even its literary ancestor, Pride and Prejudice. However, Labonte’s sense of humor and witty take on the excesses of Las Vegas make this a fun read. Tessa Golden, the protagonist, is a former art major who has fallen into the unfortunate career path of administrative assistant. As Tessa herself says, “You know you’re in a dead-end job when you get a holiday forcing people to appreciate you.” Even though her characters are over the top at times, Labonte gives them depth – and in so doing, creates people the reader can really care about. The subplot featuring Tessa’s boss, by the way, is brilliant.

I had a hard time putting this book down, probably because I have a soft spot for chick lit – especially around Valentine’s Day. As a regular visitor to Las Vegas, I was pleased to find that Labonte captured both the spirit and the geography of the place perfectly. (I wasn’t aware that Las Vegas had an art museum – now I’ll have to visit it!) The book could use one final polish – I marked a few more than twenty errors, though they were minor and didn’t affect the overall story.

This isn’t Labonte’s first book, but it is her first full-length novel. I previously reviewed Coffee Breath on this blog, which is also a lot of fun. I recommend visiting the author’s blog as well, where she frequently lampoons office life. Yes, it’s true – I’m a fan. I can’t wait to read whatever she writes next!

Oh, and I’d really like to have one of Tessa’s binder-clip Eiffel Towers.

Book Review: The Abbey by Chris Culver

Sometimes the cream really does rise to the top. Such is the case with Chris Culver’s The Abbey, a well-written, engaging novel that has become a national bestseller.

This thriller follows Detective Ash Rashid as he searches for answers after his teenaged niece’s mysterious death. Ash is Muslim in a way that many Americans will not recognize: a secularized semi-alcoholic man who just wants to live his version of the American dream. To put it another way, he is the Muslim equivalent of a C&E Christian; he prays more out of habit than faith and twists his faith’s teaching on alcohol to fit his circumstances. His niece is also a less-than-faithful Muslim, whose taste for adventure leads her to an untimely death.

This is one of the best indie novels I have read, full stop. Culver’s writing style is fluid and compelling. Every character – even the ones who only had walk-on parts – felt authentic and fleshed out. Although I spotted one continuity issue, it was a minor point. With just a few grammatical errors (mostly having to do with the proper use of hyphens), this book qualifies as an excellent read.

Chris Culver has revived my interest in reviewing indie authors. If only all indie writers took as much pride in their work as he does, we would gain the respected position in the literary world to which we aspire.

Book Review: Her Peaceful Sleep by Alex Canton-Dutari

Imagine tiny needles in the center of every key on your keyboard, pricking your fingers with each letter you type. Imagine performing open-heart surgery on yourself without the benefit of painkillers. Writing about the death of loved one is more excruciating than either of those imaginings by far. In Her Peaceful Sleep, Alex Canton-Dutari shares the experience of his wife’s death with his readers.

This short third-person memoir is almost a mosaic writing: various scenes stitched together to create a whole picture. The timeline is unimportant; the emotions are what matters. Taken as a whole, the picture created is one of a doctor shattered by his inability to help his wife.

Unfortunately, there are a number of small errors in the text, as well as a few ambiguous sentences. Mr. Canton-Dutari is occasionally guilty of showing and telling within the same paragraph, thereby weakening the emotion behind the writing. Additionally, a number of weak phrases and words have found their way into the work.

The author has no interest in revising the work, and I cannot blame him. With this story, he has inspected his soul and found it damaged in a way that only time can repair. However, if you are able to overlook the flaws of the text, you will find the raw emotion of a man who has lost his true love. For that reason alone, it is worth reading.

Book Review: Sugar & Spice by Saffina Desforges

A few months back, a man dared to self-publish a guide to “responsible pedophilia” on Amazon, causing a huge outcry of disgust – and rightly so. The very concept of adults engaging in sexual acts with children causes bile to rise in the throat of most people, including me. Sugar & Spice, by Saffina Desforges (actually the penname of two authors working together), taps into that natural revulsion and then, in what I would consider a master stroke, manages to make a pedophile a sympathetic character.

The novel follows the search for a serial killer responsible for horrific child murders in England and Wales, with enough details of true crime woven in to give the whole work a feeling of reality. Several late nights, I was forced to put the book down because I feared I would have nightmares if I continued to read.

The authors write from various points of view, from the mother of a victim to a man struggling against his own pedophiliac impulses. The suspenseful build-up was impeccable and scarily believable, the ending satisfying on most counts. My only complaint is that the authors chose to leave a loose end that I would have preferred to see wrapped up. However, that doesn’t detract from the overall effectiveness of the book.

I did note a fair amount of typos (around 25-30), though most people will likely read right past them. American readers should also be aware that this is a British book and the authors use words that may not be familiar to them.

If you enjoy being horrified and repulsed on an emotional level, I recommend reading this book. If you love suspense novels, read this book. If you have ever wondered how pedophiles can live with themselves, this one’s for you. However, if you are an overprotective, hyper-vigilant parents, please – for your own sake as well as your kids’ – don’t come anywhere near this one. You’ll never let your children leave the house again. 

Book Review: Coffee Breath by Beth L. Labonte

Coffee Breath, by Beth L. Labonte, isn’t the kind of fiction that usually makes my reading list. In fact, I never would have found it if I hadn’t been on Smashwords the night her new comic novel, What Stays in Vegas, went live. However, after following a few links, perusing her blog (Secretary 4 Life), and laughing myself silly, I bought this short YA offering. I’m so glad I did.

This charming piece is basically a surreal look at office life from a twelve-year-old boy’s point of view. Let me be clear: there’s no real story here; instead it’s a collection of character sketches – both in Ms. Labonte’s words and Joshua W. Reinke’s drawings. The whole piece is cleverly written and engaging, despite the lack of plot. The lessons Jason learns from a summer working in his mother’s office are lessons all office workers are likely to recognize. If they don’t, they haven’t been paying attention.

The book is well-edited; in fact, I found no grammar or punctuation errors at all.

After this tempting taste of Ms. Labonte’s talent, I look forward to reading her new novel – as well as her future work. I highly recommend this for anyone trying to explain to a child what it’s like to work in an office.

Book Review: Slave by V.S. Williams

What if God and Satan were still fighting over the very first soul to sin? That is the premise of Slave, V.S. Williams’s first novel. Ms. Williams’s central character, Eve, is a mostly friendless orphan who has only her cat for company. For the most part, this befuddled young woman is the still point at the center of the novel – the eye of the hurricane. Swirling about Eve are some well-drawn and unique characters, including a surprisingly large number of unhappy spouses.

Ms. Williams has a gift for phrasing that left me in awe and laughter on several occasions. At one point, a desperate, childless woman on the verge of divorce imagines her future:

“The coffee mornings would dry up, she'd be thrown out of the W.I. and so, ladies and gentlemen, there would end the briefest of sorties into an accepting society; by next month she expected to have rejoined the outcasts: criminals, prostitutes and single childless women with an eye on middle age.”

Later, another unhappy wife sums up life this way: “But life was like that, it was rubbish piled up next to palaces, orchids growing on dung heaps.”

Despite the large cast, Ms. Williams did a wonderful job of fleshing out her characters. Overall, the only character I didn’t care for was Eve. She was so oblivious to the surrounding world that I found it difficult to empathize with her or care very much about her fate. I was much more interested in the destinies of those surrounding her; in fact, I was heartbroken for one particular father and his daughter.

There are enough errors in the book – mostly punctuation and extra or missed words – that I believe a good copy editor is in order. However, these errors didn’t significantly impact my reading enjoyment.

This is a commendable first novel, given its topic and scope. I believe Ms. Williams has just begun to show us what she can do, and I can hardly wait to see her future work.

**UPDATE 6/3/11** I have been in touch with the author and provided her with my list of concerns, some of which, according to the author, are differences between American and British English -- something I certainly can understand. The others are being corrected and a new version will be uploaded soon, thus making future readers that much more impressed with her work. 

Book Junkies: Where Everybody (Sort of) Knows Your Name

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Gertrude Stein with Hemingway's son

When I was a kid, I dreamed of moving to New York or London or Paris and becoming a writer. I thought I’d live in a tiny apartment and walk everywhere so that I could absorb the culture and really have my finger on the pulse of the city. I also thought I’d find a small community of other writers – possibly ex-pats, as I imagined I would be – who would support and grow with me. We’d be the equivalent of Hemingway, Stein, and the rest. We’d set the literary stage afire again.

Okay, so my dreams might have been a little far-reaching. At the very least, though, I pictured my own version of Cheers – a place where everyone knew my name and might even shout it out as I entered.

I’ll be forty in six months. I never moved to a big city – instead my city, Phoenix, grew up around me. I never was much of a drinker…probably a good thing. And I never found a place where I felt welcomed and comfortable in the company of other writers – until very recently.

I stumbled upon Book Junkies through the blog post of a member a few months ago now. I felt instantly welcomed. This community of writers and readers is truly like a gathering of kindred souls. You can almost feel the crackle of creativity when you read the posts in the various Book Junkies pages. One of our members, Helmy, even tackled a wonderful flash-fiction collaborative book which will be available for free on Smashwords sometime next month (I’ll be sure to post about it when it comes out). The readers have tackled their own projects, offering book reviews and a beta reader service to interested writers.

So why haven’t I blogged about this before? Honestly, selfishness has kept me silent. I love having a place where people are interested in one another’s thoughts and writing processes. I love visiting Book Junkies and feeling welcome in that small community. I feared that, as Book Junkies grew, it might lose that comfortable feeling.

No more. Book Junkies might not be for everyone, but we have writers and readers of every stripe – from Romance to Horror, from Mainstream to Steam Punk. If you think this could be the community you’ve been looking for, I hope you’ll join us. That’s the great thing about the internet – there’s no capacity limit.

Vampires, Shmampires

Vampires have been a part of our literary psyche for nearly two hundred years now. In that time, they have evolved from villains – sophisticated monsters – to heroes, as in that handsome, big-game-hunting Edward Cullen. Now, Karen Cantwell and LB Gschwandtner have given us a new kind of vampiric anti-hero: the vaguely Yiddish Myron Standlish in Foxy’s Tale (The Reluctant Vampire Series, Book 1).

This novel comes together so seamlessly that I would not have known it was a collaboration. The characters, particularly Mr. Standlish, are well-drawn and interesting. The true meat of the story is the relationship of a beauty-queen, Foxy, and her slightly rebellious teenaged daughter, Amanda. After a messy and costly divorce, Foxy seeks to transform herself, not realizing that her daughter is attempting to do the same thing.

Overall, the vampire theme is just incidental to the story – like one of several spices rather than the main flavor of the dish. The writing is engaging, though initially I found the present-tense format somewhat off-putting – I felt like I was reading a script rather than a novel. I was a little disappointed in the ending, which felt unresolved. However, as this is the first book in a series, I’m sure the questions I have will eventually be answered.

This is a light, entertaining read that I would recommend to anyone seeking an escape from reality and a few laughs. I look forward to getting to know Myron better in the future.

A Spider Web Worth Getting Stuck In

Ryne Douglas Pearson’s The Donzerly Light opens with an interrogation. The man being interrogated – Jay Grady – has just murdered someone, but the people holding him don’t seem to be policemen. And, for Jay, that’s probably the nearest thing to normal that’s happened to him in eight long years.

Pearson creates a spider web of a plot that draws not only his protagonist but also the reader in and refuses to let either go. The spider, as it turns out, is a bum who holds the sign bearing the words “Buy the donzerly light” early in the book. Jay, an ambitious Wall Street junior broker, is the fly. Jay’s life is forever changed when he drops some change into the bum’s can: first, he’s given the Midas touch and then something much more sinister.

Though the main character is initially somewhat unlikeable, the story is so fascinating that this reader kept turning the pages anxiously. The path the young man is forced to walk eventually strengthens his character and makes him sympathetic. All of the characters seem real, from his childhood sweetheart to the man interrogating Jay, which helps to ground the more fantastic elements of the story.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in paranormal suspense. It was highly entertaining and had a great twist at the end.

Warning: This Book Could Disillusion Romantics

The Adventures of a Love Investigator: 527 Naked Men & One Woman should have a warning label on it. Barbara Silkstone, the fabulously funny author of The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters, set out on her own non-fiction adventure to interview 1,000 men in one year. After five years and only a little over half the men she intended, she surrendered. And who could blame her? The men she interviewed were brutally honest with her, if not with themselves.

Thanks in large part to the talents of the author rather than the subject matter, this is a fast and charming book. Ms. Silkstone’s keen eye for detail balances the words of her interviewees with the facts about the men’s appearances and tics. We meet plenty of frogs – warts and all – and a couple of princes. Unfortunately for the author, she ends up with a bad case of the TMI blues – no man will ever be taken at his word again.

And this is where the warning comes in: if you are in a happy relationship, you might want to avoid this book. As a happily married woman, I found myself questioning the devotion of a man who, both literally and figuratively, supports me. Sometimes it’s just better not to know exactly what the men in your life are really thinking.

To everyone else – especially the single women – READ THIS BOOK! It is enlightening, to say the least. Thank you, Ms. Silkstone, for sacrificing so many years to this amazing project. You are a folk heroine to me.

Book Review: Learning To Be Irish

Full disclosure: Emjae Edwards, the author of Learning To Be Irish, is published by Inknbeans Press – the very same publisher I work with. That said, no one at Inknbeans asked me to read this book, and I don’t bother to review books on my blog that I don’t think are worth reading.

As a general rule, I don’t read romances. The few that I’ve tried in the past have largely proved disappointing, usually due to cardboard characters and unrealistic plot twists. However, I was intrigued by the cover of Learning To Be Irish: as the wife of a Chicago Irishman, I wear a Claddagh as my wedding ring. That, coupled with the fact that I wanted to read some of Inknbeans Press’s other offerings, inspired me to buy this book – a decision I will never regret.

Daire, the heroine, is a typical spoiled American girl with little understanding of her heritage. Despite maintaining a pen-pal relationship with her Irish grandfather for most of her formative years, she doesn’t seem to have developed a strong bond with him; hence, she is surprised when he leaves her his home in northern Ireland. On a whim, she decides to visit the place before she puts it up for sale.

Ms. Edwards’s writing is so descriptively warm and inviting that I found myself devouring this book whole in one sitting. Her characters – both Daire and her potential love interests – are fully developed people with winning traits and devastating faults. Even the minor characters seem to breathe with life. Her ability to transport the reader from wherever they are to the small Irish village of Arlenhill is remarkable and enchanting.

Both the hero and the heroine learn and grow from loving each other, which is why I wouldn’t call this a romance. Instead, let’s call it contemporary relationship fiction (a phrase I think I’ve heard around Inknbeans Press) – I know it may be splitting hairs, but this isn’t your grandmother’s bodice-ripping fiction. Besides, that lets me continue to be prejudiced against romance novels even as I devour Emjae Edwards’s other books.

Purchase your copy of Learning To Be Irish at Smashwords or Amazon.com. For more great Inknbeans Press books, visit their website.

Book Review: The Year We Finally Solved Everything

What if there were one perfect place on the planet: a place without sickness, hunger, work, or worry? How would the rest of the world respond to that perfection? In The Year We Finally Solved Everything, author Rudolf Kerkhoven attempts to answer these questions – and I think he comes pretty close to the truth.

Richard, the narrator of the novel, lives in Canada, but he could really be in any city across North America. Perfection has been discovered in the form of Shan Won, a small island nation off the coast of China. Shan Won’s perfection is simultaneously attracting people from all over the world and destroying the lives of those who don’t want to go. As the world around him swirls into destruction, Richard seeks to become one of the Disappeared – the world’s name for those who leave everything behind for Shan Won.

The sparseness of Mr. Kerkhoven’s dialogue struck me as uniquely effective, with simple spoken sentences frequently followed by long but readable passages describing the speaker or the setting. His descriptions are so vivid that I had no problem seeing through Richard’s eyes. My one complaint is the apparently random use of commas throughout the novel – sometimes they are there when they shouldn’t be, and vice-versa.

In the end, this reader was left saddened but not surprised by the world’s reaction to Shan Won. But what is life when we have nothing left to strive for? The Year We Finally Solved Everything will make you ask that question and many more.

What I Have Learned on Page 99

“Open the book to page 99, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” – Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford was a writer and critic in the early twentieth century. Many consider him to be a guiding influence in the development of literature during that time.

And Ford Madox Ford was wrong.

Okay, maybe he wasn’t exactly wrong. Perhaps he is only guilty of an over-generalization in the quote above. I’m sure when he wrote that, he meant you could tell the overall quality of the writing by sampling a page from the middle of a novel. Which you can, if you are a discerning reader who understands that what you are really looking for in that one page is the quality of the writing, not the development of the plot. How many books have you read in your life that have a major plot development on every page? I know I’ve never read one.

The flaw in Page99Test.com – the website that takes the above quote as its credo – is that not everyone is a discerning reader. For example, I posted my page 99 from my most recent novel (which will be published in February by Ink n Beans Press). Based on that one page, I have received comments accusing me of everything from being anti-Christian to copying The Sixth Sense. Considering that the main character is a novelist suffering from writer’s block who has a great idea right after he kills himself, I suppose the critiques do have a certain amount of validity. However, how they arrived at that conclusion from one page – a page on which the main character doesn’t even appear – is beyond me. In any case, the critiques should be held to grammar and style. If you don’t like the way I write based on one page, I’m fine with that, but hold your tongue on the plot, please.

I’ll admit I was taking the comments a little too personally until I critiqued one particular page on the site yesterday. In it, the writer used some of the most beautiful metaphors and similes I’ve seen in a while, including one that described a girl as being as fresh and green as new Swiss chard. I loved it. When I submitted my critique, I saw the critiques of others. Many of my fellow critics felt that those same metaphors and similes were a detriment to the work. One person even said the writer shouldn’t have referenced Swiss chard because no one knows what that is. In fact, the critiques were split almost down the middle: half would turn the page and the other half would burn the book. And what was the book? Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel, a novel first published in 1964 and now well-known to many a high school student in Canada and the U.S. because of its frequent appearance on high-school syllabi.

Writers, I encourage you to post your page 99s on Page99Test.com. However, think of it as another marketing tool: people who have never heard of you will read your work, even if it is only one page. Don’t take the critiques to heart unless they are oft-repeated and have more to do with grammar and style than plotlines.

And when you are feeling discouraged, remember: one page does not a novel make.

Book Review: Raw, a Novel

When I was a kid, my grandparents kept a milk cow so that they could enjoy the pleasures of fresh milk. They tried to convince me that this raw product was better than the kind that came in cartons. Despite their best efforts, I was never converted to their way of thinking.

After reading Steven Revare’s Raw, a Novel, though, I’m thinking I may have missed out on something special back then. Thankfully, I didn’t miss out on this quirky novel. Raw follows Carl Krauthammer as he attempts to exchange his accounting career path for that of a writer’s. After the collapse of his marriage, he leaves the East Coast Manhattan for the Midwestern Manhattan, Kansas, in order to study under the tutelage of his favorite novelist, Julian Frye. Carl imagines that life will be simpler back in Kansas; he couldn’t be more wrong. Instead, he finds a town full of breast-feeding activists, aggressive philosophy students, and the same corporate cogs he thought he’d left back in that other Manhattan. Of course, he also discovers an illegal dairy that sells raw milk and other dairy products, which is the source of the novel’s title.

Every character in this novel is as familiar as they are unique. Julian Frye reminded me of a burnt-out author who taught creative writing at the university I attended. Carl’s girlfriend, Susan Hirschman, bore a strong resemblance to many of my feminist professors. However, the quirks that Mr. Revare gives these and his other characters are inspired.

Raw has done something my grandparents never could – it has made me wish I could try fresh milk. There must be something magical about the stuff for it to inspire such a funny, fantastic book.

Book Review: Loisaida

Having previously read The Death Trip, I approached Loisaida with trepidation. I knew I loved Marion Stein’s writing style, but her novella’s ending was unsatisfying: I still had the munchies after what should have been a satisfying snack. Loisaida, though, is a full meal.

Based on a true murder, Loisaida follows an actor-cum-journalist, Peter Teller, who sets out on a quest to solve the murder of Ingrid Hess, a beautiful woman whom he almost picked up just weeks before her death. As Peter’s investigation pulls him further into the underworld of late-80’s New York, this reader could almost feel the hot water starting to boil under Peter’s feet – though Peter, of course, could not.

Ms. Stein’s writing style is, in turns, staccato, lyrical, and enthralling. She switches between points of view with ease and clarity and her use of present-tense prose was particularly compelling. I found very little wrong with the novel as a whole, despite the author’s somewhat idiosyncratic use of commas. There were a few typos and misspellings as well, but not enough to cause irritation.

With plenty of savory scenes and meaty characters, this gritty-city novel deserves more attention than it has gotten thus far. I truly admire this author’s skill with the written word and can only hope that she will cook up another novel soon.

Smashwords Books Reviewed: Featured Author: Susanne O'Leary

Smashwords Books Reviewed has published a lovely interview with Susanne O'Leary as well as my review of her recent book, Swedish for Beginners. I highly recommend this author to anyone who enjoys women's fiction.

Smashwords Books Reviewed: Featured Author: Susanne O'Leary: "Today Susanne O'Leary is our featured author. Writing from Ireland, Susanne's novels have enjoyed international success in print as well as ..."

Book Review: Take the Monkeys and Run

Karen Cantwell's humorous mystery novel, Take the Monkeys and Run, is an entertaining and quick read, despite some slightly implausible plot twists. Her main character, the nosy, quirky Barbara Marr, is the kind of woman I'd like to be friends with: inquisitive and intelligent. The description of Barbara's mother was fantastic.

At the beginning of the novel, Barbara Marr’s husband has left the family home, telling Barbara that he needs some space. Barbara, who was unaware that their marriage was anything other than perfect, is confused and heartbroken. Seeking distraction from her unhappy situation, Barbara turns her attention to the house next door, an unoccupied building that has an unfriendly caretaker and mysterious late-night visitors. When the monkeys appear in Barbara’s trees, her curiosity leads her to find something she shouldn’t have.

Despite a few details that made it necessary to suspend disbelief, the exciting plot full of twists made this book a real page-turner.

In general, Ms. Cantwell’s female characters feel a lot more fleshed out than her male characters. She takes the time to give her women habits and ticks that seem real. For the most part though, the men seem straight out of central casting -- George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Selleck.

I believe Karen Cantwell intends to write additional books featuring this character. I look forward to reading another Barbara Marr mystery in the future.

Susan Wells Bennett
Circle City Blues
The Thief of Todays and Tomorrows
The Prophet's Wives