Here’s a few words on some books I have read in the past year but never got around to writing anything about.

I like Nick Hornby. He has an accessible and conversational tone to his novels and he is filled with a bitter wisdom all the while showing us the hope that lies just beyond. His books read easily and his quirky, introspective characters could be any one of your friends. So when picking up Slam I had some reasonable expectations.

First off, it’s not a bad book. However it does lack some of the charm of his other works. In some ways, Slam feels like a natural place for Nick Hornby to go; after years of writing about the twenty-something experience, about men discovering just how to grow up, it seems only prudent to explore where such men may have started. And so this novel follows Sam, a sixteen-year old skater whose hero is Tony Hawk and whose first encounter with love finds him becoming a teenage father.

There are some odd elements to the story. One is that Sam “talks” to a poster of Tony Hawk, and Tony talks back by quoting portions of his autobiography, a book Sam has read countless times. Another is that in two separate instances, Sam is jettisoned into the future. Twice. He gleams what his life is like from the other side and then he returns back to the present. The third thing is not so much odd as it is an eye-rolling narrative device: Slam ends in a silly Q&A with the reader in which Sam answers the story’s lingering threads. It’s more superfluous than fulfilling.

If you’ve never read any Nick Hornby, I wouldn’t recommend this title to start with. Check out High Fidelity or A Long Way Down instead. ★ ★ . 5 /5

Charlaine Harris isn’t going to go down as some great author of literature, but I enjoy her style nonetheless. It’s very direct and linear. It gets to a point, doesn’t linger on any one thing for too long and reads quickly. She’s a good author to read for pleasure. Popcorn entertainment, if you know what I mean. I’ve read all of her series: Sookie Stackhouse, Aurora Teagarden, Lily Bard and Harper Connelly.

The Lily Bard Mystery Series (Shakespeare’s Landlord. Shakespeare’s Christmas, Shakespeare’s Champion, Shakespeare’s Trollop, Shakespeare’s Counselor) is one of her darker works. The heroine is a survivor of a vicious and brutal rape. As the series begins, she has relocated to a small Arkansas town and takes up work a house cleaner for the various residents. Murder and mystery seems to always be in her path and while she would rather keep out of it, her position in the community enables to know secrets about the town’s denizens and it gives her a unique perspective in uncovering the truth of the crime.

I was intrigued by the series because of the character. Once upon a time when I was working on my own novel, my protagonist was also a rape victim and worked hard to ignore her past. It was an interesting experience to read another writer’s take on this idea. Generally, the mysteries unfold a bit slowly and the reader is able to gain a sense of the killer’s identity as the suspects weave in and out of the narrative. But there’s some surprises too and usually a strange twist or two as well. ★ ★ ★ /5

The Harper Connelly Series (Grave Sight, Grave Surprise, An Ice Cold Grave, Grave Secret) follows a woman who was struck by lightning and then left with an ability to locate corpses as a result. She and her stepbrother travel to various locales and hire out her ability. She can not only find the dead, she can also get a sense of their last moments of life. She can see how the died but if they were murdered, she cannot discern who killed them. The series focuses on those cases where she inadvertently–and unwillingly–becomes a part of the investigation.

She’s a pretty interesting character. Generally, people regard her disdainfully. They are mistrusting, suspicious and rude. I find the real moving force behind this series is Harper’s relationship with Tolliver. It’s the bright spot in the darkness of the series. There’s a respect and sweetness and it really is the backbone of the series as whole, especially since none of the novels share the same location. They are the only true constants to one another, as well is to the reader. ★ ★ ★ /5

The anticipated tenth installment to Charlaine Harris’s Sookie saga is Dead in the Family. This novel finds Sookie struggling with the events of the previous one, healing from the wounds of her brutal torture. She’s a bit of a different character from where she first started. She has a slight edge of cynicism, she’s more guarded the ever. And she’s willing to confront harsh truths she may have shied from in tales prior, such as: she wants Victor dead. A very different Sookie indeed.

Dead in the Family is a significant slow-down from the break-neck pace of Dead and Gone and as such, the novel winds up feeling a bit lacking in flavor and substance. It does, however, open up some very interesting story threads as well as close some others. Nevertheless, this book series is compulsively readable and Charlaine Harris, as always, has her wit and charm infused in the pages. ★ ★ . 5 /5

I starting enjoying Lauren Kate’s Fallen as the book neared the climax. Everything before was quite slow and predictable. I feel like the story only came to life when the author stopped keeping so many secrets from the reader and started inviting them into the world instead. I suspect the follow-up to this YA novel may be better and more lively.

It is another tale involving angels and a teenage girl with a tragic past. It takes place at an old boarding school called Sword & Cross in Savannah, Georgia. The girl, Luce, is drawn to a boy, Daniel, though he goes to great lengths to avoid her. I am sure you can see why many occurrences in this novel might be predictable. I also found much of it tautological in nature; I felt as though I were reading the same things over and over and just wanted to story to move toward something already. There was just a little too much time spent on set-up. ★ ★ /5

I actually had no intention of reading L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening & The Struggle. It was sort of happenstance that I did. My mother loaned me a few books she thought I might like and I was waiting to get a new book, I just popped this open to kill some time. It reads incredibly fast. I had both books completed within hours. I don’t have anything particularly positive to write about this series however. I was rather underwhelmed.

First off, I find Elena unlikable. A couple characters accuse her being of selfish. Well, she is. I also hate this whole thing in YA fiction where teenage girls become so absorbed by some guy that everything else ceases to matter. This guy becomes their only reason to exist. They are obsessed and neurotic and always feeling unworthy of undeserving of his devotion. And it’s irritating that these are the role models for young girls and women. I understand that these are teenage girls in these books and that teenage girls are often petulant and self-involved and reckless. But the girls in so many of these books don’t feel real to me. I was once a teenage girl with teenage girl friends. Guess what? They didn’t act like so many of these YA heroines.

Sorry for the rant but I just got really irked by Elena in these books. The CW show is awesome though! I really look forward to it and I am anxious for September. If I had read these books before I saw the show, I don’t think I would have given it much of a chance. Thankfully, the show is only a shadow of these books. It’s veered quite far off the path in lots of different ways. And I, for one, am thankful for that! ★ . 5 /5

I’m not a huge Stephen King enthusiast; I don’t care much for the horror genre. But to be fair, I haven’t actually read much of his catalogue. In fact, before re-reading The Stand I hadn’t picked up one of his books since I was a kid. I’ve read Misery, Cycle of the Werewolf, Eyes of the Dragon, the short story compilation Four Past Midnight and perhaps one or two others. In my admittedly myopic view of King’s work, I think his talent lies in creating characters and seeing how they react in extreme situations. That’s what keeps me turning the pages.

I didn’t remember much of The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition though I did read it when I was 14 or 15 and also saw the miniseries. (I even have it on DVD.) But since it is such a huge influence on Lost and I am a crazy Lost fan and this is the final season, I thought I would give it another go.

Wow. This is one of my favorite books of all time.

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides-or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.

Book I. “Captain Trips” — It starts with a sneeze here and a cough there and within weeks, nearly everyone is dead. As the world is dying, chaos reigns. The military attempts to maintain order but even those in charge are unable to control themselves. People scramble to flee cities and die from the flu, creating massive traffic jams and pile ups. The reader is introduced to various characters, most of which we follow on their journeys toward the end. Each watches in terror as everyone dies around them and they are bewildered as to why they don’t become sick themselves. When all the world seems dead they have strange dreams and venture out to seek out the truth of them.

We follow several different characters as they trek across the country, most using motorcycles because it’s the most efficient way to travel as it allows them to circumvent all the backed up traffic. They find other survivors along the way. And sometimes, that’s not always such a good thing. The epidemic leaves more tragedy in its place. There are brutal people out there. Guns and other weapons are just waiting to be picked up, as is the food on all of the grocery shelves and clothes in a department store, drugs in the pharmacies. Anything you want, it’s yours. The world as it once was is gone.

There is a chapter in this section that succeeded more than any other in painting Stephen King’s new world view, one that illustrated what becomes of the people as the world they know disintegrates and to those who are left behind. It’s a chapter without any of the main characters. It’s a chapter that in concise and heart-wrenching vignettes shows us little peeks across the country. Of suicides. Of accidental drug overdoses. Of lost and alone children who die because there is no one to take care of them, like a 5-year old boy who strolls along picking and eating berries until stumbles into a deep well and remains there, helpless with a broken legs until he dies because there is no one to rescue him. It’s these tiny stories–some a few paragraphs, other a single sentence–that effectively show the scope of this story, of how far-reaching and impacting it truly is. In other words, it shows us a world outside of the characters we have so far come to know.

Book II. “On the Border” — The most lengthy of the sections, finds the survivors coming together in small packs as they venture across the country. Generally the story follows the “good” guys, though we do at times meet up with those aligned with the dark man. Along the way, there is camaraderie and fear, mistrust and genuine affections. Eventually they arrive at their destinations. One of the characters, Glen Bateman, was a sociology professor and through him we are familiarized with the concepts and theories he has about societies and how they are formed. His ideas are interesting and often correct as well.

It’s here we follow what is happening in what the survivors have dubbed the Boulder Free Zone. They clean the community of dead, return the electricity, move into homes and create new lives and relationships, where the new government forms. Some become complacent; this reality is better than thinking about Randall Flagg who they know rests just over the Rocky Mountains. Others, the new government (which is really just a committee at this point,) is constructing a plan about how to handle the dark man. It’s in the back of everyone’s mind and they know something must be done to stop him.

Book III. “The Stand” — This section finds the story pushing toward the final confrontation. It takes place largely in Las Vegas where some of the “good” guys are heading to see Randall Flagg. To do what, they are not sure. The final battle is, to many readers, a disappointment as well as unsatisfying, but this epic story is not about this final “stand” so much as the journey toward it. And the way I see it, just how can you write a satifying climax? In a sense, Stephen King wrote himself into a bit of a corner. When everything leading up to the moment is so powerful and thoughtful and compelling, how could he top himself? So I can easily forgive this minor issue. It only lasts a few pages out of 1100 plus pages anyhow.

One of the profound successes of The Stand is in the characterization. Stephen King manages to create a compelling and believable cast. One of the difficulties in crafting a tale that basically comes down to good and evil is in making the characters identifiable. There’s two instances that impressed me where he nailed this task. One is in Harold Lauder, a teenage kid who was picked on relentlessly. He’s in love with Frannie Goldsmith who is not in love with him. She’s taken up with Stu Redman. He is also overlooked in being chosen to take part in the new government. He feels a deep sense of betrayal and an utter desire for revenge. He becomes seduced by the idea of aligning himself with the dark man. Yet through it all–despite his irrational behavior and failure to amend his outlook–you understand his rage because his inability to simply “let go” and start anew–his hubris, in other words–has been properly attended to in the writing. By being burdened by his past, despite the fact that his past is now irrelevant, Harold has doomed himself.

Trashcan Man is the other example. A schizophrenic pyromaniac, “Trash” has nothing but supreme devotion to the walking dude (aka the dark man, Randall Flagg.) Ostracized, abused and discarded his whole life, the walking dude accepts him, praises him, has a place for him. It’s a feeling he has never known. When he meets up with other folks in Las Vegas, they accept him too. It’s a happiness he didn’t know was out there for him. Because Stephen King has given proper weight to this character’s past and his struggles, his loyalty to side of evil is easily understood. In a sense, you can’t see Trash anywhere but here.

Many say that this novel is an examination of the struggle between good and evil, the war of all wars. But I don’t see it that way at all really. It’s allegory, something I am learning Stephen King seems to like a lot. The Stand is a powerful narrative, a very rich and poignant story with a deliberate profundity peppered with both nuance and flair. It’s about the human condition, the psyche of individuals and the pathos of a society when the world has fallen away. And how fitting. I suppose you only know who really are when you are put under such fear and stress. That’s the real you. It will bleed out whether you want it to or not. And The Stand is an examination of that more than it is of “good and evil.”

An 1100+ page book may seem a daunting read to some. And it certainly could be. But if the story and the characters are riveting and complex, page count doesn’t mean a thing. This is an incredible novel and I would recommend it to anyone.

To be honest, it took me like 3 weeks to get through the first 300 pages of the 1000+ page novel, Under the Dome. But after that, I finished up the next 700 in a mere 2-3 days. I was compelled to read this mammoth of a book after recently re-reading The Stand. (Review of that to follow.) I was so thoroughly impressed with The Stand that I thought perhaps Under the Dome might impress me equally. (If you’re wondering, it doesn’t quite measure up.)

What took me so long to get through the first fourth of Under the Dome is paradoxically why it took me no time at all to get through the entirety of The Stand in almost no time at all: the constant juggling of the huge cast of characters. As The Stand begins, we are introduced to the main characters one by one; they don’t yet know one another and so their journeys and experiences are easily distinguishable from one another. Under the Dome takes place in the small New England town of Chester’s Mill, and as such, the characters are already interacting with one another and have established relationships we are not already privy to. So as you read, it is easy to get everyone confused; you have to kind of pause and think about who is who as the scenes shift and alliances form. But after the initial 300 pages, I started to know the characters myself and the story became more interesting.

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day, a small town is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and rain down flaming wreckage. A gardener’s hand is severed as the dome descends. Cars explode on impact. Families are separated and panic mounts. No one can fathom what the barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away. Now a few intrepid citizens, led by an Iraq vet turned short-order cook, face down a ruthless politician dead set on seizing the reins of power under the dome. But their main adversary is the dome itself. Because time isn’t just running short. It’s running out.

The greatest fault I can find in this novel, however, is actually in the characterization. It’s rather black & white with little shades of gray. Either a character is “good” or “bad.” Shades of gray are what make people interesting, if you ask me. For example, while the big villain of the story, Big Jim Rennie, often rationalizes his behavior or tries to justify his actions to even himself, he still recognizes an inherent quality within himself: he just wants what he wants, that he is an unapologetic and selfish power monger. Simple as that. Without any redeeming quality he–and most of the other characters–has very little dimension and thus, he doesn’t seem all that believable.

On the other hand, if the novel is viewed as largely allegorical–which it most certainly can be–the black & white tendencies of the characters become understandable. After all, allegory is a way of illustrating a message–whether it be political, religious, environmental, or otherwise–about the state of circumstance and choice, about human nature. Stephen King himself stated that he wrote Under the Dome with his view of the failures of Bush-Cheney administration in mind, as well the state of the environment. (If there is one thing the Dome in the novel demonstrates, is how quickly the air becomes polluted and contaminated when it is enclosed, much like the atmosphere encloses the Earth.)

Much like The Stand, the climax of Under the Dome fails to be as compelling as the events that precede it. But that’s okay. The joy of reading both books lies in the journey of the characters, in their struggles and their triumphs.

If you are wondering about the “secret” of the Dome, I won’t spoil it for you here. Is it a fascinating reveal? That’s up for the reader to decide. This reader was sort of apathetic to it because that’s not what the story is really about. The Dome is merely a device to get the characters in this situation. A MacGuffin of a larger sort. Is it worth the read? Sure. I really enjoyed it once I was able to get acquainted well enough with the characters. But if you are a slow reader, this one may not be for you.

I’m not big on police procedurals–or John Grisham or Patricia Cornwell (I don’t need to be bored by lawyers and doctors, thanks)–but Tana French’s Edgar Award winning novel In the Woods sounded quite intriguing. I really love a story about characters with a haunted past that must confront it and experience a transformation of sorts in the process. Sadly, that’s not exactly what I got with this book.

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

Richly atmospheric, stunning in its complexity, and utterly convincing and surprising to the end, In the Woods is sure to enthrall fans of Mystic River and The Lovely Bones.

This was a book I enjoyed while reading it and that, in fact, turned out to be quite the page-turner. The real problem crept on me in the aftermath of my finishing it, in those moments when you close the book and ruminate on all the words you just took in.

Bottom line: it was an unsatisfying ending that left a signifiant plot thread just dangling with no sense of closure, with barely a thought given to it in the final pages. The whole draw of the book for me was this connection between Rob’s past and the case he was investigating. I don’t want to spoil potential readers, so I’ll just say that the end didn’t exactly have the coalescing I was anticipating.

I also don’t appreciate the author’s attempt to be clever when she claims that we, the readers, have been duped just as Rob himself was. While this may be true from some readers, it certainly can’t be the case for all. For example, I was not duped. There is a scene in the novel that I suspected was planted as a means of foreshadowing and I thought that it might have a payoff later. It did. So for the author–or more appropriately, I suppose, Rob–to assume I was as fooled as he was is a bit insulting.

Another problem is Rob Ryan himself. By the novel’s end I just didn’t like him anymore. He came off as pathetic, obsessive and foolish. Typically, character stories involve some sort of redemptive angle, or at least an attempt to examine a character’s faults and to learn from them. Of course, not all stories must end this way; a tragic end is often a more powerful way to go, so long as it is apropos to the character(s) journey and/or the writer’s subjacent message. But that is something that must be earned. I’m not saying In the Woods ends tragically per se, but to me, it ends with the character no wiser than when we met him at the beginning. And that is sort of tragic because, really, what’s the point of that?

There’ some good stuff in there, however. Tana French crafts exemplary prose. The words are so deliberate and lulling. There’s a poetry there. But what good are beautiful words without the benefit of a well-designed story?

There is a follow up to this novel. It’s called The Likeness. It is not a sequel, nor is it an origin story. Rather, it takes place awhile after In the Woods and the first person storyteller this time around is Cassie, Rob’s former partner. I did try to read it. Tried. I got to precisely page 100 before I just had to set it aside and resign myself to not finishing it. 100 pages of setup is just way too much. I felt as if nothing were happening. Page 100 is actual where it appears something is about to happen, but by that time, I was not invested enough to care.

Can I recommend In the Woods? Look, it’s not bad. It just needs some tightening up and an ending that at least addresses one of the biggest mysteries within the story. Perhaps Tana French intends to write another book that does indeed delve ito this mystery. But to be honest, I don’t care. I expected a resolution this time around. It almost felt promised. What I can suggest is reading the the prologue. It’s a beautiful piece of prose and it will give you an idea of what this author is capable of. I so enjoyed the style of her writing, I only wish that enjoyed the story she had to tell. So I will keep my eye out on her future endeavors and hope I won’t be quite so disappointed next time.

Alyson NoĂ«l’s third installment of her The Immortals series, Shadowland, left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied. The series as a whole, I feel, has vast potential but the bulk of the narrative often comes off as contrived, convenient and predictable.

That’s not say there isn’t some entertainment here, or some value. But as with many young adult novels and series, the core of the story relies heavily on a teenage love affair that is supernatural in nature and therefore, ridden with complications and conflict. And of course, the girl protagonist at the heart of all is so deeply infatuated, that her life is essentially defined by this boy’s mere existence. Not a great message to be sending to the demographic, but stories of intense romance can be given a little liberty and some forgiveness for this contrivance. After all, what makes Romeo & Juliet, for example, so timeless and beloved is it’s very insistence that life is worth nothing without love.

Ever and Damen have traveled through countless past lives–and fought off the world’s darkest enemies–so they could be together forever. But just when their long-awaited destiny is finally within reach, a powerful curse falls upon Damen…one that could destroy everything. Now a single touch of their hands or a soft brush of their lips could mean sudden deathiiplunging Damen into the Shadowland. Desperate to break the curse and save Damen, Ever immerses herself in magick–and gets help from an unexpected source…a surfer named Jude.

Although she and Jude have only just met, he feels startlingly familiar. Despite her fierce loyalty to Damen, Ever is drawn to Jude, a green-eyed golden boy with magical talents and a mysterious past. She’s always believed Damen to be her soulmate and one true love–and she still believes it to be true. But as Damen pulls away to save them, Ever’s connection with Jude grows stronger–and tests her love for Damen like never before…

I feel like the each story in each book is simply a new conflict to keep the two lovers apart. And there is nothing wrong with that except that the characters remain–more or less–unchanged. Ever and Damen both struggle with own moral compasses and both are also both vaguely aware of their selfish compulsion to be together, no matter the consequences. But each book merely introduces a new antagonist(s) connected with Damen’s shady past and each of these villains makes it their mission to keep Damen and Ever apart. Because, obviously, a bunch of immortals with nothing but time and a profound vendetta have nothing better to do than to taunt Ever, who–for all intents and purposes–is just an innocent girl, never complicit in the acts her beau took part in centuries ago. Yes, that was sarcasm there.

The saga of Ever and Dame is just a long and redundant tale thus far, a tautology that bogs down the narrative. Certainly there are other elements within the story to draw from and create conflict with, but instead the author dwells on the focused romance, as if nothing else exists. Of course, little else does exist to these two characters.

Now, the whole idea of Ever and Damen not being able to touch for eternity is an intruguing idea and certainly reminiscent of the lovers’s plight in the tv series Pushing Daisies. It has the capacity to create this potent and volatile sexual tension but instead the author introduces a slight loophole. So throughout this novel the two do “touch” through a sheet of energy that barely separates them. I was disappointed that Ever and Damen could embrace or hold hands and even kiss; it takes away much of the power of their situation if they are able to find a way to circumvent it.

Characters need growth in order to form a true connection with the reader. One could argue that there is growth here. Damon, for example, feels this “curse” is karma coming to collect on him and so he willfully changes his routins and behavior. He rids himself of material things, adopts a new wardrobe–one without designer labels–and gives away his car. He insists Ever explore her connection with the mysterious Jude to see if something sparks there. But where one might see growth in these changes, I simply see a whiny martyr. But thats just me.

There’s far better Young Adult paranormal/fantasy book series out there, none that–in my opinion–surpass the epic The Mortal Instruments. (And yes, that includes you, Twilight!) Will I keep reading The Immortals? For now, yes. I’m three books in and harbor a small hope that Alyson NoĂ«l can salvage these characters, who remain frustratingly two-dimensional and unidentifiable. She has a good idea here; it just needs some nurture, a little more substance, and a bit of nuance. The devil’s in the details, after all.

Charles Dickens’s perennial classic A Christmas Carol is a book that I had never read. A story that has been adapted countless times and in various incarnations. And so I thought it was time to give the source material a read.

Perhaps what makes Charles Dickens a prolific–and still relevant–author is his upbringing. As a child reared in the classist British society in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, he was witness to and apart of great social injustices of the time. These experiences with societal hardships are easily seen throughout his library of published works, and in fact, many of them are built around such concepts and observations, such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.

A Christmas Carol is certainly drawn from such societal elements, using class and poverty to weave the tale of the cranky, cheap and greedy (and you can now add legendary and infamous to that list too!) Ebenezer Scrooge. I don’t need to go into specifics. After all, is there anyone who doesn’t know what A Christmas Carol is about, that doesn’t know about the four ghosts, the inevitable redemption of the grouch, Tiny Tim, the uplifting and celebratory message?

Instead I will just state that if you have never read this book–or more appropriately, novella–it’s a swift (under 100 pages) and good read. What’s most remarkable about to me is that this story is so timeless and classic, so rich and profound, that in all its various adaptations–the movies, the television episodes, the operas, the plays, etc.–those stories remain incredibly faithful to the original work; it’s quite astounding. Perhaps that speaks to the story’s success, that everyone who has adapted it felt little need to change the major plot points and qualities of the characters.

A Christmas Carol is widely credited with reinventing Christmas, making it the holiday like the one we experience today, one filled with compassion and generosity. I guess we have Charles Dickens to thank for making this the best time of year, for imagining a holiday that is many a person’s favorite. It’s certainly mine. I can’t wait for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; my daughter is three years old now and is sort of starting to understand more and more things. I’m so excited for her to experience the holiday this year! And it’s a holiday we wouldn’t quite have the way we do, if it weren’t for A Christmas Carol.

Sometimes I just browse my local library’s shelves and peruse the backs and dust jackets of random books and check a few out. Shiloh Walker’s The Missing is one of those books I came across. It had an intriguing premise and I was in the mood for a story that had a little romance in it after reading a number of novels that were of quite a different persuasion.

Her psychic gift drove away the man she loved— and years later has drawn him back to her…

As a teenager, Taige Branch hated her psychic gift. No one could understand—except for Cullen Morgan, the boy who stole her heart. He did his best to accept her, until his mother was brutally murdered—and he couldn’t forgive Taige for not preventing it.

Now a widowed father, Cullen Morgan has never forgotten Taige. But what brings her back into his life is another tragedy. His beloved little girl has been kidnapped, and Taige is his only hope of finding her. Working together against the clock, Cullen and Taige can’t help but wonder whether—if they find his daughter in time—it isn’t too late for the overpowering love that still burns between them…

Once I got into it–and it didn’t take too long–I definitely found The Missing to be a page turner, although I can also deem it forgettable. And though it was classified in the fiction section at my local library I feel like it almost belongs more to the romance categorization. The story is not inundated with the purpley prose I assume so common in the romance genre, but there is a sprinkling of that in there. Strangely, one of the most prevalent thoughts I had upon completing this book was how highly sexualized it was. There’s a more than a few sex scenes in the book and they do get a bit explicit and that is not something I often encounter in the things I read. Sex scenes are usually brief or introspective, perhaps slightly nebulous or merely suggestive. Not so descriptive and capturing the blow-by-blow (minds out of the gutter, people!) such as this novel does. And I have to admit, when I read “cock” it makes me think of erotica, as it is a word that fits in swell in that genre–and maybe romance, too, though I haven’t really read much romance to know for sure–so it sorts of takes me out of a story I am trying to take more seriously than some light porn.

Overall, the prose is fluid and unabashed. A benefit to the novel is its third person perspective. You get a large dose of Taige and a sampling from the other characters, most notably Cullen. It makes the narrative’s scope widen and the implications of events and their effects on the characters more widely understood than if it were only focusing on the singular Taige instead. There is a somewhat minor mystery at the core of the story–the catalyst that ignites the reunion of Taige and Cullen–but I am afraid it is so absolutely predictable that I’m not sure if it was meant to a real mystery at all. But I suppose that’s all irrelevant because in the end, this is a story about a love so intense it survives time and guilt and tragedy. And in that respect, it is a successfully executed story.

However, one of its shortcomings is Cullen. He feels very underdeveloped to me. Even now, though I only finished the book about two weeks ago, I can’t get a clear sense of him. The only things that stand out are that he is a dedicated father and is pining for Paige. He doesn’t have many distinguishing characters I can recall, neither physically nor psychologically. He could be any guy. Taige, on the other hand, is strong and willful and compelling. And because we are introduced to her as a teenager and witness the grief and horror her gift supplies, she is easy to sympathize with and root for.

A second slight failure is the poor attention to the way the law works and how crime is investigated. But because Taige is a psychic guided by her sixth sense, you can give into suspension of disbelief and accept what liberties the writer has taken to tell her story.

A good read. I don’t know if it is a book I will remember much about as time goes by, but I was entertained and intrigued well enough through the journey. I may give the author another go around at some point.

I like Ethan Hawke as an actor. He’s quite understated, yet intense. Sensitive and self-aware. And he surely has playing the broody, conflicted man/boy down. Those character-centric qualities are ever-present in his first novel, The Hottest State, though they certainly don’t translate as well through his words as they do through his performances.

With disarming emotional honesty, Ethan Hawke’s first novel captures that agitated, electric moment between youth and adulthood when every new feeling becomes a source of mystery and wonder, and every experience seems overlaid with staggering possibility or certain doom. Hawke’s narrator will be disconcertingly familiar to anyone who has ever felt the fierceness of young love: Meeting Sarah catapults William into a world of shame and ardor and unspeakable tenderness, and in six head-spinning months he comes to know both the restless, overmastering ache of first love and the wild and ruinous grief it leaves behind.

In the voice of William–anguished, funny, improbably earnest and affecting–Hawke renders a painfully authentic portrait of a young man’s search for self-acceptance in the face of heartbreak and rejection. The Hottest State vividly evokes the violent self-interrogation that marks the end of youth and–with wisdom, compassion, and humor–offers a poignant story of a young man standing on the cusp of great change.

I must admit I was intrigued to read this because I had read most negative reviews of it. Why that piques my interest, I couldn’t say. I don’t typically seek out reading novels written by celebrities. In fact, I don’t think I ever have read one written by anyone else. But I just sort of stumbled on it while perusing the bookshelves at the library and thought, why not give it a go?

It’s not bad. It’s just…forgettable. The protagonist is needy and pathetic. He latches on to a plain-Jane girl, Sarah, and becomes instantly enamored with her and grows increasingly frustrated when he can’t quite figure her out, or why she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings in the some comparable manner. She is guarded and cautious, scared and self-conscious. And because it told in first person from William’s perspective, as readers, we aren’t privy to the inner workings of Sarah. But William speculates and obsesses. And he has strange urges, such as hoping she will get pregnant or spontaneously proposing marriage. He recognizes his oddities and attributes them to a childhood of being raised without a father. He laments on the memories he has of his father, how he wishes he could have been there. How he wouldn’t be so fucked up of he were.

It’s isn’t some psychological examination, this novel. It takes place in a rather short span of time. A few weeks, really. That’s how long it takes for this relationship to begin and blossom and then deteriorate and end. More than anything it is a coming-of-age story about a man in his early twenties trying to figure out a way to exist in a world he doesn’t quite like or understand.

As for the creative merits of the book, there are few. The prose is pedestrian and plain, lacking any sense of whimsy or flow. It could almost be a diary for William. Likewise, the dialogue is sort of odd an unnatural in many instances, often times taking you out of the story.

I can’t say I recommend it. Again, it’s not bad. It’s just missing something, I think. And I suppose it didn’t help that I found the protagonist kind of unlikable. He even creeped me out a bit. In the end, I just didn’t understand how he formed such intense emotions and pursued this romantic relationship. At times, he didn’t even seem to like Sarah. SO why bother?

I guess the same could be said for The Hottest State.