What's Broken Between Us - Alexis Bass (Book Review)

I have decided to switch up the format of my reviews slightly.  I am going to be using the synopsis from the books to begin my reviews:
Synopsis from book:
Alexis Bass’s heartbreakingly beautiful second novel is a tale of love, loss, and learning to forgive, perfect for fans of Gayle Forman and of Robyn Schneider's The Beginning of Everything.

A year and a half ago, Amanda Tart's brother got behind the wheel drunk and killed his best friend. Today, he's coming home from prison.

Amanda's been the one living with the fallout, made worse by her brother's recent unapologetic TV interview. People think he's a monster. Still, she loves him. It's her dark secret, until she starts getting close to Henry again--whose sister is paralyzed from the accident.

A year and a half ago, her brother destroyed his life. Now Amanda has to decide if she'll let his choice destroy hers.

My review:
I liked the synopsis for this book so I decided to give it a whirl.  The book starts off with Amanda's brother about to come home from prison after serving his short sentence.  Amanda is still struggling with what happened and being able to continue on with her life.  She is trying to figure out how to act and what people actually expect her to be like.  

The character development for the story is very good, you get to see what Amanda is struggling with internally and also how she perceives her family and friends.  I think the characters make you want to read more of the story and see what happens.  Amanda sees her parents as not really wanting to help that they are taking a more hands off approach and being able to figure it out on your own.  For Amanda this seems to be working, but when Jonathan comes home he needs more guidance that his parents are not giving him.  Amanda can see that he needs the structure, but is not able to help him since she really is only a child herself. 

I enjoyed the author showing the parenting style of Amanda and Jonathan's parents because it really showed the lack of guidance that she was receiving.  I feel like that setup how Amanda showed her feelings in the book.  Since she didn't have her parents to talk to or open up to she didn't know who she could really talk to and shut down expressing emotions.  Amanda was needing someone to talk to and actually open up. 

The book touches mostly on Amanda and her perceptions of everyone.  You can see as a reader how Amanda grows throughout the story.  I would have loved this book to be set as two perspectives so I could get more of a look into what Henry or Jonathon were thinking.  Henry, I would want to know what was going on with his sister and what the extent of her injuries really where.  Jonathon, I wanted to know more about what he was thinking all the time.  What his thoughts where on prison, why he didn't care if he went back, how he became him.

This is a quick read book that is easy to read at night when you have some free time.  I feel like the book lacked the second perspectives so I was left with a lot of well what could he have been thinking?  

Quotes:
"Some wounds don't heal; they aren't suppose to." 

"An even bigger miracle is the ways we find to cope with our own brutal mistakes and accept them, especially when there's no solution. Maybe, when there's no repainting what we've wrecked and we have to navigate around the shape, broken parts of our own destruction, that's when we need one another the most."

My Rating 3/5
Author website http://alexisbassbooks.com/
HarperCollins
ISBN  9780062275356
Length 298
Format Hardcover

 

My Father's Son: A Memoir - John Davis (Book Review)

Full disclosure, I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank John Davis for giving me the opportunity to read this personal memoir.

I got instantly hooked on reading this memoir and I needed to finish it in one siting.  The story starts right in with John's childhood first memory and moves through his life like a timeline.  It is very easy for the reader to follow and since it is chronologically in order you are able to imagine exactly what was happening in his life.  Also, as the reader is following along in the story John does not offer much foreshadowing so you want to keep reading to get to present day.   I think I got sucked in because I felt like something had to work out for him in the end!

The reader gets to imagine what John was going through before his parents got a divorce and than again with a mother who constantly had a new man in her life and a father who was remarried.  It looks like no one can stand up to John's father while he is a child and this continues on during his life.   John gives only a few details to each flashback, which in turn keeps the book moving as you want to know more. 


John's father Roberto caused him much drama as a child and only in the end of the memoir can John say it was child abuse.  Someone who can look back on their own life and see what wasn't correct and try to tackle those issues allows you to see how much John has grown.

This is an excellent read and for someone just getting into memoirs it is a great book to start off with.  It gives a look at how one person can overcome so many obstacles and still become successful.  The story is very personal and real, this is an easy memoir for the reader to imagine what the author was going through in their life.

My Rating 4/5
Author website https://www.facebook.com/John-Davis-967095803361217/
Outskirts Press
ISBN  9781478764199
Length 158
Format EBook

Woman with a Secret - Sophie Hannah (Book Review)

I decided to give Sophie Hannah another chance and I am so glad that I did.  I could not put down Women with a Secret.  You need to read the entire book to figure out what is exactly going on.  Not all of the details add up in the beginning or in the middle to the entire picture.  The reader is getting bits and pieces of smaller stories that in the start of the book you would never know interconnect. 

In this book it follows Nicki Clements who is a housewife with two children and loving husband.  It also follows a murder of a columnist who constantly had different opinions from popular belief.  In the beginning you can tell that Nicki is hiding something from a lot of people and maybe even deluding herself into thinking her lies are the truth.  Nicki appears to be having an affair, but looks can be somewhat deceiving.  As the book goes on you learn exactly who Nicki was talking to through the computer and met once.  Although I would argue maybe we don't know who Nicki met that one time.  As the entire book makes you question what do you actually know.

Damon Blundy who took the opposite of popular opinion and put it in his columns was murdered at his home while his devoted wife was downstairs.   The police question the wife, but she seems not to be a main suspect.  Hannah, Damon's wife, has one question for the cops and that is who was her husband actually in love with because it couldn't have been her.  Once Hannah explains herself I can see what she is saying about her husband being to devoted and to caring to quickly.

During the book I thought I put together who murdered Damon Blundy and who Nicki was supposedly corresponding with online, but I was totally wrong.  The author gives the reader so many options that it  is hard to pick just one since several people had motivates in the book.  The suspense keeps going til the last few chapters.   The character development that Sophie has given the reader keeps you wanting to know more about each person involved in the book.

I guess my one complaint was the last chapter I felt was sort of self explanatory and I would like to have known more about what happened to Nicki's crazy family instead.  I feel like as a reader I want to know if she ever confronts her parents or her so called best friend Melissa.  As the reader I got so much depth into the youth that Nicki had and avoids I wanted to see where that was going at the end of the book.

This is a book I would suggest reading when you have time to sit down and finish it quickly.  It is a can't put down type of book not one you can easily read a few pages or chapters in each night.  If you love suspense and guessing the ending this book is for you. 

Great Quote:
"I know better than anyone that sometimes a possibility is enough to keep a person going, even if it never becomes a reality."

My rating 4/5

Author website http://www.sophiehannah.com/

Publisher HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN 9780062388261

Length 374

Format hardback

Little Face -- Sophie Hannah (Book Review)

Contains Spoilers

Sometimes when I start a book I sort of have an inkling of how it is going to end; this is the same with movies and TV shows, my mom always found it odd I could predicate the ending.  I could see to many coincidences adding up with the book to be able to believe that the baby was actually missing.  Little Face begins with a first time mother who left her child for the first time for a short afternoon outing at the local health club.  She comes home to find that the baby her husband had been watching is not the baby she brought home from the hospital.  That is where the name Little Face begins.  The book switches back and forth from the present day investigation of Alice and Little Face missing versus when Alice reported her daughter missing and the police did not believe her.   Alice is convinced that her daughter has been kidnapped and another baby put in it’s place.  David her husband is now convinced that his wife is crazy.  Vivienne, David’s mother puts up the face that she believes that Alice is crazy, but towards the end of the book Alice points out that Vivienne is not sure what to believe with the baby.  The book follows the investigation of both cases, Alice trying to prove the baby is not Florence and rather Little Face and then the detectives trying to find both Alice and the baby.   

During the book Sophie Hannah works on developing each character's personalities and they really shine through the book.  Alice is a homeopath who has lost both of her parents and really took to Vivienne as a mother figure who showed her warmth and guidance in the beginning something that Alice was missing in her life.  In the beginning it does feel if Alice did really enjoy Vivienne and things did not change until they moved into the Elms and she got pregnant.  Alice throughout the time the baby is missing keeps to her character while in the house, playing the naive mother who really believes that her daughter is missing. David’s character is a little harder to follow in the story, he seems to have been bullied by his mother for so long that he doesn’t know anything else besides that.  David shows that he wants to get control of Alice by degrading her and doing things that would make his mother see Alice as crazy.  I feel this is the only way David knows how to express himself since his mother has taken so much control of his life.  Vivienne seems off from the beginning, she seems very controlling and the issues can be seen when she is forcing Alice to do things with the baby that she does not want to do.  Vivienne has also taken full control of David’s first child Felix from his dead wife Lauren.

One of the things that I did enjoy in the book is how Sophie Hannah developed the character of Lauren who was deceased.  She uses a playback of Lauren visiting Alice before she was killed giving an insight into Lauren knowing that David and Vivienne are dangerous, as well as giving her a warning to be careful.   Also, after Simon goes to visit Darryl Beer who knows a lot about Lauren’s life work and aspirations you can see she was a very educated women who had her priorities in order, so her changing her mind so abruptly about Vivienne becomes very uncharacteristic.

I feel where the book lost me on the actual missing child was a small detail that I believe could have been left out; when all the pictures taken from the hospital where deleted.  That was the moment I knew Alice was involved.  I had two theories after this small detail was given either Alice actually did swap the babies with another one or it was the same baby.  

I was not able to put it down once the story really took off of getting close to finding out who really did kill Lauren, which came to me as the bigger mystery.  I feel like the last few chapters of why Alice took off where sort of redundant and just showing that Simon was a good detective.  I liked when Sophie Hannah would have Simon just say that he knew where Alice was, but not reveal details until further on in the novel.  It helped develop Simon as a strong detective.

Overall I enjoyed Little Face, it was a fast read since you wanted to know what actually happened to the baby and who killed Lauren.  I feel I was more interested in learning who killed Lauren since I was pretty sure the baby was the same baby after the pictures all being deleted was revealed.   The character developed helped to keep the book moving along.  I don’t believe there was a lot of suspense until Vivienne and Alice were together in the pool discussing how Vivienne killed Lauren.  The mystery was more in who killed Lauren to me.  Also, the David and Alice scenes of him abusing her seemed to lead me to believe he was somehow involved in Lauren’s murder, until his computer password was Lauren than that was solved as well in my mind.

I would read this on a vacation, it is a quick read and involves some mystery.  I would probably not reread this book and would move reading more Sophie Hannah mysteries down my every growing book list since I was able to see the ending coming.

My rating 3/5

Author website http://www.sophiehannah.com/

Publisher Penguin Group

ISBN 9780143114086

Length 310

Format paperback

Book Series Number #1 in the Simon Waterhouse/Charlie Zailer series