Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill What a story. This book is the true story of the niece of the current head of scientology. She has left the group as an adult but grew up in the church and shares her personal story of a childhood stolen from her and of her transition to the outside world. I haven't been a fan of scientology and have felt it was borderline cult for some time. After reading this book I am more then ever convinced of what a terrible group this is. It is worrisome to think that people get sucked in to this belief system and made me sad to think about what the believers had to gain from joining this group. I truly am impressed at the courage this woman had to speak out and share her story and her family's story. She has survived quite an ordeal and I hope she can now lead a more peaceful adult life.
The Pretty One by Lucinda Rosenfeld It's possible my expectations for this book were too high. I felt disappointed as it has been on my list for some time and I really thought based on what I had heard about it and read in the reviews that it would be great. The story is about 3 sisters and their roles in their family system. We follow them as adults struggling to help their aging parents and manage their own lives. I liked the writers style but I just felt the story was a little flat. It seemed to have potential but never really went anywhere for me. I got invested in the characters because the author gave so much to them, but took much time explaining them and suddenly the book had ended. Overall not a bad read but I think I just missed the point and for me the book wasn't that memorable.
Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan I like this author and hadn't read a book of his in awhile. This one has also been on my list for some time. It's the story of a family returning to their summer cottage for one last time. The family matriarch, Emily, has decided to sell now that her children are grown up, her grandkids are getting older, and she has been widowed. With her two grown children and four grandchildren and sister in law she heads to the cottage one last time to say goodbye. The book is narrated by each member of the family at different points and is broken into sections by days of the week that they are at the cottage. I liked the different narrators especially given that their were 3 generations of the family at the house. The sister in law also had her own memories of her childhood coming to the cottage with her brother and parents as it was their family cottage which gave the environment more dimension as well. The cottage was located on a lake in a small town that was going through it's own changes with developments and closings of pastime favorites such as the local mini golf course. The family is going through it's own growing pains with each member of the family reliving their memories in the cottage at different stages in their lives. We also see each member of the family evaluating their futures and what their family will look like without the patriarch and what that means for each family member.
Something else interesting to me is that we first meet Emily, the matriarch, as narrator and the author aligns the reader with the character but from that point forward you get a negative representation of this character from each other member of the family. It's clear they love her as their sister in law, mother, grandmother but it's also clear they all have issues with her personality. I found myself wondering throughout the book about this deliberate choice by the author. Overall I really liked the story and the growth of each character. I think the decision to only follow the family for one week was a good one but also left me as the reader wanting to know more but on the last hand just made so much sense in terms of what the author was trying to convey to us as readers.
Jeneration X by Jen Lancaster This author has been on my list for some time, not sure how she got on it. I liked the book enough, it's her own take on becoming an adult after already being one in age for some years. I liked her personal stories and I loved the sarcasm and the humor. I guess my problem is that it's about a month later that I'm writing this and I can't quite remember the book that well. It was basically a rant on things in life that bother the author and it was cute but it just had no real substance to it. I'm willing to give her another shot though and try another of her books because while I may not remember exactly what I read, I do remember smiling and laughing throughout the book which is telling in a different way.
The Week Before the Wedding by Beth Kendrick Again not my best pick. I must stop getting sucked in just because the word "wedding" is on a book. This was the story of a woman about to marry for the second time but running into her first husband during her wedding week. It was way too romance novel and unbelievable and over the top for me. The twist and turns didn't really make sense and I didn't really like the direction the author was steering us in as readers. The book was very predictable and just really didn't hold my attention throughout. It takes a lot for me to stop reading a book once I've started and while I didn't do that here, I was glad when I was done reading the book.
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova Really liking this author lately and her writing style. This book was about a high powered career woman balancing family and work until a tragic accident leaves her no choice but to focus on herself. She is in a bad car accident and while she survives she has a traumatic brain injury that literally leaves her neglected the left, hence the title. I had no idea this condition existed, while this book was fiction this condition is very real and was so interesting to read about. When the narrator wakes from the accident she can't see or feel or understand the existence of left. It was such a hard concept to grasp at first and I found myself throughout the book really trying to think about what this would mean for an individual and how it would feel to have this condition. While I liked the way the story was told and the forced reevaluation of life and having to go with the changes this accident made happen for the narrator, I disliked the eventual end of the book. It got a little too predictable and I wish it had gone in a different direction. The other thing I liked was the underlying story of the narrators own family history and the way the accident helped her to repair her relationship with her own mother.
The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian This book was scary. I don't usually do scary. You will not find me at a scary movie. You will not even find me at home watching a scary movie. I really like this author so even though this book was a ghost story I still added it to my list. It also seemed to me from reading what it was about that it would be more suspenseful and borderline witch crafty then as ghost story as it was. It's the story of an airplane captain who's plan crashes into a lake when birds fly into the engines and he attempts to land the plan like Sully Sullenberger did on the Hudson river. His attempt however is not successful and 39 of the 40 something passengers die. The captain and his family move from their suburban home to a small town in the mountains to give him a peaceful place to recover from the trauma. He has a wife and twin young daughters who move with him. The house they find is an old house that needs work and that used to be the home of a set of twin boys, one of whom is thought to have killed himself in his teens. The basement has a locked door with 39 carriage bolt locks. The town also has "herbalists" who the reader soon finds out are thought to be witches.
It was a complex story and it took awhile to merge the two stories together. The story of the airplane captain dealing with his trauma and the story of the family moving to a new town and the potential influence of witchcraft. I really liked each story separately but felt that even once they merged together it turned in a direction I was not expecting, nor wanting the story to go. I also hated the ending. I had predicted a different ending and perhaps got caught in that and then when the story took a different route I was significantly disappointed. I do think though the author did a great job telling a ghost story and keeping the reader guessing and in suspense the entire way through the book.
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