Shelf Control is hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies. Instead of always looking ahead to upcoming new releases, I thought I’d start a weekly feature focusing on already released books that I want to read. Consider this a variation of a Wishing & Waiting post… but looking at books already available, and in most cases, books that are either on my shelves or on my Kindle!
Title: The Circle
Author: Dave Eggers
Published: 2013
Length: 493 pages
Brief Synopsis from Goodreads: When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.
As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.
Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.
What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.
How I got it: On vacation in South Carolina at a library book sale.
When I got it: 2023
Why I want to read it: I’ve been wanting to read this book for a really long time, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday! Hosted by Socrates Book Reviews this is where you share the first paragraph of one of the books that you are currently reading.
“In one way, at least, our lives really are like movies.”
Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: A young Native girl’s hunt for answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe’s reservation lead her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself, in this atmospheric and stunningly poignant debut.
Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step–an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole.
With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she’s sure lies in the legends of her tribe’s past.
When Anna’s own little sister also disappears, she’ll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation–both ancient and new–are strong, and sometimes, it’s the stories that never get told that are the most important.
Part gripping thriller and part mythological horror, author Nick Medina spins an incisive and timely novel of life as an outcast, the cost of forgetting tradition, and the courage it takes to become who you were always meant to be.
My Review: Anna Horn works hard at a local casino to help support her family, and she is also passionate about learning about her tribe’s history and culture.
However, Anna’s life is overshadowed by a series of disappearances. Several girls from her tribe have gone missing without a trace, and the authorities are no closer to finding them. In fact, they aren’t trying very hard to locate them, as they are believed to be runaways. Anna believes otherwise. She is haunted by a recurring nightmare, in which she sees a mythological decapitated head, that she believes has eaten these young missing women. This head is part of an old tale told to her by her uncle when she was small.
When Anna’s sister, Grace, goes missing, Anna starts to investigate her disappearance. As Anna gets closer to the truth, she puts herself in grave danger. She must confront not only the supernatural but also the very real threat of violence from those who want to keep the secrets of the reservation buried.
The power of Medina’s writing had me hooked from the beginning. I absolutely love the way that Medina masterfully weaves Native American mythology into the story. It adds an entirely new level of chill and suspense that I could not find in other books. Until the very end, I was unsure as to whether the decapitated head was real (and following Anna around — shudder), or whether there was only a human element involved. I won’t spoil it for you!
Medina’s book is even more terrifying because, while fiction, highlights a very real problem. Stories of missing Native American women are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. Medina’s writing brings one factoid to life: not all disappearances can be explained away by supernatural conspiracy theories and lore– some very human villains exist in our world today, too.
Stats: As of the time of writing this review (November 25, 2023), this book only has a 3.87 rating on Goodreads. I am honestly surprised, as I expected it to have a higher overall rating, especially since it is a Nominee for the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards in Horror. Some of the lower ratings discussed that while invested in the characters, the alternating timeline (before Grace went missing vs. after) was distracting and took away from the emotional resonance of the book. A second common complaint was that the designation of horror did the book a disservice because readers were not able to properly manage expectations. This book is less of a horror book and more of a thriller/mystery.
I can understand the above points, but I myself was not bothered by the alternating timelines, nor did I realize that the book was a horror book when I checked it out from the library. Even given the mixed reviews, I would still recommend this book.
Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads:Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?
My Review:Happy Place is a heartwarming story about two people who pretend to still be a couple for their annual weeklong vacation with their friend group. The Goodreads summary above is pretty accurate, so there is not much to add from my end to the plot description.
I absolutely loved this book. From the very beginning I was rooting for Harriet and Wyn. I ached for their heartbreak and hoped that they could work it out. I just wanted to read right through to the end because watching them struggle was tearing me apart. Although I knew that they would probably get together in the end — because isn’t that the ending of most romance novels? — I was still worried that they wouldn’t. Real life extended my reading of this book for 7 long days…but in the end I was relieved, and I must admit that the journey getting there was very enjoyable. I have read other Emily Henry books (you can see my reviews of the books by clicking on the titles: People We Meet On Vacation, Book Lovers and Beach Read), but Happy Place is by far my favorite.
The other characters are also great and overall relatable, and the friendships/relationships in the book are realistic. I also really loved the little details in Happy Place, like the book store called Murder She Read and the fact that the characters loved the show Murder She Wrote.
Stats: As of writing this blog post (October 10, 2023) this book has a rating of 4.09 on Goodreads. In my view, this is not enough stars. She deserves 5 stars for this book!
Title: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Author: Max Brooks
Book Length:342 pages
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Genre: Fiction, Horror, Zombies, Post-Apocalyptic
Read Start Date: August 18, 2023
Read Finish Date: October 1, 2023
Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.
Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”
My Review:World War Z explores the global response to a zombie apocalypse. The book is presented as an oral history, with various individuals recounting their experiences during and after the outbreak, which occurred over a decade before the interviews took place. The novel begins with a brief introduction explaining the origins of the zombie virus, and how it quickly spreads worldwide, causing the dead to reanimate and hunger for human flesh. As the outbreak intensifies, governments and societies are unprepared, leading to chaos and widespread panic. The book then shifts to a series of first-person accounts from survivors, including soldiers, politicians, doctors, and everyday people from different countries and backgrounds.
I recently watched the movie adaptation of World War Z on Netflix (starring Brad Pitt) and I loved it so much, I watched it three times in a row. I remembered that I had World War Z on my bookshelf — a recent purchase from a used book store during my list trip to the US — and so began to read it. I was a little disappointed that the book was nothing like the movie. There was no Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator, who was recruited by the government to travel the world and find a way to stop the infection. Lane travels to South Korea, Israel, and Russia, where he learns more about the zombies and their weaknesses. eventually discovering a sort of cure. In the book, there was no singular story to focus on. Rather, each chapter is told by a different person and we only get to see snippets of the zombie apocalypse through each individual’s memory.
While the book was interesting, it wasn’t the action packed adventure that I was expecting. It was more slow paced and at times I struggled to get through certain stories. Ultimately, whether or not you enjoy World War Z will depend on your personal preferences. If you’re a fan of zombies, horror, or science fiction, then you might enjoy the novel and/or the film.
Stats: At the time of writing this blog post (October 10, 2023), this book has a rating of 4.02 on Goodreads. My rating of three stars falls a little below the average rating.
Recommended? Yes, but either read the book before the movie, or honestly skip the book all together and just watch the movie.
Welcome to Friday 56! Hosted by Freda’s Voice, you turn to page 56 or 56% in any book or reading device and pick a sentence that grabs you.
“She could see the luminosity of the casino and resort through the screen of trees when she looked over her shoulder. The complex was so big and bright it made her think of the sun when it set on the horizon. Just a few years earlier, there’d been an expansive field where the resort now stood. It’d been a place for exploration, a place where a child’s imagination could roam.”
Shelf Control is hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies. Instead of always looking ahead to upcoming new releases, I thought I’d start a weekly feature focusing on already released books that I want to read. Consider this a variation of a Wishing & Waiting post… but looking at books already available, and in most cases, books that are either on my shelves or on my Kindle!
Title: Sisters of the Lost Nation
Author: Nick Medina
Published: 2023
Length: 331 pages
Brief Synopsis from Goodreads: A young Native girl’s hunt for answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe’s reservation lead her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself, in this atmospheric and stunningly poignant debut.
Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step–an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole.
With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she’s sure lies in the legends of her tribe’s past.
When Anna’s own little sister also disappears, she’ll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation–both ancient and new–are strong, and sometimes, it’s the stories that never get told that are the most important.
Part gripping thriller and part mythological horror, author Nick Medina spins an incisive and timely novel of life as an outcast, the cost of forgetting tradition, and the courage it takes to become who you were always meant to be.
How I got it: I checked this book out at the library on a 14 day loan when I was visiting my parents. Last night it was hard to sleep because I kept wanting to read.
When I got it: 2023
Why I want to read it: The synopsis sounded really good!
First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday! Hosted by Socrates Book Reviews this is where you share the first paragraph of one of the books that you are currently reading.
Marriages are tricky at the best of times, especially when one of you is dead.
Vincent Banecroft, the irascible editor of The Stranger Times, has never believed his wife died despite emphatic evidence to the contrary. Now, against all odds, it seems he may actually be proved right; but what lengths will he go to in an attempt to rescue her?
With Banecroft distracted, the shock resignation of assistant editor, Hannah Willis, couldn’t have come at a worse time. It speaks volumes that her decision to reconcile with her philandering ex-husband is only marginally less surprising than Banecroft and his wife getting back together. In this time of crisis, is her decision to swan off to a fancy new-age retreat run by a celebrity cult really the best thing for anyone?
As if that wasn’t enough, one of the paper’s ex-columnists has disappeared, a particularly impressive trick seeing as he never existed in the first place.
Floating statues, hijacked ghosts, homicidal cherubs, irate starlings, Reliant Robins and quite possibly several deeply sinister conspiracies; all-in-all, a typical week for the staff of The Stranger Times.
My Review:Love Will Tear Us Apart by C.K. McDonnell is a riotous, hilarious, and heartfelt romp through the magical underbelly of Manchester. It’s the third book in the Stranger Times series, and it’s just as good as the first two, if not better.
McDonnell has a knack for creating quirky and unforgettable characters, and this book is no exception. We’re reunited with the intrepid team of journalists from the Stranger Times.
All of our old favorite characters are back and better than ever. Banecroft has never believed that his wife is dead, even though there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Now, as her voice emanates through the mouth of the ghostly resident of the Stranger Times office, Banecroft has reason to believe that she is still alive.
Hannah has resigned suddenly from the paper to get back with her husband, who has changed completely. She is attending the same retreat that made him a better person. The new assistant editor is, at first impression, bothersome, and it doesn’t seem that she will get along with the rest of the staff, especially Grace, whom she sets the task of collecting old invoices for an audit. Stella continues to discover the extent (or lack thereof) of her powers, and Ox, Stanley, and Reggie get into their own side investigations.
I don’t want to spoil the book, so I will just say that the plot is as wild and unpredictable as you’d expect from a C.K. McDonnell novel. It’s full of twists and turns, and there’s never a dull moment.
Of course, no Stranger Times book would be complete without its fair share of humor. And Love Will Tear Us Apart is no exception. McDonnell’s writing is witty and sharp, and he has a knack for finding the funny side of even the most dire situations. A couple of my favorite quotes are below.
“Banecroft picked up the bottle of Irish whiskey that sat on his desk and poured himself a healthy measure, then kept pouring past the point of unhealthy all the way to death wish.”
page 4
“‘The words ‘I didn’t like it’ do not do justice to my sentiments. I only read the first two chapters, but it is the worst thing I have ever been in the presence of. It’s basically a hate crime. If an Irish person were to read it, there is every chance they would come and find you and beat you to death with it.'”
page 191
Overall, Love Will Tear Us Apart is a must-read for fans of urban fantasy, comedy, and all things weird and wonderful. It’s a book that will make you laugh, cry, and think, all at the same time.
Stats: As of writing this review on October 10, 2023, this book has an average rating of 4.46 stars. As you can see, many people think this book is great, so you don’t have to take only my word for it.
Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: There are Dark Forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular) and so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them. A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but more often the weird) of modern life, it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable . . .
At least that’s their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and -mouthed husk of a man who thinks little (and believes less) of the publication he edits, while his staff are a ragtag group of wastrels and misfits, each with their own secrets to hide and axes to grind. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door – and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who’s got her own set of problems.
It’s when tragedy strikes in Hannah’s first week on the job that The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious, proper, actual investigative journalism. What they discover leads them to a shocking realisation: that some of the stories they’d previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly, gruesomely real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker foes than they could ever have imagined. It’s one thing reporting on the unexplained and paranormal but it’s quite another being dragged into the battle between the forces of Good and Evil . . .
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Humor, Vampires, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Read Start Date: July 7, 2023
Read Finish Date: August 7, 2023
Number of Book in Series: 2
Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: Vampires do not exist. Everyone knows this. So it’s particularly annoying when they start popping up around Manchester .
Nobody is pleased about it. Not the Founders, the secret organisation for whom vampires were invented as an allegory, nor the Folk, the magical people hidden in plain sight who only want a quiet life. And definitely not the people of Manchester, because there is nothing more irksome than being murdered by an allegory run amok. Somebody needs to sort this out fast before all Hell really breaks loose – step forward the staff of The Stranger Times.
It’s not like they don’t have enough to be dealing with. Assistant Editor Hannah has come back from getting messily divorced to discover that someone is trying to kidnap a member of their staff and while editor Vincent Banecroft would be delighted to see the back of any of his team, he doesn’t like people touching his stuff – it’s the principle of the thing.
Throw in a precarious plumbing situation, gambling debts, an entirely new way of swearing, and a certain detective inspector with what could be kindly referred to as ‘a lot of baggage’ and it all adds up to another hectic week in the life of the newspaper committed to reporting the truth that nobody else will touch.
Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake.
As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
My Review:Tom Lake tells the story of Lara Novak, a woman who lives on a cherry orchard in Northern Michigan with her husband. Her three adult daughters return to the farm for the season. I believe that the present day events are set during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pandemic is mentioned only in passing and doesn’t become an overarching theme of the novel. While picking cherries, the daughters ask Lara to tell them the story of Lara’s summer at Tom Lake during her early twenties, where, while participating in a summer stock theater company, she fell in love with a famous actor named Peter Duke. The daughters grew up watching Peter Duke in several favorite movies, and only recently learned that their mother had dated him in her youth.
The novel alternates between the present and the past, and the stories soon intertwine in a intricately woven story, where past actions / events, resonate with /dictate the present.
The storylines are character heavy, and not much happens other than the telling of their lives. In such books, I always find that it is vital that the book is written well, and that the lives of the characters are engaging enough to keep my interest. Both are true with Tom Lake. Patchett writes in beautiful prose, and her characters are relatable and loveable.
Stats: as of writing this post (October 9, 2023) Tom Lake has a 4.23 rating on Goodreads. My review of 4 stars is on par with the masses.
The Legal Alien 