Its just like Jane Austen, but with reality TV, Cross Fit, anorexia, and tons of premarital sex. CBR8 review 33.

Eligible is not a 5-star piece of literature. But I enjoyed the hell out of it. I could not put this sucker down.

I’m sort of sad that I’m now caught up with all of the books thus far written for The Austen Project (see my previous reviews of Emma: A Modern Retelling, Northanger Abbey, and Sense & Sensibility) and this one is by far my favorite.

Liz Bennet is in her late 30’s, living as a magazine editor in New York City, having an affair with the ghastly (and married!) Jasper Wick. She and her sister Jane (almost 40, a yoga instructor, undergoing IVF treatment to get pregnant with no boyfriend on the scene) fly home to Cincinnati when their father has emergency heart surgery, and move back in to their childhood home with their three ridiculous younger sisters and their intolerant of everything mother.

At a 4th of July barbecue at their friend Charlotte Lucas’ house, they meet Dr. Chip Bingley, a former contestant on Eligible — just like The Bachelor– who was infamous for being a cryer, his horrid sister Caroline (who also happens to be his agent), and Chip’s friend Fitzwilliam Darcy (a talented neurosurgeon new to Cincinnati and not loving it). Of course Chip and Jane immediately hit it off, Caroline is a shrill bitch, and Darcy is a standoffish jerk.

But here’s the thing…in this version of Pride & Prejudice, Darcy just isn’t that bad. Liz is WAY worse then he is. She’s often rude, sometimes crass, and always gossipy. Her younger sisters Kitty and Lydia are absolutely AWFUL. Jane seems sort of dim. Her mother is a racist with a shopping addiction. And her father is sort of a jerk for never doing anything about any of the nonsense he sees going on around him. Mary shows a bit of personality (I know. Right?), and Lydia is almost redeemed in the end, but I really just didn’t like Liz all that much. Yes, Liz looks after her family and tries to help them sort out their various issues, but she sort of went about it with a martyr complex. Meh.

And yet, I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. EVEN THOUGH I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT. Weird, huh?

I enjoyed Cousin Willie, the Silicon Valley millionaire who comes to town to attempt to woo his step-cousin, but settles for Charlotte instead. I loved that Darcy was always spotted at Skyline Chili. I liked how Sittenfeld brought Cincinatti alive, showing that it isn’t just a boring Mid West city. And I really enjoyed the relationships that both Lydia and Kitty ended up in.

What I didn’t really care for was Liz’s obsession with the obnoxious Jasper, nor her initial treatment of Darcy. I get that Liz is a grown woman, but the way that she used sex and used her partners really annoyed me. I thought Darcy deserved better, and I was glad when she realized the same.

I also could have done without all of the spiders.

While this isn’t quite as fun as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

 

 

Damn you, Uncle Stevie. I’m not ready for these books to end. CBR8 Review 32.

The adventures of Retired Detective Bill Hodges and his friends have come to an end, and I’m sad.

I didn’t expect a whole lot when Uncle Stevie announced that he was working on a trilogy of mystery novels a few years ago. But I adored Mr. Mercedes, and couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. And I really liked 99% of Finders Keepers…it was only that 1% about stupid Brady Hartsfield moving things around with his mind that bugged me. So, I was kind of irked when I found out that End of Watch was about Brady. I just wanted Bill, Holly, and Jerome to keep kicking ass all over town, taking down bad guys, and not worrying about stupid Brady Hartsfield over in the traumatic brain injury ward of the local hospital. I thought I was all set with him.

But folks, this Constant Reader has been proven wrong.

End of Watch is almost COMPLETELY about Brady Hartsfield, and the obsessive evil that lives inside of him. And I couldn’t stop reading it. I NEEDED to know what was going to happen on the next page.

A brief, hopefully spoiler-free synopsis:

Brady Hartsfield isn’t as brain dead as you might think. He’s on some experimental drugs that just might have turned him into a telekinetic powerhouse. And he’s hell-bent on taking revenge on Bill Hodges for ruining his plans to blow up that concert a few years back. He wants to take Bill and Jerome down for the way they hurt him — and if he can get a slew of teenagers to commit suicide while he’s taking down Hodges, that would be just great, thanks.

Using some old video games that have the power to hypnotize their users, Brady sets a plan in motion that could not only ruin the lives of Bill, Jerome, and Holly, but of every single young girl that was supposed to die at the concert.

And of course, the local police aren’t buying that a “gorked out vegetable” like Brady is responsible for anything other than sitting in his chair and drooling. But Bill and Holly know better. And they start putting all of the pieces together from the various crime scenes that they are invited to by Bill’s old partner, and are willing to believe the unbelievable in order to stop Brady.

It wasn’t my favorite of the trilogy, because there was a little too much Carrie-esque, telekinetic, supernatural, magical brain stuff going on for a detective novel. But it still worked.

And it hit me in the feels, folks. We’ve gotten to know these characters so well over the past three books, that saying goodbye to them was not something I wanted to do. I want to know what’s going to happen to Barbara and her handsome new boyfriend. I need to know what Jerome is going to do when he’s finished volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. And Holly? What in the world is going to happen to someone like Holly if she isn’t out in the world solving crimes all day long? And I’m going to miss Bill Hodges. I’m going to miss the way he solves crimes with old-school methods, how he completely doesn’t understand technology, and how his unlikely friendships with Jerome and Holly made him a better man in the last chapters of his life.

These are things I stay up thinking about at night, Uncle Stevie. Thanks for creating these characters and telling their stories. I can’t wait to find out what you’re working on for us next.

 

Guess who’s back? It’s Travelin’ Jack. CBR8 Review 31.

Another check mark for me as I make my way back through all of the Dark Tower related content that dear Uncle Stevie has produced over the years. I’m happy to report that this one was a bit of a pleasant surprise.

After being slightly disappointed by my re-read of The Talisman earlier this year, I wasn’t exactly excited about starting its sequel, Black House. I have a vague memory of reading it when it was first published, and pretty much thinking it was a mess. All I remember was that the book featured good old Travelin’ Jack Sawyer, his new blind friend that he’s reading Bleak House to at night, and a bunch of tough, bearded biker guys who were somehow more than meets the eye. Other than that, I honestly drew a big blank when trying to remember the plot of this one.

Good old Travelin’ Jack is now a retired police detective from California who is living in rural Wisconsin. He loves his country home, because it reminds him of someplace, but he’s not sure where. Jack has taken great pains over the past 20 years to forget about his summer in The Territories, and has almost no recollection about his adventures at all.

In the sleepy little country town where Jack has now made his home, something terrible is happening. There’s a monster out there (dubbed the Fisherman) murdering (and eating. ew.) children, and the local police are at their collective wits end. Jack is lured back into investigative work by his friends on the force, and finds that there is far more to this case than anyone might have guessed.

I think its safe to say that I’m not really spoiling anything by telling you that there are forces from other worlds at work here, many of whom are connected to our pal Roland Deschain and his quest to find the Tower. The Crimson King is the real bad guy, having his lackeys (including the Fisherman) find children from all over the world (and worlds) to become “breakers” and assist in his ongoing obsession of destroying the tower. When the Fisherman snatches young Tyler Marshall — perhaps one of strongest breakers of all time, second only to Ted Brautigan — something inside of Jack Sawyer wakes up, and he knows that he’s the only one who’s going to be able to stop the Fisherman and get Tyler back. And that he’s going to have to go back to the Territories to get to the bottom of all of this.

There’s actually a lot to like here. The first 100 or so pages are great — a simple overview of a small town in Wisconsin on a lovely summer day. Some people are nice, and some people aren’t. Some homes are happy, and some are definitely not. The narrative weaves in and out of various locations, introducing characters and getting to know the town. Its quite well done.

I also love trying to figure out which author was responsible for different parts. I’m assuming that we can thank King for the well educated, beer brewing biker gang. I’m fascinated by their working relationship and would love to know how they go about writing these books. Word on the street is that they are talking about a third…

But.

Would I recommend this book to someone who isn’t familiar with the whole Tower quest? Nope. There’s too much going on that might just come off as nonsense. Too much about Ka and talking monorails and mad red kings. But what about as a solitary sequel to the Talisman? Yes, there are some of the same characters, and yes, there are scenes in the Territories, but really, this only works if you’ve read all 7 Tower books AND The Talisman.

 

 

 

 

Excuse me while I make some hard-boiled eggs, curl up into a ball, and cry. CBR8 Review 30.

Well.
This certainly wasn’t the most uplifting book, was it?

Buy that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good one. And it’s definitely one that’s going to stay with me for a very long time. It’s going to make me think about some of the parenting choices that ive made over the past 12 years, and make me wonder about some of the decisions my own parents made when I was growing up. And it’s going to make me teach my son to make his own damn hard-boiled eggs.

The story is about a dead girl named Lydia in early 1970s Ohio. She’s dead when the story begins, but her family doesn’t know yet. She drowned in the lake at the top of her nice, safe, suburban street, leaving behind her parents, her older brother, Nath, and her younger sister, Hannah.

But its Lydia who is everyone’s favorite. Her brother and sister simply exist in her shadow. Her parents thought that she was the sun that the rest of the family revolved around, when in actuality, Lydia felt like a failure and a liar.

She wasn’t the star science student that her mother wanted and needed her to be. She was never going to be able to be a doctor, no matter how badly her mom wished it. Her mom was supposed to be a doctor, but she left Harvard when she got pregnant and got married instead.

And Lydia wasn’t the popular, normal, “American” teenage girl that her father wanted, either. All he wanted was to have Lydia fit in — to have friends to gossip on the phone with and go the the mall with. Her dad grew up isolated from everyone in his own school — he was the only Chinese student ever at his private high school. But Lydia didn’t have friends and simply lied to her family about it. She was alone most of the time, and ready to burst from the pressure of it all.

Toss in some “casual” 1970s racism, parents who are aimlessly drifting through their marriage, and a mysterious boy who lives at the end of the street, and you’ve got quite a depressing mystery. Who was the real Lydia? Did anyone even know? Why was she alone on the lake in the middle of the night? Lydia couldn’t even swim. She was smarter than that. Wasn’t she?

This book was beautifully written. Celeste Ng brought the 1970s back to life in vivid, polyester blend colors. I could feel how hard it was for each of these siblings to simply exist every day — Nath, who just wanted to be noticed for the brilliant young man that he was, and Hannah, who was so much more than just a late-in-life “mistake”. And for Lydia, who was so afraid to disappoint her parents in any way. Who never wanted to be responsible for anything that might diminish the love that they showed her.

Yeah, this one’s a tearjerker for sure, but so good. I’d put it on par with other 1970s novels like The Virgin Suicices, The Ice Storm, and Middlesex. But my god, now I really need to read something brainless and uplifting. This one was tough.