I've been back from the beach for weeks now, but here we go anyway.
I read
The High Tide Club on the beach because I have a long tradition of reading Mary Kay Andrews on the beach. Typical Andrews--Southern-fried mystery and romance with a little comedy thrown in for good measure. Perfect.
Last Tang Standing--I put this one off for a long time because the reviews said it was kind of like
Crazy Rich Asians and I think I am the only person ever who didn't like
Crazy Rich Asians. I really enjoyed this one, though, although I have to say that this is the second "romance" novel I've read in which the female lead falls for a guy she works with, only the guy is kind of a distant secondary character and it's
when she decides he's the love of her life because he's played such a small part in it. No matter; Andrea Tang is quite funny, with or without a man.
Steel Fear--written by a writing team of two, one of them a former Navy Seal; they've written some nonfiction books before, but this is their first novel. Between the Seal and the porn-flick title, I almost didn't read it, but it was a good beach read, too. A troubled Navy Seal is taken aboard an aircraft carrier under mysterious circumstances; murder and mayhem ensue. The Seal is not well and has blank spots in his memory; is he killing people on board? Or did he do something even worse before he was put to sea? There's some real
moments at the end and you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln (some of which is more interesting than you might think), but I found it more engaging than I expected and I will read the next one in the series.
What Waits for You--the second in a series about a Hollywood detective with an academic background. I read and liked the first one enough to read this one; I like all the philosophical discussions that most reviewers consider bogdown. But if that sounds interesting, be warned that these books are REALLY vividly violent. The first chapter of this one alone is just
I did think that the murders were going to go unsolved in this one (they were solved, sort of, in about two pages at the end), but the murders in this series serve mostly as a catalyst for ruminations on society by the main character.
Save Me from Dangerous Men--the blurbs say that if you like Jack Reacher or Lisbeth Sanders, you will love this book. Hmm, well, not so much for me. The main character is a private detective/bookstore owner/vigilante who runs around meting out justice to abusive men at night, in spite of working all day at her other careers. She is hired to look into what she is told is a case of corporate espionage, which of course turns out to be something completely different and crosses over into her "hobby." I could tell within the first two pages that the author is male because the main character is such a guy's idea of a
chick and it irritated me throughout. I will not read the next book in this series. Moving on.
The Road Trip--so many rave reviews, such a long waiting list, such perfect timing as it landed on my Nook on the last day of vacation, and a big meh from me. I liked her first book,
The Flatshare, but this one just didn't do it for me. I found everyone in the book annoying--and not just the people who are supposed to be annoying. I think I am just too old for this book.
Back from the beach:
Notes on a Silencing--I read Lacy Crawford's
Early Decision, a satire that lampoons hothouse parents, and liked it. Well, this is a very different sort of book. Crawford details her sexual assault when she was a 15-year-old student at the elite St. Paul's School and the subsequent coverup on the part of the school. This is one of the most enraging books I have ever read. I can't even articulate how angry I was reading it and I still feel seething burning rage just thinking about it. It's not just what the school did to her; it's that they did the same things to so many others and got away with it for so long--and there's not a lot of evidence that things have changed.
Moving on.
You Never Forget Your First--I know what you are thinking, but it's a biography of George Washington
. I don't think I've ever finished a biography of Washington before, as I never found him interesting, but I enjoyed this one, which takes feminist (and IMO accurate) jabs at male biographers of Washington, among other things. It's kind of a biography-lite book, but I learned some new things anyway and I finished it!
I even found Washington kind of interesting.
Meditations-- people kept telling me that I should read about Stoicism because of the pan.demic, so I am working my way through Marcus Aurelius. It's interesting and thought-provoking, but slow going. It drove me to read....
The Night Before--"Ferociously smart." The covers says so. I certainly don't. I am pretty sure I started losing IQ points as soon as I opened the cover. A woman with a complicated past goes on a date with a stranger and doesn't come home. Her sister and family go looking for her. There is a whole lot of Psychology 101 psychobabble throughout; the red herrings glow in the dark in their obviousness, and the villain is apparent pretty early on (although his
motive isn't explained until the end). It drove me back to Marcus Aurelius.
I assume you've read Nora Roberts and not just her JD Robb books?
