"I...I don't know. I mean he was my son. Our son. But what he was doing was wrong. I have to believe that. Because if I don't, then everything I did was a mistake." Never thought I could sympathize with a book set around a whole lot of racist and homophobic people, but dang. This book is brutal and tender, face-paced and beautiful. Set in Virginia, we follow Buddy Lee and Ike, two fathers who have just gone through the unimaginable - their married sons were killed in broad daylight, for reasons unknown. Both fathers are struggling with not only the grief of losing their child, but the knowledge that they will never be able to repair the broken relationship between them that formed when they were unable to accept the fact that their children were gay. When the police mark the case as inactive, the men realize that the only chance they have of putting things right is by using their criminal past to their advantage, and going after whoever put their boys in the ground. You could feel the grief all the characters were feeling, and the action scenes were really well done. This book is as violent as it is beautiful, and I really hope they do wind up making it into a movie - I think it has the chance to be an amazing adaptation.

I love this book so much, one of my all time favorites!

Russell couldn't fall asleep. He wasn't tired. He tried counting all sorts of things and nothing helped. He tried counting his legs and then the stars and he found a new bed and he still wasn't tired. Then he tried counting sheep. That put him to sleep.

A more somber, but beautifully executed story of Juliet Browning and her romantic relationship while studying art in Venice during the Second World War. Some heartbreak, some inspiration, woven between 1938 and 2011. Caroline Grant, the grand niece of ‘Lettie’ embarks on a trip to solve the mystery of a sketchbook. Different from Bowen’s quirky and lighthearted Georgie romps.

I listened to this book, read by the author. It is a letter to his mother telling her how he viewed his childhood with her. She is Vietnamese and brought him up in America alongside her own mother. His American father was aware but not involved in his upbringing. His mother is quite abusive to him and he also has a relationship with a boy called Trevor so it is quite a difficult book to listen to, but beautifully written.

Really great book, keeps me reading more!

This is very much more of a character-driven story, and a character-exploration story, rather than a page turning, thrilling mystery novel. The main character, Anna, has just recently returned home after suffering a family tragedy and being kicked out by her husband. A detective who specializes in missing children, Anna's hometown has long haunted her as a girl she went to school with went missing in a still-unsolved case. Just as she returns, as it happens, another girl has gone missing - and Anna very quickly finds herself involved in solving the case. As she does so, her past trauma comes to light and becomes a force she will need to deal with if she is going to find Cameron and return to her family. I didn't really find this to be a page turner. In fact, it took me a while to get past the first section, because it's really just setting the stage and nothing much happens. I finally sat down and just plowed through the book in a day. It wasn't bad, but everything felt kind of flat and I didn't really care about Anna as a character. Even as she cried about the unknown trauma she had experienced, I never felt myself dying to know what had happened to her that led to her husband kicking her out. I just didn't care. I also don't love using real-life cases in a fictional story. It just felt exploitive and gross to me. Polly was a real girl who underwent something terrible, as did her family, and using it as some form of entertainment just doesn't sit right with me. Especially when you're going to make it a big piece of your plot, with your character investigating her bedroom and listening to a psychic talk about her.

Zachary flips through an old library book and is shocked to find that he is inexplicably one of the characters in it. The ensuing search to unravel this mystery takes him through ancient underground libraries, lost cities, magical seas, in stories that transcend Time and Fate. The author writes in a hauntingly poetic style that immediately draws you into this magical world.

It was a great book to just relax and enjoy reading.

Nice book, action, not a lot of details though. Overall, I thought it was good but not great.