All the Light We Cannon See by Anthony Doerr

Started: 4/10/2024

Finished: 4/17/2024

Year: 2014

Pages: 530

Genre: Literature

Grade: B-

Reason for reading: library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

"In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge."

Opinion: This was a long book but didn't feel like it was 530 pages-thanks to the short chapters. Could a lot of this been edited out-yes but I didn't feel the need to chop as I have with other books.

I Disappeared Them by Preston L. Allen

Started: 4/9/2024

Finished: 4/10/2024

Year: 2024

Pages: 305

Genre: thriller

Grade: C

Reason for reading: Early Reviewers giveaway on Library Thing

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "BULLIED AS CHILD FOR BEING OVERWEIGHT and an orphan, the serial killer in I Disappeared Them hides in plain sight. By day, he is an affable family man with a disarming smile, surrounded by his children and loving wife. At night he punches the clock as a hard-working pizza man. After work, he roams Miami's nighttime streets as the Periwinkle Killer, the sociopath passing judgment on the wicked according to a twisted moral code. He believes himself to be a defender of women and children. The Everglades is filling up with the corpses of his victims. He must be stopped, but there are no clues except the periwinkles he leaves at every crime scene."

Opinion: A thoroughly review is posted on Librarything.com

Murder of a Wedding Belle by Denise Swanson

Started: 4/7/2024

Finished: 4/9/2024

Year: 2010

Pages: 246

Genre: Mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: continuing with the series, library book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "School psychologist Skye Denison reluctantly agrees to act as maid of honor in her California cousin's over-the-top platinum-style wedding- and is also expected to assist the control-freak wedding planner. But when Skye discovers the planner dead, just one week before the big event, Skye is suddenly working double-duty.

"While overseeing every nuptial detail, she's also helping the police find out who hated the bridal consultant enough to kill her. Can Skye get her cousin to the church on time-and save herself from a killer who may actually be on the guest list?"

Opinion: A decent continuation of Skye's life...this time out of school and more family involvement.

A Haunting in the Arctic by C. J. Cooke

Started: 4/3/2024

Finished: 4/6/2024

Year: 2024

Pages: 334

Genre: paranormal fiction

Grade: B

Reason for reading: library book

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "The year is 1901, and Nicky is attacked, then wakes on board the Ormen, a whaling ship embarked on what could be its last voyage. With land still weeks away, it’s just her, the freezing ocean, and the crew – and they’re all owed something only she can give them...

"Now, over one hundred years later, the wreck of the Ormen has washed up on the forbidding, remote coast of Iceland. It’s scheduled to be destroyed, but explorer Dominique feels an inexplicable pull to document its last days, even though those who have ventured onto the wreck before her have met uncanny ends.

"Onboard the boat, Dominique will uncover a dark past riddled with lies, cruelty, and murder—and her discovery will change everything. Because she’ll soon realize she’s not alone. Something has walked the floors of the Ormen for almost a century. Something that craves revenge."

Opinion: An interesting look at a former whaling then research ship in the Arctic. Told in two different time frames and a slight unexpected twist at the end.

Shadow Prey by John Sandford

Started: 3/27/2024

Finished: 4/2/2024

Year: 1990

Pages: 342

Genre: mystery/thriller

Grade: B-

Reason for reading, TBR pile, continuing with series

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "A slumlord butchered in Minneapolis...A rising political star executed in Manhattan...A judge slashed to death in Oklahoma City...

"Each victim has a history of bad behavior, but the only thing the killings have in common is the murder weapon—a Native American ceremonial knife—and a trail of blood that leads to an embodiment of evil known only as Shadow Love. Recruited to be the lethal hand of a terrorist campaign, Shadow Love has his own bloody agenda, one he will do anything to achieve.

"Enlisted to find him are Minneapolis police lieutenant Lucas Davenport and New York City police officer Lily Rothenburg. But despite the countrywide carnage they needn’t look far. Because Shadow Love is right behind them."

Opinion: The mystery and suspense was great...there was a lot of extra stuff that just wasn't necessary.

Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs

Started: 3/25/2024

Finished: 3/27/2024

Year: 2002

Pages: 315

Genre: mystery

Grade: B

Reason for reading: library book, continuing with the series

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "They are “the disappeared,” twenty-three massacre victims buried in a well in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya two decades ago. Leading a team of experts on a meticulous, heartbreaking dig, Tempe Brennan pieces together the violence of the past. But a fresh wave of terror begins when the horrific sounds of a fatal attack on two colleagues come in on a blood-chilling satellite call. Teaming up with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe quickly becomes enmeshed in the cases of four privileged young women who have vanished from Guatemala City—and finds herself caught in deadly territory where power, money, greed, and science converge."

Opinion: Fits with the rest of the series despite it taking place in Guatemala.

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

Started: 3/24/2024

Finished: DNF

Year: 2023

Pages: 348

Genre: biography/social science

Grade: F

Reason for reading: library book

Type: hardcover

Blurb (from Amazon): "What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self―a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against?

"Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

"Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

"Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times."

Opinion: What am I missing? This books has been extremely popular and all I feel is that it is the author trying to make sure that she is more popular than her doppelganger and this person isn't even a true doppelganger. I get wanting and having to clear your name if someone whose morals and values are completely opposite from yours and people are dumb enough to confuse the two of you. 

Creature by David M. Carner

Started: 3/21/2024

Finished: DNF

Year: 2024

Pages: 431

Genre: horror/suspense

Grade: D

Reason for reading: friend of author

Type: paperback

Blurb (from Amazon): "In the remote town of Consequence, nestled deep in the southeast side of Washington State, an ominous presence has cast its shadow over the community. Residents whisper of mysterious disappearances, strange sightings, and unexplained terror lurking within the dense woods surrounding the town.

"Chief of Police Darin Lane, a seasoned and peaceful law enforcement officer, is determined to uncover the truth behind the mounting fear that is gripping his town. As the town’s Chief of Police, he finds himself thrust into a chilling investigation that defies rational explanation. With each passing day, the unknown creature’s malevolence intensifies, threatening the very fabric of the close-knit community he has tried to protect.

"Unbeknownst to Chief Lane, his thirteen-year-old son, Daniel, faces his own challenge on a camping trip with his friends deep within the enigmatic forest. As the mysterious events escalate, the destinies of father and son become entwined in a battle against a terrifying creature that has somehow awakened and seeks to reclaim its dominion over the land.

"Creature is a riveting tale of suspense and supernatural intrigue, where a father’s duty and his son’s courage converge to confront a mysterious evil. Will Chief Lane unravel the secrets hidden within the dark woods, or will the creature’s presence consume Consequence and its unsuspecting inhabitants? As the suspense builds, the bond between father and son is put to the ultimate test in a race against time to save their town from the shadows that threaten to engulf them all."

Opinion: The font for this paperback version is extremely small and makes it almost impossible to read. Carner is a fantastic story teller but he provides a lot of story that is not necessary to make a good book.