Reading Reading Reading

I am in full summer read my life away mode and can't keep the reviews coming fast enough on my blog.  I'm going to cheat and use Amazon to give a synopsis and then tell my opinion of the books I've zoomed through recently. 

Defending Jacob by William Landay

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.
This was an excellent, suspenseful gut-wrenching book.  I was on the edge of my seat constantly trying to figure out the murder mystery the entire time.  And the end absolutely blew me away!  A must read if you like mysteries! 

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

A young girl.  A fateful key.  A woman searching for the truth…

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door to door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard—their secret hiding place—and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released.

Sixty Years Later: Sarah’s story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist investigating the roundup. In her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own future.

I have mentioned how I love historical fiction and this is no exception.  I really enjoyed how the book moved back and forth between 1942 and 2002.  The small piece of the Holocaust I had not previously heard of was also a great history lesson.  Not quite the page-turner variety, but excellent story that I would highly recommend!

Shell Games by Kirk Russell

The discovery of thousands of empty abalone shells and two murdered divers sends Lieutenant John Marquez's poaching investigation in a new and very risky direction. Former DEA agent and now head of a special operations unit of the California Department of Fish and Game, Marquez learns he himself has been targeted as the next victim. Stalking him is Kline, a vicious drug smuggler turned abalone poacher who has a vendetta against Marquez. John Marquez is supposed to protect wildlife, not solve murders, but the only way he can break the multi-million-dollar abalone-smuggling ring, as well as save his own life, is to find and stop Kline. A fast-paced crime novel set along the majestic Northern California coastline, Shell Games introduces a tough, complex, and appealing hero and a masterful new series.

The setting was a little strange to me.  I felt it a bit strange that abalone poaching would be a serious, crime-filled problem.  I didn't do any research to see if it truly is, but I guess anything is possible these days.  The mystery of the crimes kept me going in this book.  I enjoy suspense and trying to figure out whodunnit, but different setting would have got me into the book a bit more.  I don't write it off completely.  It was a good read, just nothing like the above two or the series I'm reading now.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.

I feel like I already blogged about this one, but I can't find it, so sorry if it is a repeat.  Both of my parents recommended this book.  The description didn't have me hooked, but the story sure did.  What a life on the circus!  All the details of the big top were very interesting and the story line was fantastic, too.  I love animals and could really related to Jacob's love for them, too.  Excellent, quick read!