dckathleen's reviews
268 reviews

New Yorker writer investigates his Nazi grandfather's role in WW2.

I finished this, but ultimately I wish I hadn't. Main character lives and works on the plantation where she grew up and where her family was formerly enslaved. The descendants of the enslavers still own the plantation and....they're awful. They hold terrible "slavery times" plays and plantation weddings. There's a murder. 

a scientist with psychic powers gets pulled into a police investigation. Old love, family history, a gritty cop, and bad judgement all figure heavily in the story. 

Too much dog killing

This one loses points for some plot holes, but regains them for a really original plot. This was an enjoyable read. 

I really liked this. It's supposed to be about bringing a woolly mammoth to life as so many of our present animals are edging towards extinction, but really it's about family and dealing with loss and change. It's funny and sweet. 

Matilda + Charlie and the Chocolate Factory+ Ready Player One. This was sweet, even though there were some things that I thought were overdone, but mostly sweet. 

This book plays in 1950, and it's about a secretive murder training academy with an ethical mission. Parts read by Neil Patrick Harris. This was good, but could have been amazing. I felt like parts were a bit disjointed. 

I really liked this, it was Gothic horror with a sense of humor, and a reflection on trauma. Couple buys a haunted house, and it's pretty intense. The wife, for reasons which unfold, is willing to hang in there. Husband leaves, and wife kind of shrugs and moves on. She has bleeding walls and ghosts to contend with. Adult daughter, who has never been to the house, shows up to figure out where her father went. Her visit shakes things up in unexpected ways. 

I finished it, but two weeks later I couldn't reconstruct the plot for you...much of which was convoluted.