I picked this one up at the thrift store when I traveled to visit my son and his family. I like to check out thrift and Goodwill stores when I go places to pick up books for my Little Free Library. A lot of times, I don’t read the ones I buy but this one drew me on with the promise of being fun.
And it definitely was a fun read. The protagonist is a perfectionist who loses her job basically through sabotage but, as a reader, you get a feeling of relief that she’s getting off the treadmill that was her life working out of town all week and spending weekends at home. Her family life clearly suffered due to her lifestyle/work absences.
The reader gets to see great character arcs of several of the members of her family.
The daughter is a soccer player and most of the book revolves around her quest to play for an elite travel team. The best parts of the story are where the obsessive coach of the elite team sends crazy, ridiculous memos to the girls and their families every day. He’s loony tunes and never met an exclamation mark he didn’t like.
I spent a lot of the story laughing at his memos and hoping he’d get his comeuppance.
I’m a huge soccer nut so this book was right up my alley. The character growth was well done on the characters who had a chance to change. Not so much on the coach guy, but that was sort of expected. Lol
This book was published in 2008 but it could have come out last week as it was so up to date—other than the reference to the Larry King show.
This was a quick read—less than a day—but full of good, entertaining writing as well as a great message about life’s priorities.
This book is part of a series of stories with the protagonist being the owner of a coffee shop who can’t help but get involved in murders that happen in her town. She’s attracted to the detective she works with on the cases but she also has a date with a local doctor and has a former live in lover who is a stalker. In other words, she attracts drama. And she isn’t very likable.
Even though she owns a coffee shop and the title of the book makes one think there will be some kind of pumpkin spice drink—latte, coffee or even chai—nope. Not any in sight for the entire book.
A woman is killed at a Halloween party and busted pumpkins are all around her but no spices. Nope. None.
The protagonist is smart and clever in the way she can solve crimes but she is one of those types who don’t listen. Even when she is told to stay out of the crime scene, she goes willy-nilly in the room and starts touching stuff.
The first couple of times she didn’t listen were cute but then it got old. I get that the amateur sleuth needs to have access to try to solve the case in these kinds of books, but it really became annoying to this reader. I’m sure there were other ways to get around that issue but her just blatantly ignoring warning after warning became tedious. She went rogue way too many times to count.
All that being said, the mystery itself was good. It was clever to have the story take place at a Halloween party with a terrible storm so everyone was stranded there and also in costume. It heightened the danger and intrigue to make the killer not be able to escape. The other partygoers didn’t seem too concerned to be locked in a mansion with many rooms for a murderer to hide in, though.
I thought the ending was appropriate and I enjoyed the mystery of the murder.
Even though this is a series, I was able to follow the story and figure out who was who without much effort.
For a quick, easy, seasonal read with not much depth, this was a fun one. Just don’t expect any pumpkin spice.
Vianna Roots is a reluctant witch from a Salem family with a long history of witchcraft. She also sees the dead which is not a normal characteristic of a witch. She never fit in—either with the town or her family and had a bad relationship with her mother. As soon as she was able, she escaped in the middle of the night and had no intention of ever returning to her childhood home.
Fate had other plans for Vianna. Her mother died and she had to return home to take part in the ritual of the burial of her mother. But Vianna has other plans than performing the ritual as it is supposed to go. She wants to tie her mother to the grave so she can’t come back and harass her like her other dead relatives do—especially her grandmother Susannah.
When Vianna arrives in Salem, she has an accident in her old truck with, of all things, a local policeman. Then, when she gets to the house she inherited and can’t wait to sell off, the house won’t let her in and things continue to go downhill for her from there.
She doesn’t want to wear witch robes to the cemetery and chooses a red dress from her mother’s closet which turns out to be the dress her mother wore when she was initiated into her role as a witch. Something Vianna is determined not to let happen to herself.
At the cemetery, we meet a number of other characters who all have distinct personalities and who do not much care for the rebel Vianna. The scene is set for more drama in her life.
Vianna ties her mother to her grave and once she returns home, she starts to clear out some of the old things lying around. In searching a drawer, she finds a rotting hand. A vision of a woman reliving her death in the bathroom shows her where the hand originated. And now Vianna is on a quest to help this spirit to rest—a spirit she happens to know quite well. But she doesn’t plan to embrace her legacy as a witch. She is going to solve this issue with this spirit and sell the house and leave again as soon as she can.
Along the way to her goal, Vianna goes on a date with a man she had a crush on in high school. She finds, not only is he weird and possessive, but his mother has issues, too. He’s persistent and annoying. She’s mystified about why he’s suddenly attracted to her. Old school mates wreak havoc in her life, and, when danger arises, she even has to head back to the cemetery to dig up another ancestor and get a bone from her—not because she wants to embrace her legacy, but because it’s necessary to do so.
The cemetery caretaker is someone she knew in the past who is not welcome in the witching community either and they strike up a friendship. I loved their relationship. It was nice to have someone that the heroine could rely on and who was a great character. She offered some relief from the gloomy atmosphere and danger the heroine was in.
This book was delightful to read. A lot of great action, a mystery about some paintings and a dead girl in the bathroom as well as the friendship that arises between two people who don’t fit in makes for a great story. The author also gives us fans of the macabre and light horror a lot of great, descriptive scenes. This is no white witch, light comedy type story that glosses over some of the darker sides of the craft. I quite enjoyed the change of pace from those type stories.
I recommend this one as it is chockful of great scenes, some humor and a compelling story, not least of which is how misfits can find their place and make the home/family they need.
This was a great book with a lot of interesting analysis of Russian short stories and their writers. The author is a professor at Syracuse University and now I want to take one of his classes. While I didn’t agree with everything he said, as in whether a couple of the stories were actually wonderful. :), he had great points to make about the seven stories he chose to analyze. I had never read some of them and fully enjoyed them even though two of them were a bit odd.
This is a great book for writers as his analyses of the tales gives the writers among us a lot of insight into the stories as well as how to extrapolate from them ways to improve our own work. It is a dense read and takes a lot of concentration but well worth it as it seems to me to be a mini course in Russian short stories and how brilliant these writers were. To say nothing of what a great teacher Mr. Saunders is. He’s witty and intelligent and the reading of this book was a joy. Even if you aren’t a writer, there is a lot to take away from this book and it’s well worth a read.
In the Tibetan religion, the bardo is the place between lives. I didn’t know this until I picked up this book. It’s sort of what I think some western religions call purgatory. I’m not 100% sure since I’m Methodist and we don’t have that concept in our theology. Nevertheless, this was a fantastic read. Mr. Saunders, a professor at Syracuse University is a brilliant, witty writer.
This story starts with the last illness of Willie Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln. We are also introduced to a variety of characters in the bardo itself. They don’t know they are dead. They think they are in “sick boxes” and waiting to recover and go back to their families.
The conversations and actions of the men and women in the bardo are repetitions of what they did in life. Some retell the same stories over and over.
We have three main protagonists there. One a reverend, and one a man who was a printer who died when a rafter hit him in the head and one who slashed his wrists when his lover took another lover, who is still “waiting” for his mother to discover him and take him to the hospital. They show us, through their points of view, the others in the bardo. Some of the conversations are poignant and some are quite amusing. Sometimes, people leave the bardo with a flash and bang when they look at a light but our main characters resist the light as they don’t want to disappear to who knows where. They are waiting for their families to come take them home and they sure want to be there when it happens.
Interspersed between the scenes in the bardo are some quotes of various members of the public and newspapers regarding the huge party the Lincolns threw when their son was upstairs gravely ill in the White House. Many thought they were wrong to have the party that had been planned for a while. Many thought the child’s parents were to blame for his illness as they allowed him out in the snow and cold with his little pony. It was interesting to read those comments. It appears as if they are from real articles of the time. I didn’t research to be sure of that, but they read as true. Which makes the story even more poignant. If they are fiction, it increases my admiration for the author’s cleverness.
The boy eventually dies and, after a funeral, is taken to the cemetery. He arrives in the bardo and our cast of characters assure him he’s only in a sick box and will soon rejoin his life and see his father again.
Lincoln comes to the mausoleum where Willie’s body is and the boy tries to make contact with him. Of course, Lincoln can’t hear him.
The main characters of the bardo become worried about the boy when he’s devastated that his father can’t hear him. They are determined to help him. Maybe he should try to escape the bardo? The young ones usually do, but Willie is determined to reunite with his father and plans to stay around.
The rest of the story is about how they try to help Willie and lessons are learned for all of them. Well, most of them, as there will always be some who choose other paths.
This book was a quick read that pulled me in and I found myself turning pages in thrall with the story and the talent of this writer. He encourages the reader to think about life and love of family and how we, as humans, are tied to our lives. It’s sometimes hard to let go of things and this book is a lesson in how we often have to make decisions where we might put ourselves at risk. The author teaches us these things in an amusing as well as heart-rending way. His talent in switching from one to the other is beautiful and make this a very worthwhile read. I highly recommend this one.
Ramblings of a Writer 