The Book: Somebody Else’s Daughter, by Elizabeth Brundage

The Story: The back of the book says that this book is about two drifters, Nate and Cat, who have a daughter, Willa, and are forced to give her up for adoption.  The couple that adopts her is a wealthy couple who are sending Willa to a fancy-pants school.  When Willa is 16 or 17, Nate ends up teaching English at the school that Willa goes to.  Fatherly-drama ensues.

That is partly what the book is about, but just reading that did not prepare me in anyway for what actually went down.  We’re talking serious drugs, murder, prostitution, molestation, pornography and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  I’m not complaining, I can deal with these issues in a book, it was just totally shocking because the book description didn’t prepare readers for that at all.

The story partly revolves around Willa, but really there are about 5 or 6 other stories that are happening in the wings that get an equal amount of play.  Teddy, a boy that she is sort of crushing on, is involved with a drug addicted prostitute.  So is Mr. Heath, the head of Teddy and Willa’s school.  Mr. Heath must just have a thing for little girls, because he also messes around with Willa.  Teddy’s mom, Chloe,  is messing around with Joe Golding, Willa’s adopted father.  Did I mention that Joe runs a porn business? And that his wife tried her hand in the porn business for a little while?  Joe starts feeling guilty, so Chloe moves on to Nate, Willa’s biological father. Just these kind of crazy antics. I didn’t even really get started… or tell you who got murdered. Oh, mysteries, mysteries.

What I Thought: I started this book, got about 150 pages in and got bored. Or confused. There were ALL these characters introduced right off the bat and I was just overwhelmed.  I let it kind of marinate in my mind while it sat on my bookshelf and I read a bunch of other books.  When I came back to it, I seriously read the last 200 pages in just a couple of sittings.  I felt like it took this book a little while to gain steam, but once it did it really took off.

Seriously, though, the stuff I talked about in the summary is pretty graphic.  I wasn’t expecting this at all and I was completely shocked.  There are graphic sex scenes, and not just “normal” sex. Some pretty wild stuff.  I was blown away.  So, there’s that.  Now that I think about it, I remember thinking this exact same thing about this author’s other book The Doctor’s Wife. Maybe that is just her “thing.” Hm.

My only real complaint is that with ALL these stories going on and all these lives intersecting it is hard to really get into any of them.  As soon as I would get intrigued with one, it would move on to the next.  They tie together well at the end, but until then it just came off as a bit choppy.

Conclusion: Really not a bad book.  A pretty interesting story once you get all the characters straight, but not for the faint of heart.  Deals with some pretty serious, pretty graphic stuff.

The Book: What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman

The Story: In the 70’s, two sisters disappeared from the local shopping mall.  They were 11 and 15.  There were a few clues, but nothing substantial.  Eventually, it was kind of written off.

Now, a woman is involved in a rush hour traffic accident just a few miles from the mall where the girls disappeared from.  She claims to be Heather Bethany, the younger sister.  She seems a little “off” and while her story has a lot of off-the-record details, there are just as many inconsistencies.  Through the story, a newer detective, the old, retired detective that first worked the case, a lawyer and a social worker work together to try to get all the details straight.

Leads are followed and lead to a man suffering from dementia, several “false identities,” a house burnt down with a man inside, and a missing grave.  All of this leads into some twisty stories and when it straightens out and the answer is revealed it is seriously shocking!

What I Thought: This is one of the books that I got cheap when Border’s went out of business.  If I had paid full price for this book, I think I would have been kind of mad, but for a 40% off book, I guess I got what I paid for.

Not that this book was awful. It really wasn’t, and I steamed through it in just a little over a day.  The mystery really did keep me guessing and the story itself was good.

What really bothered me was the characters.  They were just flat. And predictable. And stereotypes.  And choppy writing. And empty dialogue.  I can’t really put my finger on what was “off,” but there was just something that didn’t sit right with me.  I don’t read  a lot of books that are out-and-out mysteries, so maybe it just isn’t my genre.

I did enjoy the parts that kind of went into what Sunshine and Heather’s parents and community went through in the wake of their disappearances.  I liked the “flashbacks” that involved them and the detective that stayed on the case for 20-ish years.  These relationships and reactions were the parts of the books that spoke to me.  If I could have just taken that and left the detective-novel stuff, I would have for sure.

Conclusion: Not horrible. Probably a good beach read or a book to read on a rainy day in.  Not worth 15 bucks, but if you get it as a gift or from the library, I’d say give it a shot.

The Book: Handle with Care, by Jodi Picoult

The Story: During an ultrasound at 27 weeks, Charlotte and her husband Sean are told that their baby has a disease that makes her bones very, very brittle.  She already has seven broken bones and if she doesn’t die at birth will have many more.  They are heartbroken, but push on.  Willow is born.  More bones are broken, but she lives.

The story in the book takes place when Willow is five years old.  She has had sixy-something broken bones. She is smart and capable and adorable.  She falls and breaks both of her femurs on vacation and Charlotte and Sean are arrested on suspicion of child abuse.  When everything clears up, Sean decides to file a lawsuit because of all that they went through.  While the lawyer tells them that they don’t really have a case in this incident, but that they could possibly file a “wrongful birth” lawsuit saying that their doctor didn’t catch Willow’s disease early enough to allow for them to terminate their pregnancy.  All they have to do is say that they would have terminated, given the information earlier.

The decisions that are made based on this little tidbit and all of the fallout make up the rest of this story.

What I Thought: If I am judging this book based only on its own merits, I really liked it.  Like I’ve told you before, most of my favorite books are the “throw the family into a situation and watch them wiggle out” type of books.  This is exactly that.

The book switched points of view every chapter.  And not just between two or three characters.  I lost count.  It was literally every main character in the book, except for the MAIN main character, Willow.  This was kind of effective because it let you get into everyone else’s head, but it wasn’t really carried out effectively.  The voices all sounded very similar with the exception of the teenage sister, which sounded the same- only with the addition of far to many “like”s.

The moral dilemma here is what made the book worth reading.  At the beginning of the book, I found myself flip flopping back and forth- able to see the benefits of each side. After I made up my mind, however, I wanted to scream at the characters that were on the other side of the issue.  It was emotionally provocative, without a doubt.

But let me get right down to it.  I cannot judge this book based only on its own merit.  I read a book by Jodi Piccoult when I was in high school and I was wild about it. I mean, I fell in love. I read it probably a dozen times.  Then I read several of her other books. Not back to back, mind you, just when I came across them at the library or the used book store. They are all the same.  She just has this little outline that she uses.  She has to even have a hat full of characters that she pulls from to, just subbing out different names.

In case you’ve read any Jodi Picoult, just know that this one is My Sister’s Keeper plus The Pact, with the changing narrators, like in Nineteen Minutes.

I guess if you have people buying your books you can do whatever you want… and to be fair, I keep trying again. But I just wish that she would try something new.  I love how she writes characters and I love the moral issues she explores, but I knew from the first few pages how this was going to turn out, and I was right on the money.  That’s annoying to me.

Conclusion: If you haven’t read Jodi Picoult before, this probably isn’t the best, but it would be a good introduction into how she does it.