The Clinic

Finished February 21

The Clinic by Cate Quinn

This suspense thriller mostly takes place at a remote luxury rehab centre on the Oregon coast. Haley, an famous singer, is a patient there and we see her as the novel begins going into an area that she's not supposed to be in.

The novel then jumps to her sister Meg. Meg works at a casino in Las Vegas, where she is part of the investigative team looking for people trying to cheat the system and for other types of crimes. Meg was caught a few years back by some of the bad guys and suffered an injury that she got opioids for and now she is a functioning addict. She's already used other substances to deal with childhood trauma that she hasn't dealt with, and has recurring nightmares that include a man in a fedora and playing cards. 

She'd been close to Haley until Haley left home suddenly, leaving Meg with their mentally unstable mother. 

When Meg gets the news that Haley has died at the rehab centre, and hears rumours of suicide, she is at first very upset, then decides to enter the centre herself as a guest to try to find out what really happened to Haley. She is sure that Haley would never commit suicide. 

There is a second point of view here as well, that of the manager of the rehab centre, Cara, who hasn't been there long. Cara has a background in the hotel industry, where she worked until she got caught up in a scandal. As Cara gradually learns what is going on, partly from the doctor there, Max, and partly from her own investigations, we learn about things from a different angle. 

The other guests at the centre are as famous as Haley was, actors and singers, all there for various addictions. The head of the centre is a man from Switzerland with his own sketchy past, and as the local police also show an interest after the death of Haley, we find some other centre staff may have troublesome connections as well. 

This is a story of both psychological suspense and some physical suspense as well. It has lots of twists and turns and unexpected events that keep you guessing on things right to the end. None of the characters are particularly likeable, even though you might think are. 

The author has her own experiences in rehab, and says that this is her first novel that she's written sober. 

Maureen

Finished December 2

Maureen by Rachel Joyce

This is the third and last in the series that started with The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and continued with The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. This is the story of Maureen, Harold's wife, and takes place a few years after his story does. Maureen is still struggling with how to deal with her grief and the feelings she has around the loss of her son. Maureen and Harold have made their peace with each other and grown closer, but they are both aware of her struggle. Maureen has heard about the garden that Queenie created and is having trouble understanding it. She's seen pictures, but they haven't helped her understand. Harold and her have discussed her need to see for herself this place that holds a piece of her life, and one night when she can't sleep, she decides to go. 

This is story of her journey, one that is both physical and emotional. It is a shorter book than the others, but goes deep into Maureen's mind, showing us how she thinks, and how she has used her stern facade to protect herself. It also gives us insight into other things that happened along the way in her struggle and how they've brought her to a more isolated life. 

It took me some time to read this novel as I wanted to sit with it at times and reflect on what it was saying and where it was taking me. This is a beautiful book, and a fitting conclusion to this story. 

Together We Will Go

Finished August 6

Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski

This is a road trip novel with a twist. Mark Antonelli is a man who has tried to make a living as a writer and has been unable to do so. After the last rejection, he decides to use his savings to buy a used tour bus and do a road trip from his home in Florida across the United States, picking up passengers as he goes along, and ending up in San Francisco where they will find a cliff at sunset and drive over. He place an ad online for a short period and gets numerous responses and then removes the ad in case someone tries to trace it. 

He hires a driver, Dylan, who is ex-military, and while he is aware of the plan, does not want to die himself, and won't be taking the final drive. Mark has set up a system on board the bus that people can log into and tell their stories. There is a cloud backup. This is part of the plan, The participants will sign a form giving the rights to their stories, and after the end of the trip the texts will be automatically put on to the public for greater understanding of how people struggle with different issues.

The story is told through these diary-like entries that people make, including some that are voice-to-text, and through emails and texts exchanged between the participants and with a few people not part of this trip. This means that we see both interactions between the characters as well as their pasts that led them to this choice, and their thoughts that they record. 

The characters that join the bus make their choice for a wide variety of reasons, from chronic pain, medical issues that they haven't been able to afford to resolve (because this is the U.S. where healthcare isn't a given), addictions, mental health issues, social issues like being ostracized and bullied, and guilt over past actions. All of the characters feel their issues are significant enough that they don't want to go on, they don't want to continue the struggle, and being aware of their thought processes is quite eye-opening. 

As they go along, they interact with the outside world, and sometimes that has consequences that they haven't prepared themselves for. 

This is a moving story with an unexpected ending. And yes, that cat on the cover does have a meaning.

So Say the Fallen

Finished February 12

So Say the Fallen by Stuart Neville

This is the second book in the series featuring DCI Serena Flanagan of the Belfast police. It is also the first one that I read. Serena is assigned a case that looks fairly straightforward. A man, Henry Garrick, who was in a car accident a few months ago and lost both his legs has been found by his wife dead, with the means to kill himself at hand. 

The widow, Roberta Garrick, first called her priest Peter McKay before he summoned the police. 

Serena has a lot on her mind, with things not going well in her personal life, and having questions about her future. Her superior is planning to resign soon, and doesn't have a lot of patience for Serena's sense that something isn't quite right about this case. 

As Serena digs deeper into the widow's past and the reverend begins to have doubts about his own actions, things slowly move forward and Serena has new questions. 

I like the Serena Flanagan character, how she doesn't doubt her professional intuition even when her personal life is having issues that make her question some of her choices. She is a complex character with nuances that make her interesting. 

The case includes a few people who don't want to see anything but the obvious, and Serena must take risks to follow her suspicions through to the end. 

Survivor

Finished April 20

The Survivor by Gregg Hurwitz

This suspense thriller begins with a man standing on the ledge of a high-rise in Los Angeles. He is there because he plans to kill himself, but while he's out there the bank inside is robbed. Nate Overbay, the man on the ledge has rushed in to save people before, but he is haunted by a time he didn't rush in, and his best friend did, and died for it. 

When he looks in and makes a connection with a dying bank employee and realizes more people will die if the men robbing the bank aren't stopped, he looks for a chance and finds one. He stops the robbery, and prevents more deaths, but he becomes known to the man behind the crime, and that is a dangerous place to be. 

For he is Pavlo, a powerful Ukrainian gangster, a man the cops would like to catch but haven't been able to pin anything on, and when he finds Nate, he gives him a task and a deadline, and Nate's teenage daughter Cielle's life is in the balance. The men that Pavlo works with are dangerous and violent and Nate is fighting his own body. 

Nate's PTSD from his time in the military has estranged him from his wife and daughter, but now he is back in their lives, trying to protect them from the attention he has brought on himself. He doesn't know who he can trust, and he has his own demons to deal with. 

But when he discovers the reality behind his task, he wants to find a way to do the right thing and still save his family. 

Nate survived childhood loss, losing his best friend, and his family, but this will be the biggest test of survival for him yet. This is an edge of the seat read, hard to put down and with lots of action and violence. It also has moment of love, intimacy, and truth. 

The Ruin

Finished March 14
The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan

This novel, set in Galway, Ireland is a real page-turner. It is the first in a new series featuring detective Cormac Reilly. The book starts with an event from 1993. Cormac is a young policeman, sent out to respond to what he believes is a domestic incident. He has trouble finding the house, and when he gets there finds a teen girl and a young boy and their dead mother. The radio in his car is broken, and the house has no telephone, so Cormac takes the two children to town to the hospital. He tries to follow up on the case, but isn't given any encouragement by his superiors.
Now, it is twenty years later, and Cormac, recently part of a special ops team, is back in Galway with his partner Emma. The move is partially for Emma's job, but also because Cormac could see that they were going to disband his unit and figured it was a good time to leave. But once back, he is frozen out by most of his colleagues, and put on cold cases.
Meanwhile, a young intern, Aisling, discovers she is pregnant. She knows it is the wrong time to have a baby, that she will lose her chance to become a surgeon if she does. So when she returns home from her hospital shift and lets her boyfriend Jack know about her condition, she also shares the difficulties, which causes him to take time to think as well. When she finds him still gone when she wakes, she isn't sure what to think. Has he taken the news harder than she thought? But then, two police arrive at her door and let her know that they found his body in the river, a suspected suicide.
With everything else going on in her life, this is too much of a shock for Aisling. She's is numb, and not thinking clearly. But there is someone else on the scene who is thinking clearly, and acting on those thoughts. It is Jack's sister Maude, a woman who hasn't been in his life for the last twenty years. And Maude doesn't believe that Jack's death was suicide. And the police aren't interested in her theories.
Cormac becomes involved in the case, when he is asked to look again at the death of the woman he found twenty years ago, Maude and Jack's mother. Did she really die by her own hand as the police thought, or was someone else involved. As Cormac digs into the old case, he finds himself finding that outside influences have effects on investigations, both past and present, and he must make difficult choices.
This is a great series introduction, and I definitely want to read more about Cormac and his colleagues.

Vigilante

Finished March 12
Vigilante by Kady Cross

This teen novel deals with several difficult and related issues. The novel starts several months after a sex crime is committed at a party and a few months after the victim commits suicide. Hadley and her best friend Magda, juniors in high school, go to a party at the house of a classmate. Magda is interested in a popular boy that Hadley doesn't think that much of, but she humors her. The two girls go their own way at the party and Magda is drugged and raped by four of the boys, and pictures and video of the interaction are shared on social media. Magda and Hadley are both upset, and Magda is a much quieter girl following this horrible event. The boys don't get the punishment that they deserve and instead Magda is belittled, shamed, and harassed. When Magda kills herself, Hadley first is devastated, but then anger begins to grow, and an urge for revenge.
When an expected opportunity arises to embarrass one of the perpetrators, Hadley does it without really thinking. But then she begins to plan, and she soon finds that her urge to take revenge against the boys may be leading her in a direction she isn't entirely comfortable with.
Hadley has always been interested in martial arts, taking classes for years. When a local police officer asks for her help in running classes for teen girls to teach them how to protect themselves, Hadley is pleased. This is a way to ensure that other girls don't have to go through what Magda went through. But she finds that the classes offer her a way to help her to move on by letting her make new friends as well.
This story deals with a lot of very current issues related to teenagers and women today. It looks at the issue of justice, of power, and of the dangers of some actions. It also doesn't categorize all men as bad. There are several men in the novel that respect women in a way that the perpetrators of this crime do not. An interesting read.

The Far End of Happy

Finished February 13
The Far End of Happy by Kathryn Craft, performed by Janet Metzger

This novel was inspired by a real life episode in the author's own life. As the book begins Ronnie wakes up in the guest bedroom of her home, on the morning that her husband is supposed to be moving out. This is a temporary measure, giving Ronnie time to find a new place to live for her and their young sons, while getting them out from sharing the same roof. Ronnie has grown more and more unhappy in her marriage, initially allowing herself to be stifled in her own career goals, then finding that her husband has kept secrets from her regarding his spending, their financial circumstances, his consumption of alcohol, and more. As he has grown more distant, their physical intimacy has also diminished, and Ronnie feels that she must begin again for her own good.
That morning, she finds her husband's bed not slept in, the TV blaring, and an accusatory note left in her office. As she gets the boys up and ready, her husband Jeff reappears, but it becomes obvious to all of them that he is drunk. As her youngest son Will takes it upon himself to intervene, her husband's unstable state of mind becomes clear. His car is stocked with alcohol and he threatens to kill himself with a shotgun.
This novel covers the next twelve hours as Ronnie, her mother, and her mother-in-law all examine the events that have led to this day. All three of them, as they wait under police protection in the nearby firehouse, look back at their relationships, their own struggles with life, and their questions about what more they could have done.
This is an exploration of depression from family members viewpoints, and about the complex feelings that exist when the help they want to give isn't accepted.

The Wanting

Finished February 12
The Wanting by Michael Lavigne

This novel revolves around three characters: Roman Guttman, a Russian-born postmodern architect in Israel; Anyusha Guttman, his 13-year-old daughter; and Ami, a young Palestinian.
As the novel begins, Roman is injured in a bus bombing, and this incident throws him into a confused state of mind. At times he reverts to his past and his life in Russia, his meeting and relationship with Anyusha (Anna)'s mother, and the events that caused him to come to Israel. He takes a drive out into Palestinian territory and the journey results in more difficulties.
Meanwhile Anna has become more involved with an extremist Jewish sect, unknown to Roman, and his absence results in a lack of supervision that makes her more vulnerable to their influences.
Amir observes both Anna and Roman from his otherworldly position, for he was the one that bombed the bus that caused Roman's injuries. We see how his life led to this action, how he feels about it now, and how he feels about Roman and Anna's actions.
This is a story about extremism in its different forms and the outcomes for both society and surviving individuals. It is about love, and how it can lead us to do things we would never have dreamed of doing. It is about the uncertainty of life and how intermingled our lives are.

Finished two on the weekend

Finished November 10
The Worst Thing I've Done by Ursula Hegi
This novel is about relationships and related in an interesting way to the second book I read.
Here Annie, Mason and Jake grew up in houses side by side and remained a threesome through their lives until now. When Annie and Mason got married a few years ago, Annie's parents were killed in a car crash on their way home, her mother living only long enough to have Opal, Annie's sister delivered. Annie has been both mother and sister to Opal and Mason and Jake have been involved as fathers. Now that Mason has killed himself, Annie has pushed Jake away as well, and is trying to see the truth of the relationship that the three of them had. This story is told from many points of view: Annie's, Mason's, Jake's, Opal's, Aunt Stormy (her mother's best friend) and Pete (Aunt Stormy's lover).
At first Annie drives for relief from grief, listening to radio psychologists solving people's relationship problems, but later she paddles, and eventually finds solace in her work again.

Finished November 11
The Cruellest Month by Louise Penny
This is another mystery set in the village of Three Pines. Someone in the community has been frightened to death during a seance and Armand Gamache of the Surete of Quebec is called in to investigate the death. Along with this, Gamache and his family are being attacked in the newspapers as a result of his role in disclosing severe police misconduct years earlier. Gamache knows that a traitor is planted among his team, but tries to keep his own fight to himself.
He finds jealousy and other toxic secrets among the villagers.
It is the disclosure of the idea of the "near enemy" among emotions, explained to Gamache by Myrna, that I was able to relate to the previous book. It is an interesting idea, and one taking place more than we may think. A fascinating story.