Colorways by Vicki Welsh

Vacation month is always a hard month for reading, especially when we have guests around. I socialize instead of read and that’s absolutely OK! I don’t have a lot of great recommendations this month. Ms Mebel…..was my favorite book of the month by far. The Janus Stone cones in second.

I hope you have some very good books to recommend to me this month. Leave them in the comments.

DNF
Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger – I thought I’d enjoy this as a hype for football season. Turns out, I’m not so interested in high school football.

Dissection of a Murder by Jo Murray – It’s not really about a murder trial. It’s about what everyone is thinking about the murder trial. Tedious.

This is the second book in a mystery series featuring Dr. Ruth McDowell. This book was first published in 2011 but seems to be in the process of being re-published in audio. As a consequence, audio versions are difficult to find.

Dr. McDowell is a self-described somewhat pudgy archaeologist. She’s in her late 30’s and lives very happily with her cats. She was introduced in the first book, The Crossing Places, when she was asked to team up with Detective Inspector Harry Nelson to investigate some remains thought to be those of a missing little girl from 10 years ago.

In this novel, again there are child remains. This time they are found at a demolition site that used to be the site of a children’s home. Ruth is asked to investigate and immediately notices that the child’s head is missing. DCI Nelson is back and the two seek out the priest who ran the home. Father Hennessey immediately tells them of two children who went missing 40 years earlier. Those two children were never found. However, someone else does not want Ruth investigating this child’s remains or the history of the property.

It’s an interesting series with interesting characters. I did not catch on to the probably culprits quickly at all. I’ll have to wait around for book # 3, I think it’s not due in audio format until December, although some of the later books are already available.

This book is about the Sharaf family the immigrated to the US, Northern Virginia specifically, from Afghanistan. They arrived with the clothes on their backs but, over time, the father worked very hard and they became very wealthy.

The story begins after some tragedy has happened and the whole thing is told through interviews. That was a really interesting approach that I liked a lot. The book synopsis doesn’t even hint at what happened so I’ll only mention that the story revolves around the oldest daughter Zorah and her dishonoring the family.

I liked that it was set in Virginia because I recognized at lot of the places and I enjoyed the narration style. It is, of course, centered on the perceived and real differences in American culture and the culture of immigrants that want to keep succeeding generations enmeshed in the family’s original culture. The story could have come out of current news headlines. I don’t feel that it did anything to move a discussion forward. In the end it was nothing more than a news story as it might be told on some crime new show.

We picked this book for our drive up to Maine. It was the perfect length and McMurtry can always be count on for great stories.

This is the 3rd book in the Berrybender series. These books can be read out of order because it was a complete book but the series is about the wealthy, English Berrybender family. The year is 1830 and the Berrybenders are on a trip with their 3 daughters to explore the wild West.

In this book the focus is on the beautiful daughter, Tasmin. She has married while on the trip and has a son named Monty. Kit Carson is part of their group and they are constantly under risk of Indian raids. Tasmin, honestly, is quite annoying. She demands a lot of attention and we got a little tired of her by the end. Still, it kept us entertained for the ride.

What a fun book!

Mebel (pronounced Mabel) is 63 years old and a wealthy trophy wife in Indonesia. From a young age, she was raised to be a trophy wife and that’s what she has been since leaving college. Now her husband has asked for a divorce because he’s fallen in love with their very young personal chef.

She’s not worried though. She has a plan. She will go to cooking school to learn to cook as a way to win him back. The best place to learn to cook is France. She backs her designer clothing and heads to Paris only to learn that she has enrolled in the wrong school. She ends up in a culinary school in a small village near Oxford, England.

Mebel is the oldest student by far but eventually befriends one of the young students named Gemma.

You can probably guess how it might end but the road to get there is charming and funny. Mebel is a wonderful character who find much more strength than she ever knew she had.

Jane Trevally finds a lost white terrier while out on a walk with her own dog. She knows that the dog has been seen with a teenage girl staying nearby. When the girl is reported missing, Jane decides to return the dog to the registered owner’s house in London. When she arrives she realizes that she recognizes the house, even though it’s totally run down now.

Years earlier she had a creepy experience at this house but the man who answers the door isn’t the same man that she remembered. He says that he doesn’t know anything about the missing teenager.

Jane can’t let it go. She intuitively feels that this house is the key to the missing girl and she decides to look into it herself.

I really all of the Lisa Jewell books. Some really hook me in and some, not as much. This was a “not as much” book. The story was just a little too dark for my liking. It was borderline horror with secrets layered on top of secrets and a lot of damaged characters.

Not a great vacation book for sure. If you don’t like reading about trauma, don’t read this one. It’s nothing but trauma.