Author: Herman Melville

Jamie (from Goodreads) captures my thoughts perfectly:

It’s just that any enjoyment or satisfaction I got out of the book was overshadowed by the tedious, largely pointless stretches of encylopedic descriptions about the whaling industry. Melville strikes me as one of those people who would corner you at a party and talk incessantly about whaling, whaling ships, whales, whale diet, whale etymology, whale zoology, whale blubber, whale delacies, whale migration, whale oil, whale biology, whale ecology, whale meat, whale skinning, and every other possible topic about whales so that you’d finally have to pretend to have to go to the bathroom just to get away from the crazy old man. Only he’d FOLLOW YOU INTO THE BATHROOM and keep talking to you about whales while peering over the side of the stall and trying to make eye contact with you the whole time.

Goodreads Rating: * (but Jamie gets ***** for that review)

Author: Lisa Jewell

When she was nine years old, Melody Browne’s father saved her from a fire that destroyed her home. When she recovered she had no memory of her life before the fire. In her early thirties, after attending a hypnotist’s show on her first date in eight years, she begins to recover snippets of memory. As she tracks down the truth behind these memories she learns of the tragic circumstances of her childhood.

Goodreads Rating: * * * *

Author: Louise Penny

This is the third book in the Inspector Gamache series; I’ll have to try and find the second book somewhere.

I loved that the murder to be solved took place in Three Pines, but I’m a little concerned that for a small village and with the number of murders and murderers there won’t be many left in town. Most of the characters from the first book are back.

I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as the other books in the series. In this book there was a murder to solve but there were also some shady deals going in the police force and Gamache was in the middle of it all. I felt a bit like I was missing too much of the back story on the police misconduct to really understand what was going.

Goodreads Rating: * * * *

Author: Kate Horsley

An American exchange student living in France stumbles out of a forest and she has no idea who she is or what happened to her. Adding to the mystery is the fact that her host family have disappeared. An aggressive reporter poses as her aunt and the two of them try to solve the mystery.

I started the book about the same time as I started proofreading a manuscript and it didn’t have my full attention to say the least. When I finally had the time to dedicate to the book I had pretty much lost interest.

The story is told from the point of view of both the “aunt” and the girl. The girl’s story is told by using past excerpts from her blog and the current state of her mind.

Goodreads Rating: * * *