Book Review Thursday - 7/28

I'm behind on reviews and I am going to be listening to books while I paint so I will just get even more behind. I might try and put up a part 2 tonight, but it will depend on how the painting goes.

No Good Deeds, Laura Lippman’s 9^th Tess Monaghan book, starts out with a prologue from Crow, Tess’s live in boyfriend, and his confession that his actions got a teenage boy killed. It’s not just his confession that is a little shocking because if you have read any of the other books with Crow and Tess in a relationship, you would know that Crow would never knowingly do anything that would cause harm to anyone else. What was about as shocking to me as his revelation is that Lippman has never written from Crow’s point of view before.

The story begins with Crow making deliveries to food banks in some questionable neighborhoods and he ends up with a flat tire. As he realizes the tire is flat, a boy from the neighborhood, Lloyd, offers to help him out with the tire for a little money. While Crow realizes that the boy probably had something to do with the flat, he still takes him for a meal and then invites Lloyd back to his and Tess’s house for the night to stay out of the cold. After a conversation over dinner, Tess realizes that Lloyd has information on the several month old death of a US attorney and Lloyd attempts to rob Crow and Tess after they go to bed.

Tess does her usual bit of not letting something drop and hunts Lloyd down in his neighborhood several days later to get the full story on the attorney. She then sets up an interview with Lloyd and her contacts and the local newspaper to get the real story of the attorney’s death. Lloyd is protected by source laws through the paper, but Tess’s name is given as having set up the interview and the ‘fun’ begins.

I thought this was a solid addition to the Tess series. A lot of the story was told from the point of view of characters other than Tess and while it gave away a little of what was going on, there were still unanswered questions until the end. I also was eager to find out if the connections formed between Lloyd and Crow and Tess would continue into future books.

A Turn in the Road is another book in the Blossom Street series by Debbie Macomber. This series doesn't follow a single group though. It introduces new characters in almost every book and Macomber just adds tidbits of the original characters throughout. In this book, we revisit Bethanne who was introduced in A Good Yarn, the second book in the Blossom Street series, where her husband left her and she struggled to keep the house where she was living with her kids.

Fast forward 6 years and the woman that Bethanne's husband Grant left her for has now left him. Bethanne has a successful party business and her daughter, Annie, is working for her while getting her college degree and her son is just about to get married. Grant has now decided that he is ready to pick up where he left off with Bethanne and wants her back. Annie is all for this and manipulates Bethanne through the entire book to push her back to Grant, "where she belongs."

Grant's mother has decided to take a road trip across the country and Bethanne and Annie join her so that they can all enjoy the experience and get away to think about their relationships. Bethanne meets a man along the way and Annie sees it as a huge road block, so to speak, in her plans to reunite her parents. Grant can't 'let go' of the situation and demands to speak to Bethanne daily as a way to keep tabs on the trip, but we all know it's so that he can't have a way to be involved in everything that Bethanne is doing.

This is a quick read and one that I read the actual book instead of listening to the audio version. I can get through Macomber's books much quickly when I read them manually, as I call it. There were things that bothered me in the book and I found myself shaking my head at times and calling Bethanne a moron for even considering taking her ex-husband back. I wanted to scream at her, "HE LEFT YOU FOR A YOUNGER WOMAN AND DROPPED OUT OF YOUR KIDS' LIVES!" Bethanne's waffling on the situation was irritating and was only overshadowed by Grant's insistence on talking to her and then everyone getting ticked off at Bethanne when she reminded Grant that she didn't have to answer to him anymore. And this happened daily!

Anyway... No Good Deeds is a must read! And A Turn in the Road is if you don't have anything better to do. :)