Book Review: What Rose Forgot by Nevada Barr

What Rose Forgot, a novel by Nevada Barr

What Rose Forgot

First paragraph:

Rose's head jerks, drops, and she's awake. I've fallen asleep meditating, she thinks. It's been a while since she's done that. Over the years, an ease of concentration has incrementally developed. Staying awake is - was - easy. Eyes still closed, she sweeps her hands overhead, breathing in. The inner elbow of her right arm burns like a cigarette has been stubbed out on her flesh....

Rose, 68, wakes up frail, feeling like 100 years old, and finds herself on the grounds of a home for the mentally impaired, from which she seems to have escaped. She doesn't remember how she got there or why. After being hauled back into the maximum security home, Rose realizes she  doesn't belong there but is being drugged to make it seem as if she is mentally incompetent or suffering from ALS. Rose stops taking her medications, hides her pills, becomes slowly more alert daily, and plots her escape.

She not only has to get through locked doors, but find out who has done this to her - admitted her to this home from which no one comes out alive. Rose's husband has recently died, which leaves only her two stepsons and her 13-year-old granddaughter, Mel, the only one she thinks she can count on.

As the suspense builds, Rose, a former yoga practitioner, decides how to fool her caretakers in the institution and slither out of their grasp, with the help of granddaughter Mel and Rose's long-distance sister Marion. She also has to find out who committed her to the home and why.

I loved the intrigue, the unanswered questions posed by a tantalizing plot , and Rose's determination and quick thinking, at age 68. This was an entertaining read, which I did in just over a day.

This ebook was borrowed through NetGalley. Publication: September 17, 2019, Minotaur Books

Meme: Each week, Vicki at I’d Rather Be At The Beach hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros where readers share the beginning paragraph(s) of a book they are reading or plan to read.  

Sunday Salon: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

I was able to finish this book in two days due to the scathing hot temperatures outside that allowed me to stay indoors and read.

The Dutch House

The Dutch House, a novel by Ann Patchett, September 24, 2019, Harper

Genre: family drama, domestic drama, fiction

The plight of two children, Danny and Maeve, grabbed me from the beginning - the story of a sister and her young brother whose mother disappeared from their gilded mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs and left them and their father in the care of a cook, a nursemaid, and a housekeeper. 

The house in which they lived, called the Dutch house because of the previous owners, seems to be the center of the novel. The Dutch house is a large impressive mansion bought by the father, Cyril, for his family, but its opulence and size overwhelmed the mother, Elna, so much that she deserted it along with her husband and children. The house is later taken over by a stepmother, Andrea, who loves the house but not the children, Danny and Maeve. She banishes them from their home after Cyril's sudden death, leaving them impoverished and alone.

The house and their past family life continue to influence Maeve and Danny as they make their own future without the benefit of their father's house or fortune. 

Intense and forceful, the story narrated by Danny, held on to me till the very end. The characters Elna and the stepmother Andrea are two opposites, distinct in their response to and relationship to the Dutch house. 

A five-star recommendation. This was an ebook borrowed through NetGalley. 

Two new books:

The Butterfly Girl

The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld, October 1, 2019, Harper

Genre: thriller, suspense

An investigator tracks down a missing girl. Setting: Portland, Oregon

The House of Brides

The House of Brides by Jane Cockram, October 22, 2019, Harper

Genre: psychological suspense

A young  woman flees to a family estate in England, but finds not safety, but only danger, there.

Memes: 

The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and the Sunday Salon,  Mailbox Monday.

Book Beginning: All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy

All the Lives We Never Lived

All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy,  November 2018, Atria 

Set in India during World War II and the present,  the novel is about a man's attempt to discover the truth about his mother.

Book beginning:

In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman. The man was in fact German, but in small‑town India in those days, all white foreigners were largely thought of as British. This concern for accuracy annoyed my scholarly father even in circumstances as dire as losing his wife to another man. 

Page 56:

Dinu was older than me, at school he was my protector.

Do these excerpts grab you as a reader?
Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Book Review: The Heart Keeper by Alex Dahl

The Heart Keeper

The Heart Keeper by Alex Dahl, July 16, 2019, Berkley

Genre: thriller

Themes: heart transplant, obsession, mothers and daughters
Objective review: 4.5/5

My review: This thriller deals with mothers and their daughters and the volatile and contradictory feelings mothers can have. In the case of one woman losing her child, whose heart was donated to another child, feelings change, develop, and the loss might be almost too much to bear.

Intriguing, suspenseful, and heart breaking all at once.

This review is part of a book tour sponsored by Berkley, Penguin Random House, which provided the review copy. 

Sunday Salon: Exotic Environments for Three New Mystery Novels

Mysteries and cozies are more and more using exotic environments and atmosphere to appeal to readers who may want something different from the traditional settings - bookstore, library, specialty and candy shops, local tea and coffee shops, bed and breakfasts, or hotels, etc.

I  have three new mysteries with an African safari theme, a Singapore setting, and a Budapest-style, Hungarian tea house.


Love and Death Among the Cheetahs by Rhys Bowen, August 6, 2019, Berkley Books
Setting: 1930s England and Kenya
Georgie and Darcy are finally on their honeymoon in Kenya's Happy Valley, but murder intervenes (publisher)

Death in a Budapest Butterfly by Julia Buckley is the first Hungarian Tea House Mystery, publication July 30, 2019, Berkley Books. Hanna Keller runs her family's Tea House,  but when a customer keels over from a poisoned cuppa, Hanna and her tea-leaf reading grandma will have to catch a killer. (publisher)

Singapore Sapphire by A.M. Stuart is the first Harriet Gordon Mystery, August 6, 2019, Berkley, Harriet Gordon stumbles into a web of stolen gems and cutthroat thieves as she runs from her tragic past in a new historical mystery series set in early 20th century Singapore.  (publisher)

Memes: 

The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and the Sunday Salon,  Mailbox Monday.

It's Monday: What Are You Reading?

Memes:  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Mailbox Monday.

The Pawful Truth by Miranda James, July 16, 2019, Berkley

Genre: mystery series

When Charlie Harris decides to go back to school, he and his Maine Coon cat, Diesel, find themselves entangled in a deadly lovers quarrel on campus (publisher)

The Ditch by Herman Koch, June 11, 2017, Hogarth Press

Genre: family drama, suspense

The bracing and inventive new novel of suspicions and secrecy from Herman Koch (publisher)

This was the only book that grabbed my interest the last time I visited the bookstore. That might change the next time I go, but for now this is my new read. It's different to me as I've never read any of Koch's books. Told by what seems an unreliable narrator, a man full of jealousy, who suspects his wife of having affairs with every other man she is in contact with. I can't wait to finish the book to see if he was right or just paranoid!

What are you reading this week?

Thriller: The Heart Keeper by Alex Dahl

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

The Heart Keeper

The Heart Keeper by Alex Dahl, July 16, 2019, Berkley

Genre: thriller

Themes: heart transplant, obsession, mothers and daughters

Book beginning:

ALISON 

I wake all the time; that is, if I sleep at all. The alarm clock projects the time onto the wall on Sindre's side of the bed and I lie staring at the pulsating dots separating the numbers. It's just after two o'clock in the morning and Sindre isn't here. He was here when I fell asleep. At least I think he was. I pull my hand out from underneath the warm duvet and stroke the cool, empty space where my husband should be. 

A few nights ago, the same thing happened....

Page 56:

ISELIN

I get up because I can't fall asleep in case the school rings, which I think they probably will - Kaia isn't used to being away from me, or to be around other children. 

I can't wait to read this new book. What do you think?