Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a thoroughly enjoyable murder mystery with a unique premise. One of the customers at the bookstore where Lydia works commits suicide in the store. In his pocket is a picture of her as a child, a childhood that she's been trying to keep hidden all these years. He also left what seems to be clues, as if he was trying to tell her something.

There are so many interesting and ominous twists and turns in this book. It made it feel fast-paced and fun to read. The big reveal at the end is satisfying, even if it wasn't a huge surprise and I could see ahead of time where it was going.

The only thing I didn't like was the central character Lydia's relationships with those closest to her. She comes across as selfish and lacking in empathy. Everyone around her loves her and sacrifices for her, but she just pushes everyone away and gets really mad when they get too close. I understand that the author wrote it this way in order to construct the necessary conflicts in the story arc, but it came across as contrived and was a bit annoying to read.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

For a book on such an interesting topic, Dreamland was a real struggle for me to get through. The main problem is that it is way too long for the amount of content it covered. The book is mostly divided into short four or five page chapters, with each covering a different town and different people. Each of these towns and people then needed their own only-tangentially relevant background information and histories, so the book really bogged down from that. Also, the tale of the opiate epidemic in each of these towns and people are pretty much the same, so it's just reading the same story over and over.

Even in tracing where the drugs are coming from, it's also the same story over and over, with doctors from different towns over-proscribing pain medication, and men from a small Mexican town selling heroin in the US. It feels like the author took copious notes from many different sources, and then just turned his notes directly into prose format instead of parring them down to a concise, cohesive story. At the end, I feel like I could have gotten the same information just from reading a few articles on this topic.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

The Leopard is my second exposure to Harry Hole, and it's just as good, if not better, than The Snowman. At its core, this is just a really great mystery. The plot is twisty and complex, filled with reveals and red herrings everywhere. There are so many messed up, crazy characters that leave you guessing who's really the guilty person.

I do feel like this book is longer (at more than 500 pages) than it needed to be. The pacing through the majority of the book is good, but the last 100 pages dragged on a bit.

A note of warning: the crimes in this book are really dark and gruesome. At times they feel a bit overdone, and the author himself has even said that he may have gone too far with some of the brutal scenes. Knowing that going in, I was prepared and they ended up feeling within my limits.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

To me, Sing, Unburied, Sing feels like two separate stories. One is the advertised tale of Jojo coming of age with a black drug-abusing mother and a white just-out-of-jail father. Jojo takes care of his young sister Kayla and lives with his black grandparents, Mam and Pop, all the while trying to grow up and figure out who he is. Seeing the world through Jojo's eyes is raw and painful, but also beautiful because they capture Mam and Pop's love for him and Kayla.

I do feel like there was a missed opportunity with Leonie, Jojo's mother. We get passages from her perspective, but they are just one-dimensional, showing her as essentially the bad guy who neglects her kids for drugs or hits them when she is occasionally present. But we don't get her motivations. Often it's portrayed as she does bad things just because. For a book that so lovingly created Jojo's character, I wish the supporting cast is more three-dimensional.

The other story is about ghosts. There's a few of them hanging around, and whenever it's their perspective in the book, it's hard to read. The words are beautiful, but once you string them into sentences, they don't always make sense and they slow down the book. To me, if they were taken out of the tale altogether and we got more of the other story, this book would have been better for it.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

In The Immortalists, Daniel drags his three siblings to see a psychic, who tells them the exact dates they will die. After that, the story is divided into four parts, each following a sibling through events in their lives. The premise of this book is captivating and interesting, yet this book falls so disappointingly short of its potential.

For a start, most of the characters in this book are selfish, needy, and unlikable. Simon, the youngest, wants to spreads his wings and move to another city. When he does, two of his siblings tries to guilt trip him into coming back, badgering him about how now that he has left home, they have to give up schooling to move back in with their mother. I guess their able-bodied mother can't live alone. And his mother gives him an ultimatum to either return to living with her immediately or don't bother seeing her again. Who needs enemies when you have unreasonable family members like that?

Then there's Daniel, who blames everyone but himself for his lack of closeness with his family. When his niece comes to visit him, he laments how nice it would be to see her more, then proceeds to chew her father out. Obviously, they don't visit often. He then goes on to blame the psychic for ruining everyone's life, when he was the one who sought her out to begin with and she only gave them the information he requested. I can't stand characters who don't take responsibility for their own actions, and this book is full of them.

The writing is just ok. It includes some questionable moments, such as the book starting off with a description of one of the siblings' body, including her nipple color and the patch of fur between her legs. She was thirteen at the time, and was only just taking a walk (fully-clothed) with her siblings, so I don't understand why the description was even relevant. It's like the author is trying to be deep with something, but just came across as creepy.

Every once in a while, there is a good passage in the book, including some interesting thoughts on the immigrant experience, and the latter part of the section that focuses on Varya, when she realizes that she's responsible for her decisions and her life (wow, finally!).

But ultimately, the things I didn't like in this book outweighed the too-few portions of good. If you're considering this book, it might be worth a read for its interesting premise, but just be ready to set your expectations low.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Astonishing and emotionally gripping, Nothing to Envy peels back the curtain and offers that rare glimpse into what life is really like in North Korea.

Reading this, I'm struck by how similar their lives are to ours and also how utterly different it is. They share the same ambitions for a fulfilling life, the same yearning for love and belonging, the same hope of better opportunities for their children. Yet, their lives are nothing like ours.

Not only do they lack any type of personal choice or freedom, but they also have to endure years of famine. Going in, I never really thought about what it means to go through a famine of this severity and magnitude. Every day, all day, their entire time and energy are spent going far into the woods to scrounge for grass and bark and rotten fruit, as all possible edible items nearby have already been eaten.

When situations get so hopeless and people become desperate, they start hardening their hearts against each other. That drive to survive extinguishes everything else, and it's awful to see the transition take place. The most innocent and trusting would often die of famine first because they don't want to steal or go behind the government's back to make a little extra money to trade for food. It makes me wonder what I would do if I had nothing to eat for days or weeks, let alone for years, if I wouldn't be forced to go against my moral code just to have a bite of food.

This book follows the lives of six North Korean defectors, and Demick really makes their stories and perspectives come alive. She shows how complex these people are, even in the face of total calamity. They retain their hope and dignity, and against all odds, eventually escape.

There is no easy solution for them that would solve all their problems. And there is no easy solution for North Korea either. Even if the regime is to eventually collapse, what will happen to all the people there? Assimilation will be a long and arduous process when they have spent a lifetime indoctrinated in a totalitarian regime.

This is one of those books that makes me think and also makes me so thankful for the life I have. By some random luck, I managed to get this life. But I could've easily have been born somewhere else, and maybe now, instead of having the opportunity to read books and share my thoughts, I'd be spending all day walking and scrounging for tree bark to eat. It's a sobering thought indeed.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!