A Nearly Normal Family examines the three members of the Sandell family when daughter Stella is accused of murder. In the aftermath of her arrest, Stella, along with her father, a pastor, and her mother, a defense attorney, must each dig deep down inside and examine what lengths they are willing to go to protect their family.

First, the good: I found the writing style to be engaging throughout, and felt compelled to keep turning the pages. I thought the subject of the story is interesting, and I was curious where the author would take it. For most thrillers, the focus is on what really happened, but I don't feel that's the crux of this story. What really happened is almost an afterthought. Instead, we spend the majority of time scrutinizing and exploring each of the three main characters, their thoughts, their morals and ethics, and how far they will go to protect each other.

Now for what I didn't like: The characters are all so unlikable, not just a little, but a lot. This was probably the biggest hindrance to my enjoyment of this story. The father is paranoid, has boundary issues, and suffers from my-child-is-perfect syndrome. Stella is extremely spoiled and bad-tempered. And as for her crime, her parents did not question or care as to their daughter's guilt. They wanted to save her regardless of whether she killed another person or not. The story is told from their three alternating perspectives, so it was really hard to hang in there while they complained, acted crazy, and supplied endless odd justifications for what they were doing.

It's also a really long story for the amount of substance that's in here. Each of the three members of the family gets to have their turn to tell their side. Except each person often tells an event multiple times, first with some facts obscured, then again as they reveal what they concealed. And since there are three points of view, it's not usual for the the same thing to be told four or five or even six times. How many different ways can you say the same thing? Many times, apparently.

In the end, I enjoyed the writing, but found the characters to be complete duds. With how dysfunctional they turned out to be, this is more of a family drama than anything else. The theme seems to be that parents will do anything for their children, including lying, scheming, obstructing justice, and harassing others, all to keep their precious baby out of jail, regardless of guilt. If everyone used that logic and got their way, the only people in jail would be orphans. So no, I really can't agree with that.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Death by Dumpling sees Lana returning to work at her parents' noodle shop after losing her job and her boyfriend. When a customer ends up dead due to a food allergy, she and the chef become suspects in the murder. Lana quickly realizes that she has to figure out what really happened if she wants to clear their names.

This is a cozy mystery and it definitely feels like one. There's not even a whiff of danger as Lana goes around poking her nose where it doesn't belong. She blunders on, asking intrusive questions to everyone, and somehow they all indulge her by answering. Eventually she happens upon the answer, and it proves decently satisfying to wrap the whole thing up.

I initially came across this because I love dumplings, and the titles in this series are just too delicious to pass up. Otherwise, I would say there is nothing special about this debut. It's fine as a cozy, but it's a bit on the bland side. It didn't really grip me or make me feel compelled to keep reading. I think it's because the writing is very simple. Everything is spelled out in minute detail, so the reader is hit repeatedly over the head with things that are obvious and don't really need to be said. It sort of sucks the excitement out of the writing.

Something else that bothers me is Lana's family. Her mom is overbearing and meddling, in the way that Chinese families are. And her sister is kind of a jerk. Probably most other readers wouldn't be so bothered by this, but coming from a Chinese background, I found this hit a little too close to home, and it made those interactions hard to read.

Still, the titles in this series have me intrigued (I know, I shouldn't pick a book by its title, but I can't help it), and the first book shows enough potential that I'll probably go on to read the second one. Hopefully that one will be a little more exciting, and feature more of the delicious Detective Trudeau and less of Lana's family.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Maid is Stephanie Land's memoir of her arduous and often back-breaking journey to claw herself out of poverty and to find a place of belonging and financial stability for her and her young daughter. It details her desperation to take on any menial jobs available to make ends meet while being a single mother, taking night classes to complete her degree, and being on government assistance that barely bridged the gap to food and shelter.

I found the writing to be stirring and heartbreaking. Land often had to make impossible choices, such as staying in an abusive relationship, or leaving and being homeless. Or putting her daughter in a crummy daycare versus caring for her when she's sick but losing her wages for the day. Her raw desperation could be felt in the pages.

Land also talks about the demoralizing interactions she had with people who looked down on her need for government assistance. Strangers would yell "You're welcome!" when she tried to use food stamps at grocery stores, as if being poor is somehow a choice and a moral failing. Even on food stamps, she often could only afford to eat instant noodles at the end of the month when her food budget ran out.

And yet, even though Land's tale is no doubt compelling, I do admit I found the memoir to be a little lacking. Land spends a lot of time talking about her maid jobs, the houses she cleans, what the state of the rooms are, and what she guesses her clients and their lives are like. It makes for a juicy read, sure, but it doesn't add any insight. There is so much potential in this book, yet much remains unexplored.

For example, I would have liked to read her views on what policy changes would make a difference. There is so much she personally encountered that didn't quite work for her (minimum wage and government assistance) or she didn't have access to (benefits and health care). I would have liked to see her take those and put forth a discussion on what could be done to make things better, not just for her but also others going through a hard time.

In the end, this was a riveting and moving tale of one person's struggles through poverty, and I appreciate it for what it is. I just wish Land had used the opportunity to turn her personal perspective into suggestions on policy updates, without which nothing will change. In that respect, this book felt like a missed opportunity.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Move over, Dracula! There is a new vampire classic in town, and it is creepy, compelling, and utterly memorable!

Dracul starts off in Bram Stoker's childhood years. He was a sick boy confined mostly to his room, until one night on the cusp of death, he somehow makes a miraculous recovery at the hands of his beloved nanny Ellen. Thereafter, his illness completely disappears. After this unexplainable event and a series of strange deaths in town, Bram and his sister Matilda starts digging around to find out what is really going on with their nanny. But Ellen vanishes without a trace, and the years go by. Until one day, Matilda sees Ellen on the streets of Paris, and the siblings are immediately pulled back into this mystery.

Dracul is the prequel to the classic vampire novel Dracula. I found it completely fascinating that it's presented as a true story, one detailing Bram Stoker's early dealings with the evil that eventually led him to write Dracula. Dracul is written by his great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker, who claims he put the story together after meticulous research from Bram's personal notes and Stoker family journals.

This book hits all the right notes. It's creepy and atmospheric, taking place in old villages and castle ruins, in gloomy daylight and dark nights. It's exhilarating and thrilling, full of unexplained events and horrifying happenings. It gives off the impression that this world of vampires and evil beings could really exist, and there's something so deliciously fun about that.

The only minor complaint I have is that the narrative switches between Bram in the present and his story leading up to that moment, until they finally converge into the climax. Usually authors employ this technique when what's happening now is more exciting than what's happening in the past, and so this switcheroo keeps the readers engaged with the backstory until it catches up to the current narrative. But in this case, the backstory is just as exciting, so the narrative would've lost nothing by sticking to telling it in chronological order. But that's only a few pages here and there, so it's a small quibble.

I picked up this book on a whim. I was browsing the latest paperbacks and happened across it. I'm usually a little leery of prequels, especially when it's written by someone other than the original author. And having never read Dracula, I wasn't sure what to expect. But I didn't need to worry. This book is a chilling and completely riveting vampire tale, and it wouldn't surprise me if one day it reached classic status in its own right. Now after all this, I'm curious how Dracula stacks up.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Colleen Hoover. I just never know what I'm going to get with her, so I always approach her books with caution. And I'm happy (and relieved) to report that Regretting You was a complete win for me.

We follow mother/daughter duo Morgan and Clara. Morgan had Clara when she was only 17, and put her dreams on hold to raise her daughter. The two love each other, but often clash due to their strong personalities. When tragedy strikes the family, the two must put aside their differences and try to come to terms with their new circumstances.

This story has all the best of Colleen Hoover. It delves into the complex relationship between a parent and a child, the challenges of growing up and seeking independence, and how to move on after tragedy. It's a rich sketch of the tapestry of life, with the messiness of everyone's feelings and expectations, and what happens when they all collide.

I found the passages around communication and misunderstandings to be particularly poignant. They underscore both how easy it is to let feelings of hurt and resentment build up over time, as well as the difference it can make to approach a loaded interaction with calmness, kindness, and honesty.

The supporting characters in this book are real highlights. Miller and his gramps are both so sweet and sarcastic, and they steal every scene they're in. They provide the perfect comfort to Clara through her anguish and heartbreak. It makes me wish they were real so that I could have them in my life.

I seem to either love Colleen Hoover's books (most of the time) or find them extremely questionable (every once in a while), and I'm glad this fell in the former camp. Right now is a stressful time, and this was the perfect heartwarming story to pull me away from that. It's comforting to read about love and kindness making a difference, and that there will be time again for happiness after tragedy.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

The Other People starts off with Gabe searching for his daughter Izzy. Three years earlier, he was driving home when he saw his daughter's face in the backseat of an old car. He lost the car in the ensuing chase, and arriving home, he found out that his wife and daughter had supposedly been murdered. But Gabe knows in his heart that his daughter is still alive out there, and he's been looking for her ever since.

The premise is super interesting, but I wonder if this is a case where the story just couldn't quite live up to the hype. In addition to Gabe's story line, we also follows two others: a waitress at a service station, and a mother on the run with her daughter. I found the story lines to be more or less entertaining, though a bit bland. The switching between them felt disjointed to me, and as a result, I never quite bonded with any of the characters.

Once the different stories started to converge, there were a lot of coincidences and many of them were far-fetched. The story seemed to go one way with "the other people", but then towards the end, a paranormal element was thrown in that felt jarring and odd. The ending was very drawn out, with multiple explanations necessary to account for everything. It was all rather complicated, and I'm not sure I grasped it all.

In the end, this was a diverting story, as long as you can suspend your beliefs and don't look too closely at the explanation. It was a fun few hours of reading, but I wish I had found it more compelling and thrilling.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

In The Water Cure, three sisters live with their mother and father on an island cut off from the rest of the world. They are taught from a young age that women must be protected from the terror and violence of men, and that the real world is filled with toxins that would degrade and sicken them. When their father disappears and two men and a boy show up on their island, their lives upend. What follows for the sisters is the slow disintegration of their lives that they have always feared.

The story is divided into three parts, and I found the first two to be decent, though not great. The prose is dreamlike and evocative, filled with lots of feelings and thoughts. We spend a lot of time getting to know the cruel punishments and rituals their parents subject them to in order to cleanse their bodies and minds and be rid of the world's toxins. But then I got to the third part, and it completely fell apart for me.

This book has an extremely simplistic and pessimistic view of the genders. Women are universally awesome and filled with the spirit of love and sisterhood; men are irredeemably bad from the moment of their births. It completely disregards individuality. Every person fits in one or the other gender, and they surely must act in accordance with that, without any ability to think for themselves. It's an extremely tribalistic view of "us versus them", and in our world today, we need less of that thinking, not more.

Though it's laid out as a story of redemption, it doesn't feel that way to me. Rather, the message seems to be that you are what your parents teach you, and you can never grow to be more than that. There's no hope of figuring out your own mind or your own wishes. And that translates to not having to take responsibility for one's own actions. The book essentially says that their parents and their circumstances made the sisters into who they are, and as a result, they are not responsible for the bad things they do onto others. Just... no.

I'm appalled by the violence and complete disregard that the three women have for others, which is disguised as righteousness. In the end, what are the men's heinous crimes? Well, it's to love and leave. Sure, that is unkind, but it's not deserving of death or torture. It's also not deserving of the women living in constant fear or acting so hysterical throughout.

If the gender roles in this book were reversed, I can't imagine this book would be allowed to be published. Women would be up in arms over the misogyny. This book is marked as feminist, but it isn't. It's making mountains out of molehills and being as purposefully hurt as possible over small slights. It's being cruel to a group of people, to those you would label as "others" who are different from yourself. And that's not ok.

In the end, I strongly disagree with the message of this book. As someone who, like almost everyone out there, has had the painful experience of being lumped into a group and seen as a stereotype rather than an individual, I just don't understand or agree with the spirit of this story.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star