Well, that was an unexpected dose of nasty and fun, wasn't it?

Ted meets a mysterious woman at the airport and, thinking he would never see her again, spills all his secrets to her right then and there. He confides that his wife Miranda is cheating on him, and that he secretly wishes he could kill both her and her lover to teach them a lesson. Once Ted and the woman arrive at their destination, they part ways, but that turns out to be only the beginning.

This book, with its twists and turns everywhere, was thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end. Just as I was getting comfortable with a current story line, I would be hit with a surprise that completely knocked me over and had me recalculating my understanding of what was going on. And this happened so many times.

It's also filled with outrageous characters all trying to kill each other and outdo one another with scheming and backstabbing. It's a rare breed of author who can write a book filled with unlikable characters and make the story itself enjoyable, yet Swanson achieves just that.

The only small gripe I have is that the ending seemed rather abrupt to me. It just ended when I expected there to be more explanation and wrap-up, so it felt a bit unsatisfying. Even though the outcome was clearly implied, after all that buildup, I wish the story took a little more time to see everything to its complete conclusion.

Still, this murderous story was highly enjoyable. All throughout, I couldn't stop turning the pages, excited to see what crazy thing was going to happen next. I've been looking forward to reading this for a long time, and I'm so happy it lived up to all the hype.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

What if you had a glimpse into your future? Would what you see change how you acted today?

Dannie is living the life she's always wanted: a great career as a corporate lawyer, about to be engaged to her boyfriend of two years, and everything is going exactly as she's planned. On the night of her engagement, she falls asleep and seemingly catches a glimpse of her life five years in the future. That glimpse, in which she's with a different man, throws her entire world into turmoil.

The premise of In Five Years immediately caught my attention. There's something fascinating about the concept of knowing one's own future. Do you let it dictate your actions? Is there any way you can avoid your destiny if you don't like it? Those are tough questions, and the scenario facing Dannie is especially hard because this peek into her future self plants the seeds of doubt about the direction of her life and the person she's with.

And yet, this book is also so much more than that. It sets forth Dannie's personal journey of growth and discovery. It explores friendships and relationships and dealing with loss. The characters in here are fascinating, as are the choices they are forced to make. It all combines into the best possible mix, leaving me riveted throughout.

However, the ending threw me a bit. Without giving anything away, I'll say that the story led the reader in a specific direction, a seemingly profound one. It would've made the whole story come together at an insightful destination. But it didn't go that way. It went somewhere else, and that direction took a bit away from the story that the author was trying to craft.

Still, I ended up loving most of it. I found the characters interesting, their choices difficult and nuanced, and the plot line compelling. Even though the ending wasn't as stellar as I hoped, I still very much enjoyed the journey. Reflecting on it, I think this is one of those memorable stories that will stick with me for a long time.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

Can a ghost story be boring? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

In The Sun Down Motel, Vivian works the night shift at the front desk of a creepy motel. She sees some ghosts haunting the place and starts digging around. Soon she realizes that some of the deaths around town may be connected. But one night, she disappears without a trace. Thirty-five years later, her niece Carly shows up, hoping to figure out what happened to her aunt. Carly also gets a job as a front desk clerk on the night shift. Soon she's digging around and being haunted by ghosts too.

This story bored me to sleep, literally. The problem is, if you take out the ghosts, not much happens. And the ghosts were mostly only there in the beginning of the story to precipitate the two girls' investigations.

The majority of the story centers around Vivian and Carly, each in their own timeline, putting their lives on hold to bumble around, sticking their noses where they don't belong. In Vivian's case, she zeroes in on a guy solely because she has a gut feeling that he's a bad person. Let's think about this for a second. If he really was the guilty party, then she's going around following a killer. If he's not guilty, then she's just harassing and stalking an innocent person. I know stories have to have some sort of premise in order to tell their tale, but this just stretched beyond credibility.

The two girls' parallel storylines have a lot of overlap, so it often feels like I'm being told something I already know. And it doesn't help that the two women have pretty much the same personality (extremely nosy and weirdly obsessed with digging into people's deaths beyond what is safe or healthy). More than once, I forgot whose point of view I was reading and it didn't really matter.

It's like watching a campy horror movie where you could see the main characters doing one stupid thing after another, and they just get more and more into trouble. And it's not clear why they are doing these things. Both can leave at anytime, especially when weird stuff starts happening. I don't understand their motivations, and it prevented me from connecting with them.

And even when the plot mercifully seems to have wrapped up, it somehow kept going on some more. There were extra unnecessary characters and ghosts who seem to have no purpose other than to make the story longer and more convoluted.

Lots of people loved this book, so this was clearly a case of it not being the right match for me. I trudged on when I should have quit. I thought it would get better, but it never did. I just couldn't get into it. The whole thing was unbelievable, and it exhausted me.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Humble Pi takes us on a tour of the times when math, engineering, and programming have gone wrong, leading to disastrous or sometimes just funny results. The book covers a range of mistakes, including bridge failures, space exploration disasters, game show cheats, financial algorithms gone rogue, and so much more.

I pretty much loved this book from start to finish. I found it thoroughly fascinating and often hilarious. Parker has a great way with explaining technical subjects, distilling it down to layman terms while retaining his humor. Even on events I already know about, Parker's explanations provided a new and interesting take.

The book is organized so that similar themes are grouped together into chapters, but each incident is only a few pages long, so it never feels bogged down or boring. I found it best to read with the internet handy, so I could zip on and find out more whenever it interested me.

It's been a while since I've been this riveted by a nonfiction book. I was tearing through it, chuckling to myself and stopping only to look up videos of Michael Larson on Press Your Luck and Galloping Gertie as it came down. I'm so glad I happened across this book. It totally spoke to the inner engineer nerd in me. After all, the only thing more fascinating than how something works is when it doesn't.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

Seven friends meet up to ring in the New Year together at a remote wilderness lodge. Two days later, one of them is dead. Told in alternating perspectives from three of the friends, as well as in alternating timelines, one leading up to the fateful event and one in the immediate aftermath, it begs the questions: What happened? Who was killed and why?

And here is essentially the first issue with The Hunting Party: we don't know who the victim is. Even in the aftermath narrative, the identity of the victim is obfuscated. We don't even know their gender until quite late in the book. And withholding this information takes all the fun out of it. It's no longer a mystery to be solved so much as a contrived tale, manipulated such that as much of the information is withheld as possible.

Reading this book gave me anticipation fatigue. There was a complete dearth of action and information. Sure, anticipation adds suspense and fun, but only for a little while. After that, I need something more: clues, reveals, investigation progress, anything. Otherwise, my brain starts to feel fried out from all that imminent expectation. It becomes overloaded and then turns to exhaustion.

In the meantime, we are treated to eye-rolling drama from the most unlikable group of friends I have ever come across. How these people, who are so snide and awkward around each other, are supposedly friends for decades really belies plausibility. They treat each other with disdain and open hostility. Who needs enemies when you have friends like that?

And the book is full of descriptions of the remote wilderness, with its snow and trees and mountains and silence. There was a point in the middle of the book, when nothing but petty drama and bleak terrain filled the pages, that I was so bored it was hard to make myself keep reading.

Eventually the book did come together, and the last bit was enjoyable. But I wish it was a more even reading experience throughout. I can't help but feel this was a bit of a missed opportunity, that such a promising premise and entertaining story had been written in such a way as to take the excitement and fun out of the majority of the book.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

In Silver Sparrow, we follow two sisters with different mothers who share the same father. The girls are kept away from each other. They grow up in seemingly similar circumstances, but their father's disparate treatment of them results in different lives for the two of them. When their paths finally intersect, it leads to the unraveling of their father's carefully crafted families.

The writing in here is beautiful: evocative, nuanced, and weighty. I found myself immersed in it, unable to turn away. There is so much said and unsaid, so many emotions on the surface, but also underneath. The relationships in here are complex and fraught with peril, and each person is doing the best they can given the circumstances, but it often isn't enough.

What drew me to this book initially is that it says it's about polygamy, and I'm always fascinated by that. Why would anyone willingly participate? What are the logistics? But this book isn't really about that. When I think of polygamy, everyone participating has to know they are doing so; otherwise, it's just plain cheating, right? So this book isn't about polygamy so much as it's about cheating. But even then, it doesn't adequately address why the participants wanted to take part in all that.

And while the story focuses on the two daughters, I'm not sure I really grasped the point of it. The narrative feels cohesive, but ultimately leading nowhere. And when it finally gets to the crux of the matter, it ends abruptly without really resolving anything. And maybe that is the point of it, that there is no resolution to such a complex set of issues, but that's not very satisfying to me as a reader.

Overall, I enjoyed the writing in this story, and its ability to provide a viewpoint into a tricky and difficult family setup, and the effects of that on the daughters. But the narrative itself felt a bit wandering to me, without a clear goal in mind. And when it did reach a crucial point, it just sort of ended. I didn't really gain any insight from it. I kept waiting for more throughout the book, and then there was no more.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars