Local Girl Missing starts out with so much promise. Frankie's best friend, Sophie, died 20 years ago, and her body was never recovered. When Frankie receives a call from Sophie's brother saying that Sophie's remains have been found and begging her to return to her old hometown to help him identify her and track down her killer, she agrees and goes. That sounds pretty interesting, right? Unfortunately, the story pretty much devolves into a giant mess from then on.

A large part of the problem is that everyone acts silly in the story. The narrative alternates between present-day Frankie's and 20 years ago Sophie's point of view. Once Frankie gets to her hometown, she immediately starts receiving threatening notes and feels like she's being watched. She constantly tells herself she should leave, but then she just stays. This cycle repeats for days. Even though she is 40 years old, she thinks and acts like an immature baby, constantly angling for attention. In the story, supposedly everyone likes her, but I find that seriously hard to believe.

Sophie doesn't do any better, keeping secrets left and right, even when it's not necessary. The whole mystery wouldn't have happened if she hadn't kept everything from everyone close to her, guarding her secrets like they are great treasures.

About half way through the book, you can kind of see where it's going. From then on, the story crawls along, like a soap opera trying to draw out each moment without anything new happening. The mystery doesn't really progress. The suspense is the fake kind, where nothing is happening. We the readers find out more, not because some new clue is discovered or deduced, but because the narrators finally decide it's time to drop us little nuggets of info.

And when we finally reach the merciful end, the twist is just laughable.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry is a heartwarming and magical story that blurs the line between real life and fairy tales, told from the eyes of a seven-year-old girl. Elsa's grandmother has always regaled her with fairy tales from the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and when her grandmother dies, she leaves behind a treasure hunt for Elsa. As Elsa proceeds on her adventure, she starts to realize that her grandmother's fairy tales and their real lives are much closer than anyone would have guessed.

There are so many amazing things about this book. The world that is the Land-of-Almost-Awake is complex and well-thought-out. The blending of that make-believe world with the real world is seamless and masterful. We meet lots of interesting characters who evolve as the story progresses. And the story is touching and uplifting without being cheesy.

As with other books I've read by Backman (A Man Called Ove and Britt-Marie Was Here), it takes a while for the story to pick up, so the first few chapters seem a bit slow. And there's a lot of information to take in about all the fairy tales. But don't let that discourage you. All the relevant info you need will be repeated later. If you press on, you will be richly rewarded.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

The Gatekeepers is a well-researched look at the White House chiefs of staff under Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama; and their styles, abilities, accomplishments and failures in that role. The book explores the relationship between a chief's effectiveness and his president's ability to get things done during that time.

It talks about how the role has evolved into its modern reincarnation, what each president wants from their chiefs, and the consequences of that seminal choice. It's full of interesting details and tidbits, offering a backstage look at the defining moments in each president's tenure from the chief of staff's perspective.

I've long-held a fascination with the role ever since John Spencer played chief of staff Leo McGarry on The West Wing, and it's heartening to read that just like on the show, most chiefs are there working tirelessly to do the best they can for the country and for their president.

One note here: there is a quote in the book that completely gives away the ending of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. I was in shock when I read it, just in the middle of the book without any spoiler warnings. It's not ok to give away another book's ending, and I'm very disappointed it was included in the book. So be warned.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Homegoing is a stunning saga spanning eight generations, starting with two half-sisters in Ghana, one who lives a life of relative ease in Cape Coast Castle, while the other is imprisoned in the same castle and sold off as a slave. The book is structured so that each chapter is in essence a short story focused on one person, alternating between the two sisters and their descendants through the generations.

Even though each chapter is about a different character, Gyasi deftly weaves together a complete and cohesive story, building each generation on the generations before. At the hands of a less capable author, the story could start to lose momentum as we switch from one character to another, but not here. I finished this book in just three days, unable to put it down or think about anything else.

At its heart, this book is trying to show the impact of slavery and colonialism on everyone. And that impact is felt for many generations, robbing families of spouses, parents, siblings, children, their dignity and often a fair shot at a good future. The stories in here are heartbreaking, made even more emotionally griping because they are a distillation of the true experiences of so many.

I've read a lot of books this year, and most will pass into and out of my memory with barely a backwards glance. But this book, with its rich and haunting narratives, I know will be seared into my memory as one of my favorite books this year.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

Not much happens in this book. The plot of this story is so thin it's hard to say it even qualifies as a plot. For such a short story, it really drags on. I kept reading and hoping that something (anything!) was going to happen. It doesn't help that most of the book is just the self-important ramblings of an old man disguised as some sort of philosophical epiphany. He, his friends, and his girlfriend all sound like insufferable snobs who can't just say what they mean and have to go around having airs with each other. And when the big reveal finally happens in the last pages of the book, I'm just like *shrug* "is this what all the fuss is about?"

Readaroo Rating: 1 star

The Owl Always Hunts at Night is a Scandinavian crime fiction, the second in the Munch & Kruger series and my first introduction to it. It's dark, gruesome, suspenseful, and incredibly twisty. The beginning will instantly grab you, the premise of the crime is intriguing, and there were no lack of characters to suspect. It pretty much had me turning the pages until I reached the very end. That said, I feel like this book has some flaws that prevented me from thoroughly enjoying it.

With so many characters in this book, it's a little hard to keep up sometimes. It almost feels like there are too many, thrown in simply to up the suspect-count. It starts to feel a bit contrived, how everyone just happens to have connections to each other. Also, a lot of the characters have similar names--Marianne, Miriam, Marion--just to add to the confusion.

Speaking of characters, neither of the two main characters plus all the additional detectives on the team are particularly competent. Kruger is perpetually drunk and often on pills, sometimes while talking to suspects. In the course of an evening, she would go through like 10 or more drinks. It's a wonder she didn't keel over. I know she's a flawed character, but it's hard to be sympathetic to her when she can't be bothered to make any sensible decisions. She even interrupts suspects while they are answering her questions during interrogation. Munch seems confused and not sure how to lead the investigation, often ignoring relevant pieces of information as it comes in because he's too tired to care.

Really, all the detectives on the team are fairly scatterbrained, having to ask for clarification multiple times in each conversation, as if they don't even know what they are talking about. Every time new information comes in, even if it's information that they themselves requested, they still have to be reminded before they can remember. It's very odd and makes for really frustrating dialog.

This book is fairly suspenseful, but at times it feels like the author is trying to contrive even more suspense into it. For example, at one point, all the detectives watch a video and there is a part in there that shocks them! But then the book immediately switches to other characters' stories and we the readers don't see what that is until many chapters later. There's no reason for this. The book would be just as good if we find out discoveries at the same time as the detectives.

So all in all, while the plot of this book was enjoyable, the way it was written and the unlikable characters did take away from that.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Quakeland is a journey across America, examining earthquakes both naturally-occurring as well as man-made. It takes a hard look at what we humans are doing to contribute to the frequency and severity of them, as well as what we are doing to prepare and recover from them.

The conclusion is that earthquakes can happen pretty much anywhere. And we are contributing to their frequency and severity. And we know so little about them that we don't have a way of predicting them. And because big ones happen so rarely and people's memories are so short, most governments do not find it worthwhile to spend the money so that we are prepared. It's a pretty scary conclusion.

A good chunk of this book (Part 2) is focused on earthquakes with man-made causes. This includes dams, drilling, mines, injection wells, geothermal energy, fracking, etc. Since there are so many of these topics, at times this part of the book feels thinly stretched, with fact-after-fact thrown in, but not enough depth or an overarching story that the reader can really remember it all. In the end, I'm not sure I retained much details from the topics in this part.

I went into this book wanting to understand more about the well-known earthquake zones, such as the Cascadia subduction zone and Ring of Fire, but the book didn't spent much time covering those, just a chapter here and there. It would have been nice to see more coverage about their histories, what we know about the lead-up to their tremors, and how communities rebuilt afterwards.

Part 3 of the book is the most interesting to me. It talks about urban planning with respect to earthquakes, mental health effects of those who have experienced a traumatic earthquake, tsunamis, earthquake predictions, and early warning systems. I really enjoyed this part of the book and thought it was well-written and engaging.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars