U is for Undertow

U is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton.

Sue Grafton started her "alphabet" mystery series with A is for Alibi back in the '80s and hasn't looked back since. Her novels, featuring P.I. Kinsey Millhone, still take place in the late '80s, this one in 1988, where Millhone can frequently be found typing away on a Smith-Corona typewriter.

This book, as in all her alphabet mysteries, was good, but the ending was just a little too 'pat' for me, though admittedly Grafton did take a long time connecting all the storylines running through the novel.

3 out of 5 stars.

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The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold.

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it.

Great book, and now I definitely want to see the movie when it comes out in January. Susie Salmon is murdered in December 1973 when she is 14 years old, and she then goes to Heaven, but it is a sort of "in-between" Heaven: she can still look down upon Earth and see everything that is happening there. Her father is sure he knows who her murderer is (and is, in fact, correct) but there is no evidence, and the police do not believe him at first. The novel spans over a period of ten years or so (perhaps a little longer) and Susie watches as her siblings and friends grow up without her.

I've never read a book with this sort of narrator before, and Alice Sebold kept me captivated until the very end.

4 stars out of 5.

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Soon to come

I have been reading a lot of Kristin Hannah books, which is why I haven't written many reviews lately (I try to write reviews of books by different authors, not just the same one over and over). However, I have two Kristin Hannah books left to read and then I will be reading The Lovely Bones, the bestseller by Alice Sebold that is now a major motion picture which is coming out in theaters soon. I have heard that this is a great and very intense book, so we will see if my expectations are fulfilled.

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