The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

A social worker tells Lila, a young woman on the verge of aging out of foster care, that she needs to get her life in order.  She finds what she thinks is her ticket out, by signing an employment contract to work in a small town in Missouri.  What awaits her is something very different.

Usually I enjoy reading stories that use different characters perspectives.  But I have to say, in this case I struggled with it.  The page counter on my Kindle read 40% before I figured out that Lucy is Lila's daughter and that the story is not only written from different points of view but that these two main characters were living in different time periods. One thing I have learned is there are things that a writer doesn't reveal to the reader in order to keep them reading.  The setting however, is never one of those things. 

I am not one for reading many mysteries, but I love when a good one keeps me interested.   The Weight of Blood was far too predictable and the ending left me disappointed.  Too much weight for me.

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a few years ago.  It had won the Pulitzer Prize after all and I loved its fresh, edgy voice.  I like to mix my reading list up so I felt it was time to read another Junot Diaz novel, spice things up a bit.

The first page of This is How You Lose Her sucked me right in.  Diaz's writing is fast, snappy, sexy and neurotic.  Yunior is a young, Dominican trying to find his way even though the whole world seems to be against him.  He constantly chases the girls searching for something lasting and is never able to find it.  He's a smart kid with a good brain but thinking with the wrong brain overrules everything else in his life. Circling in the background is his over protective mother and a dying brother. 

Yunior's fast and furious antics kept me on the edge of my seat. For awhile.  After the read 'o meter on my Kindle passed 50%, I prayed for Yunior to find a girl so the story could be over with.  Too much of the same thing over and over began to bore me.  The heart racing pace of the writing got to be too much for me to take.  I wanted a break.

At the end of the story, I breathed a sigh of relief. Yunior's tales had come to an end and I could move on to something more calming and relaxing.  Since I do most of my reading in bed, I also needed a good night's sleep.  Spicing things up is not always exciting as it may seem.

The Battle of the Thermostat

I know I'm a wimp.  My northern friends remind me of that on a regular basis these days.  I understand that here in Florida we don't have 10 feet of snow to shovel out of the driveway and it's not -50 below even without the windchill factored in, but we've had a miserable winter too.  I am desperate for the cool, sunshiney days with flowers blooming and birds singing. 

Get out your violin.

I have all tile floors in my house.  A good idea when it's 90 degrees outside in the summer.  But when the temperature dips to 30 degrees outside, the inside turns into a meat locker.  An air conditioner turned furnace is hardly up to the challenge.  The poor little heating element runs and runs and runs, while I have put on every sweater in my closet and every pair of socks in my drawer.  I can't get warm.

And then Mother Nature pulls another cruel trick.  The next day we are breaking all kinds of records when the temps climb to 85 degrees.  I've turned off the heat and turned on the air again.  I'm sweating buckets around here!  The piece of machinery we depend on for our year round comfort is just as confused as we are. It was just getting the hang of the heat when we asked for it to make us cool instead.

Today we are back down to 50 degrees outside.  My nose is running, my lips are chapped and my toes are turning blue.  Misery loves company and I want you to know, I'm pretty miserable too. The sky is grey and gloomy.  Even here in the Sunshine State.

After The Fog by Kathleen Shoop

After The Fog by Kathleen Shoop

After graduating from college, I moved to Pittsburgh for my first job at Gimbel's.  The first time someone asked me for a gum band, I had no idea what they wanted.  When a girlfriend said she needed to redd up the house because company was coming, I was just a clueless.  And the first time I hears the word 'yunz', I thought I'd moved to a foreign country.

After The Fog paints a picture of a steel town on the Monongahela River is western Pennsylvania in post WWII America.  The mills kept the towns alive, without them the people would have nothing.  They wrapped the workers and their families in the dirt, soot and fog sent into the air from the stacks.  The almighty paycheck from the mill kept their noses to the grindstone and their complaints silent.

Rose is a driven community nurse with a secret past.  She believes she has done everything right in keeping her marriage and family together.  When it all falls apart in the great fog, her soul searching begins.

The scenery and setting of this novel took me back to this part of the country I'd left behind years ago.  I breathed in the thick, gritty air.  I heard the rough guttural sounds of their speech. I walked through the crooked streets lined with rundown houses and broken stoops. The characters, Rose, her husband, Henry and her children lacked depth.  Many of Rose's actions didn't seem to fit her.  Her lazy sister-in-law, Sara Clara, appeared in an interesting scene early in the book, never came into the fullness I longed to see from her.  I felt the same about Father Tom.  These were the characters I wanted to see more from and never did.

After The Fog is based on an actual event.  If I had know that from the start I may have viewed this story with more credibility.  Some descriptions of the fog seemed unrealistic to me.  If I'd know they were based on historical descriptions I may have viewed them differently.  After The Fog may have more historical value even though it is a fictional account.  Otherwise, I wouldn't invest time in this story that lacked the depth of character I long for as a reader.