Chris BohjalianRezensionen

Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-Print: Available – (Bib info from Amazon website) COPYRIGHT: October 5, 2004 ([hardbound] first edition); ISBN-13: 978-1400047451; PUBLISHER: Shaye Areheart Books; LENGTH: 448
-Digital: (Bib info from Amazon website) COPYRIGHT: September 27, 2005 ([Kindle] Reprint edition); PUBLISHER: Vintage; ISBN: 9780062910721; File size 763 KB
*Audio: (Info from Libby) COPYRIGHT: 7-July-2004; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape; DURATION: approx. 17 hours; Unabridged (LAPL MP3)
Feature Film or tv: Not that I’m aware of.

SERIES: No
CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
-Nan Seton: 70-year-old; Mother, Grandmother
-Spencer McCullough: Husband; Father; Communications Director and Spokesperson for FERAL (Lobbying group for animal causes)
-Catherine Mccullough: Spencer’s wife; Nan’s daughter
-Charlotte Mccullough: Spencer and Cahterine’s 12-year-old daughter
-John Seton: Lawyer; Hunter; Father of Willow; Husband of Sara; Son of Nan
-Sara Seton: Wife of John; Mother of Charlotte
-Willow Seton: John and 10-year-old daughter; Charlotte’s cousin

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-Selection: Don (husband) and I were at a public library in Laguna Niguel. The Friends book store was closed but this was on the shelves right outside the bookstore. Don was intrigued, so I hunted the audio down through my Los Angeles Public Library subscription.
-About: A family challenged by one person’s cause that no one else believes in; another member’s desire to bond with colleagues and a newborn son by starting a new “sport” which is directly counter to the first person’s cause; common procrastination; the usual dysfunctions of inattentiveness to relationships; reckless youths; and issues that revolve around hunting.
-Liked: Well-developed characters; good plot.
-Disliked: Often over-the-top didacticism; length
-Overall: My husband and I liked it enough to be interested in reading more from this author. While this book primarily covers two sides of two interconnected issues pretty well, I don’t think it’s attempting to be completely objective, which isn’t to say it should.

AUTHOR:
Chris Bohjalian:
(Excerpt from Wikipedia) “Chris A. Bohjalian (Armenian: Քրիս Պոհճալեան) is an Armenian-American novelist and the author of 20 novels, including Midwives (1997), The Sandcastle Girls (2012), The Guest Room (2016), and The Flight Attendant (2018). Bohjalian's work has been published in over 30 languages, and three of his novels have been adapted into films. Bohjalian's The Flight Attendant has been adapted for a television drama starring Kaley Cuoco.[3][4]”

NARRATOR(S):
Susan Denaker
(From IMDb) “Susan Denaker is known for Girlfriend 19 (2014), Alex & Jaime (2017) and American Friends (1991).”
(From Penguin Random House) “Susan Denaker’s extensive theatre credits include numerous plays in the West End of London, national tours, and many English Rep companies, including a season with Alan Ayckbourn’s company in Scarborough. More recently in the United States, Susan has appeared in Our Town and Sweet Bird of Youth, both at the La Jolla Playhouse, and Breaking Legs at the Westport Playhouse.”

GENRE: Literature, Fiction

SUBJECTS: Vegetarians; Animal rights; Lobsters; Guns; Hunting; Crusades; Family relations

LOCATIONS: Sugar Hill, New Hampshire; northern Vermont
DEDICATION: “For the Blewer Women: Sandra, Cecilia, Victoria, and Julia”
EXCERPT: From: “Prologue”
“Cavitation
The bullet—cylindriform as a rocket but tapering to a point almost sharp enough to prick skin with a casual touch—was two and a half inches long when it was in its cartridge in the rifle. The shank was made of copper, and the expansion chamber would cause it to double in diameter upon impact. The tip was designed to swell upon contact as well, ripping apart the flesh and muscle and bone as it made its way to the elk’s or the bear’s or (most likely) the deer’s heart. It looked like a little missile.
The bullet did not hit Spencer McCullough in the chest that very last night in July, however, because that would have killed him pretty near instantly. Nor did it plunge into his abdomen, which—depending upon how much of his stomach, his liver, and his spleen were in harm’s way—would have killed him over the course of minutes. A thirty-ought-six—a .30-caliber bullet atop the classic cartridge case developed by the U.S. Army in 1906—turns bowels into pudding.
Instead, it ripped into the man’s body just above and to the side of his chest, slamming into him below his right shoulder. It shattered completely the scapula and his shoulder joint, demolished his rotator cuff (which would have been even more debilitating for his wife, Catherine, because she still gave a damn about her tennis serve), and mixed into a thick, sloppy soup the muscles that Spencer used to move his shoulder and lift his right arm. The bullet was traveling at two and a half times the speed of sound, and the tissue had to absorb the velocity: Consider the way a bullet does not appear to pierce a brick of Jell-O but, rather, causes it to explode.
What was of most importance to the two EMTs who arrived at the house at the very peak of Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, however, was that the bullet had also obliterated the first branch of the axillary artery—the superior thoracic artery—though as they were taking what remained of Spencer’s vitals near what remained of his snow peas that summer night in the garden they tended not to use words like axillary and thoracic. They used words like bleeder and terms like bleeding out, and Evan Seaver—the male of the pair—allowed himself a small assortment of expletives and invectives. Evan was two decades younger than his partner, a fifty-one-year-old first-response veteran with hair the color of hoarfrost that fell over her ears and rounded her skull like a helmet. Her name was Melissa Fearon, but everyone called her Missy Fearless. She ignored Evan’s occasional lapses in decorum that evening because he had never before seen a gunshot wound. He’d seen his share of grisly car and snowmobile accidents, and he had in fact been with her when they found the vacationing TV producer who’d been decapitated behind the wheel of the convertible he’d rented in Boston. But that gentleman was clearly dead—not dying—and so Evan hadn’t had to get too close or spend any time with the corpse.
Both EMTs were volunteers who did other things for a living. Evan worked at an electrical wire factory in nearby Lisbon, and Missy taught math at the high school in Littleton. On at least a half-dozen occasions she had pulled her own students from their dads’ toppled four-by-fours or their very own Geos, Escorts, and Corollas, the vehicles inevitably crinkled like the foil wrappers that folded themselves around sticks of chewing gum. She had dealt before with audible bleeding—hemorrhaging that seems absolutely torrential, the flow not in reality making the noise of a geyser but seeming to everyone present as if it is—and seen people (grown-ups and teenagers and, alas, children) impaled on the shards of twisted metal that once were parts of automobiles.
Spencer was well into the first symptoms of shock when they arrived: He was cold and clammy and pale, and he was having great trouble breathing. Consequently, he was what Missy Fearon and her more seasoned associates referred to as a scoop-and-run. She and Evan did little at the edge of the garden where they found Spencer (his body half in the lupine that bordered the vegetables and half in the ugly, knotted vines on which once had grown snow peas) other than apply a thick, gauzy trauma dressing to the wound—and then lots of hand pressure—slip a stiff plastic cervical collar around his neck to immobilize his head, and roll him onto a backboard. Then they were off to the hospital in Hanover. Somehow Missy managed to stick a saline IV into Spencer in the ambulance while continuing to keep weight on the wound. She thought of how the EMTs sat on patients or jumped on the rolling gurneys to maintain pressure in the TV dramas, but she couldn’t imagine actually doing such a thing, especially with this poor guy. She’d be sitting on jam.
As for the emergency room physicians and the surgeon who, fortunately, lived within minutes of the hospital, once they had Spencer McCullough stabilized their greatest concern was the reality that before shattering all that bone in his shoulder and upper back, the bullet had done a pretty fair job of pulverizing the brachial plexus—the network of nerves that sends signals from the spine to the arm and the hand. Recall the Jell-O: Meaningful reconstruction was completely out of the question Assuming they could even save Spencer’s right arm (which was no guarantee), it was highly unlikely that it would ever do a whole lot more than flop at his side like a scarecrow’s.
Inevitably, Spencer was right-handed. And so even though he wasn’t the athlete his wife was (the rotator cuff was among the least of the surgeon’s problems), this would be a severe disability. Even though he worked at a desk—Missy overheard enough as she worked to get Spencer into the ambulance to understand that he was a public relations guy for some animal rights organization in New York City, and this house he was at was his mother-in-law’s—it was going to be a very long time before anything came easy to him again.
Once the physicians had started pumping the units and units (and still more units) of blood into him, done a chest X-ray, and gotten the only good news that Spencer McCullough’s body was going to offer that evening—there was no hemorrhaging inside the thorax and a lung had not collapsed—they set to work trying to control the bleeding in his shoulder and washing out the wound. This meant, among other tasks, meticulously removing all those tiny fragments of bone, which were now little more than contaminants. It meant using a Gore-Tex sleeve that looked a bit like a miniature version of a radiator hose from a car engine to reconnect the severed arteries, and then—when they needed yet more tubing—stealing a part of a vein from his leg.
Weeks later, they might do whatever reconstructive surgery they could. They might perform a nerve-cable graft, taking nerves from the part of the man’s leg where they had just taken a vein so that a portion of the pudding of sheared links in the nearly invisible wires in his right shoulder might begin to grow back. Or, if necessary, they might amputate the arm. In all likelihood, it was going to be completely useless. No, it would be worse than useless. It would be a hindrance, a limp and flaccid tentacle that hung by his side, caught on counters and tabletops, and banged against him when he tried to move his body in any manner that was even remotely athletic.
Still, Spencer McCullough was alive. And if someone had said to either Missy Fearon or Evan Seaver before they arrived at the house on Sugar Hill that a guy there had taken a bullet from a thirty-ought-six a couple of inches from his heart, they both would have assumed that they could have driven from the scene to the hospital at the speed limit with their siren and two-tone switched off, because all that was going to happen when they arrived was that the body was going to be declared dead and put on ice for the ME.
Only when they had deposited Spencer at the hospital and he had been rushed into the OR did either of them have the time to voice the questions that had crossed both their minds: Why the hell was there a loaded deer rifle on the property three and a half months before hunting season? And why in the name of heaven was a twelve-year-old kid—the guy’s own daughter, for God’s sake!—firing potshots into the garden on the last night in July?”

RATING:
4 stars

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
3/27/23 to 5/9/23

Murder, mystery, love, power, antiquity, Italy, and World War II. These elements woven togther by Chris Bohjalian make for a suspenseful, and interesting tale. Casandra Campbell, a favorite narrator from my Jodi Picoult reads, narrates the audio version. It's got more than a fair share of brutality and violence, hence why not a five star.

This is historical fiction about the Armenian Genocide. It is well told, but rough (hence the average score), as you might imagine given the subject. I'm not a fan of violence but there's probably no way to properly explain such a tragic piece of history. I learned about a subject I'd known nothing about.

Tension aand darkness certainly in this Vegas, crypto, mob scenenovel. Didn't finish as quickly as usual so it had a couple of nights for the dark underside to haunt me. It had lots of twists, pretty well developed characters and just enough light to keep me going. Glad to have it done in a way, I'm not a fan of the Vegas scene anyway.

Chris Bohjalian has been a must read author for me. He's written 23 books and most of them were five star reviews from me. Unfortunately, his new book isn't as good as some of his previous books. It's still a great read but unlikable characters make the book difficult to read in parts.

Chrissy and Becky are sisters and had been very close when they were young. Years later family secrets cooled their relationship. They still talked on the phone but not very often plus they were on different paths in their lives.

Chrissy lives in Las Vegas and performs in her own show at one of the lesser casinos playing Princess Diana.
She loved her life in Las Vegas. She spent most of her day in her private cabana at the pool and she uses pills and alcohol to help her get through her days. When one of the owners of the casino is killed, she begins to worry about what will happen to her show if someone buys the casino. That ended up being the least of her worries.

Betsy is a social worker in Vermont. She is serious about life and a total opposite to carefree Chrissy. She has recently adopted a 13 year old girl and they are working at getting to know each other. When her boyfriend asks her to move to Las Vegas with him to work in the crypto currency business she decides that she's burnt out from social work and it's time to try a different path. Chrissy was very unhappy with her sister's decision and really didn't want her living so close.

Both women are trying to live their lives as best they can. Chrissy loves her Diana tribute and Betsy is excited to move to Vegas and start over. They both end up in a lot of trouble surrounded by gangsters and con men and in extreme danger.

Review to follow.

This was an unusual one. An interesting premise and promising start - a meltdown at a nuclear power station in America and the subsequent “fallout” as experienced by a teenage girl.
The voice of the teenage girl was credible but I felt the story could have been condensed. I was engaged for some parts and not others.

Everything Chris Bohjalian writes is very good and exceptional. In the case of THE LIONESS, it doesn't start out that way. But if you keep reading, it does get there.

It is 1964. Katie, an actress, takes her new husband, brother and pregnant sister-in-law, and five friends on a safari in Africa. Almost immediately the group of campers is besieged by Russian men, who kill their African guides but not the Americans. It looks like the Russians intend to kidnap them.

What follows are the Americans' experiences from each of their points of view. Their African porter's POV is also included. All the while you and they wonder whether this is a kidnapping, why, and by whom. Every segment of every chapter has clues, but the clues point in different directions. The mysteries might be solved in several ways.

Some survive, others don't. Each of the Americans is up against not only the Russians but, also, wild animals. You'll see who is tough (and who "the lioness" is).

Intrigue and drama in sin city...

Crissy Dowling has a residency at the second-rate Buckingham Palace Casino in Las Vegas where she spends most nights of the week doing two shows as a Diana impersonator. She's spent years becoming Diana and has really embraced her character. Crissy isn't very social and spends her days poolside, drinking or dropping some pills, in a cabana that she has earned as one of her perquisites. She's not close to her younger sister, Betsy, and so is stunned to hear that Betsy has adopted a teenage girl and is moving out to Las Vegas to take a job with her current boyfriend, Frankie. Betsy's job is ostensibly as a secretary for a company that intends to make cryptocurrency big in the city. Unfortunately, they are most likely gangsters and bad things start to happen.

After a very slow start and lots of boring information about fintech and crypto, this got a little more exciting toward the very end -- even if most of what happened was fairly implausible. I didn't care for the Diana angle nor the way the narrative was obviously speaking the author's opinions about the royal family. That whole aspect of the novel had so little to do with the actual plot. That said, the other angle, the Vegas mafia, is also not of interest either. I never grew to like any of the characters and the conclusion was quite predictable.

I've found the Bohjalian novels to be hit or miss with me and this one was the latter. It took me forever to read because I just never got fully vested in the story. Was glad to finally finish.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday books for the e-book ARC to read and review.

Enjoyed, even though I wasn’t crazy about the main character. Seems to be yet another mystery that is responding to the me to movement. The setting was interesting, though I felt much of what happened particularly in the latter part of the novel was very unlikely for the time

Could have been much shorter. It took til half way through to get going, and it REALLY took its time explaining itself.

Compelling historical fiction set in 17th Century Boston about an intelligent woman who dared to challenge the Puritan patriarchy by asking for a divorce from her brutally abusive husband and was ultimately condemned to hang for witchcraft. That bare outline does not do justice to the rich historical details Chris Bohjalian used to fill in the contours of Mary Deerfield’s tortured married life, neither whitewashing her own impure and sinful thoughts nor rendering her as a saint, but exposing her as a woman we would recognize as suffering from battered woman syndrome.

At a time when we in the United States, as a society, are grappling with exposing the power structure built into the foundations of our political, economic, and cultural institutions, this story reminds us how the power was wielded especially over women, or others deemed unworthy, like the Quakers in this novel. Educated women like Mary and her friend Constance were especially suspect and sometimes all it took was a suggestion by one person, who perhaps had a grudge, to bend the lens through which many others in a community view sometimes perfectly ordinary acts. I might have given five stars but for several areas that seemed implausible, or at least a stretch, to me.

I am, in general, not drawn to murder mysteries in my reading choices. It's just not the way I chose to spend what never seems like enough reading time. If I had known "The Flight Attendant" was a murder mystery, I might not have even picked it up, but I did because it was written by Chris Bohjalian, whose books I have enjoyed immensely. The fact that the story begins when a flight attendant with a killer hangover wakes up in a plush hotel bed next to the nearly-decapitated hedge fund manager she met on their flight to Dubai might have put me off, but it did not. Because I knew I would be treated to well-drawn, credibly-flawed characters and a compelling story. And so I was. What I did not expect from that opening scene were the twists and turns in the plot that I never once anticipated. Nothing and no one are what they seem. This book was so much more than a murder mystery -- or a thriller, as I had seen it described -- it was also a tale of redemption. Well done!

Great story boring storytelling. Sad because this could have been an excellent book.
Russian sexy slaves posing as strippers at a bachelor party being held in the suburbs. The two handlers get killed by the sex slaves and and run for their lives.
What happens to all who attended the party afterwards and the sex slaves is what the story is about. But the writing is wooden as if it is for a story in a newspaper not a novel.

Takes place in the 1660?s. A story of woman who files for divorce from her much older husband for cruelty. She is denied this and must go back to her husband, but decides she must plot a way to get rid of him. She plans on poisoning him, but is unable to at the last minute. She is then accused of being a witch and finds herself guilty .She is due to be hanged the next day. when she finds before her friends that have come to save her by putting on a cargo ship bound for Jamaica. Before her friend can get her to the ship, they are confronted by her abusive spouse and a friend both drunk from an evening at a bar. A tussle ensues and she kills her husband with a sword and her friend kills the other gentleman by slashing his throat. Next thing we know she is in Jamaica with the man she has fallen in love with. No one in Boston knows what happened and all parties involved go on with their lives. Kirkus: A Puritan wife shocks her community and risks her life to file for divorce in 1662 Boston.For more than five years, Mary, age 24, has been married to Thomas, 45, a prosperous miller. Thomas has been physically and sexually abusive, always taking care that there are no witnesses. He castigates Mary?s intelligence, telling her she has ?white meat? for brains. The marriage is childless, drawing community suspicion to Mary. When she can?t hide bruises on her face, she lies about their provenance. The behavior, she tells herself, only occurs when Thomas is ?drink-drunk.? The coverup continues until, cold sober, Thomas drives a fork into Mary?s hand, breaking bones. She flees to her parents? home and files for divorce, which is allowed but only if grounds can be proven. Forks are a major motif: Not merely newfangled ?cutlery? which Mary?s father, a shipping entrepreneur, hopes to profit from importing, but miniature pitchforks viewed by the Puritans as ?Devil?s tines.? The forks, as well as other clues�a mysterious pestle, a pentagram etched on a door frame¥are used to counter Mary?s compelling, but unwitnessed, claims of cruelty with insinuations of witchcraft. Divorce denied, Mary must return to the marital home and resort to ever more drastic expedients in her quest for freedom. Mary comes from privilege, and her parents clearly care about her. (Unlike the divorce magistrates, they don?t believe she injured her hand by falling on a tea kettle spout.) That they allow her return to Thomas to avoid witchcraft charges defies plausibility¥death at Thomas? hands seems a more immediate prospect, and her family wealth affords many other options. The charges come anyway¥timed for maximum melodrama. The language, salted liberally with thee and thou, feels period-authentic. The colonists? impact on nearby Native tribes is not Bohjalian?s primary concern here, but the Hobson?s choice facing women in Puritan society is starkly delineated.Illustrates how rough justice can get when religion and institutional sexism are in the mix.

(2021) One of the best books I have read is a long time. Set in the mid 1600s in Boston, Mary is married to a cruel and abusive husband. She tries to be a good Christian wife until he stabs her in the hand with a fork (or Devil's tines). She sues for divorce, which is rare but does happen in the time but in the male dominated society is eventually denied her claim. This is the premise of the first half of the book. The second half sees her trying to get revenge, even to the point of murder of her husband, Thomas. She goes right to the brink, but can't do it. At this point witchcraft (they are near Salem afterall) enters the picture more and more as neighbors and others see her actions as being in league with the devil. She is eventually jailed and tried on that count. Facing a hanging, she is broken out of jail by her daughter-in-law who was also abused by Thomas, her father. The intent is to get Mary on a boat to Jamaica, but they encounter Thomas and a friend in the streets which leads to Thomas and the friend being murdered by the two women. Mary makes it to Jamaica where she is joined by Henry, a Boston man she has fallen in love with. Kirkus: A Puritan wife shocks her community and risks her life to file for divorce in 1662 Boston.For more than five years, Mary, age 24, has been married to Thomas, 45, a prosperous miller. Thomas has been physically and sexually abusive, always taking care that there are no witnesses. He castigates Mary's intelligence, telling her she has ?white meat? for brains. The marriage is childless, drawing community suspicion to Mary. When she can't hide bruises on her face, she lies about their provenance. The behavior, she tells herself, only occurs when Thomas is ?drink-drunk.? The coverup continues until, cold sober, Thomas drives a fork into Mary's hand, breaking bones. She flees to her parents' home and files for divorce, which is allowed but only if grounds can be proven. Forks are a major motif: Not merely newfangled ?cutlery? which Mary's father, a shipping entrepreneur, hopes to profit from importing, but miniature pitchforks viewed by the Puritans as ?Devil's tines.? The forks, as well as other clues�a mysterious pestle, a pentagram etched on a door frame¥are used to counter Mary's compelling, but unwitnessed, claims of cruelty with insinuations of witchcraft. Divorce denied, Mary must return to the marital home and resort to ever more drastic expedients in her quest for freedom. Mary comes from privilege, and her parents clearly care about her. (Unlike the divorce magistrates, they don't believe she injured her hand by falling on a tea kettle spout.) That they allow her return to Thomas to avoid witchcraft charges defies plausibility¥death at Thomas' hands seems a more immediate prospect, and her family wealth affords many other options. The charges come anyway¥timed for maximum melodrama. The language, salted liberally with thee and thou, feels period-authentic. The colonists' impact on nearby Native tribes is not Bohjalian's primary concern here, but the Hobson's choice facing women in Puritan society is starkly delineated.Illustrates how rough justice can get when religion and institutional sexism are in the mix.Pub Date: April 20, 2021ISBN: 978-0-385-54243-2Page Count: 416Publisher: DoubledayReview Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2020Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021

This book is really easy to fall into and read and the premise is interesting but I really didn't enjoy it. The basic story is about wealthy middle aged guys who have a bachelor party where things go horribly wrong and people wind up dead. Life after the party is a mess as they come to terms with the repercussions of the party on their marriages and careers.

I had zero sympathy for the leading male character, Richard, even though I think we were supposed to find him heroic in the face of this terrible situation he really didn't cause or deserve. I thought his wife was too forgiving. I did feel sympathy for his daughter who at nine was old enough to know something terrible was going on but not quite old enough to fully understand.

More sympathetic was Alexandra, one of the girls "entertaining" at the bachelor party. Her story is tragic and while it was certainly interesting to see how something like this could happen to a young girl it's also not a world I want to spend my free time living in.

It's not a bad book by any means but I wouldn't rush to pick this one up either.

Awful! Completely predictable, oddly crude, filled with drivel about angels that seems to have no real purpose and a load of completely unlikeable characters. If I hadn't paid money for it, I wouldn't have finished. A total waste of time.

The Flight Attendant A Novel by Chris Bohjalian published by Doubleday Books is a good read. I want to thank all parties who made this book possible and many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my arc of this novel.
I like many readers out there feel that the thriller genre is highly saturated but this novel has such unique qualities that it makes it a gem in the genre. Chris Bohjalian does an amazing job painting his female lead in many dimensions. While she comes across like a drunk party girl who enjoys a good time in every part of the world she lands, she is also a devoted aunt a strong female and a sister. For those who do not know much about alcoholism it is a very interesting ride watching Cassie spiral then picking herself up. I felt that the slow pace of the novel actually didn’t bother me. Why you ask well that simple because I think the slow format makes the story more digestible for the reader there for making it a more enjoyable read. I think the only thing I didn’t much care for was the character of Viktor while I get the role he played I just want a fan. Over all I think this deserves a read from anyone who likes a thriller with lots of twists.

I have very mixed feelings about The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian. On one hand this is an unforgettable piece of historical fiction detailing the Armenian genocide by the Turks that occurred during World War 1. I was fascinated to learn more about this event and it’s setting. One of the things that I really missed was a map. The story involves forced marches and battles and a map would have helped define what I was reading about.

The story unfolds in two timelines which in this case I didn’t like. The story of Elizabeth, an American missionary and Armen, an Armenian who was searching for news about his wife and child, is set in 1915 was interesting and should have been allowed to stand alone. Instead the second story line involved Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Laura, who introduced herself as the author of the book. I found this story line redundant and often felt it was being used simply as a place to dump information.

The Sandcastle Girls is my first book by this author and although I didn’t love it, I will definitely read more from Bohjalian as his writing is strong and powerful. I only wish it hadn’t been delivered in the two story line format as I felt that took away from the “historical fiction” part of the story.½

This was perfect for my mood, a little drawn out but not terribly predictable

I am a little disappointed in this book overall, as I had high expectations after seeing some very good reviews. Also disappointing that I didn’t like this more because my library has several more audios of this author’s books on Overdrive. It started out well, at least, with a brutal murder occurring from the anonymous murderer’s POV, and it kept me interested enough to keep pulling me along with the story and trying to guess at the murderer. But… I felt myself growing more distanced from all the characters as the story progressed, which really should not happen. By the end, I really didn’t care much about any of them, but was only curious to see how the story resolved and if any of my guesses at the murderer were right. I’m fine with a book peopled by unlikeable characters, because it’s absolutely possible for them still to be drawn in a way that the reader can still connect with them. I don’t feel the author accomplished that here. The mystery reveal was a disappointment, too, as it turned out that the murderer is a minor character whom we aren’t even introduced to in the war storyline until close to the end. I will still try other books by this author, though. Maybe I’ll like another better.

Audiobook from my public library via Overdrive. I read this for The 16 Tasks of the Festive Season, for my first Light Joker: Read a book that has the words “light”, “candle”, “lamp”, “sun” or “fire” in its title or features any of these five things on its cover. This book fits, obviously, because it has “Light” in the title. I’ll use this for square 4: Book themes for Thanksgiving Day: Books with a theme of coming together to help a community or family in need. –OR– Books with a turkey or pumpkin on the cover.

Wow! A fine work from Chris Bohjalian!

I usually enjoy a good Bohjalian book, but this one just left me flat.

Excellent