Weekly Reading Thread - May 3, 2015

Thanks for starting the thread!

The House We Grew Up in by Lisa Jewell. I'd started this last week, ended up really enjoying it. The story of one family where the mother is a hoarder and everyone else has a secret! The book starts when the mother has passed away and one daughter goes there to clean out the house, all the brothers and sisters are estranged...but gradually they all turn up to help and we find out each of their stories. 4 out of 5 stars.

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. This is non fiction, the author's mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and while she has her chemo they start to talk about the books they are reading. This book is like meeting a new friend and then one day he tells about when his mother died and how he felt about it. While obviously it was a sad (but not overly sappy).

I ended up just really liking both him and his mother. 4 out of 5 stars

The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood. I read a later book- "The Italian Wife" by the same author a few months ago and really disliked it...but I already owned this so decided I may as well delve into it. 

I was pleasantly surprised, this book was much better and much more engaging. Told from the points of view of two women, a 1960s housewife who is in an unhappy marriage and has an affair; and a woman in the 1900s who is having an affair with a married man and he vanishes in the 1906 San Fransisco earthquake. The book explores grief and moving on.

Just before I started the book I was reading about the author and learnt that her 6yo daughter died from a bacterial infection a few years ago. That made an impact on how I read this because it made me aware of how personal much of the description of grief was for the author.

I'd recommend this 4 out of 5 stars.

The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon. This is a mysetry/thriller. The main character Reggie's mother was the last victim of a serial killer who chopped off women's right hands. Then 25 years later her mother is discovered alive in a homeless shelter. It goes back on forth between the current time and to her life around the time her mother vanished. Right up until it was revealed I didn't know who the killer was, kept me guessing.

There's hardly any  serial killer stuff (a couple of brief descriptions but not too gory r too detailed), but it was a little bit far fetched at times, but not enough to take me out of the story. Overall a good read (listen). 4 out of 5 stars.