Review: The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

Book/Author: The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth #2)
Publisher/Year: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2010
Pages: 407 pages
Where I got it: bought at Borders
Buy It: Amazon

Summary (from Goodreads): Gabry lives a quiet life. As safe a life as is possible in a town trapped between a forest and the ocean, in a world teeming with the dead, who constantly hunger for those still living. She’s content on her side of the Barrier, happy to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast while she watches from the top of her lighthouse. But there are threats the Barrier cannot hold back. Threats like the secrets Gabry’s mother thought she left behind when she escaped from the Sisterhood and the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Like the cult of religious zealots who worship the dead. Like the stranger from the forest who seems to know Gabry. And suddenly, everything is changing. One reckless moment, and half of Gabry’s generation is dead, the other half imprisoned. Now Gabry only knows one thing: she must face the forest of her mother’s past in order to save herself and the one she loves.

My thoughts: I must have the worst memory in the history of people under 60 who have not suffered some traumatic memory loss. I read the first book in Carrie Ryan's series, The Forest of Hands and Teeth just two years ago and I hardly remember a thing about it. The only thing I really remember is that I wasn't very crazy about the first book and most people thought it was really good. In her second novel, The Dead-Tossed Waves, the story of the undead continues as we learn that Mary has grown up and now has a teenage daughter who is the MC of this book. It's rare for me to enjoy the sequel far better than the first book but this was an example of that. Right from the beginning there is action as Gabry and her friends jump the barrier that separates their relatively safe town and the unknown area where the unconsecrated roam. Her friends are attacked and those who aren't infected end up imprisoned for crossing the barrier. So much action and conflict, I was hooked!

When Gabry meets a stranger across the barrier who looks at her as if he recognizes her, I was intrigued. It takes almost the whole book to find out the deal with that and it did a good job of keeping me engaged. I was trying to figure out what the big secret was, but I ended up being so far off with my guesses anyway. As for the characters in The Dead-Tossed Waves, I thought Gabry was much more tolerable than her mother had been. I couldn't stand Catcher from the start but was routing for her and Elias to get together.

I wasn't sure about this one after being let down by the first, but I'm glad that I read it because Ryan has redeemed herself. I will most likely read the third book because I'm interested to see how Gabry's story ends up. If you haven't read any of the series, I would honestly recommend skipping The Forest of Hands and Teeth and moving right on to The Dead-Tossed Waves. There isn't much pertinent info in the first book that sets up for the second. This could very well have been a stand alone novel, minus the cliffhanger. Speaking of the cliffhanger, eeeesh! I want to know what the heck happened to Gabry and Catcher, and if she will ever see her mother or Elias again. Well worth the read, especially in October. The mudo (zombies) make for a creepy story!


My rating: 3 stars

Review: The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Book/Author: The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Publisher/Year: Ecco/ August 2011
Pages: 309 pages
Where I got it: received for review from the publisher
Buy It: Amazon

Brief Summary (from Goodreads): Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief.

Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.

When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance–their magnum opus–whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art.

My thoughts: The Family Fang is a story about a dysfunctional family of performance artists, the Fang's. Art has always been the most important thing to Caleb and Camille Fang, until they have children and suddenly have other responsibilities. The Fang's learned to incorporate the kids Annie and Buster, or Child A and Child B, into their "art" butas the kids grew up they weren't as willing to be a part of their parents mischief. This book was full to the brim with conflict and it reminded me of the family dysfunction in television and movies such as Arrested Development and The Royal Tenenbaums (in fact the blurb on the back of the book mentions this similarity to the Wes Anderson film). It was highly entertaining but often uncomfortable.

The Fang's artwork was always about the reaction of others and much of it was cruel or just plain wrong. I have to give props to Buster and Annie for both turning out relatively normal after having parents as bizarre as Caleb and Camille. I felt so bad for them because it was clear that their parents would always choose their artwork over them and that rejection is a pretty terrible thing to deal with for any kid. For the most part I enjoyed the wacky antics that went on in the novel, although the horrible parenting drove me nuts. I didn't particularly care for any of the characters, they were more of a love to hate bunch. The public displays that the Fang parents created were often at the expense of their children's privacy or innocence. A and B never got a choice whether or not they wanted to be a part of their parents creative process and now as adults they are finding out not only are they still a part of it but they have become victims of the Fang's craziest piece yet.

For much of the novel I was entertained but nothing was really making me want to drop everything to pick up the book. There was a bit of a twist ending that pulled me back in and caused me to blow through the last 50 or so pages. Overall, I thought The Family Fang was a fun read with a peculiar premise. I'd recommend this to anyone with an interest in reading books with a mix of flawed characters and comedic situations. It's not necessarily a laugh out loud book but it's one that will have you thinking on a much deeper level about society, families and what's important in life.

My rating: 3 stars

Review: The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness by Ned Zeman

Book: The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness by Ned Zeman
Published: August 4, 2011, Gotham
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 288 pages
Where I got it: received for review from the publisher
Buy It: Amazon

Summary: A journalist faces his toughest assignment yet: profiling himself. Zeman recounts his struggle with clinical depression in this high- octane, brutally funny memoir about mood disorders, memory, shock treatment therapy and the quest to get back to normal.


My thoughts: I've said this before about reviewing memoirs... how can I possibly judge something that a person experienced? This is not a product of someone's imagination, these are the true events of Ned Zeman's life. Admittedly, I had some trouble getting into the book at first, as I felt there was a bit too much focus on the people he profiled at his job as a contributor to Vanity Fair. However, as Zeman began falling into the dark, twisted world of the clinically depressed and started experimenting with different medications, I found myself quickly sucked into the story. After many failed attempts with mood altering drugs, he turned to the controversial ECT (electroconvulsive therapy, also known as electroshock therapy) and once again the story got a whole lot more interesting.

ECT pretty much did exactly what it sounds like it should do to a person's brain. Ned began to forget things but continued to go through the emotional ups and downs as his brain was subjected to the scheduled brain frying sessions. Despite the unfortunate circumstances, there was a humor present in Zeman's rehashing of events. He was able to poke fun at himself and the sad state of his sanity which is something I give him a lot of credit for. He went through so much crap and found himself feeling desperate enough to try anything that might help him. As a Psychology minor, reading about other people's downfalls and learning about the way the mind works has always been an interest of mine. I was very impressed with the way Ned's friends formed a support group for him in order to make sure he was getting to his appointments and taking care of the things he might forget because of the amnesia. Things could have turned out much different for Ned had he not had such an awesome group of people who cared about him.

I think that I could have done without a lot of the info in Part 1 of the book, but overall I found The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness to be an entertaining and informative story about how depression can completely take over a person's life, and the ways in which it can affect those around you. I'm actually quite interested to learn how he was able to recover enough to remember details and write this book. ECT sounds like such a horrible procedure, I'm surprised that he's not a vegetable by now!

My rating: 3 stars

Head on over to The Broke & the Bookish, where I'm giving away a copy of The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness to one lucky winner. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the chance to read this book & give away a copy!

Review: Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

Book: Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris
Published: 2007, Little Brown & Company
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 387 pages
Where I got it: received as a Secret Santa gift a couple years ago
Buy It: Amazon

Brief Summary (from Goodreads): For anyone who has ever worked in an office, hating everything and everyone in it, yet fell apart when it was time to leave -- this book is for you. Heartbreaking, yet hysterically funny, Then We Came to the End is the definitive novel about the contemporary American workplace.

My thoughts: Then We Came To The End has been on my to read list pretty much since it's release but for some reason it took me almost 4 years to actually pull it off my shelf. With any book that I wait that long to read, there was a huge amount of hype leading up to it for me. There was nothing that wowed me about this novel, but I found it to be an entertaining read that was very relatable for anyone who has ever worked in your typical office environment. There were many points where I was laughing out loud because I could picture some of the events happening in my own office. There were a lot of things that were a little outrageous but they still were so funny to picture. It's easy to see that author Joshua Ferris' view of corporate America is a bitter one, but he's able to poke fun at that in his debut novel.

I enjoyed the use of first person plural and how we never find out who the narrator is. He/she speaks on behalf of the group and refers to all of the employees of the ad agency where this book takes place as the collective "we". The characters were all so entertaining, from the crazy ones, to the slackers to the workaholics. There have been a lot of comparisons to The Office and Office Space in other reviews, and it's definitely very much along those lines but I would say more like if the employees of Dunder Mifflin were all on crack.

While there were plenty of funny moments, there were also a lot of really depressing ones. The characters were waiting with bated breath to find out who would be the next to be laid off. They were all aware that their jobs as advertising creatives basically turned them into soul sucking demons. As someone who goes to work most days dreading what lays ahead, I know how terrible it feels to have a job you absolutely can't stand but you need it to survive. Ferris wrote Then We Came To The End shortly before the economy got really bad, so I imagine that if he had waited to write this just a year or two later, it would be so much worse. There's not much you can do other than to laugh though when you realize you're not the only one who hates their job or works with a bunch of crazies.


My rating: 3 stars

Review: The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow

Book: The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow
Published: January 2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 320 pages
Where I got it: e-book from NetGalley
Buy It: Amazon


Summary (from Goodreads): Walking a lonely forested valley on a spring morning in upstate New York, having been hired by a developer to dowse the land, Cassandra Brooks comes upon the shocking vision of a young girl hanged from a tree. When she returns with authorities to the site, the body has vanished, leaving in question Cassandra’s credibility if not her sanity. The next day, on a return visit with the sheriff to have another look, a dazed, mute missing girl emerges from the woods, alive and the very picture of Cassandra’s hanged girl.
What follows is the narrative of ever-deepening and increasingly bizarre divinations that will lead this gifted young woman, the struggling single mother of twin boys, hurtling toward a past she’d long since thought was behind her. The Diviner’s Tale is at once a journey of self-discovery and an unorthodox murder mystery, a tale of the fantastic and a family chronicle told by an otherwise ordinary woman.
When Cassandra’s dark forebodings take on tangible form, she is forced to confront a life spiraling out of control. And soon she is locked in a mortal chess match with a real-life killer who has haunted her since before she can remember.

My thoughts: I have been trying to write my review of The Diviner's Tale for a few days now and have been having trouble figuring out what I want to say. Cassandra Brooks is a diviner- that is she dowses the local land in search of water and minerals. I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this one and I never really knew what diviner's do until now. It was an interesting topic, although it took me awhile to get invested in the book. Once I did I was racing towards the end to find out what happened.

I think the mystery behind Cassandra's vision of the hanged girl should have drawn me in more from the beginning, but it wasn't until I got more details of Cass's past and the troubled Roy Skoler that I found myself truly engaged. It's unfortunate that it took so long for me to get into it because I think otherwise this would have been at least a 4 star book for me. I loved the relationship between Cass and her twin boys. There was a different dynamic between them than what you read of mother and sons in most books. I liked that they played things so cool most of the time and it was often like they were taking care of her more than she took care of them. Most boys at their age resent their parents but these two acted more like she was their sister in the way that they looked out for them. The relationship between she and her father, Nep, was also very touching. His struggle with Alzheimer's made me really sad and had me reflecting upon my relationship with my own father and grandfather.

When Cassandra sees the hanged girl and we find out that she used to see other things that had her questioning her sanity, the story gets much more interesting. There's that sense of mystery but also that character struggle in our protagonist as she tries to figure out more about herself and her abilities as a diviner. I thought that Laura's character was a little weird and there was a lot of buildup with her going missing a couple of times for somewhat of a disappointing resolution. I would have liked to see more development between Laura and Cassandra and less unnecessary love story between Cassandra and Charley. Overall I found The Diviner's Tale to be an enjoyable read filled with interesting relationships between family and friends with a little mystery wound in.



My rating: 3 stars