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Many thanks to Raven Street Publishing and Netgalley for introducing me to Robert Bryndza. This thriller was just that, and kept my rapt attention most of the time.

Maggie and Will are middle-aged professionals living the affluent life of their dreams: Maggie is a trauma surgeon, and Will has left medicine to pursue architecture, his passion. The author quickly paints a picture of a happy life together, until Will is carried into the trauma unit where his wife Maggie is working, dying of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Maggie has a very hard time accepting the idea that Will has killed himself. She saw no signs of depression, no sign of anything amiss.

In the following days and weeks, as Maggie tries to come to grips with her new life, she travels to the vacation home they built on an island in Croatia. This is when things get scary and creepy. Once there, Maggie will discover more about a part of Will’s life he never shared with her, while alive. However, it turns out that he has made arrangements to tell her everything, should something happen to him. Without giving away too much of the story, I must say that this part of the story was hard for me to fathom, that Will would dump all of this on his poor, unsuspecting wife, a woman he was very much in love with.

The author’s depiction of Maggie’s experiences on this island in Croatia, during the quiet, deserted off-season, is vivid and memorable, and her angst feels real.This part of the novel was extremely well written.

However, Will’s willingness to get himself into such trouble, to compromise himself in such a way, does raise some questions about Will’s morals and life that I don’t feel were answered in a very believable way. Maggie, meanwhile, is an incredibly strong character, and very smart. Through sheer toughness and a little luck, she reinvents her life–perhaps a little too tidily. All in all, this story was compelling, if not always believable. I would happily read this author’s work again.

This is more than a story about a mystery. It’s a beautifully written depiction of life at a small boarding school, a microcosm in the woods. What happened there, amongst the students, was not beautiful, but the way Bodie Kane looks back on some important events, as an adult, is well expressed. Much of the novel is written to someone offstage, a character the reader will learn much more about along the way.

Bodie, a successful podcaster, has returned to the Granby School, the boarding school where she spent her vulnerable teen-aged years, for a few weeks to teach a class. When she asks her students to choose a topic to investigate for their own podcast projects, one of them expresses the interest to delve into a murder that happened at the school while Bodie was a student there, decades ago. It’s a crime for which a man named Omar is serving time, and also a controversial subject matter, since there are many people who believe the investigation was flawed, and conspiracy theories abound on social media.

Bodie is both pleased and a bit scared at the prospect of getting into this subject matter. It’s been on her mind, something about her past that won’t stay buried. In the meantime, Bodie has her own complicated life to deal with, along with resurfacing memories of the events that happened around the time of Thalia Keith’s murder.

In the years since this tragic event, society’s values have shifted and the world is very different, largely because of social media and an increased awareness of social injustices. So, the time seems to be right to look at this case again.

This is a fascinating story, and I was intrigued almost as much about the flawed perceptions the students of the 1990s had about each other as I was about the obviously flawed justice system. This novel does not tie things up in a neat bow, and I admire that, also.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Penguin Group Viking for sharing this novel with me!

This memorable novel is both ingeniously creative and importantly timely in its message. R.F. Kuang weaves together a story that injects magical realism into a novel that is both historical and revisionist. That is, this is a story that asks us to imagine the road not taken at a certain time in history, and the ethics of the decisions of those in power–and question how and why such power came to be, in the first place.

I felt that the characters were well-developed and realistically complex, making it possible for the reader to feel the emotion in their stories. The plot was also well crafted and paced.

Instead of summarizing the plot, I want to simply recommend this novel, which I knew nothing about before I started reading. Part of the magic, for me, was simply reading on to discover the shape of the world as it is created by this author.

Bravo!

Please Report Your Bug Here, by Josh Riedel, is a mixture of coming of age, social commentary, and fantasy novel. The protagonist is Ethan Block, who has a liberal arts background but is working on a start-up social media site called DateDate. He works with just two other people, known as the engineer and the Founder, until they are bought by The Corporation, a bigger social app that appears to be modeled on Facebook.

During his employment in social media, Ethan is witness to the dawn of certain technologies, and how, in the pursuit of wealth, this social media platform is willing to expose the general public to potential harm with features that are not completely understood. This is where it becomes part fantasy novel. The author creatively conjures up a possibility that does not seem possible in real life, at least not literally, to drive a plot about social media that is unique.

Ethan is both intrigued and disturbed by what is at first referred to as “the black box bug,” and he and Noma, a young woman who is hired as a contractor at DateDate, start to investigate this phenomenon. Noma contributes mystery to this story, as she has prior knowledge that she does not immediately share with Ethan.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a strong sense about Ethan’s emotional state, or his feelings about others. For example, his one long relationship came to an end, and the thoughts Ethan shares with the reader about this are not enlightening. I thought he seemed like an ambivalent stranger throughout the story. Noma is a sympathetic and intense character, and I might have related to her more, had she been the focus of this cautionary tale.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable story with an inventive plot, though it was not an urgent read for me. There were times when the dialogue seemed a bit improbable to me, perhaps because of a lack of experience on my part with this particular work environment and culture.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Henry Holt and Co. for sharing this new novel.

Greek mythology is usually fascinating, and this novel lives up to that expectation. I did not remember much of the Greek mythology I’d read, and certainly did not know who Clytemnestra was until reading Costanza Casati’s work.

Born in Sparta to a ruthless Spartan King, Tyndareus, and Leda, the intelligent, shrewd queen, Clytemnestra is brought up to be the same. She is trained to fight and to value power and dominance. Unfortunately, Tyndareus’s daughters would all find what is was to be their father’s pawns, traumatic for women who were trained to be strong.

Clytemnestra’s character is imagined with nuanced complexity. She rages with hatred, wanting vengeance for those she has lost, but is also capable of intense love. Clytemnestra is one well-written, solid protagonist.

Her royal family is also depicted in detail, especially Helen, who I’d incorrectly associated with Troy instead of Sparta. There is more than one version of Helen’s story, but now I will forever think of her as married off to a brute, used by her father for a power alliance. This story did not depict Helen as a demigod, though she was rumored to be the daughter of Zeus.

Ancient Greece is shown to be a harsh world, where Clytemnestra suffers unimaginable losses and indignities, but eventually rises to the top, to be a ruler like no other woman. While reading this novel, I had to remind myself that this is mythology, not history. This chronicle feels real.

I enjoyed this immensely, Thanks to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for this opportunity.

This fascinating thriller takes its name from a forest featured in Shakespeare’s play McBeth. Like that famous play, this novel is populated with flawed individuals whose ambitions prove hard to balance with their morals. Accidents, deceptions, and cross purposes make for a complex, exciting plot.

In Eleanor Catton’s new novel, Birnam Wood is the name of a small nonprofit organization that seeks to plant crops in unused spaces, sometimes with permission, and sometimes not. There is certainly some lawlessness and trespassing going on, but the group’s members see it as a necessary evil in their mission to help those in need and to work for a more fair society. Before I read this, I was not aware of guerilla gardening.

There are four main characters in this book, plus two important supporting roles. Mira and Shelley are prominent members of Birnam Wood, and their relationship is complicated. They’ve been close for a long time, but at this juncture, Shelley is beginning to feel that it’s time for her to move on, and Mira is aware of this, and dreading it. To this end, Mira is striving towards her goal to prove that Birnam Wood can make a go of it, and eventually start paying the staff. However, for Shelley, this is not the only ambition. Shelley would also like to move out of Mira’s shadow.

A third important character is Tony, an aspiring journalist who is returning to the Birnam Wood fold after being abroad for a few years. Since he’s been away, and not experienced the hard work and frustrations of the past, he is appalled at the group’s newest venture, which he believes goes against all their principles.

This new venture involves a billionaire named Robert Lemoine, a middle-aged man who is buying a large swath of land to build a doomsday bunker–or so he says. Robert is a fascinating character. We don’t know how he got so rich, or exactly how he acquired his particular skill set. He meets Mira by accident, and immediately gives her permission to farm part of the land he is buying. Furthermore, he philanthropically gives her a lot of money, immediately.

The two other characters in this story are Sir Darvish and his wife, Lady (Jill) Darvish. It’s their land that is being sold. They have a good marriage, and Lady Darvish is proud of her beknighted husband, though she’s the smarter, more capable one.

When Mira reports back to the group about Robert’s proposal, everyone is impressed with her find, except Tony. He leaves the group, and it becomes his ambition to find out as much as he can about Robert Lemoine.

So, Birnam Wood sets up a camping site, and gets to work. Robert charms and wins over these new young friends. Tony googles, makes phone calls, and spies on them. Meanwhile, Sir Darvish becomes curious and pays a visit.

At this point, there are a couple plot twists, and things happen quickly. Both thought-provoking and riveting, this novel would make for an excellent discussion about both morals and the characters involved.

Bravo! I would recommend this to anyone.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for this wonderful experience.