Q is for Quarry by Sue Grafton

Synopsis:

She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California's Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the murder remained unsolved.

That was eighteen years ago. Now the two men who found the body, both nearing the end of long careers in law enforcement, want one last shot at the case. Old and ill, they need someone to help with their legwork and they turn to Kinsey Millhone. They will, they tell her, find closure if they can just identify the victim. Kinsey is intrigued and agrees to the job.

But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business, and what begins with the pursuit of Jane Doe's real identity ends in a high-risk hunt for her killer.

Q is for Quarry is the first Kinsey Millhone book that didn’t completely hook me in. I don’t know what it was about this book. I did enjoy it and the story was interesting. But, it kept losing me and took me a few months to read. That could also be due to the reading slump I’ve been in lately. Maybe a bit of both.

What I didn’t know going into it was that it’s based on a true story. I wish I had known that from the start. I may have been more invested.  Sue Grafton added some details that weren’t from the real story because this is a work of fiction, but she kept the integrity of the case in tact. What’s even better is that she got involved in trying to help solve the case. All of this was added as a note at the end of the book.

You can pretty much get what the whole thing was about from the synopsis. So, I’m just going to include a link where you can read about the Jane Doe of Santa Barbara. Someone has to know who this woman is. We can only hope it’ll get solved and she will get the justice she deserves all these years later.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/205ufca.html

https://www.independent.com/2011/07/21/who-was-jane-doe/

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Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

Synopsis:

Odd Thomas never asked for his special ability. He's just an ordinary guy trying to live a quiet life in the small desert town of Pico Mundo. Yet he feels an obligation to do right by his otherworldly confidants, and that's why he's won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death. But when a childhood friend disappears, Odd discovers something worse than a dead body and embarks on a heart-stopping battle of will and wits with an enemy of exceptional cunning. In the hours to come there can be no innocent bystanders, and every sacrifice can tip the balance between despair and hope.

The second book in the Odd Thomas series and it was just as good as the first. It was mysterious, but there were parts of it that actually made me uncomfortable while reading. That’s pretty hard to do.

It was interesting because the whole book takes place within a few hours. You don’t see that very often. But, it was so action packed that if it was dragged out, it would have been super long.

You never really know what Odd is going to get into. This one started right from the first page. I was shocked by how quickly I was introduced to the main story line.

I was also curious how book 2 would be different without Stormy in it. I don’t think I have recovered from the end of Book 1 yet. But there were some nice callbacks to their relationship. Even with wanting Odd to progress and be able to move on, it would be nice to hear about her in the next books as well.

This is definitely one of my top series to read. Its horror but it’s also fun. You get a good mix. Plus, you get Dean Koontz’s writing. Can’t complain there.

4/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes: “The dead don’t talk. Perhaps they know things about death that the living are not permitted to learn from them.”

“The heart cannot flourish in logic alone. Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.”

“We sometimes take refuge in misery, a strange kind of comfort.”

“The correct question has three equal parts. What’s wrong with humanity? Then . . . What’s wrong with nature, with its poison plants, predatory animals, earthquakes, and floods? And last . . . What’s wrong with cosmic time, as we know it, which steals everything from us?”

“Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.“

“The world has gone mad. You might have argued against that contention twenty years ago, but if you argue it in our time, you only prove that you, too, live in delusion.”

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Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark

Synopsis

Sharing never-before-heard stories ranging from their struggles with depression, eating disorders, and addiction, Karen and Georgia irreverently recount their biggest mistakes and deepest fears, reflecting on the formative life events that shaped them into two of the most followed voices in the nation.

In Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, Karen and Georgia focus on the importance of self-advocating and valuing personal safety over being ‘nice’ or ‘helpful.’ They delve into their own pasts, true crime stories, and beyond to discuss meaningful cultural and societal issues with fierce empathy and unapologetic frankness.

Being a big fan of the My Favorite Murder podcast, it was a no-brainer to pre-order their book when they announced it.

I didn’t know what to expect. Would it be funny? Touching? Overly edited? Way under-edited? But I was pleasantly surprised. Their chapters were written in their own voices and I could hear them in my head as I read.

It was actually a pretty insightful book. I was thinking it would probably be a little cheesy, but it wasn’t really. It had their comedy littered throughout it, of course. But it fit in with the rest of the book. There was actually solid advice in here and that surprised me. I also cried – so, there’s that too.

Not all of the stories were new. We’ve heard a lot on the podcast. But this was a different way to take them in and there were different tidbits of info throughout.

Solid book. I really enjoyed it 4/5 stars!

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The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Synopsis:

France, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. 

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.

My first impression was “wow, this book is long.” I abandoned that notion pretty quick because I almost wanted it to go on forever.

This book is H-E-A-V-Y. When I started it, it was just a sad book about WWII in France. The more I read, though, the more breaks I had to take. It was just gut wrenching to read. Yeah, these may be fictional characters, but this was reality for so many people.

You really become attached to every single character that you read about. Its really hard to express my feelings about this book because it’s almost pure sadness. But then there is the joy of having read it because it really is a great read.

I’m not huge on historical fiction but I do tend to enjoy books about WWII/Holocaust. It’s just so incomprehensible that these things happened to real people. It’s tough to digest but it makes these books that much more interesting.

If you are in the mood to feel every single feeling – pick this up. It is definitely worth the read. Even if it does leave you empty and hopelessly sad.

5/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes: “As I approach the end of my years, I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”

“Everything looked exactly as it always had and that surprised her. War was coming, and she’d imagined it would leave a mark on the countryside somehow, changing the grass color or killing the trees or scaring away the birds, but now, as she sat on this train chugging into Paris, she saw that everything looked completely ordinary.”

“Some images, once seen, can never be forgotten.”

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Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

Synopsis

"The dead don't talk. I don't know why." But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn.

Maybe he has a gift, maybe it's a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd's otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo's sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it's different.

A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world's worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd's deceased informants can tell him. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15.

Today is August 14.

In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe. As evil coils under the searing desert sun, Odd travels through the shifting prisms of his world, struggling to avert a looming cataclysm with the aid of his soul mate and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll. His account of two shattering days when past and present, fate and destiny converge is the stuff of our worst nightmares, and a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in the darkness must persevere.

This book was recommended to me by a friend/bomb Americano maker. So, obviously I had to read it. She was kind enough to lend it to me. Now, I have to say, I’m pretty hooked on this character.

This book was a ride from beginning to end. It laid the foundation for the protagonists. It explored their depth and the depth of the story. Then it completely took off.

I didn’t know the synopsis when I went into the book, so I was going in blind. I think that was good for this one. It made for so many surprises. I didn’t think it was going to be creepy, but I didn’t expect that it would also break my heart. There were so many different emotions. I can’t wait to read the next one. I have to see what comes next for everyone involved.

5/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes: “We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which it must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that we have brought along a suitcase or two of darkness, and misery.”

“The dead are sensitive to the living. They have walked this path ahead of us and know our fears, our failings, our desperate hopes, and how much we cherish what cannot last. They pity us, I think, and no doubt they should.”

“In our dreams, we are not detached observers, as are the characters who dream in movies. These internal dramas are usually seen strictly from the dreamer’s point of view. In nightmares, we can’t look I to our own eyes except by indirection, perhaps because we fear discovering that therein lie the worst monsters plaguing us.”

“Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces of colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard’s thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread.”

“A cynic once said that the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be in humane to one another.”

“The town slept, but not its demons.”

“Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It’s about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.”

“Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind. “

“We are not strangers to ourselves; we only try to be.”

“It takes awhile to realize what a lonely world it is, and when you do . . . Then the future looks kinda scary. “

“We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall, but if we dwell too much on the vivid details of what we’ve witnessed of man’s inhumanity to man, we simply can’t go on. Perseverance is impossible if we don’t permit ourselves to hope.”

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