173/200

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read for hours upon hours trying to finish this book in a day and it just wound up disappointing me. Picoult usually has amazing endings that shock me but this one even I figured out from a mile away. It was so obvious. And everything tied up in a neat little bow. Why didn't anyone siply ASK Jacob what really happened? It was beyond frustrating that they didn't. And why was the detective's perspective even a point of view? It was only there a couple of times. Blech.

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172/200

Pride and Prejudice

I remember reading this in high school and liking it, but this time around, I found it torturous. It was so boring and the writing was hard to follow.

171/200

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book more than I thought I would. My favorite character was Evelyn who starts as an overweight, emotional eater going through a mid-life crisis. Hearing Ninny's stories about the Whistle Stop Cafe through Ninny helps her get her life back together and changes her for the better.

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170/200

Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I liked the premise of this book. A pregnancy pact among three high school girls destroys a town. The problem was, I found myself not caring about the characters. The fact that one of the mothers is a school principal makes the situation more tense but I found her vilification to be over the top. The girls having absolutely no concept of the ramifications of their actions was frustrating to me as well. And having the original girls father magically in the picture seemed a little too clean as well.

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169/200

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really like the concept of this book. A murder takes place and it is up to sheep to solve it. Beyond that, I wasn't really a fan. At 341 pages, I felt this book could be at the very least 100 pages shorter. There were a lot of people, and it was kinda hard to keep track of since the sheep were the ones describing. And there were a looottt of sheep to remember as well. After all that, I thought the ending was pretty anticlimactic.

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168/200

Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really cute, quick read. Moose is a young boy living on Alcatraz in the early 1900's. His sister, Nat, has a mental disorder, that appears would now be called autism, or something like it. The warden on the island is constantly giving Moose's family a hard time because of Nat. Moose asks Al Capone, a prisoner on Alcatraz, to get Natalie into a special school. Capone does this, but asks for favors in return through the laundry that the cons do for the citizens of Alcatraz. As you can imagine, trouble is soon to follow.

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167/200

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember starting this book years ago, and then putting it down. Yet I kept hearing great reviews, so I thought I would give it another try.

I don't know much about the Bible, so I was hesitant. The prologue explains that Dinah is a woman from the Bible, the daughter of Jacob, sister of Joseph. The prologue also states that the Bible talks about Dinah being raped and she wonders why anyone in the future would name their child Dinah.

The whole book I was waiting for the infamous rape. Midway through the book, something unspeakable happens to Dinah, and I thought that was it. The end. But really the book is only half done. I thought it would've wrapped up nicely there.

It was a relatively interesting book, but a slow go. And by book's end, I was a little confused with what I thought was supposed to be the ending.

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165/200

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Garden Spells by this author and really liked it. Then I read The Sugar Queen and thought it was awful. This book was more towards the positive side. Emily's mom has recently died, so she goes to move in with her grandfather in a small town in North Carolina. Everyone seems to know who she is before she even gets there, and not for any good reasons. Her grandfather ignores her, as do the locals, except for Julia, a local baker and restaurant owner, and Win, whose family does not want him around Emily at all. Emily and Win are a bit star-crossed lovers, and Allen goes back to her magical roots, but it is nothing too over the top. When I was reading that Win's family can't go out at night, I kept thinking, "Please not vampires" until I realized that would be backwards. My favorite part was Julia and her relationship with Sawyer.

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164/200

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really liked Shutter Island, so I wanted to give Lehane another try. This book is the story of Danny Coughlin, a white police officer, and Lester, a black man, in the early 1900's. Their stories intertwine when Lester needs to escape his home and finds a job working for Danny's family. Babe Ruth's story also shows up occasionally. I liked the story, but I got tired of the union fighting, and thought the story was a little lengthy.

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