Echo Park by Micheal Connelly

Harry Bosch #12. Harry & Kiz Rider are still partners in the Open-Unsolved Unit. They have been working cold cases while Harry continues to pull his own cold case files from time to time to see if he can solve one of his own unsolved cases. He does this in his "down time". One of the cases that has always bothered him was the disappearance of a 22 year old woman, Marie Gesto, whose car was found in an unused garage of an apartment building 13 years previously. Presumed dead, her body was never found and neither was the killer. Now, a man who was pulled over by the police due to a license plate error (the license plate number was entered incorrectly, so the police officer thought it was a stolen car) had two large garbage bags on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Inside the garbage bags were two women cut up into pieces. This man's name is Raynard Waits. He is charged with the murder of these two women, but said that he killed Marie Gesto too and that he could lead them to her body if they took the death penalty off the table. He said he could lead them to another male victim's body as well and tell them about six more murder victims.

Harry doesn't want to make a deal with him initially, but eventually realizes that it's important to find these missing people so that their families finally know what happened to their loved ones. Raynard says he needs to lead Harry & Co to Marie's body since they wouldn't be able to find it on their own. They agree to this plan, but Raynard will be in chains and heavily guarded. Raynard does lead them to Marie's body, but on the way back to the vehicles, things goes awry. Two police officers are killed, Kiz in seriously injured, and Raynard escapes.

These books always have twists and turns in the story that you know will be coming, but you don't know when or in what direction they will lead the story next. That's what I love about them. Things are never what they seem to be. Even Harry has a hard time figuring out how Raynard's escape actually happened, what happened with Kiz (who was standing near Raynard when he grabbed an officer's gun and killed him and his partner), and if someone on the police department was involved in this escape.

One thing that is really consistent with Harry, is that he always manages to trash his relationships with women he genuinely cares about. In this book, he reconnects with Rachel Walling from the FBI. Things are going really well with them, until they aren't. Typical Harry.

Wendy's Rating: ****

The Radius of Us by Marie Marquardt

This story has two narrators: Gretchen and Phoenix. They are both young adults (19 and 20 by the end of the book.) They are both trauma survivors from different cultures who happen to connect. Gretchen was brutally assaulted one night by a young latino man. She was scarred by this attack and it derailed her life, despite the support of two very loving parents. Phoenix was living with two women in America, having escaped gang life in El Salvador. He escaped with his younger brother, Ari. It took them four months to get through Mexico and eventually to the US where Phoenix was sent to a detention center and Ari was sent to live in a place for minor chidren in Texas. Ari (short for Arizona) stopped speaking once he arrived in Texas, presumeably from the horrors he experienced trying to get from El Salvador to the US riding on top of trains, working in the drug fields, witnessing death of those who didn't make it. Phoenix's hosts in America were Sally and Amanda. They took him in and gave him a home. Phoenix had to wear an ankle bracelet for tracking purposes and he could not ever step outside the 20 mile radius from their home. He was waiting for his court date to see if he could stay in America or would be deported back to El Salvador.

I have read another book, a biography, of a young man who rode the trains to reach America. In both books, their mothers left them in the care of their grandmothers to travel to America (illegally) to earn a wage to send back to their children. The other story was much more powerful in what it was exposing when it talks about the separation of families and the dangers of these kids trying to reach America. Phoenix's mother came back to El Salvador once, when he was around 7 years old, got pregnant with Ari, and then left again for America when Ari was still an infant. She sent money until Ari was about 3 years old and then they never heard from her again. Once their grandmother died, Phoenix was branded by a gang, and Ari was targeted for induction into a gang, Phoenix knew he had to save Ari from his own experience. Phoenix was forced to participate in a gruesome death of a rival gang member when he was only 13 years old.

Gretchen had a boyfriend who she had been dating for 2 1/2 years. He was a year older than her and in his freshman year of college. Even though he was very supportive and seemed to love her, Gretchen's traumatic assault changed their relationship and they drifted apart. Gretchen couldn't seem to work through her trauma, despite supportive parents, a therapist and an incredible best friend. She broke up with her boyfriend and promptly pursued a relationship with Phoenix. Definitely two troubled souls finding each other.

I read a lot of youth fiction and non-fiction. I've been trying to determine why I didn't love this book. The messages were important, but I think the writing style wasn't for me. Trauma is such a complex issue - and certainly gang life is a tragedy in and of itself. Then there is the painful truths of poverty and loss. This book addresses all of this, but not with a depth that I would have expected. I didn't feel authenticity in the voices.

Wendy's Rating: ***1/2

Forget Me Not by Stacy Willingham

I enjoyed this book, even though the beginning was a tad slow for me. There were certainly some surprises along the way, however. At times I was suspicious of various characters - and some I had a right to be as evidenced by the ending - but I still enjoyed how the story unfolded.

The protagonist is Claire Campbell, a journalist whose older sister, Natalie, disappeared 22 years previously at the age of 18. Claire is estranged from her parents, especially her mother, and keeps herself closed off from her friends. She doesn't get the promotion she was expecting, so she quits her job. Then, her dad calls her and asks her to go visit her mother, who fell and was injured. She hasn't been home since she left after high school. Claire is not in a good place, to put it simply.

Since she is unemployed, she decides to go home. Her arrival to her mother's home (her childhood home) doesn't inspire any warm & fuzzy feelings. She overhears her mother complaining to her father about Claire's visit. Her parents have been divorced since Natalie's disappearance, but her dad still keeps tabs on her mother. (Still loves her, actually.) Claire decides to leave after one night. She ends up getting a seasonal job at a vineyard called Galloway Farms, which is a place that Natalie had briefly worked the summer she disappeared. It's hard labor, but the job provides a place to live, food, and a wage. Claire figures it will buy her some time before she crawls back to her former employer and asks for her job back.

Claire finds a journal hidden in her cabin almost immediately. It's the diary written by Marcia Galloway, the wife of the man (Mitchell) that owns Galloway Farms. She starts to read it and the knowledge she gains about her employers leads her down a dangerous path. She becomes suspicious of Mitchell Galloway, especially after she starts connecting the dots between him, his wife Marcia, who was reported missing when she was a teenager, other missing girls, and her sister Natalie. Claire's journalistic nature kicks into high gear, which puts her life in danger. Things do get a bit tense at this point. I read the last 75 pages at a fast pace!

Wendy's Rating: ****

The Midwife of Auschwitz by Anna Stuart

Another important story about the horror of the Holocaust. This one focuses on the babies who were born at Auschwitz between 1943-1945 with the assistance of a Polish, Christian midwife by the name of Stanislawa Leszczynska. Since this is not her biography, the author represented her in the book using the name of Ana Kaminski. Stanislawa/Ana was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau for supporting the resistance, of which her three sons and eventually her husband were a part of. At Auschwitz, she is known to have assisted in over 3,000 births. Unfortunately, most of those babies did not survive after birth. The Jewish babies were put to death almost immediately. Some babies were eventually part of the Lebensborn Program. This program took blond haired babies and children away from their mothers and sent them to German homes to be raised. Ana and her assistant, Ester Abrams, who was Jewish but trained to be a nurse, decided to secretly tattoo the armpits of newborns to be taken by the Lebensborn Program with their mother's number so that they could potentially be reunited after the war. As much as I have read about Auschwitz, this is something that I didn't know about. The bravery and survival of these women and others is simply astounding. It's incredible how much the human body can endure if the will to survive is strong.

This story starts in 1939 in Lodz, Poland. The horror for these people begins when the Jewish people were informed that they needed to move their families to a specific part of the city that was set up as a "Jewish Ghetto". In order to establish this ghetto, Polish Christians were forced to move out of the area as well. The Jewish people were crammed into homes, with different families living together. The Christians forced to move were told to find a different home, mostly the homes that the Jews were forced to leave. Initially, these people were told they could voluntarily move to a "camp" instead of staying in the Lodz ghetto. This was before people realized the Nazis' intent was to use these camps as death camps for the Jewish people and others with non-Aryan traits. Ana & Ester's story starts here and follows them to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they stay until January 27, 1945, their day of liberation.

The horrors of Auschwitz are well-known by now, but there are so many levels and aspects to this horror that I learn something new with every book I read about World War II. My heart breaks more with every story. As painful as the details are, the spirit, bravery, and perserverance for life of all those that suffered and/or survived keeps me reading.

Wendy's Rating: *****

Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild

This book had a surprising twist at the beginning of the story! Reading the jacket cover synopsis does not prepare you for the actual storyline. I actually re-read the synopsis to see if I had misinterpreted what the story was about. Nope. It's just cleverly written to not give anything away. I will try not to give too much away in my review either, but you probably shouldn't read this if you haven't read the book yet.

The narrator is Honor. Her father, deceased, was English and her mother is French, so she is bilingual. Honor, her husband Tom, and their daughter, Chloe, spend every Christmas in France, but they live in England. Honor is not close to her mother, who lives in France, and rarely sees her. Honor & Tom have some super close friends at home, Lauren (divorced) and Annie & Oliver, who are more like their family. The story starts at Christmas in France. Honor & Tom are struggling a bit in their marriage because Honor is obssessed with having a second child after suffering 5 miscarriages. Tom appears to be "over it". And even if he isn't permanently over it, he truely wants to spend Christmas with their daughter NOT talking about it. Honor can just not let it go. They had finally decided to use a surrogate, as well as an egg donor. The implantation had already occurred but they didn't know if it was successful yet. Honor wants to contact the surrogate (Jess) to see if she would take an early pregnancy test (7 days earlier than recommended), but Tom really puts his foot down.

The name of the egg donor is Grace. She requested that her name be forever confidential. It was considered a "closed" donation. Honor chose her specifically for Grace's profile and they referred to their egg donor as "Dunkirk". They knew she lived in Italy and what she looked like, but that's about it. One day a letter arrives, addressed to Tom. He opens it, but realizes it was sent to him by mistake. It was supposed to be sent to Grace, their egg donor. So now he knows the name of their egg donor who wanted to not ever be known. Now the moral dilema of the book. Should Grace be informed that her confidential identity has been revealed?

This sets up the rest of the book as a wild ride for sure! At one point (maybe two) I had to put the book down briefly to "re-group" because the consequences of Tom's actions were difficult to stomach. One thing leads to another, etc. I definitely enjoyed the book, but sometimes it was like watching a train wreck!

Wendy's Rating: ****

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

It took me some time to get into this book. I guess I didn't find it "wickedly funny" or "hilarious" like so many other people have. But, the longer I read, the more value I found in it. On the surface, Lila drove me crazy. She was so spoiled and entitled. Spending a million dollars on her wedding? What a waste! And I couldn't figure out why the beautiful, privileged, self-involved young woman would spend her time in a stranger's (Phoebe's) suite instead of celebrating her wedding week with her friends and family. Although she was so self-absorbed, she didn't even seem to like her friends and family. Meanwhile, Phoebe is trying to follow through with a plan to kill herself because she felt her life was at a dead end.

Once I got past all of that, I started seeing each character for the multi-layered people that they were - and I could actually identify with some of the decisions they were making. Phoebe's husband cheated on her with her best friend; she was in a dead end job - at the same school that her husband, Matt, and her friend, Mia taught at too; she was infertile; she was depressed; her beloved cat died. So, she booked a room at an extravagant hotel (where she had wanted to vacation with her husband but he planned a different, ordinary trip for them) so that she could end her life. The first thing I loved about Phoebe was her deciding to spend the last day of her life being brutally honest about everything. It's so hard to tell the truth. She boldly tells Lila that she came to the hotel to end her life. Lila gets upset because she doesn't want Phoebe's death to ruin her wedding.

Phoebe and Lila strike up an unlikely friendship, but once the reader gets to know Lila better, it's more understandable. Lila is also very unhappy in her life, despite "having it all." Her finance, Gary is also not really himself. He is chasing happiness while being very sad (still) about the death of his first wife. Then there is Jim, Gary's best man and the brother of his dead wife, Wendy. All four of these people are struggling and they have spent too many years living their lives being pushed into a direction that isn't right for them, simply because they don't know how to get out of the choices they have made. And it's too hard to tell people the truth of how they are feeling.

I absolutely loved the last 100 pages of the book. Phoebe explains to the bride and bridesmaids what Cubism is. There is a painting of Lila's naked mother painted in the Cubism style that was gifted to Gary after he visited the gallery that Lila worked at. She thought he loved it and understood art. He didn't realize it was Lila's mother. Anyway, Phoebe explains that, "...it was an artistic and intellectual movement in the early twentieth century. They believed if you aren't seeing something from all sides, you aren't seeing it fully." This, of course, is the theme of the book. Then, Marla (Gary's sister who had an affair), told Phoebe that "[t]he affair is the easy way out - the fantasy of believing someone else can give you what you don't know how to give yourself." Another quote from the end of the book explains the same sentiment in a different way. Phoebe contemplates that "[i]t is so much easier to sit in things and wait for something to save us. Phoebe sat in the bad things the way she used to sit in the snow as a child."

I loved the people these characters decided to be by the end of the book. Lots of honesty (finally) and lots of growth. 

Wendy's Rating: ****

The Closers by Michael Connelly

Harry Bosch #11. Harry is finally back in the LAPD after a three year retirement. Yay! He is partnered up again with Kiz Rider and they have been assigned to a new branch of the Robbery-Homicide Division called the Open-Unsolved Unit. Basically, they will be looking at cold cases. Abel Pratt is the officer in charge of the unit and he seems to like and respect Harry. Double yay! This gives Harry a fighting chance. Ha! Harry & Kiz' first case comes from a "cold hit", meaning that there is a DNA match on a 17 year old case of a murdered 16 year old girl taken from her home one night and found murdered near her home days later. The killer was never caught; a motive never discovered. Now they have a DNA match on the gun that was used in the murder, but the gun is missing from the evidence room.

Harry and Kiz start by reviewing the murder book and interviewing the applicable people attached to the original investigation. One of the original detectives committed suicide a few years after the murder, but the second detective had been promoted a few times and was a Commander now in the LAPD. With Harry's luck, it doesn't take long for him to suspect a cover-up by none other than Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, his nemesis. He also suspects a racial motive to the murder since the victim, Rebecca, was bi-racial and it was 1988 in Los Angeles, CA. There was no mention of a racial motive in the murder book, but the DNA match ties the gun to Roland Mackey, a member of the white supremist group called the Chatsworth Eights.

What I love about Harry is how persistent he is. He is a man of action. He comes up with a plan to "trap" Roland Mackey so they can figure out who he gave the gun to, which ended up being the murder weapon. He doesn't necessarily think that Roland killed Rebecca, but he believes that Roland knows - or helped - the person that did. Unfortunately, Harry's plan goes awry. The unexpected happens and it's not good. With Harry's new job on the line, he goes home and independently starts over again with the murder book. Back to the drawing board. All I will say is "a picture is worth a thousand words". Harry figures out what's been bothering him about the crime scene photos from 1988. Not only does Harry find the murderer, but there is more good news at the end of this book. There is your incentive to read it! :)

Wendy's Rating: ****