Deadline by Chris Crutcher

This is a book written for teen boys, but I think that I got more out of it than my teenage son. I think a person has to have lived life (longer than the teenage years for sure!) to really appreciate the message of this story. My son thought it was "boring" in places. I thought it was thought-provoking.

Ben Wolf is a senior in High School, as is his younger brother Cody. Ben started his education late because he was such a small child. So instead of attending school one year ahead of Cody, they started together. Ben is a track star. Cody is a football star (quarterback). Their mother has significant mental health issues and their father simply exists. He lets life just pass him by, knowing that he can't change anything since it's out of his control. It's because of this that Ben forms a deeper relationship with Coach, even buying and driving Coach's old car.

After having his sports physical exam, Ben is told by his doctor that he has an aggressive form of blood cancer. In order to live longer than a year, he would have to undergo aggressive treatment, which may extend his life a bit, but would obviously affect his quality of life. Ben decides to skip treatment and live the final year of his life to the fullest. This includes joining the football team (with his brother), bravely asking out the girl of his dreams (Dallas) who is considered out of his league (she says yes!), befriending the town drunk (Rudy) and challenging his history/civics teacher nearly every minute of every class. The kicker here is that he decides to keep his diagnosis a secret from everyone. He wants the last year of his life to be "normal".

Ben's journey brings him to a state of "self-awareness". As he develops new relationships with people, like Dallas and Rudy, who share their own heart-breaking secrets with him, he discovers how painful it is for people to live with secrets. In other words, Ben figures out that he is being selfish for keeping his diagnosis from the people who love him. He is not giving them the time to process that he will not be in their lives after the year is up and that there is no future for him/them.

Ben wants to make an impact before he dies, and he definitely does. There are a lot of sad stories in this book involving physical and sexual abuse, mental illness, alcoholism and death by suicide, accident and illness. But I loved Ben, Cody and Coach - and I loved their relationships, which included full acceptance and unconditional love. In the end, Ben's deterioration and death come fast, and I definitely shed some tears.

Wendy's Rating: ****

The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark

This story is about a con artist, Meg Williams, but she is more of a "Robinhood" con artist. Meaning, her marks are not innocent, vulnerable people, but rather unscrupulous characters who have harmed others. Meg returns to her home town after 10 years and her mark is the man who stole her and her mother's inherited home out from underneath them - and then gloated about it. This man, Ron Ashton, is now a candidate for state senator. Meg returns to make him pay for what he did to her mother.

Meanwhile, Kat Roberts, a reporter, has been waiting for Meg to return so that she can expose her for the con artist that she is. Ten years previously, Meg had anonymously given Kat a "tip" regarding a source on a story involving a principal preying on his students. Kat met the source, but the source raped her. So Kat blamed Meg for this traumatic event. Another element in Kat's life is that her boyfriend, Scott, plunged them into debt because of a gambling addiction, but which he is undergoing treatment for. So you could say that Kat & Meg both have trust issues, for good reason.

What's great about this story is the relationship that builds between these two women. They hold each other "close" so they can keep an eye on each other. Kat uses a fake name and background when she introduces herself to Meg so that Meg doesn't know that she is researching her for the "big story" she is writing. Meg is too smart for that though. She figures out quickly enough who Kat really is, so then gives her a part-time job to keep her close. Scott  does not trust Meg at all and he keeps warning Kat how seductive con artists are and how good they are at lying. Meg doesn't actually trust Scott and keeps voicing sympathy to Kat about her gambling-addicted boyfriend when someone starts messing with her bank account and opening up a credit card in Kat's name. Kat really doesn't know who to trust.

This is an engaging story and I very much enjoyed it!

Wendy's Rating: ****

Lodestar: Keeper of The Lost Cities, Book Five by Shannon Messenger

As usual, a lot happens in Book 5 of this series. The kids figure out that the different symbols they are discovering in various places (like Keefe's cloak and the former Neverseen hideout where Sophie & Dex were held) are sections of the Neverseen Lodestar.  Each piece of the Lodestar leads to a different Neverseen hideout. Since Tam is a shade, they are able to go to these secret hideouts without being discovered. Sophie, Fitz and Tam end up at an occupied hideout however, and although they are initially trapped by a force field, Tam is able to get them out of it and they are successful in capturing both Brant and Ruy. Keefe refuses to come with them though, still trying to earn the trust of the Neverseen, including Alvar (Fitz' brother).

War is pending. No one trusts the other groups. King Dimitar wants to leave the treaty and he wants the ogres to simply be left alone. A band of rebel ogres however, attack Lady Cadence. Brielle (Grady's goblin bodyguard) ends up being killed. An Exillium Camp is set up at Foxfire and all of the elves start training in skills taught by Exillium teachers.

Wylie gets kidnapped. Sophie & gang figure out that Wylie's mother, Cyrah, was actually murdered. Wylie's kidnappers think that Wylie knows more than he does about his mother. We also find out that Dex' mother, Juline, is actually working with the Black Swan Collective and one of her disguises is Squall.

Sophie is invited to attend the Peace Summit at Lumenaria. The Neverseen end up destroying Lumenaria unfortunately, and one key character ends up dying. I am still sad about it so I won't reveal who it is here. Keefe is able to steal Fintan's & Kenric's caches from the Neverseen, but I guess we don't know if they are the authentic caches or not.

Finally, in this very brief summary, the ending goes in an direction I wasn't expecting. Sophie searches for her human sister, Amy/Natalie, and finds her in a closet in Amy's home. Oddly enough, Amy recognizes Sophie, even though her memory had been wiped clean.

This is already a complex story, but it's even harder to explain because of all the different "disguises" and roles that various characters play.

Wendy's Rating: *****

Ceremony in Death by JD Robb

This is the 5th installment of the Eve Dallas mystery series. Eve is pulled into the world of Wiccans and Satanism. Wiccans don't believe in harming anyone or anything at all and Satanists find happiness and joy in sacrificing animals and humans. Eve doesn't trust either group, but Peabody trusts the Wiccans, which causes a strain in the relationship between Eve & Peabody. Roarke also takes measures to protect Eve due to his beliefs and Celtic origins, which Eve thinks is foolish. Eve pretty much drove me crazy in this book! As a cop, you need to keep an open mind - and trust the people around you. She was hell bent on telling everyone else they were foolish for "believing" in the concepts presented to her and she was focused on trying to find evidence that a Wiccan was responsible for some gruesome deaths, simply because his father had been a mass murderer. She just seemed very narrow-minded, which is unlike her. I think the point was that she was undergoing personal turmoil because of who her own father was, but you would think that she would have been more trusting of the Wiccan who was trying to escape the horrors of his parentage, since she is trying to do the same thing!

The first death was a former police officer, which everyone knew and loved. Frank's death was originally thought to be from a heart issue, but after his granddaughter, Alice, is murdered, Eve believes (rightly so) that Frank was murdered as well. Alice worked at a Wiccan shop called Spirit Quest, but previous to that she was caught up with the Satanists, Selina & Alban. Selina used heavy drugs on her "minions", which resulted in memory loss for her followers after the satanic rituals (including sacrifices) and it also encouraged her followers to do horrible things since they didn't really know what they were doing in their drug-induced state. Alice contacted Eve after Frank's funeral because she felt like her life was in danger.

I'm hoping that Eve learned a few things before the next book! First of all, she puts a lot of trust in Peabody & Roarke normally, so why not listen to what they have to say?? She doesn't have to follow what they think blindly, but it bothered me that she so determinedly ignored what they were saying.

Wendy's Rating: ****

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

On the back jacket cover, it compares this book to A Man Called Ove (which I loved!) and Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (which I did not care for). So I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not. I almost hate to admit that I did not care for this book. It's a well written book. It's charming and funny. But it's always a bad sign when I check repeatedly to see how much I have left to read. It just seemed to go on and on. Another issue I had (and couldn't seem to get over, no matter how charming the book), is how ridiculous it was. I can read sci-fi and dystopian novels and not even think about how implausible something might be. But I could not do that with this book.

This story is about five elderly people living in a retirement home who decide they would rather live in prison than their current living situation. They had the idea that they would be better cared for, with better food, more sunshine & outdoor time, etc. in prison than the retirement home. So the ringleader, Martha (79) decides the five of them should commit a robbery so that they would be arrested and spend time in prison. Their first major theft (or what they called a "kidnapping") was stealing a Monet and a Renoir (worth 30 million kroner) from the National Museum. They hold the paintings ransom, (their ransom note is written with letters and words cut from a newspaper) demanding 10 million kroner. The story goes on for about another 250 pages as they succeed in their plan, lose the paintings, lose half the money (that the National Museum left in two shopping carts on a cruise ship), hide money, fall in love, spend time in prison, get out of prison and decide they love the life of crime. It just goes on and on - every single minute of it implausible. It's just too much for me!

So, what did I like? Certainly the author is very creative. She has an engaging writing style and I did chuckle out loud from time to time. The story definitely flowed nicely and the characters were unique and quirky. So in the end, if you like this kind of book, it's a good read. Again, I feel bad giving it only a three-star rating because typically I only rate poorly written books three-stars. But this book was not for me. Glad I'm done. :0)

Wendy's Rating: ***

Rapture in Death by JD Robb

Book 4 of this series. Eve and Roarke are now married. Roarke is still doing his own thing, but he helps Eve with her investigations more and more. He has much better equipment than the police department. In this story, various people are committing suicide, even though they did not appear to be at risk for it. The police department is fine with calling them suicides, but Eve is not. So, she starts looking into these unpredictable suicides herself, with Peabody's faithful assistance of course. She is especially affected when she tries to talk one of the victims off a ledge (being on the ledge too) and is not able to. The woman jumps to her death with a smile on her face. All of the victims have a smile on their faces.

Eve suspects that the people who committed suicide did so because of the virtual reality programs they were watching before they died. Of course Roarke owns the company that makes the virtual reality programs that are of concern, so he assures her that the programs cannot make someone do something they wouldn't ordinarily do. He introduces her to Reeanna and her husband, William. Reeanna not only works for Roarke in his virtual reality division, but she also counsels Eve in a different direction than Mira (Eve's regular therapist) as Eve battles her own childhood demons.

Mavis and Leonardo are still in love. The second story running through this book is Mavis' opportunity to become a star. Jess Burrow is in the music and entertainment industry and he tells Mavis that her demo disc is ready and that it's going to be a big hit. He wants to throw a big party and have her sing at it. Of course this big bash is hosted by Eve and Roarke, and there is a shocking twist at the party.

It takes everyone awhile to figure this one out, but they do in the end and everyone I mentioned above is involved in some way. ;)

Wendy's Rating: ****

Work Horse by Zach Olstad

This is actually a remarkable story. It shows what sheer determination, perserverance, courage and a high tolerance for pain can do. This young kid living on a small Amish farm in Minnesota (his parents bought it from an Amish family when Zach was 6 years old), had a passion for sports and even though he was only 130 lbs when he was in High School, he made the decision to shoot for the stars and try to play football in the NFL. Craziness.

He and his family worked hard on the farm of course, but Zach created his own "work outs" in addition, to try to get stronger and bulk up. He was incredibly self-motivated. He eventually put on weight, built up muscle and grew to 5' 11'' - which is still not very big for a professional football player. He was 245 lbs going against guys that were 300 lbs. 

He managed to get into a Division II college (Winona State) and spent six years there. Two of those years he was red-shirted (Freshman year and then his third year due to an injury). He suffered significant injuries and just kept playing through the pain. His goal was to reach the NFL. He was called up by the Buffalo Bills and got a spot on the roster. Unfortunately, during his second game as a pro, he succombed to his injuries. He just couldn't hide his number of injuries and the amount of pain he was in any longer. The Bills let him go. BUT, he made it to the NFL!

His positive attitude and work ethic is incredible. He went as far as he could possibly go, and then when he could go no further, he switched directions. He now owns a fitness studio in Nashville TN. Although this isn't the best written book, I am rating it four stars because of how impressive Zach is.

Wendy's Rating: ****