The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

This book reminds me of the shows that play on Lifetime "television for women".  I'm not saying it was bad but it was meh.

This book was a bit over dramatic and her characters were rather stereotypical in many ways. The book follows three main women and their relationships. One woman has a husband, a son and a cousin whose life is horribly enmeshed with hers and her families. This woman was quite self-centered and seemingly not very reflective until her husband announces he is in love with someone else. This starts a period of finally reflecting and looking at the people in her life as individuals rather than how they affect her.  She makes a couple colossal mistakes but is able to swallow pride and make an effort to mend the problem.

The second woman is the widowed mother of a man, married with one child, and a girl who was killed at seventeen. This woman wears her grief like a heavy blanket. The blanket of grief diminishes her capacity to enjoy anything in life except her grandson.   She has spent the years so wrapped in her grief she has largely ignored her living son. She has no concept of his grief, she has not made any effort to get to know him or his wife.

The third woman is married with three daughters. She is a super organized "get it done" kind of woman. While her husband is traveling on business, she finds a letter addressed to her from her husband "to be read in the event of his death."  The existence of this letter throws her for a loop as it is very unlike her husband to do something like this. When she asks him about it on the phone later, he tries to brush it off as no big deal, he wrote it right after their first child was born and he was feeling the enormity of parenthood. This was a pretty good answer but she knew he was lying.

In thinking about it, this was an okay book but it was just a little more feminine drama than I like.

Already Gone

Already Gone by John Rector

This is a crime thriller.  On page two our protagonist gets his finger cut off with bolt cutters.  If you can't handle that, don't read this book.

This isn't a crime thriller from the perspective of the police or even the criminal.  This is told from the voice of the guy who now only has 9 fingers.  He can't figure out what's going on and who he needs to be looking over his shoulder for.  He's a newly appointed University professor but he didn't start out all normal and straight laced and therein lies his dilemna.

This was a pretty good book and the first big twist I saw coming probably just because all other avenues had been exhausted and  I've read tons of these types of books.  The ending annoyed me big time though.  If you like crime drama, check it out and then let me know if you liked the ending or if you agree that it should have ended differently.  I mean, that one guy shouldn't have died, you know???

A Provencal Mystery

A Provencal Mystery by Ann Elwood

This is a historical novel combined with a mystery novel.

An American historian and professor researching for her tenure paper spends her days going through the historical records of a nearby convent in a small town in Provence, France.  Suddenly, the diary of a 17th century nun appears in her research material.  She is distracted from the research giving her the facts and figures of the inhabitant of the convent.  She tries to stay on task but is encouraged by a friend, a nun, to keep going with the new material.

First, an apparent murder occurs in the diary.  Second, an apparent murder occurs in the research library.  Our historian and her colleagues are the suspects.  Soon, it seems if she can solve the 17th century murder, she can solve the murder from now as well.

This was a really fun, fast read.  I highly recommend it.