Kate Padilla's Blog, page 30

REVIEW: WATCH ME GO

WATCH ME GO, BY MARK WISNIEWSKI. PUTNAM, 320 PP. $26.95

Reaching Mark Wisniewski's novel, Watch Me Go, was a little like listening to "Serial," the true-crime podcast that everyone's been listening to and talking about. (Note: If you haven't listened to "Serial" yet, you absolutely should). Similar to Adnan's account of what happened with regards to the death of Hae Min Lee, Watch Me Go is the account of what happened to Tom Corcoron, a jockey who disappears one day and shows up later in a la...

PAPERBACK: SEDUCING INGRID BERGMAN

I read Chris Greenhalgh's debut novel, Seducing Ingrid Bergman, for review last year in the Reporter, about a year or so after I reviewed Therese Anne Fowler's Z. This kind of novel is really popular right now -- a fictional account of a true-to-life love affair between two well-known people in history. The entire trend, I think, began with Paula McLain's The Paris Wife. (Confession: I started The Paris Wife but haven't finished it yet. I should check it out again.)

Greenhalgh takes a little...

REVIEW: ETTA AND OTTO AND RUSSELL AND JAMES

ETTA AND OTTO AND RUSSELL AND JAMES, BY EMMA HOOPER. SIMON & SCHUSTER, 305 PP. $26

A title like Etta and Otto and Russell and James suggests a quirky band of characters and shenanigans they manage to get themselves into. And Emma Hooper's debut novel is, to some extent. Things kick off when Otto finds a stack of recipe cards on the table with a note on top:

Otto,
I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. Don't worry, I've left you the truck. I can walk. I...

PAPERBACK: SHOTGUN LOVESONGS

It took me until about halfway through Nickolas Butler's novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, before I realized it was somewhat of a modern-day, Midwest Four Weddings and a Funeral, told from the perspective of Charlie's group of friends. But, while Four Weddings and a Funeral is largely told from Charlie's perspective, Shotgun Lovesongs divides the focus between several of the characters.

It opens and closes with Hank, the family-man with two children who farms in Little Wing, Wisconsin. He is, when c...

PAPERBACK: THE BOOK OF JONAH

Biblical stories are definitely making a comeback in popular culture, with movies like Noahand Son of God andThe Bible mini-series. Joshua Max Feldman, though, takes it one step further with The Book of Jonah. In this book, Feldman's debut, Jonah Jacobsteinis a modern-day corporate lawyer. He's got a girlfriend and a not-girlfriend, he's looking ahead to partnership at his firm and he and his girlfriend are looking at high-end lofts together. It seems he has it all.

But Jonah starts having th...

REVIEW: THE BOOK OF LOVE

THE BOOK OF LOVE: IMPROVISATIONS ON A CRAZY LITTLE THING, BY ROGER ROSENBLATT. ECCO, 192 PP. $22.99

Here is my Thursday evening routine. After dinner, I pour myself a glass of wine, I sit on the couch with a blanket (and my dogs) on my lap, I pick up my 3-month-old son and I read. I read both children's books to him and, once he's asleep, I read whatever it is I've been working through at the time.

A few weeks ago, however, the books I read to him and the book I read to myself were the same b...

REVIEW: HOW WE FALL

HOW WE FALL, BY KATE BRAUNING. MERIT PRESS, 303 PP. $17.99

First love is a common theme in young adult literature, but debut author Kate Brauning finds a way to spin it in a way that's never been done before.

Jackie lives with her family. All of her family. She, her parents and her sister live with her aunt and uncle and their family -- which includes Marcus, his three brothers and his two sisters. Marcus and Jackie, being the oldest, are often paired for chores, and are often asked to take ca...

REVIEW: IN SOME OTHER WORLD, MAYBE

IN SOME OTHER WORLD, MAYBE, BY SHARI GOLDHAGEN. ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, 272 PP. $25.99

Imagine a twenty-year span of your life. You meet people, you share life with them, and then you progress forward and meet other people. And those people have others in their past they've shared life with as well. And life continues, and the dance of meeting and sharing and progressing continues.

In Shari Goldhagen's latest novel, In Some Other World, Maybe, Adam goes to see a new movie in a small-town in Florid...

REVIEW: COLD, COLD HEART

COLD, COLD HEART, BY TAMI HOAG. DUTTON, 388 PP. $27.95

Where many thrillers begin when the serial killer abducts the pretty girl and end with either the pretty girl's escape or the solving or her murder, Tami Hoag's Cold, Cold Heart begins with Dana Nelson's escape from the man who killed several other girls. In her escape, she kills him as well, which wraps that up fairly nicely.

But the beatings he inflicted on her have left her with little to no memory -- of who she was or of who anyone aro...

PAPERBACK RELEASE: THE QUEEN'S DWARF

Sometimes I wonder how many more people would be interested in history if the textbooks and curriculums included the little tidbits novelists seem to dig up when they write fictional stories based on real-life events. Take, for example, the situation going on in Ella March Chase's The Queen's Dwarf, in which Henrietta Maria, the French queen of England and the wife of King Charles I, collects a party of unique individuals known as her "Curiosities and Freaks of Nature." One of these little f...