Shine Shine Shine

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
Audio CD, read by Joshilyn Jackson
Macmillan Audio, July 17, 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1427221391
Hardcover, 320 pages
http://lydianetzer.blogspot.com/

Overview

When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.
Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be “normal.” She’s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they’re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they’re at each other’s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?
Sunny wishes Maxon would turn the rocket around and come straight-the-hell home.
When an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blond wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same.…
A debut of singular power and intelligence, Shine Shine Shine is a unique love story, an adventure between worlds, and a stunning novel of love, death, and what it means to be human.

My Thoughts:

 

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer follows the love story of Sunny and Maxon, but it is so much more than just a love story. Sunny was born completely hairless during an eclipse while her family was in Burma. Her missionary father was executed by the Communists and her mother moved back to the States. Sunny and Maxon met as children and knew one thing: that they belonged together. Now married, Maxon is a very successful Nobel-winning autistic NASA scientist who is on a mission to colonize the moon with self-replicating robots. Sunny is his very pregnant wife, left behind on earth with their autistic 4 year-old son, Bubber. In their current suburban life, Maxon's success has afforded them a model house. Sunny wears a variety of blond wigs to hide her baldness and keeps an expensively furnished, immaculate house. It soon becomes clear that Sunny has tried very hard to reinvent herself as the perfect suburban mother, which has put a great deal of self-induced stress on them.

 

But after Maxon leaves for the moon, Sunny has a car accident that sends her wig flying off in her neighborhood. This exposure of her secret causes Sonny to re-examine her life and the choices she has made in order to fit in and seem "normal."  Then a meteorite hits the space ship Maxon is on, placing the mission and his life in jeopardy. To complicate matters further, Sonny is now feeling contractions, her mother is dying in the hospital, and she's re-examining Bubber's need for medication. Sunny's on-going crisis situation causes her to question if she needs to embrace the idiosyncrasies of her and her family. She soon begins to wonder what makes us human and if such a thing as normal exits. 

 

In Shine Shine Shine, Lydia Netzer has penned a clever, imaginative novel full of great descriptive language and unique, quirky characters. The language flowed beautifully, as read by Joshilyn Jackson on my audio version.  It has a strong message about accepting the peculiarities and faults of others rather than everyone striving for a Stepford-like conformity. Netzer alternates between the points of view of Maxon and Sunny. She also gives us backstory along with current events to help us better understand these characters and their motives. Sunny is not a perfect character, but that was the point. She tried to put on the facade and be perfect for others. Once her cover was blown, Sunny realizes that she has to accept who she is and who Maxon is and who Bubber is - and that each of them is special and unique.

 

Very Highly Recommended - one of the best

 

This was my first audio book. I won the audio version of Shine Shine Shine  from a giveaway on Joshilyn Jackson's website an embarrassingly long time ago. The problem is that I wasn't finding a time to listen to an audio book. My "commute" to work is maybe 5 minutes and I just haven't taken any long car trips. Finally I just had to tell myself to start listening to it while I was doing other things. That worked, but I have to admit that I missed seeing the words in a physical copy of the book. I loved listening to Jackson read the story, however, and I'd like to get an audio CD of one of her books just to hear her read it.

 

Excerpt from book

you tube audio

Domino Falls

Domino Falls by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due
Atria Books, 2/19/2013
Hardcover, 384 pages
ISBN-13: 9781451617023

Description:

It began on Freak Day—that day no one could explain, when strangers and family members alike went crazy and started biting one another. Some thought the outbreak was caused by a flu shot, others that it was a diet drug gone terribly wrong. All anyone knew is that once you were bitten and went to sleep, you woke up a freak.

My Thoughts:

 

Domino Falls by husband and wife writing team Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due is a sequel to the story they began in Devils Wake.  In this post-apocalyptic thriller, Zombie-like freaks abound as a small rag-tag group makes it to Domino Falls, California. Along their trek they have heard broadcasts from Joseph Wales, the leader of the Thread group. He has a Threadie sanctuary/compound in Domino Falls. After the group manages to gain admittance to the town it almost seems too good to be true - and that may, in fact, be the case. Could fighting the freaks on the outside be preferable to the sanctuary Wales' group provides?

 

An infection has caused the outbreak of freaks. One bite from them and a healthy person is infected. Once the freaks fall asleep, they turn into the dangerous runners. After that they change into the slower shambling freaks. Although Domino Falls doesn't quite have the full, detailed explanation of what happened, it certainly provides enough information to enjoy the novel. The explanation given is that the freak outbreak was caused by receiving a flu shot after eating a certain mushroom. After that the freaks infected people through their bites.

 

Characters include: Kendra Brookings, Terry Whittaker, Sonia Petansu, “Piranha” Charlie Cawthorne, Corporal Ursalina Cortez, Darius Phillips, Dean Kitsap, and Hipshot, a black terrier mix. (Dogs can detect freaks before people can.)  These characters are well-drawn in this novel especially for the second book in a series. Actually Domino Falls is more of a character driven novel and the freaks are simply there, as an ever-present threat that everyone must consider. But there are other threats in this novel that may be just as creepy.

 

Clearly, from the ending, there will be more books in the series. 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It was engaging and the plot was gripping from beginning to end. I haven't read the first book in the series, but if  it is close to the quality of Domino Falls, then I'd very highly recommend it too.

 

Book Excerpt

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was an uncorrected proof courtesy of  Atria Books and Netgalley for review purposes.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord
Random House, 2/12/2013
Hardcover, 320 pages
ISBN-13: 9780345534057

Description:

The Best of All Possible Worlds is a stunning science fiction epic that is also a beautifully wrought, deeply moving love story.
A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life but come to discover that in order to preserve their culture, they may have to change it forever.
Now a man and a woman from these two clashing societies must work together to save this vanishing race—and end up uncovering ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. As their mission hangs in the balance, this unlikely team—one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive—just may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all.

My Thoughts:

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord is a science fiction/love story.  In it the Sadiri, a humanoid race, have been the victims of genocide on their home planet. The attack has left many more male survivors than female, so a large group of males has traveled to settle on the planet Cygnus Beta because there is a large population of displaced races and peoples settled there and some of them may be related to the Sadiri. The male Sadiri survivors are telepathic and can determine if a group of people/settlers have a high percentage of Sadiri blood.

 

An expedition traveling across Cygnus Beta is looking for groups that may be distant genetic relatives of the Sadiri. Grace Delarua, a Cygnian bio-technician and linguist,  along with Dllenahkh, a Sadiri emissary, are part of the group chosen for the expedition. Delarua narrates a majority of the novel in a chatty, first person style while Dllenahkh careful reflections are in the third person. This expedition is basically to seek mates for the surviving Sadiri males so they can preserve as much of their genetic heritage as possible.

 

The novel consists of chapters that are evocative of a series of short stories because, basically, the group is traveling across the planet exploring, looking at the locals, and getting to know each other, while under a variety of circumstances. As a result of this style, the novel felt choppy and disjointed to me. The main focus of this novel, despite the science fiction label, is following the budding romance between Delarua and Dllenahkh.

 

I'm going to have to admit that I didn't enjoy The Best of All Possible Worlds. I wanted to, especially when it is described as a science fiction epic. I enjoy science fiction, but romance novels... not so much. The combination didn't work for me and I'm going to chance a guess that it won't for many other science fiction fans. This novel is really more of a romance novel in a science fiction setting, which explains why it is getting many great reviews, but is so-so for me.

 

Quotes: Excerpt

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was an uncorrected proof courtesy of Random House and Netgalley for review purposes.

Three Graves Full

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason
Gallery Books, 2/12/2013
Hardcover, 320 pages

ISBN-13: 9781451685039 

http://www.jamie-mason.com/

Description:

For fans of the Coen brothers’ films or for those who just love their thrillers with a dash of sharp humor—an engaging and offbeat story about a man driven to murder, who then buries the body in his backyard only to discover that there are two other shallow graves on his property.
“There is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.”
With this memorable first line, we meet Jason Getty, a regular guy in every mild sense of the word. But extraordinary circumstances push this ordinary man to do something he can’t undo...and now he must live with the undeniable reality of his actions. And just as Jason does finally learn to live with it, a landscaper discovers a body on his property—only it’s not the body Jason buried.
As Jason’s fragile peace begins to unravel, his life is hitched to the fortunes of several strangers: Leah, an abandoned woman looking for answers to her heartbreak; Tim, a small-town detective just doing his job; and Boyd, a fringe-dweller whose past is about to catch up to him—all of them in the wake and shadow of a dead man who had it coming.
With the tense pacing of a thriller and the language and beauty of a fine literary novel, Three Graves Full heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in fiction.

My Thoughts:

 

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason is a murder mystery that can also be comedic. Jason Getty is a man under a constant strain. He has a man buried in his backyard, by his own hand, however, unknown to Jason, there are two other bodies buried in his yard. When one of the other bodies is discovered by a landscaper Jason hires, it soon leads to the discovery of the second body. Although culpability for the untimely burial of these bodies points to the previous owner, Jason is, quite naturally, obsessed with the thought that the police will soon find the third body, the one he is responsible for burying in the yard more recently. Adding to Jason's already overwhelming fear of the police investigation is a smart dog and a couple of unwanted trespassers.

 

Three Graves Full juxtaposes murder with comedy. It has been compared to works by the Coen brothers, and I can see the comparison to Fargo, but it brought to mind, for me anyway, Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry, another dead body mystery/dark comedy. The humor here is not slapstick; it is based on the absurdity of the situation and the consequences of choices the characters make. The story whipped along at a good pace, but did slow and trip a few places along the way. Additionally, Jason is not a readily likeable character. While I can accept unlikable main characters, Jason's personality is best described as bland. That could be problematic for some readers.

 

Since I was provided an uncorrected proof for review purposes I have provided a link to an excerpt below, but there were several times when I sorely wanted to saved a sentence, description, or paragraph for quotes to share with you. Not only is Mason witty, she has some very descriptive language which provides wonderful insights into portraying her characters and their emotions, motives, thoughts, and backgrounds. There were places where descriptions were a tad bit overwritten, which could be indicative of any first novel. It is clear that Mason is a talented writer, so, since this is her debut novel, look for future novels.

 

highly recommended - and keep an eye on future novels by Jamie Mason

 

 Quotes: Excerpt

 

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Gallery Books and Netgalley for review purposes.

Guest Post - Art Maines, author of Scammed

Why Seniors Are Easy Targets: The Psychology of Scammers

One in every five Americans over 65 are taken in by scammers.  The criminals who scam elders like your mom or dad are professionals. It’s their job, and some people claim they study their reprehensible craft day and night. Their sole purpose is to rip people off, and no doubt about it, they are very, very good at it. They seem to be as intelligent and well educated in their line of work as any doctor or lawyer is in his or her respective profession. The rest of us often underestimate them, and the crooks like it that way because it makes their jobs easier. Our parents are literally nothing to them but a payday or even a game. Often they get an adrenaline rush from defrauding others, and a sense of triumph or victory. Put bluntly, they’re predators.

Some people who perpetrate fraud indulge in what therapists call “selective disengagement of moral self-sanction from inhumane conduct.” What a mouthful! This means they use mental games to ignore internal messages meant to stop them from hurting others. I theorize that they often use worthy ends such as the need to support a family in a hostile economic environment to socially and morally justify hurting our parents. They downplay the harm they cause and even blame the victims for bringing the problems on themselves. Others are sociopaths who lack a conscience and simply don’t care what happened to others. Either way, or through a combination of these two elements, our elder loved ones don’t stand a chance against these people unless we help them.

A scammer makes contact with a potential elderly victim, and then begins building a manipulative web of lies carefully designed to make the senior believe they can gain money or help someone else. When an elderly person gets ripped off by a scammer, it isn’t about being stupid; it’s often about unmet needs like feeling lonely, worry about limited finances, or the desire to help others. Many people judge victims of frauds and scams as stupid, gullible, or some variation of these ideas. I disagree. 

In my experience, seniors are easy prey for scammers because they have unmet needs.  They may feel lonely, undervalued, bored, poor, or sincerely desire to help others.  These needs make the ploy for the chance to win a bunch of money, bail a grandchild out of a foreign prison, or save a lot of money on driveway resurfacing sound like a good idea to a senior.

A certain level of unmet needs in an elder is normal, so please do your best to move beyond any guilt you may feel about this. We can’t possibly meet all of our needs as younger adults, let alone as we age. Virtually everyone experiences a discrepancy between their needs and what their life actually brings them. What we’re seeking to do here is understand more about the role unmet needs play in our parents’ vulnerability to criminals who want to use their discrepancies against them, and perhaps work with our elder loved ones to help them think more clearly and have fewer unmet needs.

Let’s face it—the perpetrators are better at their job of hurting people than the majority of elders currently are at staying safe. Most people will never be able to tell just by talking with someone whether or not that person is a criminal out to steal from them. The crooks are incredibly skillful at reeling in their victims without revealing their actual motives. Virtually everyone I’ve spoken with said the scammers were “very friendly” and “seemed totally honest.” So what can be done?

The most important you can do to protect your parents or other senior loved one is to educate them about scams.  Have the conversations regularly in case Mom or Dad does not remember well.  Ask them if they have gotten any suspicious phone calls or emails. 

Make scam prevention and education a frequent topic just as you enquire about their health.  Your goal is not to frighten your senior but to let them know you care about their welfare and want them to be smart and savvy where these crooks are considered.

Art Maines, LCSW, is a therapist in private practice and an expert in Elderly Fraud Recovery and Prevention.  His new book Scammed: 3 Steps to Protect Your Elder Parents and Yourself, gives in-depth information on scam prevention and recovery.

Scammed

Scammed: 3 Steps to Help Your Elder Parents and Yourselfby Art Maines
Love Your Life Publishing,  October  2012
Trade Paperback, 210 pages

ISBN-13: 9781934509524
http://scammedbook.com/


Description:

One in Five US Seniors are Scam Victims, Learn How to Prevent and Recover from this Crime:
When author Art Maines' beloved stepfather Bill was cheated out of thousands of dollars, Art went on a mission to ensure no other family experiences this tragic crime.
In Scammed, Art provides a three step scam prevention and recovery program, based on his training as a social worker, therapist, and his extensive research.  Suitable for seniors or children of elderly parents, Scammed will help you:
Understand the most common types of scams
Learn the psychological ploys used by scammers so that you can spot a scammer immediately
Create a scam prevention plan
Recover from a scam with your dignity intact
Use the resources in your community if you suspect a scam

My Thoughts:

Scammed: 3 Steps to Help Your Elder Parents and Yourself by Art Maines is the kind of book you hope you never need but it's great to know that it's available if that concern should arise.  And that need may arise so it might behoove those of us with elderly parents to take this seriously. According to Maines, "Seniors make up about 12 percent (and rising) of the US population, but are approximately 35 percent of all fraud victims." (pg. xvi) Maines is talking about several different kinds of scams, frauds and exploitation targeting our elderly parents. Maines took up this educational cause after he helped his stepfather, Bill, through the aftermath of an ongoing scam that ended up robbing him of tens of thousands of dollars.

Maines writes: "My main purpose in writing this book is to help you help your parents or other loved one deal with and recover from the awful experience of getting ripped off by professional scam artists. I provide the three steps I took in handling a series of scams perpetrated on my 82-year-old stepfather in 2009. Though the specific details of your experience will be different from mine, I provide ideas and resources to help you manage and minimize the damage from this type of crime." (pg. xxi)

Scammed is set up to make providing help and guidance very accessible to the reader. The easy to read, informative style shouldn't be intimidating to anyone. The advice is very well organized. There really is a plethora of good, common-sense advice as well as some very specific steps that you need to take, organizations you need to contact, hurdles you might encounter, and even proactive ways to prevent scams.

I loved the fact that Maines even made it clear that you need to keep good records as you gather evidence - including notebooks, a filing system, and logs for everything and all information. This is something that most of us instinctively know, but I had to ask myself how many times do I make important phone calls and jot down notes and details I know I need on scratch paper. This reminder to approach helping your parents purposefully and carefully is a great reminder.

The contents of Scammed

Section One: Getting Scammed and the Recovery Steps

Bill's Story

Chapter 1: Step 1 - Discovery: Gather the Vital Information Quickly

Chapter 2: Step 2 - Protect Your Parents: Stop the Bleeding and Lock Down Their Assets

Chapter 3: Recovery: Plan Your Parent's Financial Recovery

Section Two: Emotional Challenges and the Psychology of Scamming

Chapter 4: Helping your Parents Recover Emotionally

Chapter 5: Handling Your Own Emotions: The Importance of Good Self-Care

Chapter 6: The Psychology of Scamming: An Introduction to How the Scammers Do It and What That Can Teach Us

Section Three: Prevention: The Scam-Resistant Elder

Chapter 7: First Things

Chapter 8: Unmet Needs, the Five FLAGS and Scam Drills

Chapter 9: Preventing More Pain: Financial Abuse and Identity Theft

Section Four: Putting the Steps into Practice with Three Common Problems

Chapter 10: Recovering from Telemarketing Scams

Chapter 11: Recovering from Home Repair Rip-offs

Chapter 12: Recovering from Financial Identity Theft

Final Thoughts

Appendix: Resources and Recommended Reading; Relevant Websites for Each Step of the 3-Step Process; Books; State Contact Information;

As you can see, Scammed is a short book packed with information. And if information is power, scam prevention is the key. Maines makes it clear that it is better to "Never let yourself be chosen. Always do the choosing." (pg. 104)

 Very Highly Recommended

Art Maines, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice, speaker, and expert in elderly fraud recovery and prevention. He earned his Master's Degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Art and his stepfather Bill live in St. Louis.

Come back tommorrow for a guest post by Art Maines, author of Scammed. 

Although I would recommend everyone read the whole book, I asked Art  to address the question: What is the single most important fact that you would like people to remember after reading Scammed?

Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the author and Premier Virtual Author Book Tours for review purposes.  

The Expats

The Expats by Chris Pavone 

Crown Publishing Group, 2012
Hardcover, 336 pages
ISBN-13: 9780307956354
http://www.chrispavone.com/

Description:

Kate Moore is a typical expat mom, newly transplanted from Washington DC to the quiet cobblestoned streets of Luxembourg. Her days are filled with coffee mornings and play-dates, her weekends with trips to Paris and Amsterdam. Kate is also guarding a tremendous, life-defining secret, one that’s becoming unbearable, indefensible. It’s also clear that another expat American couple are not really who they’re claiming to be; plus Kate’s husband is acting suspiciously. While she travels around Europe, looking for answers, she’s increasingly worried that her past is finally catching up with her. As Kate digs, and uncovers the secrets of the people who surround her, she finds herself buried in layers of deceit so thick they threaten her family, her marriage, and her life.

My Thoughts:

 In The Expats by Chris Pavone we are given delicious clues right from the start that Kate Moore is more than she seems. When Kate's husband, Dexter, is offered a lucrative position with an unnamed bank in Luxembourg, Kate quits her job in Washington D.C., the details of which (she's CIA) she never totally explained to Dexter, and they decide to pack up their sons and become expats, Americans living and working abroad.

While Kate thinks, at first, that she is leaving her double life behind to concentrate on being a wife and mother, it soon becomes clear that she has developed some skills that could still be useful to her since everything in Luxembourg may not be quite what it seems to be. Dexter is becoming increasingly distant and might be hiding something from her. And then there is a couple they have met who don't seem to be who they claim they are.

As the tension slowly begins to build, clues foreshadow that there is much more to the story: "Much later, Kate realized that Chicago should have been her first clue. (page 48)." The Expats is full of clues and hints like this of much more to come... and the secrets, all the secrets and half-truths being hidden from others..

In fact, this stylish and cerebral espionage novel is about secrets, people keeping secrets wrapped up in other secrets. It's not a novel full of violent gun battles and fight scenes. Instead it is an intelligent novel where we are allowed glimpses and tantalizing clues of what might be the real truth, only to have these new revelations dashed  aside as new clues are revealed. This is a long-con (and as a Lost fan, I appreciate a great long-con story.) 

The writing was superb. The narrative alternates between the present and the past, both in chronological order, giving us clues and information slowly and subtly. This really makes for a complex, cleverly plotted novel. I started The Expats and could hardly set it down. At page 250 if I didn't have an early meeting the next morning, I would have been sorely tempted to stay up way-too-late to finish this novel, something I really can't say very often anymore.

I thought Chris Pavone did a tremendous job developing Kate's character and taking us along as we slowly learned what was really going on. While there have been some complaints about the ending, I thought it was great, full of unanticipated twists, and perfectly fit the whole tone of the novel.

Very Highly Recommended - I thoroughly enjoyed this novel!

Quotes:   Excerpt

Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from Crown Publishing Group and TLC for review purposes. 

Chris Pavone grew up in New York City, and attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn and Cornell University. He worked at a number of publishing houses over nearly two decades, most notably as an editor at Clarkson Potter, where he specialized in cookbooks; in the late nineties, he also wrote a little (and mostly blank) book called The Wine Log. His first novel, The Expats, released in the U.S. and the U.K. in early 2012, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and is being published in fifteen languages on five continents, and developed for film. Chris is married and the father of twin schoolboys, as well as an old cocker spaniel, and they all live in Greenwich Village and the North Fork of Long Island.