The Perfect Wife

Title: The Perfect Wife
Author: J.P. Delaney
Published: August 6th 2019 by Ballantine Books
Format: eBook, Hardcover, 413 pages
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

This is a book which will stay with you. There is a futuristic reality of Artificial Intelligence (AIs) taking over the everyday world that is spooky in its possibility. Start with the advancements made by the companies run by the tech billionaires, add in a slightly off-center tech genius, add in a disappearance, or is it murder, then finish it off with a cobot, a companion robot, who takes on the appearance of the person you love and there you have “The Perfect Wife”.

There were parts of the book that confused me. How could a preprogrammed AI, with data gathered from social media accounts, have what from the outside appears to be insider knowledge of the person they have replaced? Granted, in this book AI is not technically artificial intelligence, but rather autonomous intelligence, yet Abbie seems to know more than “she” should.

There is a side story around the son of Abbie and Tim. Danny developed a disintegrative disorder called Heller’s syndrome which is often referred to as late-onset autism and you see the battle between Tim and AI Abbie as to what is the right care for Danny. This had introduced me to Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy. Doing a little side research, it is no wonder they disagreed as to what is best for their son and why Abbie fought so hard to find a stable environment for him.

It is the ending that will make you say “oh, I get it now”. Where it should have all made sense in the beginning, when you realized what a self-obsessed narcissist Tim was and as you reflect, you realize the clues were there all along.

JP Delaney is an author that has psychological twists down to an art. You know there is a bombshell waiting for you, you just don’t know when or where it will land and when it does, you are blindsided.

Scone Cold Dead

Title: Scone Cold Dead
Author: Karen MacInerney
Published: June 28th 2019 Self-Published
Format: eBook, Paperback, 244 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Series: Gray Whale Inn Mystery Series #9

Some weekends are made for simple books full of familiar faces and a bit of a murder on the side.

Some shenanigans are going on with the lobstermen of Cranberry Cove. Enough so that an investigator is coming to the island to keep an eye on one trapper. Unfortunately, this young woman is killed before she can step foot on the lobster boat. Following her death, it comes to light she wasn’t there for the lobster counts, after all, she had ulterior motives and now someone is desperately trying to cover up the real reason she was there.

Add in the usual love story subplots, a new artist retreat, and an illness which is keeping a much-loved character bedridden, plus delicious recipes, and you have the usual plot of Natalie Barnes Investigates. It is truly surprising how no one on this island is as cleaver or is as quick as she is. Yet, she always seems to be knocked over the head when someone is trying to getaway.

Since Karen MacInerney has taken to self-publishing, there is a bit of a letdown when it comes to proofreading and editing. The flow is slightly off in this book, old tried and true plotlines are easily inserted, and nothing new ever happens. Yet, we continue to come back to the familiar and to check in on the meandering goats that are still munching on the delectable geraniums.

Old Bone

Title: Old Bones
Author: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Published: August 20th 2019 by Grand Central Publishing
Format: eBook, Hardcover, 384 pages
Genre: Thriller
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Nora Kelly #1

Combining legend, fact, fiction, and science, the writing team of Preston Child takes the reader into the final days of the Donner Party and wraps enough mystery and intrigue to captivate the reader with a current-day archaeological dig, led by Nora Kelly a curator at the Santa Fe Institute of Archaeology, in the Lost Camp, all the while encompassing treasure hunting, grave robbing, and bio-warfare.

The book grabs you from the beginning, slows down a bit in the middle, and ends with such an explosive end the reader might not have understood, from the beginning, where this book would end up. Some of the descriptions are a bit graphic and stomach-turning, but this is about the infamous Donner Party and most people know what was supposed to have happened.

This is the first in the new Nora Kelly series which has Pendergast making a surprise visit, but not sure if he will be a recurring character. But one does wonder if Corrie and Nora will partner together on future cases.

The Warehouse

Title: The Warehouse
Author: Rob Hart
Published: August 13th 2019
Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Genre: Dystopic / Technothriller
Source: My thanks to the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

As Margaret Atwood once said, add enough truth to your fiction so people can’t accuse you of making it up and that is exactly what Rob Hart has done. As if Bezos, Walton, and a little Musk on the side, had a singular vision with the backing of government antiregulation. It isn’t shocking that the head of Cloud comes from Arkansas or that there are drones delivering products that have been, in a way, stolen from their rightful inventors. This is what business has turned into and billionaires are only supplying what the masses demand.

The Cloud has devised a new live-work environment since there are very few life-sustaining jobs outside of their facility and the earth is little more than a wasteland. Cloud, in its infinite wisdom, has given the public what it needs – jobs, housing, and food. What more could a desperate workforce want?

Zinnia is a corporate spy. Hired to infiltrate Cloud technology and find a way to bring it down. Paxton was the CEO of his own small business that was slowly pushed out of the market by Cloud. When that dream was over, he worked as a prison guard which gave him the right credentials to work for Cloud security and to learn their secrets. What Zinnia and Paxton didn’t expect was their two worlds colliding. Decisions will be made, minds altered, revolting revelations made, and in the end, there will be one final chance at freedom.

The plausibility is what is so terrifying. The learned helplessness. We see it coming, we know it is possible, yet we do nothing because we each want to save a few dollars, receive items nearly instantaneously, and all the while putting out of our minds what those sacrifices entail. Oh, and don’t get me started on the future of food.

Ron Howard and Brian Grazer now own the movie rights to this book. As you read, you can see it on the big screen, see the crowds arrive at the theaters and walk out chattering about how fantastical the idea is as they contemplate their new big box store purchase.

The Cactus

Title: The Cactus
Author: Sarah Haywood
Published: May 7th 2019 by Park Row
Format: Paperback, 384 pages
Genre: Women's Fiction

Cacti is not prickly to keep invaders away but to allow it to thrive in the harshest of environments.

I am not going to go as far as to say Susan Green is on the spectrum, but I do tend to wonder since she has very precise ways of looking at life. Ways which are orderly with no room for emotion or the feelings of others. She has well throughout life plans and when she discovers, at the ripe old of 45, she is pregnant, and with the recent passing of her mother, Susan is a befuddled mess.

Susan and Richard had a mutually satisfying relationship. He was a man that she had met a decade or so previously through a lonely heart ad. They laid out their relationship rules, complete with an understanding there would be no sharing of their personal lives and settled on a purely physical relationship with mutually agreed upon evenings out. All organized and precise the way adults should behave. She never anticipated a baby would enter the picture, and when it did, she quickly ended their relationship determined to keep her independence.

Her relationship with her widowed mother was of begrudgingly mutual respect if they did not see each other frequently. Susan’s brother Edward, on the other hand, was a thorny nuisance and when her mother’s will was read, and Susan did not receive what she believed to be her fair share, she did what any other rational legally trained person would do -- she gathered her documents and went to court.

Refusing to give up her autonomy, yet needing the proceeds from the sale of her mother’s home, she reluctantly begins asking for help from the few people who are willing to get close to this prickly person who raises cacti. Then again, she doesn’t technically ask, they are the only people left in her life willing to see past the brusque exterior.

As her due date nears, and the court case is coming to a head, Susan encounters a shock she never prepared for. A secret so devastating it causes an emotional upheaval that will breakdown her walls and allow her to bond with Rob and Kate, letting in a life she had denied, and in turn, allowing Susan Green to forget the rules.

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Title: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
Author: Melinda Gates
Published: April 23rd 2019 by Flatiron Books
Format: Hardcover, 273 pages
Genre: Women's Study / Human Rights

I savored this book. I had no intention of rushing and found myself lingering over certain passages and stopping fellow book lovers asking if they had had a chance to read, and if not, let them know that they were in store for a remarkable journey when they did.

Somewhere in the first couple of chapters, you forget who millionaire philanthropist Melinda Gates is and instead join a woman on a journey of not quite enlightenment but a discovery of women in general. Women who once they know they have a voice will use it to lift their neighbors and daughters and allow them to see a world that was denied to the previous generations.

You will cry along with Melinda and relish in the differences that the Gates Foundation has made in the lives of women in impoverished countries. Women that thought that their only choice was no choice. A husband would be chosen, more children would die than see their fifth, not to mention their first, birthdays. Hunger, beatings, and brutal backbreaking work so their husband could live a freer existence because that is the way it has always been.

There are many quotable parts of this book, but what remains with me is a simple fact that “change does not happen until someone says no”. They are simple words, but words strung together have a deeper meaning. This is a nightstand book, a book that should be picked up and reread from time to time so we don’t forget.

The Woman in the White Kimono

Title: The Woman in the White Kimono
Author: Ana Johns
Published: May 28th 2019 by Park Row
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction

There was truth within the magical stories Tori’s father had told. Stories which never grew old and took on a life of their own yet always included a blue pebbled street, a tea merchant and his beautiful daughter, a pathway of lanterns, a tree, and of heartache and hope. It was not until, as he lies dying, a letter is shared and secrets revealed. What Tori did not know was there had always been hidden truths in his tales which has now led a grieving daughter on a journey to a life-before-a-life.

Told in an alternating style encompassing the harsh realities of 1957 Japan and current day where Tori Kovac, an investigative journalist, travels to Japan to find Naoko, a woman who was her father’s first love. A love not allowed between an American serviceman and the daughter of a tea merchant determined to rebuild his business by arranging a marriage between his daughter and the son of a wealthy and powerful family.

The letter revealed an unknown daughter. A sister Tori never knew, and in response to the deep loss of her father, she is determined to find this woman. A woman that is half her father, someone who could help her to fill in the blanks and can share her stories. What she did not expect was a harsher reality of what Naoko had to endure. Of a time and place which was cruel to pregnant seventeen-year-old girls who carry a half American babies.

Carved out of true stories, there is a heart-wrenching authenticity to this book. A never wanting to let go of Tori or Naoko, or the countless other women who had to suffer, yet there is a knowing they are at peace after this dark piece of history has been told.

A Grave End

Title: A Grave End
Author: Wendy Roberts
Published: July 15th 2019 by Carina Press
Format: eBook, 219 pages
Genre: Paranormal Mystery
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Bodies of Evidence #4

Another one of those series I cannot explain why I continue to ready, yet I do in hopes they will get better or the main character will become less whiney and damaged.

As families reach out to Julie Hall, in desperate need to find missing loved ones, she must keep her walls up or become overwhelmed by the sheer number of emails and requests she receives. From time to time there are those cases which spark her interest but when they take place in her old home town, a town which holds brutal memories, her first reaction is to delete the request, lock her doors, and hide from the outside world.

There is something about the case of Alice which piques her curiosity and a chance meeting outside of a prison with a psychic, she tentatively combines skills to see if they can come up with a breakthrough for the family. Dead ends after dead ends lead Julie frustrated and exasperated. Her dowsing rods are not picking up on Alice’s remains, until she goes to the one place she swore she would never return to.

Though I had begun to wonder about a specific character in the book, I figured it could not be that easy, why would an author ask so little from her readers, but that is exactly what Wendy Roberts did. Maybe next time she will add in more twists or additional plots to throw us off.

I’ll never understand why this series took off in the way it did when her previous – Ghost Duster Mysteries, and Grounds to Kill just disappeared from the radar.