Thursday, October 25, 2018

Teen Scene TONIGHT at 6:30


The Prayer Box by Lisa Wingate




When Iola Anne Poole passes away in her bed at ninety-one, the struggling young mother in her rental cottage, Tandi Jo Reese, finds herself charged with the task of cleaning out Iola's rambling Victorian house. Running from a messy, dangerous past, Tandi never expects to find more than a temporary hiding place within Iola's walls, but everything changes with the discovery of eighty-one carefully decorated prayer boxes, one for each year, spanning from Iola's youth to her last days. Hidden in the boxes is the story of a lifetime, written on random bits of paper--the hopes and wishes, fears and thoughts of an unassuming but complex woman passing through the seasons of an extraordinary, unsung life filled with journeys of faith, observations on love, and one final lesson that could change everything for Tandi.

This novel is a good character drama. The prayer boxes uncover bits of Iola’s life and her connection to the community, as well as why she was misunderstood. Through it all, Tandi is learning more about her own strength, healing her relationship with her teenage daughter, and trying to believe in her own right to have love and respect in her life. 

Received 4 stars on Goodreads and can be found in the Adult fiction section of the library.

Monday, October 1, 2018

The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle




The 71/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle 
By Stuart Turton


 This book is a REALLY cool mystery/sci-fi, it has themes of Agatha Christie and then some time travel elements. Really well done. I can't even imagine the intricate plotting and time it took for this. The author said he had to make an excel spread sheet to keep all the time lines and characters in line. 

A gentleman wakes up in a manor house during a party with several unique guests, and doesn't remember anything about himself, or why he is there. He soon discovers there will be a murder that night, and it is his job to find the killer. Tricky though, because he has to relive the day several times in different host bodies and see the day unfold from their perspective using that specific host body's skills to learn more about the murder. Each time he wakes up he remembers the previous body he was in and what he learned.  A woman named Anna seems to be his ally in all this and carries a book around showing everything they have learned, She tries to find him at different points in each day to talk to him without revealing anything she already knows. She relives the same day too, but in the same body, and I know this sounds super convoluted and hard to keep up with, but I was able to follow it pretty well. A few times I had to flip back through because I got off track. It is an interesting idea, and a plot twist at the ending I did not see coming at all! I couldn't put this book down, I just had to see how it played out at the end! 
This is shelved in our Adult Fiction section of the library.