Certain Girls

Once again, I will gush about the wonder that is Weiner. Jennifer Weiner, to be exact, but I guess the other kind has its positives too.

After you've read a couple of Weiner's books, there are certain characteristics and a certain tone that you eventually come to crave, actually being drawn to reading one of her books, knowing nothing other than that she wrote it so it has to be good. Weiner's Good In Bed is what initially sparked my love of her so you can imagine my excitement when I happened to find a sequel: Certain Girls.

Reading Good In Bed first is a must if understanding auxiliary characters is something that is important to you. Otherwise, I think the overall theme and general plot of the book is something a lot of women can relate to, especially mothers and daughters.

Cannie Shapiro I Won't Even Attempt Her Married Last Time, is the very understatement of "helicopter parent," long before that was even a thing. Her now-teenager, Joy, is your typical, American teenager, embarrassed by her mother and critical to everything she says, does, and wears, but is otherwise beautiful, intelligent, and empathetic. When curiosity gets the better of her and she picks up the fiction-based-on-non-fiction novel her mother published shortly after she was born, Joy's life feels turned upside down. While both blaming her mother and dying to know about a part of her mother's past, she sets out in search of it, be damned she's only 13!

What she finds is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Through personal experience and by traveling through her mother's past, Joy learns what makes us all human, not perfect and worth understanding and at least sympathy. She learns things aren't always what they seem and that maybe most dark clouds do have silver linings. And that loving your mother really isn't so terrible after all.

With a certain amount of humor you come across in her other books noticeably absent, the laugh-out-loud moments were few and far between, something that also surprised me with her The Guy Not Taken: Stories. But she touches on some difficult subject with charm, wit, and a healthy dose of sarcasm. It's a good curl-up-with-an-Irish-Coffee kind of book while still making you think - especially as a mother to a daughter - how will I handle her questions to me about my past? It also proved to be a beacon of how my writing might one day affect her. It also made me think about my mother and how she handles my questions about her past. What we all want, when we're Joy at age 13, is to not know our mothers are human. When we're an adult with daughters of our own, what we want to know is that they are human.

A Captain's Duty

This particular story flew onto my radar by way of the thing that controls all of our televisions: The Today Show, which is regrettable for a few reasons: 1) The story of Captain Phillips and his kidnapping by Somali pirates, as documented in his memoir, A Captain's Duty, happened not that long ago in April of 2009 but I was just made aware of it in December 2013; and B) The show was interviewing Tom Hanks about his role in the newly released film as Captain Phillips himself. *shudder* After spending most of The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons wishing someone else had played Robert Langdon, I find it hard to watch a Tom Hanks movie that's not A League of Their Own. So when I heard them discuss the movie, I jumped up to my computer to search for the book. No way there wasn't a book to precede this new Hollywood spectacle. Of course there was a book, and fortunately written by the Captain himself (and Stephan Talty).

I read this in December, long after I had called it quits on the Summer of the Memoir. But after reading several non-fiction, I now consider it one of my favorite genres, and one that I'm inexplicably drawn to. A Captain's Duty did not disappoint.

Phillips is an experienced Merchant Marine with a love and passion for the trade that not everyone shares or understands. He's dealt with his share of ups and downs, crews that wouldn't cooperate or that he had to replace altogether, near-death accidents, and the surprisingly common pirate warnings and seizes. He's learned that remaining calm is the best route to take especially, and which he exemplifies, as he's taken by pirates to use as ransom on the mainland, only heightening his danger as the chance for locating him once on land would be slim to none.

Written with the blunt honesty of a man who spends most of his life at sea, but with an easy-to-understand flow even when it came time to insert all of those blasted Merchant Marine facts and figures, Phillips expertly conveys the waves of emotions during those perilous days at sea. Gripping yet solemn, once Phillips is taken hostage by pirates, the reader can almost imagine him huddled in the life-raft with a pen and paper, documenting every move and breath rather than suffering as he did. Or maybe that is just more comforting for us readers to picture.

The story takes a bit to get going because, as with any book, a certain amount of set-up information is involved. And if you watched any of the news coverage back in 2009, as I didn't because I haven't had cable in a few years, you already know what went down. Was it important is that he lived to tell the tale. And oh what a tale it is, the least we can do is carry it around in our tote and read what actually happened instead of the overblown Hollywood version.

Dark Places

Gillian Flynn does not mess around. When she says she's going to take you to some dark places, boy does she mean it. After finishing Gone Girl, I wasn't sure I'd ever be mentally prepared to step back into the disturbing worlds she seems so hell-bent on creating in such vivid, morbid detail. But I found myself in a bad mood for about a week and was inexplicably drawn to Dark Places, knowing I was only guaranteed an ending, not whether it would be a good one.

Set in both 1985 and present day, Flynn takes us on a mysterious journey of murder, Satan worship, and family drama. Libby is the sole survivor of "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas," and to say her emotional scars run deep is a vast understatement. To say her pockets run just as deep is a misconception that leads to her using her story and involvement in the murder as a way to keep afloat a lifestyle she's not all that interested in. But what she inevitably discovers is that what she thought she knew isn't what she knew at all, and that while she was the one person to help convict the killer 25 years ago, she's probably the only one who knows the least about what happened.

Just reading the back book cover and it's no big surprise who the killer is. Or is it? Like Sharp Objects and Gone Girl, the reader goes through the range of emotions of it being obvious who did it but maybe they didn't do it, not having any idea who did it, thinking every character did it, then figuring out who did it and thinking, D'oh! Why didn't I think of that before? But what I most appreciate about Flynn - besides her penchant for going where we're all thinking without holding back - is that, as the reader, we unravel the mystery right along with the main character. Too many mysteries I've read have the protagonist figuring everything out long before the reader is supposed to, and patronizes the reader by making them wait to find out what they know. With Libby, we had the pleasure of the cogs in our brain turning right along with her's, and thankfully only she was subjected to the immediate result.

An incredibly dark story written with zero glints of sunlight, Flynn enlightens the dark places hidden in all of us and what sets them free and what keeps them in check by our morals. She subtly breaks it down to reveal that none of us are very different and that all of us are just a few misunderstandings away from turning into the darkness ourselves. A must-read you won't mind carrying in your tote - or not even have to since it's completely plausible to finish in a weekend - Flynn expertly weaves together what is great about Gone Girl and what is great about Sharp Objects: mystery with just enough creep to keep it intriguing, and horrifying while still maintaining a bit of fantasy. Or at least that's what I tell myself in order to get to sleep at night...