THE GOD OF THE WOODS by Liz Moore

At a summer camp in 1975 in the Adirondacks, Barbara Van Laar, the daughter of the camp owners, goes missing.  Oddly enough, her younger brother, Bear, has been missing for over a decade, and the same serial killer was at large during both disappearances.  Hence, we actually have two mysteries to solve here.  Enter Investigator Judy Luptack, mostly underestimated because she is female.  She and the camp director, T.J. Hewitt, are the most competent women in this book.  Louise, a camp counselor, was partying the night of Barbara’s disappearance, but she basically just has bad taste in men.  The award for most insipid of the women is Alice Van Laar, Barbara’s mother, who has basically checked out and given herself over to alcohol and tranquilizers since her beloved son disappeared.  Her husband and his father are arrogant jerks who seem a little too tight-lipped to be innocent, but with red herrings galore, any guess is likely to be wrong.  The women, plus Barbara’s bunkmate and minus T.J., get multiple chapters in the book, as does the serial killer, so that the Van Laar men remain somewhat enigmatic.  The timeline goes back and forth, but the author labels the chapters very specifically to alleviate the guesswork.  I would have liked a little more suspense here, maybe some cliffhangers, but Judy is the character who captured my attention.  At 26, she has trouble breaking free of her parents, despite her successful career, because she is unmarried.  That problem seems more 1950ish than 1975 to me, but whatever.  And don’t let the length of this book turn you off, as this is a fast read, with mostly short chapters, so that stopping places are easy to come by, if you really want to stop.

EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE by Benjamin Stevenson

I have to admit that I enjoyed this novel, which exceeded my expectations by a long shot.  The main action takes place at an Australian ski resort, where our first person narrator, Ernest Cunningham, joins his family to celebrate the release of his brother Michael from prison.  In fact, Ernest was the witness who sealed Michael’s fate at the trial.  The event gets off to a rocky start when a dead body shows up in the snow before Michael has even arrived.  An inept cop named Crawford chalks the death up to exposure, until Sofia, Ernest’s stepsister, proves that in fact the dead man is a homicide victim.  Ernest becomes the de facto investigator of the crime, but he actually just writes books about how to craft a murder mystery novel.  We assume that he will eventually solve the crime, but in the meantime the plot is a bit overly intricate.  Past events related to Ernest’s brother Jeremy and their father, their connection to the man Michael murdered, and the disappearance of a girl named Rebecca McAuley are somewhat convoluted.  There are so many killers and so many murders that I found it challenging to keep up, and the family relationships just added another layer of confusion.  On the flip side, the main storyline hums along with Ernest as our entertaining guide and first-hand observer.  One loose end dangles at the end, and I think the author should have tidied that up a bit.

FOURTH WING by Rebecca Yarros

This book reached out and grabbed me and wouldn’t let go, with its passion, partially fueled by magic dragons, igniting the page, along with a generous helping of the f word.  This is an R-rated, super-addictive romantasy, which has Harry Potter elements to it but is definitely not for children.  Think more along the lines of Game of Thrones.  Also, I’m not sure how much it would appeal to men, so that I’ve now narrowed the audience down to adult women.  Much of the plot is predictable, but it’s still a thrill ride of the first caliber.  Twenty-year-old Violet is the first-person narrator who has to choose a quadrant in which to train for service to Navarre, and she has spent her entire life preparing to become a scribe—keeper of the archives.  However, her mother, a high-ranking military leader, insists that Violet become a Rider—of dragons, that is.  Many don’t survive the first test, which involves walking across a narrow, high parapet, where one misstep means falling to one’s death.  Those who do survive this and many other daunting tasks will have the opportunity to bond with a dragon who will endow them with magical powers.  As for the romance angle, it will be steamy enough to raise your heart rate.

THE CURSE OF PIETRO HOUDINI by Derek B. Miller

The appeal of this book eludes me.  It is a picaresque adventure story, but the uninspired writing style and molasses-like pace did not deliver.  The book starts out in first-person, narrated by a 14-year-old girl whom Pietro Houdini takes under his wing and assigns the name of Massimo—a boy’s name.  Massimo’s parents have been killed in a WWII bombing, and Massimo follows Pietro to an abbey for refuge.  When Massimo embraces his identity as a boy, the narration changes to third-person.  Then Massimo becomes a girl again but with another false name, and the narration remains third-person.  Guess what the final narration and identity change is?  Is this a stylistic choice or a metaphoric choice or what?  For me, it’s just kind of a mess.  As for the writing style, I would say that it is written for a12-year-old, except that it contains subject matter not appropriate for a juvenile.  Honestly, I would prefer to read a novel intended for a young audience than to read one intended for adults that has such a simplistic writing style.  The book does contain some humor and some historic information, but I was still glad when it was over.