Cell; Robin Cook

CELL, Robin Cook 

Penguin Audio - 2014 

 Read by George Guidall

iDoc is the basis for Robin Cook’s new novel Cell. Smartphone owners everywhere have a favorite app or two that has really proved useful, but what about an app that replaces your need to see your doctor?  Still in the testing phase, a new app called iDoc, is a personalized doctor capable of diagnosing and treating sick patients. Implant a tiny sensor and probe into the patient, test fluids on the screen of your smartphone (ugh) how simple is that?  It will even be able to send prescriptions to the pharmacy for the patient. 

The story begins with a presentation about iDoc by the company for prospective investors. The app is in its final testing phase and is touted as being loved by the test patients and sure to revolutionize medicine. For George Wilson, a fourth year radiology resident at a LA hospital, he sees both its merits and its risks.  It certainly would help bridge the gap in the number of primary care doctors throughout the country, but could this app become a future target of computer hackers and just how reliable is this product? 

When George’s fiance Kasey, unexpectedly in their bed he doesn’t understand how it could have happened. Yes, she was a diabetic, but thought she had that pretty well under control. She was also an iDoc test patient. George is devastated by Kasey's death and at least initially he doesn’t suspect any wrongdoing. However, when several more test patients die after undergoing radiology imaging procedures, the red flags go up and George decides to dig deeper into the deaths. Were their deaths a result of iDoc? If so, was it deliberate or faulty technology? George is determined to find out more about iDoc and what is going on.

This is a story which held my interest well enough, but it wasn’t perfect.  The characters seem a bit flat and there wasn’t any nail biting tension like there was in his novel, Coma. The iDoc concept was fascinating and grabbed me early on, making for an enjoyable listening experience. I do recommend trying this one if you tend to like medical thrillers.

4/5 stars (audiobook provided by publisher)

First Chapter First Paragraph ~ Tuesday Intros - Cambridge; Susanna Kaysen

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where I share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book I am reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us? Today's pick---

 Cambridge; Susanna Kaysen

Knopf - March 2014

AWAY

"It was probably because I was so often taken away from Cambridge when I was young that I loved it as much as I did.  I fell in love with the it, the way you fall in love with a person, and suffered during the many separations I endured. 

In the summer before our October departure for England, the screen door to the backyard broke and had to be replaced.  The new door had a hydraulic canister that hissed when it opened or closed instead of smacking, thump, thump, the way the old door had.  I didn't like this.  Neither did my cat Pinch.  Cats and children are conservative.  Pinch would use the new door to go out of the house, but she refused to come in through it, and she'd sit by the front door waiting for someone to notice that she'd decided it was time to come home.  After three weeks in England, I felt the same way: Okay, let's go home now.  It's time to go home.  But my parents, looking out their new, hydraulic door to England, didn't notice me, and, like Pinch, I had to sit there hoping and hoping."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   

What do you think? Would you keep reading? Feel free to join us by linking your First Chapter post below. 
 

Visible City; Tova Mirvis

Visible City; Tova Mirvis

Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt - 2014

Visible City was a joy to read. It reminded me of a few of quotes that have always resonated with me...... 

• “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
•  If you look for perfection you'll never be content." 
• "Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed."

 Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

The setting for Visible City is the upper West side of Manhattan, and for Nina a stay at home mother to two children under the age of three, her life isn’t what she imagined it might be.  Once an attorney like her husband Jeremy, now while her husband works late nights, Nina has taken to entertaining herself by gazing at her neighbors in the building across the way with her son's toy binoculars.  One night she sees a what appears to be a content couple sitting on the sofa reading, the next night it's the same routine. She imagines they are a happy couple who have settled nicely into middle age.

One day the couple seems to have disappeared and a 30-something woman takes their place in that same window. It appears she is in a heated argument with a man and then soon after is having sex with him. What happened to the other couple and who are these younger people? Days later the younger woman appears with a leg cast and Nina's curiosity grows.

As the story unfolds the lives of these individuals entwine.  Leon, a therapist, his wife Claudia an art professor, Emma, their daughter, and other young moms in Nina's circle, who seem to have it all together on the outside, but are really conflicted in their own ways. Nina's husband Jeremy is also in turmoil.

The author does a wonderful job meshing the lives of these individuals and exposing both their little joys and in some cases bigger warts.  It was a joy to read about the lives of these flawed characters. 

In many ways this book reminded me a novel I read and loved in 2004, also set in Manhattan, called Between Two Rivers, by Nicholas Rinalidi. Read them both.

5/5 stars 

(arc /egalley)

Alice Close Your Eyes; Averil Dean

Alice Close Your Eyes; Averil Dean

2013 - Harlequin/Mira

Vachon Island in Puget Sound is the setting for debut novel, Alice Close Your Eyes. It's classified as, "a cross between steamy exotic romance and spooky thriller" by Booklist, but I think readers need to be aware the the characters are really twisted and there is plenty of sexual violence in this book.

The novel opens with Alice Croft, a 21 year-old woman who has had a horrible childhood growing up within the foster care system.  She's a woman with an intense hatred for one individual and bent on revenge for what she had had to live through.  For 10 years she been been searching for just the right person to carry out her plan.

The story opens with Alice breaking into someone's house, this isn't a first for Alice. She enjoys snooping inside homes, looking for a box of sentimental objects that, according to Alice, all men keep.  Her victim this time is Jack Calabrese.  While doing her snooping, Jack returns home and catches Alice hiding inside of his closet,  He is eager to find out who this woman is and what she wants, but for Alice, Jack is not exactly a stranger, she has been stalking him for some time now.

As the story continues the dark and dirt past of both Alice and Jack gets revealed, and Jack fulfills Alice's sexual addiction and what seems to be her need for physical abuse as well.  This is one twisted story of obsessive love. The writing is decent, but the graphic details were very disturbing at times. While I'm sure there is probably an audience for this kind of story, the novel was too over the top for me to appreciate. One thing which just didn't seem believable to me was the fact that Alice was a successful YA author. Proceed with caution it you decide to try this one.

2/5 stars

(review copy)

Coming Soon to a Book Store Near You ~ Ruin Falls; Jenny Milchman

While trying to prioritize my lengthy list of new books coming out in 2014, I decided to try a new feature on my blog. I'm hoping this idea will hopefully serve a few purposes: keep me focused on books I'd like to read, give a little PR to the authors (especially new authors) who worked so hard getting published, and to let other readers know about books that will be hitting the book stores soon (within the next 90 days).
 
Here's my "Coming Soon to a Book Store Near You" pick for today --

Ruin Falls; Jenny Milchman

April 22, 2014 - Ballantine Books

In a suspenseful follow-up to her critically acclaimed Cover of Snow, Jenny Milchman ratchets up the tension with this edge-of-your-seat story of a mother determined to find her missing children.
 
Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children, eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have met their paternal grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz’s husband, Paul, has decided that, despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.

On their way to the farm, the family stops at a hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her sleeping children, all her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reed are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, and detectives are called in.

Frantic worry and helplessness threaten to overtake Liz’s mind—but in a sudden, gut-wrenching instant she realizes that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room that night. Someone she trusted completely has betrayed her. Though she knows that Ally and Reid are safe, Liz will stop at nothing to find them and get them back. From her guarded in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her own hometown, Liz follows the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and haunted by nightmares.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Does this sound like a book you might add to your wish list?

The Road Home; Rose Tremain

The Road Home; Rose Tremain

Naxos Audiobooks - 2009

The Road Home starts out rather sad. The protagonist, Lev, leaves his Russian village for London to find work after losing his job at the local sawmill. He's 43 and needs work so he can send money home to his mother for both her and his his young daughter. Lev is recent widower  who lost his wife to leukemia at the age of 36. He's understandably depressed, leaving all that is precious to him behind in order migrate to London to find work. He keeps in touch with his good friend Rudi back home by cell phone in this post 9/11 time frame. 

While traveling across Europe by bus, he meets Lydia who is also facing trying times.  Lev's English is poor and he is unfamiliar with some customs. Trying to stretch the little money he has, he initially sleeps in doorways until Lydia helps him to find a room in a rundown place. The house is owned by an Irish plumber who drinks a bit too much and is also missing his family who have recently moved out. Lydia also helps Lev find a job, first distributing leaflets, then as a dishwasher and later as a cook.  Still depressed and missing his wife and family, he meets Sophie, a tattooed vixen who is more than willing to cheer up poor Lev, but there is more to Sophie than meets the eye. She is a compassionate young woman who spends her free time volunteering at Ferndale Heights, a home for the elderly.

The focus of the story is on Lev and how he tries to navigate life in an unfamiliar country after having suffered tremendous personal loss. The story is interesting enough, but it was a little to quiet for me.  Although some readers may view the ending as convenient, to me it was evident early on how this story might end, I just wasn't aware of the specifics.  The Road Home is a story about loss and about loneliness. It's about picking yourself up when life throws you a curve ball and about doing what you need to do in order to move on. The author manages to capture all of this very well without making it too sad. For me, the best past of this novel was the multi-dimensional characters, each flawed in some way, yet so real and so memorable.

I liked the audiobook because of Juliet Stevenson, who is an amazing narrator. She is so skilled at capturing so many different accents and timbres. While listening it felt like the story was choppy, and "choppy" it was for a reason -- this was an "abridged" version, which made me kind of mad. I didn't realize libraries even purchased "abridged" audiobooks. Had I realized this earlier on, I would have read the print edition which I'm sure I would have enjoyed a bit more.

3.5/5 stars

First Chapter First Paragraph ~ Tuesday Intros - New Life, No Instructions; Gail Caldwell

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where I share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book I am reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us? Today's pick is a book was released today!

 

 New Life, No Instructions; Gail Caldwell

(a memoir)

Random House - April 1, 2014

Cambridge 2011

"My first tip off that the world had shifted was that the dogs looked lower to the ground.  I dismissed the perception as visual misread: Because I was on crutches and couldn't bend down to touch them, of course they would seem father away.  Then a friend came to visit, a striking woman whom I'd always considered tall.  She was standing across the living room and I was smiling, happy to have her there, and I thought, Tink is small! And I never realized it before.

The fact is Tink is about my size, but until that day I had looked up to her in more ways than one.  I was just home from five days at New England Baptist Hospital, where the chief of joint reconstruction had built me a new hip and lengthened my right leg by five eighths of an inch.  The measurement sounds deceptively slight, but then pi, unexplained, doesn't mean much, either.  What the extended hip brought me was about two inches of additional height, because I was no longer bending forward in pain.  It gave my leg something immeasurable: an ability to reach the ground, and the chance and anatomical equipment to walk right for the first time in my life. Almost as dramatic, at least in the beginning, was the reorientation of my physical self in space.  My perspective had been jolted to the point that trees and cars and other markers of street life felt closer to me, within reach in a way they hadn't before.  I could sense the effort involved in making these neural adjustments: In a simple movement like a step forward, particularly outside, there would be a lurch of visual confusion, then acceptance.  It happened quickly and brilliantly, and my comprehending it changed everything: What had seemed to be mere dizziness was in fact the brain's ballet."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   

What do you think? Would you keep reading? Feel free to join us by linking your First Chapter post below.