The Color Of Light by Karen White

I'm not sure why I kept reading this book or why someone on the back cover of this book calls the author's prose "lyrical." That is not a descriptor that I would attach to this novel.

The Color Of Light by Karen White is ultimately a love story dressed up and masquerading as a mystery. Jillian is pregnant, newly divorced, and struggling to find her way on her own with her daughter. She returns with her daughter to Pawleys Island, SC, her childhood home of warm summer memories to heal and start a new life. Linc is bitter, haunted by the disappearance of his girlfriend whom he was accused of killing one summer, and trying to resist the attraction he now feels to Jillian despite her perceived betrayal that summer when Lauren, his girlfriend and her best friend, disappeared. Lauren was never to be seen nor heard from again after that summer. This is the story of Jillian and Linc and how they each begin heal together after they lay to rest the past that scarred both of them.

Ultimately the thing that annoyed me the most about this book was the unnaturalness and awkwardness of the characters' dialogue and sometimes even the writing in general. In the end the draw is the characters and the mystery that destroyed their lives one summer and now threatens to destroy their lives again.

I don't think I can recommend you try this book because reading it did not leave a screaming desire for me to check out any of the author's other works. But if you want to check it out anyway you can request it from Annville Free Library. Good luck.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

Over the last two years, as I have tried to tease out the truths from the untruths in that series of events that seeped out through Elizabeth's death, like lava moving upwards and outwards through salt water from a tear in the seabed, I have had to be you several times, Cameron Brown, in order to claw myself towards some kind of coherence. Sometimes it was--is--easy to imagine the world through your eyes, terribly possible to imagine walking through the garden that afternoon in those moments before you found your mother's body in the river. After all, for a long time, all that time we were lovers, it was difficult to tell where your skin ended and mine began. That was part of the trouble for Lydia Brooke and Cameron Brown. Lack of distance became--imperceptibly--a violent entanglement.

So this is for you, Cameron, and yes, it is also for me, Lydia Brooke, because perhaps, in putting all these pieces together properly, I will be able to step out from your skin and back into mine.
from chapter one, page five, Ghostwalk

The book mentioned in the previous post is titled Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott, and --good news-- I have finally finished it and am now submitting this review for your approval. Stott is an English writer, as in from England where she lives and works at Anglia Ruskin University. The book takes place in Cambridge, England.

Animal rights groups, animal experimentation, Isaac Newton and alchemy all play big roles in this novel and end up being interconnected within the plot; it all makes for one very complicated story. Famed historian Elizabeth has been working, researching, obsessing and writing a controversial, groundbreaking Isaac Newton biography for about a decade. Then she is found by her son, Cameron, mysteriously drowned in a river before she can finish the book's last chapters and submit it for publication. In the aftermath of his mother's death, Cameron hires his former lover, Lydia, an author and screenwriter, to ghostwrite the last chapters of Elizabeth's Newton biography and ready it for publication. He offers Lydia access to his mother's home, The Studio, and all of her papers and research to complete the job. Before long it becomes clear that nothing is as it seems when strange light patterns and inexplicable events occur at both The Studio and in the Cambridge area. These inexplicable happenings hint at the very complicated and tangled nature of Elizabeth's death and her work and how these are entangled and connected to the distant events shrouded by history of Newton's seventeenth century Cambridge and present day Cambridge in which a battle of wills has erupted into violence between animal rights activists and animal experimentation laboratories.

The words complicated, cryptic, deliberately ambiguous all describe this novel; it is also beautifully written. The reader struggles along with the narrator, Lydia, to recount and connect the jagged pieces of the story into some semblance of an explanation for the inexplicable events that ultimately throw her life into shambles. Part historical novel, part supernatural/science fiction mystery thriller, you'll be sucked in by the writer's way of stringing words together; in the end you'll realize that ultimately this is a love story entangled among the complications of life and the physics that govern this world.

I highly recommend you read this book. It available upon request from Myerstown Community Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Yada Yada Prayer Group by Neta Jackson

The Yada Yada Prayer Group by Neta Jackson is set in Chicago, Illinois in 2002. The prayer group of the title is a diverse group of women thrown together to pray during the Chicago Women's Conference. While at the conference, one of the women receives an emergency phone call from home. The other ladies spend the whole night covering the emergency in prayer. At the end of the conference the women decide to call themselves the "Yada Yada Prayer Group." They promise to stay in touch by email. After a few weeks of emailing, they decide they should start meeting in person again. Each time they meet, a new twist is added to the story as the women share their own personal problems with the group.

This is an easy read because it is a story that has several twists. There were times I could not put the book down. I had to keep reading to find out what happens.

This book is available in the Matthews Public Library in the Young Adult Fiction section, located at call number YA/LP/Fic/Jac. It is also available upon request from Annville Free Library, Myerstown Community Library, and Palmyra Public Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Kathy

Death Sentence

So it has been a long, long while since I last posted to the blog, and I'm sorry. I'm still reading the same book that I've been reading for the past, like six to nine weeks. It's one of those books where once you pick it up, it sucks you in. But once you put it down, you can leave it there for days ... which is what I've been doing. I am near the end, and eventually I will finish it.

This review is about the movie Death Sentence that stars Kevin Bacon, Garrett Hedlund, Kelly Preston and Aisha Tyler.

The movie is based on a novel by the same name (the novel happens to be the sequel to the novel Death Wish which spawned a movie series by the same title; however, Death Sentence is in no way related to Death Wish the movie). It tells the tragic tale of Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon), a husband and father, whose older son is slaughtered in a convenience store hold up. It's not long before Nick decides to take justice into his own hands and hunts down the gang banger that killed his son. Nick's act of vengeance unwittingly sparks a war between the gang and himself that will escalate into a violent bloodbath.

Bacon portrays an ordinary, everyman; he is a corporate vice president who doesn't have any training with guns or combat. This is why I found myself thinking the man was extremely lucky in some action scenes in which he has some close calls with death. Ultimately Bacon's character pays some hard consequences and a steep price for the war he starts with his act of vengeance.

The movie is a disturbing, graphic, violent, modern day tragedy that has pulse pounding action. It also offers some intense, innovative shots. The movie is accompanied by a haunting soundtrack and score that greatly add to mood and tragedy of the film.

This DVD is available upon request from Annville Free Library, and I highly recommend you try it out.

--reviewed by Ms. Angie