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Showing posts from 2019

The Last Lie by Alex Lake

This was a thriller I picked up in passing from the library, and absolutely devoured. The author writes under a pen name, and appears to use "they" pronouns, which makes me wonder if this is a case of that phenomenon where male crime writers are pretending to be women because female writers have been more successful in the crime genre recently. At any rate, that's not so important— what's important is that even though this book's plot wasn't the twisty, complex story I was hoping for, it really kept me hooked. The characters were rather straightforward as well, with Alfie Daniels as a textbook definition sociopath, down to the animal abuse in childhood. His wife, Claire Daniels, is a little bit of a cliché rich girl, a little naive, and used to getting her way. And yet, even with these stock characters, I don't know why exactly, but I still found myself itching for one more page, one more page, until the whole thing was done. So I'd recommend it...

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

Characters: Lori herself Boyfriend, Lori's boyfriend who dumps her because he doesn't want to live with children anymore (Lori has an 8 year old son). Wendell, Lori's therapist Her Clients: John, a Hollywood screenwriter who thinks everyone's an idiot Charlotte, an alcoholic who dates all the wrong guys Rita, a woman in her 70s who has made some major mistakes in life, and is struggling to see a reason not to end her own life by her next birthday if conditions don't improve. Julie, a 30 something newlywed professor and Trader Joe's clerk with terminal cancer Plot: The structure of the book is such that it switches back and forth between Lori's own personal issues and therapy sessions with Wendell, and her clients' sessions and their struggles. I found this worked organically, and the stories were woven into Lori's own discoveries about herself around similar themes. Lori focuses quite a lot on her break up with "Boyfriend...