It’s late afternoon, and the light is golden as it shines through the leaves, leaving shimmering dappled shadows on the carpet. It’s been so mild and sunny this past week, perfect weather for late summer/early fall.
I have two books to tell you about today, but if it turns out to be brief summaries of each, just blame it on the lovely weather! I finished reading Ruth Ware’s novel, One Perfect Couple, about five couples who are chosen to participate in a new reality tv show, “One Perfect Couple”, set on a remote desert island. Each couple has one partner who is participating in the hopes that this will launch their acting/modelling career or provide their 15 minutes of fame. But all is not what it seems, and when they are stranded on the island after a severe storm with few supplies and no way off, things start to unravel quickly. It was much like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with one participant taking control and the others trying to alternately stand up to them and just survive. It was pretty good, quite a page-turner, but I really resented Ware’s blatant plug for one of her earlier novels right in the midst of this one, which I found kind of shameful. But it was an interesting ending, and I was intrigued enough to wade through all the excess (there was plenty of padding in this book) to get to the end and find out the truth. It’s not her best book, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not her worst, and I’m being pretty objective, since I don’t even like reality shows!
Then I read a YA book that one of my former students, now helping out at the school and in my library to get his volunteering hours, is reading for one of his English classes. The Things She’s Seen by Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina is told mainly from the point of view of Beth Teller, a teen who died in a car accident but still hangs out with her father, a police detective, who can see and hear her. He’s not been able to get over her death, and with her mother dead for many years already, he seems to have no one to go to with his grief. When he is recruited to help investigate a routine inquiry into a fire at a children’s home in a small town, he undertakes this task with little enthusiasm. But all is not what it seems, and when he goes to interview a witness, a girl who supposedly ran away from rehab, things become more complicated and dire, and Beth’s father must do everything he can to uncover the truth about the home and the children living there, as well as the adults who ran it, before there are more deaths and coverups. This was a quick but intense read, dealing with the horrors of colonization in Australia and the generational harm suffered by the Aboriginal people at the hands of the violent, power whites. I would never have read this on my own, but it was an excellent book by this brother-sister writing team.
That’s all for today. There’s still time to get outside and enjoy the lovely evening! Take care and keep reading!
Bye for now... Julie
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