Whispering Rock by Robyn Carr

Posted for Diann Stark

Audio book: Reading time: 11 hours, 16 minutes. 368 pages

Description: Mike Valenzuela makes his way to Virgin River to ‘get away’ and heal. He is a decorated U.S. Marine reservist, LAPD officer; he was badly wounded in the line of duty.

He realizes it is time for him to settle down and grow some roots. So, he agrees to become the town’s first cop, he has been married a couple times before. He longs for the kind relationships his fellow marine buddies have found—a woman who make him whole. He finds that woman in Brie Sheridan, she came to Virgin River to feel safe.  Brie was a prosecutor who nearly lost her life at the hands of a crazed criminal. So she understands his drive to protect and serve. She has fears she can’t escape—but now she has found someone who will show her just what it means to trust again.  Mike will do anything to help Brie feel safe and to rid herself from the painful memories of her past. He wants her to know how much he loves her and will give her a new beginning.  

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

336 pages

I can’t help but cheer on this novel by a fellow librarian and small-town Missouri girl!  McHugh plotted out an excellent Ozarks-based mystery – I was absolutely absorbed.  

Side note: McHugh lives in Columbia and included the staff of DBRL in her thanks/acknowledgements, stating that she spent countless hours in the Columbia Public Library study rooms guzzling coffee and writing this book – cool, no?

Summary from the LA Times:

“With her riveting debut, The Weight of Blood, Laura McHugh makes a strong bid at cementing a new tradition of regional crime fiction while keeping tourism low in the Ozarks. . . . [A] powerful sense of place is the anchor of The Weight of Blood. The well-drawn townspeople and oppressive, dread-soaked atmosphere sprout from the soil of Henbane. . . . The prose is strong, with evocative paint strokes in all the right places. McHugh is an artful, efficient writer who tells her story in vicious blows. . . . McHugh has crafted a sharp, haunting tale of blood in the Ozarks, as substantial as it is pleasurable to read.”—Los Angeles Times

Room by Emma Donahue

352 pages

Jack loves his Ma, loves his daily routine, loves Plant and Bed and items he’s received as Sunday treats.  Jack only knows Room, the tiny area where he’s spent his entire life.  Told from Jack’s perspective, this book is unique and absolutely stunning. 

The Amazon summary:

“To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.”

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

336 pages

Eleanor is weird.  Wild red hair, strange clothing, overweight and bullied at home and school.  Park is half-Korean and sticks out in his Omaha neighborhood.  He spends each day trying to fly under the radar, until he meets Eleanor.   A beautiful , original (yet universal), and heartbreaking love story.  

My favorite summation of the book was written by the genius writer John Green: 

“Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it’s like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it’s like to be young and in love with a book.”—John Green, The New York Times Book Review

Frog Music by Emma Donahue

416 pages

A cross-dressing vagabond named Jenny meets Blanche, a French circus performer turned burlesque dancer, in 1876 San Francisco.  Donahue weaves an interesting tale taken from a real unsolved crime. 

The Booklist summary:

 “Donoghue flawlessly combines literary eloquence and vigorous plotting in her first full-fledged mystery, a work as original and multifaceted as its young murder victim. During the scorching summer of 1876, Jenny Bonnet, an enigmatic cross-dressing bicyclist who traps frogs for San Francisco’s restaurants, meets her death in a railroad saloon on the city’s outskirts. Exotic dancer Blanche Beunon, a French immigrant living in Chinatown, thinks she knows who shot her friend and why, but has no leverage to prove it and doesn’t know if she herself was the intended target. A compulsive pleasure-seeker estranged from her “fancy man,” Blanche searches desperately for her missing son while pursuing justice for Jenny, but finds her two goals sit in conflict. In language spiced with musical interludes and raunchy French slang, Donoghue brings to teeming life the nasty, naughty side of this ethnically diverse metropolis, with its brothels, gaming halls, smallpox-infested boardinghouses, and rampant child abuse. Most of her seedy, damaged characters really lived, and she not only posits a clever solution to a historical crime that was never adequately solved but also crafts around Blanche and Jenny an engrossing and suspenseful tale about moral growth, unlikely friendship, and breaking free from the past.” --Sarah Johnson