Category: blogging

When it's your word against everyone else's--what do you do?

Bree Finch has fallen on some troubled times: her marriage has ended, she's separated from her young daughter, Charlotte, and she's haunted by a past she can't escape. Routine helps, and every afternoon, during her lunch break, Bree goes for a jog in the park near her office. It's the same every day: the same route, the same mothers with their children, the same people walking their dogs.

One day, during her jog, she spots a young boy a bit older than Charlotte, a boy she saw just the day before with his mother. But his mother is nowhere to be seen now. Nervous, Bree watches the boy as he wanders into the parking lot. And then she watches as a man grabs the boy, forcing him into an SVU. She watches as the boy cries and screams for his mother. She watches as the man slams the door shut, revs the engine and takes off.

She runs after them into traffic, and tries to take a photo, but can't. The SVU is gone.

Bree can't deny what she's seen, and she can't get the little boy or his screams out of her head. But, she's the only one who believes that she witnessed the kidnapping of a child. No one else at the park saw the boy or someone snatching him, and she can't give a detailed description of the child. The police don't believe her, nor does her estranged husband, with whom she has a tense and complicated relationship. Instead, they begin asking Bree the questions: Why is she always alone in the park? Why does she spend so much time there? Does she realize that she makes the other mothers nervous, with the way she watches them and their children?

Then, days later, a woman is murdered--and Bree is the first person the police talk to.

Not because they think she may have witnessed something.

Not because they believe her about the kidnapped boy.

Because she's their main suspect.

I am a huge fan of Kelley Armstrong and she is pretty much an automatic buy for me as I tend to devour her books fairly quickly. Although with that being said for some reason I never read this. I had to double-triple check just to be sure and in fact, it was correct, I never read this. Since it was Canada Day I decided now was the perfect time to read it because Kelley is a Canadian author.

Wherever She Goes is a stand-alone book.

Our main character is Aubrey. Aubrey is separated from her husband, Paul. They have a daughter together and he has primary custody. This really intrigued me because as you read you realize that Aubrey has so many secrets that no one knows about. As the story progresses more is revealed about her past and the reasons she did what she did.

One day Aubrey is in the park and she witnesses a little boy being forced into a car. Like any normal person who witnesses this, she instantly calls the police. The only problem is no one has called to report a missing child. Aubrey knows this little boy as they met briefly the week before with his mother. Where is his mother and why hasn’t she reported him missing?

With no reports of a missing boy, the police don’t believe her (after questioning the other parents that were in the park as they saw nothing) and feel as though she is doing this for attention. Aubrey knows who the boy is and knows he was taken but decides maybe she should focus on her own daughter but her gut keeps telling her otherwise.

When an unidentified woman appears on the news as being murdered Aubrey recognizes her. She once again goes to the police but no one is taking her seriously so she decides to take matters into her own hands because she knows there is a little boy who needs her help. She is willing to risk her own past coming to light to help this little boy out.

As she continues to investigate she soon realizes her life is in danger. How far will Aubrey take it? Is she willing to risk it all for a little boy she doesn’t really know?

I highly recommend this super quick and exciting read that will have you on the edge of your seat. So many twists and turns that will make you want to keep flipping the pages to discover more.

Code Name Verity is a compelling, emotionally rich story with universal themes of friendship and loyalty, heroism and bravery.

Two young women from totally different backgrounds are thrown together during World War II: one a working-class girl from Manchester, the other a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a wireless operator. Yet whenever their paths cross, they complement each other perfectly and before long become devoted friends. But then a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France. She is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. The story begins in "Verity's" own words, as she writes her account for her captors.

In the month of June I took part in a group buddy read for Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein with a bunch of fellow bookish Canadians.

It was during a Penguin 10 Reveal where Penguin was discussing Elizabeth Wein’s upcoming release, The Enigma Game that a bunch of us chimed in saying we should buddy read Code Name Verity and we did.

I wanted to love the book but I just couldn’t. At times I wanted to give up but thankfully the group kept me going. I think had it not been for them I would have stopped.

I see the praise for this book and I feel like I might be in the minority with my thoughts on this. Did I miss something? Perhaps reading a set number of chapters weekly set me back? Should I attempt to read it perhaps in one sitting? Do I do the audio book version instead?

I should start off by saying that historical fiction is a new to me genre. I have never had an interest in reading this genre before so I was happy with the buddy read so that I could give it a try.

I will say that this will be one of the hardest reviews I have had to write. Hopefully I don’t include spoilers.

The book is told almost in like a diary style and I tend to love this format. Its told in first and third person and I think that is where I got a little lost because I wasn’t sure if it was Verity (who had numerous names such as Queenie)) and Kittyzhawk (Maddie). I ended up having to make notes just to get through the first part. I think it was almost half way through it when it started to make some sense.

This is the story of two young women in the 1943 in Nazi occupied France. One of the young women just happens to be a secret agent who is captured as she was parachuting into France. She is given two weeks to give them radio codes, locations etc but she gives them her story mixed in with that and as she is doing this she is being tortured. As you are reading this your heart breaks because this happened to so many people (men and women). I did like this character because even though she was living in hell she was feisty and very snarky. I guess she figured what more could they do to her then they already were. Will they kill her or send her to a concentration camp?

The second part is about the pilot and what happened after her friend parachuted into France. We discover that she had to crash the plane in France and about the people who helped her. This was when the story started to get a little more interesting because it seemed to fill in gaps  of the previous part and it begins to make a little more sense.

I do admit to googling to see what the planes looked like that were mentioned.

Sadly this was not the book for me but I think if you like historical fiction you might enjoy this if you haven’t already read it.