Roger's Reads

Author & Book Reviewer

Review of The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

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Hearts invisible furies book coverThis is the story of Cyril, who is born in Dublin, Ireland in 1945 to an unwed, 16-year-old mother named Catherine Goggin. Catherine was forcibly banished from her small hometown by the local priest because of her pregnancy, and the priest literally dragged her out of the church and into the street, kicking her along with way. Quite a horrifying scene, truth be told. Here, we see firsthand the incredible and harrowing power over people’s lives that the Catholic Church once wielded and how it controlled and manipulated people through fear and intimidation.

So baby Cyril is adopted by a strange and somewhat unconventional couple, Harold and Maude Avery, who, though well-meaning, have very little feelings for this little boy. They even insist that he call them Harold and Maude instead of Mother and Father because after all, he is not a real “Avery.”

As a child, he realizes he is gay, which is not an easy thing to be in ultra-conservative Catholic Ireland. He is also in love with his best friend, Julian. The storyline of him and Julian was at times humorous but also heart-wrenching, as Cyril tried to push his feelings aside. Cyril’s life as a closeted young gay kid is not an easy one.

So this book then spans all the decades of Cyril’s life through seven-year increments covering his loves, losses, tragedies, longings, regrets, his mistakes, and all the lessons he learns along the way.

This book was quite heartbreaking at times in its depiction of what life was like in Ireland, until very recently, for women and gay men. It’s also very much about the culture of Ireland and all of the changes the country the went through from 1945 to 2015, the year the story ends. So in this way, I ended up learning a lot about Ireland.

Now I don’t want to give the impression that the book was overall grim because that’s not the case. Though the story does start out with hypocrisy, hatefulness, and mean-spiritedness that was difficult to read about, it ends with the triumph of sanity. There are also plenty of savagely funny scenes with hysterically humorous, clever and witty dialog.

I loved the snappy banter between the characters and the eccentric personalities of many of them. That being said, the secondary characters were a delight, and each was well-fleshed out. They felt like real people that each of us might know.

This book grabbed from the first page, and it was nearly unputdownable. The first line, in fact, was hooked me right in:

“Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.”

I found The Heart’s Invisible Furies exceptionally moving and entertaining, and it took my breath away at times, with its compelling narrative and beautiful, expressive lush prose. This is not just a coming of age story, but also a man’s emotional search for a sense of identity and country. It’s about love, loss, longing — about struggling with who one is.

Cyril’s character though likable is deeply flawed and though good-intentioned, he does do some horrible things and inadvertently ends up hurting people, as we all do at one time or another in our lives.

All in all, a beautiful, heart-warming and poignant book that I’m so glad I read. The Heart’s Invisible Furies was my first John Boyne book, and I look forward to reading more by this author.

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Review of Dear Evan Hansen by Val Emmich

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Dear evan hansenThis book was a collaboration by four authors: Val Emmich, Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul, which was was originally a Broadway play that I unfortunately, didn’t get a chance to see. But from my understanding, it was quite well received.

Introducing Evan and his letters

So the book follows Evan, a high school senior who has horrible social anxiety. Under the direction of his therapist, he writes a letter to himself each day that starts out with:

Dear Evan Hansen,

Today’s going to be an amazing day and here’s why…

A letter ends up in the wrong hands

But things don’t go so well for Evan one day when one of those letters to himself ends up in the wrong hands. And, it just so happens that this particular classmate commits suicide with a copy of Evan’s letter in his pocket.

Now the letter in question was a rather dark letter, a letter detailing Evan’s doubts, depression and his particularly somber view on life at the time it was written.

Evan meets the parents…and tells a lie

What results is a series of misunderstandings due to one simple lie. We then follow Evan along with the deceased student’s parents on a heart-wrenching journey through grief and mental health.

You see, Evan knew that the student’s parents were hurting deeply, so he chose to tell one little white lie because at the time, he felt it was the right thing to do. It was a simple lie — a lie meant to help rather than to hurt.

And the lie grows….and grows….

But this lie grew and grew and grew, spiraling out of control until it became a social media sensation. It turned into a story that Evan couldn’t put away and ignore. It became…almost a mythology that was way past the point of going away on its own — it becomes a story that Evan can no longer escape from.

Because of this and his strong urge not to cause the student’s parents any more pain or take away their hope, Evan tells even more lies to keep the story going, and he gets in deeper and deeper and deeper.

Thrust into the Spotlight

This book also portrayed in a somewhat frightening way, the power that social media plays in our lives and how it has the capacity to cause real harm as well as promote healing.

So because of this misunderstanding and Evan’s lie, Evan, a boy who preferred to move through his day unnoticed and invisible, is suddenly thrust in the spotlight. Now on the positive side, he does find acceptance among his peers and for the first time, is propelled forward with a new purpose.

On the negative side, this new world of Evan’s is about to unravel and come crashing down, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.

My Verdict

I ended up enjoying this book — although I don’t feel “enjoying” is the proper word to use about a book whose subject deals with the aftermath of a suicide. Let’s me just say that it was a compelling read and was very disturbing and heartbreaking at times.

The story dealt with some very tough topics such as suicide, bullying, isolation, mental health, loneliness and lying but it didn’t do so in an After-School-Special hit-you-over-the-head kind of way. Rather, the topics were handled with dignity rather than in a cringy, in-your-face way.

Though…I will say that the situation that Evan found itself in made me cringe on several occasions, but it was a cringe of embarrassment for Evan rather than because the tone of the book was preachy.

All in all, I felt that this was a powerful well-told story that illustrated wonderfully the ups and downs of life in high school and how the course of our life can change from one simple decision, for good or for ill. I ended up giving this book four stars. Recommended!

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Review of Body Swap by Sylvia McNicoll

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Body swap book coverThe story starts out with a fatal car accident when Susan, an 82-year-old woman, runs over 15-year-old Hallie with her Hurricane SUV. They both awake at some sort of otherworldly carnival where Hallie accuses the older woman of carelessly running her over. Susan claims her gas pedal stuck and that the accident wasn’t her fault. They manage to persuade “the powers that be” to give them another chance. They are both then sent back to earth to discover the true cause of the accident. The kicker is that they awake in each other’s bodies – 15-year-old Hallie is now in the body of an 82-year-old woman and Susan now has the youthful body of a 15-year-old.

I’ve always enjoyed the body switching trope in which each person views life from the perspective of the other. Movies such as Freaky Friday, Big and 18 Again come to mind. In this book, I enjoyed how the two main characters had to figure out how to live in each other’s bodies and deal with all the challenges that come with it. Up until now, Hallie was a self-obsessed phone-addicted teenager whose primary focus was attracting the attention of the boy she was crushing on. Susan, on the other hand, was dealing with her son who not only treated her as though she were a child but was also intent on placing her in a nursing home. They were two people who couldn’t have been more different.

It’s also worth mentioning that there is also a race against the clock theme — Hallie and Susan must work together to determine the real cause of the accident before time runs out. What I especially enjoyed, is how the two of them became devoted and fierce friends, each looking out for the other and evolved as characters. In this way, the story is a lesson in empathy and selflessness — and what’s it like to walk in someone else’s shoes. I think that putting a teen in a senior’s body is an excellent way of illustrating the challenges that older people face in today’s world and perhaps bring awareness to how senior citizens are treated in our society.

That being said, the character development in this story was phenomenal, as both women learn the importance of respecting and understanding others who are different than themselves. They also discover that there is plenty to learn from each other and both attain a new level of wisdom by walking in the other’s shoes.

Though there was a serious undertone to the story, there were also plenty of hilarious moments, like their interactions with their friends and families. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud mishaps and misadventures as they try to navigate life in their new body, which is of course, what makes body swap stories so much fun.

The only problem I had with the novel was that it wasn’t always easy to picture the correct character during the narrative. For example, Susan refers to Hallie as Susan, even though Hallie looks like Susan. Likewise, Susan’s friends and family refer to Hallie as Susan, and when they are in the presence of each other, Susan refers to Hallie as Susan and Hallie refers to Susan as Hallie. Confused? From time to time, I was too. Because of this, I feel that that body swap trope works much better on the screen than it does in a novel. Though I did get the hang of it as the story progressed, it was a tad confusing and disconcerting initially.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and meaningful read with interesting characters. To be honest, I was expecting more fluff, but there was a delightful substance to this story, and I adore being surprised. Not to mention, the ending is satisfying, and I loved the full-circle nature of the story.

I thought the author did an excellent job of telling the story from each character’s perspective and I really enjoyed the witty banter between Hallie and Susan. The dynamic between the main characters was believable and relevant. Body Swap ended up being a beautifully written, fascinating, insightful, and well-wrought book from two very different perspectives and is well worth the read.

A big thank you to EdelWeiss Plus for providing a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Review of Mistborn 1: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

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Final Empire book coverThis is the first book in the Mistborn trilogy, which is an epic high fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson. I’ve kind of rediscovered my love of fantasy recently. When I was a kid, I read hundreds of Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery novels, so it’s been a lot of fun to dive in once again.

The World

So The Final Empire takes place in a dystopian world that has been ruled for a thousand years by the Lord Ruler who is believed to be immortal and who governs by absolute power and terror. His empire is referred to as The Final Empire.

In this grim world, ash continually falls from the sky, the sun is glowing red, and there are no flowers or grass. There are two groups of people: The nobility, who are under the Lord Ruler’s thumb and the Skaa, who are more or less peasants and who have lived in slavery, misery and fear ever since the Lord Ruler took power, and who are often killed without cause by the Lord Ruler’s enforcers or by their Noble overlords. So the lives of the Skaa are pretty much that of constant terror.

For them, all hope is lost. Or is it?

But the main characters in this story are a group of misfits who are trying to overthrow the Final Empire, led by a man named Kelsier.

Now Kelsier is a legend in the underworld – a masterful thief who could pull off any heist, that is until the Lord Ruler caught him and sentenced him to the Pits of Hathsin — a place from where nobody has ever escaped alive.

But escape Kelsier did, and when he did, he recruited underworld’s elite.

**The magic system in this world is called Allomancy and is quite impressive. **

It’s a system in which you ingest different types of pure metals and then “burn” them by will in order to temporarily gain enhanced abilities such as increased speed, super hearing, and enhanced strength. For example, you “choose” to burn copper and you do.

Some of these metals can allow you to almost fly through the air or fire objects with the speed and strength of bullets.

The majority of Allomancer’s are called Mistings and have the ability to burn only one metal and one metal only. But there is a rare and special type of Allomancer called a Mistborn who can burn All the metals, so these are indeed truly powerful individuals, nearly unstoppable.

As we learn, Kelsier is a Mistborn. So he has brought together the smartest and most trustworthy Allomancers, with the goal of taking down the Lord Ruler, a more or less suicidal task.

Introducing Vin – A Street Thief with a Huge Secret

Kelsier ends up recruiting a young woman named Vin, a street thief, who has been abused and betrayed by everyone she’s met.

But as it turns out, the girl has some impressive powers of her own and Kelsier takes it upon himself to bring them out. But she’ll have to learn to trust him first — not an easy task.

So the rest of the story revolves around the ragtag crew of misfits who have undertaken the impossible. We dive head-first into this strange and unsettling society as we see their plan unfold with the huge question: How can you defeat the undefeatable? And what will be the price to try?

I loved, loved, loved this book!

The world-building was phenomenal, and The Final Empire had the most creative and meticulous magic system I’ve ever come across in fantasy.

Allomancy was fascinating, and I loved the depth that the author went into in describing it.

And the world was delightfully creepy, yet mesmerizing

The world itself was also enthralling, with the dreadful Lord Ruler and his terrifying order of Steel Inquisitors, also believed to be immortal, with steel poles through their eyes; the frightening mists that took over the city every night; the mysterious origins of the immortal Lord Ruler; and the dead-yet-alive mist-wraiths that lived in the mists.

It’s a chunkster but well worth the effort!

I was a bit hesitant to start this book because it was a chunkster, coming in at 647 pages but once got started, I tore right through it.

This book had a masterful intricate plot, a group of true badasses, a powerful yet damaged heroine who turns out to be quite lethal to her enemies, rich dialog and banter, an awesome magic system and amazingly developed characters that I ended up falling in love with.

I loved The Final Empire so much that I immediately picked up the second one in the series and I’m over halfway done with it — and it’s longer than the first one.

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Review of My Life As a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland

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My life as a white trash zombie book coverI was in the mood for something crazy and fun, and this book fit the bill. Plus I loved the cover!

My Life as a White Trash Zombie follows Angel, a 21-year-old pill-popping, high school dropout who lives with her alcoholic father. She’s also a convicted felon for car theft (though it wasn’t her fault) and she’s now on probation.

One day, she waked up in the ER. The doctors tell her that she had just suffered a near-fatal overdose of painkillers. The funny thing is that Angel remembers being in a horrible car accident, covered in her own blood but at it turns out, there’s not a scratch on her. Authorities also told her that she was found naked on the side of the road, which also made no sense to her, though to be truthful, her memories of that night are still somewhat sketchy.

Things even get weirder when she receives an anonymous letter telling her there’s a job waiting for her at the morgue. Given the way her life has been spiraling downward recently, she doesn’t dare to refuse the job, especially given the note warns that if she fails to hold onto the morgue job for a month, her toxicology results will be shared with her probation officer and she’ll end up going to jail.

On top of that, the anonymous note author gave her a supply of strange energy drinks, and the note told she must drink one of them every other day. As her supply of drinks dwindled, she receives another note, telling her, “If you crave it, eat it.”

The thing is, is that recently Angel has been craving brains. During an autopsy, she found her mouth began watering and her stomach grumbling at the mere smell of brains. They smelled….delicious!

She finally gives in to her cravings one day and finds that eating brains gives her a rush that her pills ever did.

Because of her new habit of eating brains, she can only come to one conclusion: Somehow she has been turned into a zombie. It’s only when she meets another actual zombie, and he confirms her suspicions.

So the question is: who turned her and why?

So the rest of the book follows our young newbie zombie as she struggles with her new and improved self, falls in lust with a hunky policeman, tries to keep her secret from loser boyfriend, gets in a couple of rows with her alcoholic dad and surprisingly, finds that since becoming a zombie, she’s changed more than just physically. She also grown as a person and now sees that there’s a lot more to life than pills and booze. In fact, her life is the best it’s ever been, brain-eating aside.

It’s fun to watch her as she learns her limits and adjusts to her new zombie powers. She also ends up being quite a resilient character.

But life as a zombie isn’t all smooth sailing for Angel. There’s a serial killer on the loose who’s been decapitating his/her victims and keeping the heads…which of course, means fewer brains for Angel are showing up at the morgue. But things heat up even more when she and the serial killer cross paths, leading to a riveting climax!

So I ended up loving this book. It was so much fun! I can’t tell you how many times I laughed out loud. It was snarky, funny, irreverent, unique and all around fun read. It also had a unique take on zombies which I really enjoyed, and there was even a mystery to solve.

The story was nicely wrapped up at the end with a completely satisfying ending. This just might be my new favorite zombie book, though I did enjoy Warm Bodies as well. As for the dialog, it was amazing, and there were so many lines caused me to crack up.

A truly fun romp of a book with great witty banter along with likable characters, a gripping plot, a little romance, a serial killer, a touch of redemption and ….zombies… made this a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ read for me.

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Review of Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

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Cabin at the end of the world book coverCabin at the End of the World is a horror novel that follows Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew who are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a large stranger named Leonard unexpectedly appears in the driveway. He is young, friendly, and he wins Wen over almost instantly. They talk and play for a while until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.”

Then, three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying menacing homemade weapons. As Wen runs inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

The four strangers plead with Wen, Andrew, and Eric to let them in, that they have to, that the fate of the entire world is at stake, but they refuse. Eventually, the four strangers manage to forcibly break in, and there are injuries as a result. The story then turns into a tense and gripping home invasion tale of survival, which is personally a trope that scares the bejeezus out of me.

Once the four of them have subdued Wed and her dad, they explain that the Wen, Andrew, and Eric need to make a sacrifice – an ultimate sacrifice within the next 24 hours or so. If not, the world will be destroyed. So the question is: Are the four strangers cultists or crazies? Or is the world on the brink of the apocalypse?

The book did an excellent job at building up suspense and paranoia as the remote little cabin turned into a house of horrors complete with a torture chamber. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, to see what was going to happen next and whether that which the four had predicted would come to pass — that is, whether the world actually was on the brink of collapse.

Now I will say that some of the violence that takes place is described in very gory, vivid and disturbing ways so more sensitive readers might want to pass on this one. I do like a good horror novel, so it didn’t bother me too much — though it definitely was disturbing.

This was an uncomfortable book – a real psychological thriller — whose tension escalated as time passed in the cabin. It was tense, suspenseful and gut-wrenchingly horrifying, the kind of book that will either give you nightmares or keep you up at night.

Though it was a suspenseful and gripping read with well-developed characters, at the end of it all, it didn’t quite work for me.

The main reason was the ending: Let me just say that if you like a nice, tidy resolution to a story, then this book is not for you. This is the kind of story that leaves you with more questions than answers, and leaves you with an unsatisfied feeling after turning the last page — or at least it did for me.

It seemed like the author spent the entire novel building up this incredible amount of suspense only to have it fizzle out at the story’s end. I expected more of a dramatic ending — or at the very least, an answer to the story’s central questions.

But the payoff just wasn’t there. Now if you don’t mind somewhat vague endings or experimental stories, then, by all means, give Cabin at the End of the World a try. It just wasn’t the novel for me. ⭐⭐

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