Born to Die - Lisa Jackson **

The resemblance between Dr. Kacey Lambert and B-movie actress Shelly Bonaventure is a standing joke in the town of Grizzly Falls, Montana. So much so, that Kacey is momentarily shocked to read about the fading starlet’s death. Still, it’s not as if there was any real connection between them. And when a fatally injured jogger who also bears a striking similarity to Kacey is rushed into the ER days later, Kacey is ready to rule it another sad, strange accident. Detective Selena Alvarez suspects otherwise. An autopsy confirms that the jogger had traces of poison in her blood at the time of her death. Selena and her partner, Regan Pescoli, can find no motive for the murder. But Kacey has started to notice ties between the dead women’s lives and her own—all close in age, born within miles of each other—and all with ties to the man Kacey has just begun seeing, single father Trace O’Halleran. Now, with more look-alikes dying, Kacey must question her judgment, her safety—and everything she’s ever believed about her past. The deeper Kacey digs, the more reason she has to fear. The body count is rising, the killer is getting bolder and more brutal. And Kacey knows it’s only a matter of time before hers is the next name on a list of those who were born to die…

I think the only way this book could be described would be far fetched.  Lisa Jackson writes good mysteries, but she seemed to have been digging through the dregs to come up with this plot.  A bunch of women, the biological results of artificial insemination, start dying.  The clinic where they came from is long gone, but somehow somebody has tracked down babies who resulted in sperm donations from the same man 30 years ago and is killing them.  Most of them don't even know that they came from artificial insemination, and yet he somehow tracks them down... and they're all pretty much in the same city.

Jackson writes engaging stories.  Her main characters still drew me in, but the plot and the supporting characters were too unbelievable for me to really get into the story.  Finally, the ending was laughable, it was so unlikely.  I'm normally a Lisa Jackson fan, but this one was a bomb.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards ***

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins.
His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.

My first mistake with the novel was to watch the movie before reading the book. I don't generally like reading books after I've seen the movie based off of them because the differences stand out too much to me. I think it distracts from the story when you're expecting one thing and read something else.

Starting out, having seen the movie (which wasn't very good)I had trouble getting into this book. It was slow reading, but I would say that I started enjoying it more at about the half way point, when it started to vary significantly from the story line in the movie. It was good for a little while, and then the end was really slow. Truth is, I felt like the story was over about 40 pages before the end of the book. Eventually, I ended up quitting about 10 pages before the last page. I don't think it was a bad story, just not great. And I really think my impression of it was hampered by the less than stellar movie.

Old Dogs Are the Best Dogs, by Gene Weingarten and Michael S. Williamson *****

This book is not a novel. It's a cross between a picture book and a collection of (very) short stories. I ordered it a few weeks ago, while feeling sentimental and kind of sad that my own pup is becoming an old man.

Each page has a black and white shot of an old dog, opposite of a description, tidbit, antic or memory from when they were younger.  Some make you laugh, others make you cry.

After my basement flooded last night, it was exactly what I needed. I was too stressed to sleep, so I whipped through it in the night. It's an easy - if emotional - read that any dog lover will want to read over and over. Loved it. Friends be forewarned: I will be giving it as gifts.

Rainwater, by Sandra Brown ****

Ella Barron is determined that even the ravages of the Dust Bowl will not affect the well-ordered life she has built for herself and her special child, Solly, who lives in a world of his own that even she can’t enter. Aware that he evokes pity and distrust, Ella holds herself aloof from her small community, but her new boarder, David Rainwater, comes into her life— and changes it forever. As economic desperation creates bitter social unrest in the town and surrounding farms, Ella finds herself relying on Mr. Rainwater’s soft-spoken advice and the steely resolve of his convictions. But tensions escalate in the summer heat, until one violent night everything they believe in will be put to the ultimate test.

This was not your typical Sandra Brown novel. The focus was about the difficulties of the times, not the romance between the two main characters. Actually, I was still wondering if she'd have them get together well into the book. I found it reminiscent of Bridges of Madison County, or a Nicholas Sparks novel... not what you'd call great literature, but a quick easy read. I liked it. It was a welcome change, and I hope she writes more like this.

The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly ****

Veteran bestseller Connelly enters the crowded legal thriller field with flash and panache. Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller regularly represents lowlifes, but he's no slickster trolling for loopholes in the ethics laws. He's haunted by how he mishandled the case of (probably innocent) Jesus Menendez, and, though twice divorced, he's on good terms with his ex-wives; one of them manages his office, and the other, an ambitious assistant DA, occasionally tumbles back into bed with him. When Mickey signs on to defend young real estate agent Louis Roulet against charges of assault, he can't help seeing dollar signs: Roulet's imperious mother will spend any amount to prove her beloved son's innocence. But probing the details of the case, Mickey and private investigator Raul Levin dig up a far darker picture of Roulet's personality and his past. Levin's murder and a new connection to the Menendez case make Mickey wonder if he's in over his head, and his defense of Roulet becomes a question of morality as well as a test of his own survival. After Connelly spends the book's first half involving the reader in Mickey's complex world, he thrusts his hero in the middle of two high-stakes duels, against the state and his own client, for heart-stopping twists and topflight storytelling.

This was one of the best mysteries that I've read yet.  It had all sorts of twists and turns, and took me off guard numerous times.  Very well written.

The Girl She Used to Be, by David Cristofano ***

When Melody Grace McCartney was six years old, she and her parents witnessed an act of violence so brutal that it changed their lives forever. The federal government lured them into the Witness Protection Program with the promise of safety, and they went gratefully. But the program took Melody's name, her home, her innocence, and, ultimately, her family. She's been May Adams, Karen Smith, Anne Johnson, and countless others--everyone but the one person she longs to be: herself. So when the feds spirit her off to begin yet another new life in another town, she's stunned when a man confronts her and calls her by her real name. Jonathan Bovaro, the mafioso sent to hunt her down, knows her, the real her, and it's a dangerous thrill that Melody can't resist. He's insistent that she's just a pawn in the government's war against the Bovaro family. But can she trust her life and her identity to this vicious stranger whose acts of violence are legendary?

I think that maybe I missed reading the last three sentences in that description.   I certainly didn't read the description on the back of the book until after I was a good 100 pages in.  If I'd read either, I don't think I'd have started it.

I thought, going in, that this book was going to be how difficult it's been to have to change identities and be uprooted throughout her life, and how the heroine deals with it.  The story does touch on that, but the focus is more about the push and the pull between Jonathan and Melody.  The description on the back cover implies that there is romance between the two.  There is, in a way, but not in the bodice-ripper, harlequin romance sort of way.  (Which is good, because lately I have been very much not in the mood for that sort of romantic story.)

The first 100 pages or so were pretty good.  Right about the time that Jonathan was introduced, I read the back cover and my perception of the whole story changed.  I almost didn't finish it.   I kept pushing on, though, and while I'm hesitant to say that it was a pleasant surprise, I will say that it wasn't the disappointment that I was sure it was going to be.  It was fluff.  It wasn't even believable fluff.  The heroine was unsympathetic and made incredibly bad choices.  The men that she encountered and waffled between were caricatures of stereotypes, and neither was engaging.  But, the story was somewhat entertaining for a while.  It was a quick, easy read.   I think it's probably a good thing that it was under 250 pages, because I probably would have required more substance to read anything longer.

Love Me to Death, by Allison Brennan **

Six years ago, Lucy Kincaid was attacked and nearly killed by an online predator. She survived. Her attacker did not. Now Lucy’s goal is to join the FBI and fight cyber-crime, but in the meantime, she’s volunteering with a victim’s rights group, surfing the Web undercover to lure sex offenders into the hands of the law. But when the predators she hunts start turning up as murder victims, the FBI takes a whole new interest in Lucy.

With her future and possibly even her freedom suddenly in jeopardy, Lucy discovers she’s a pawn in someone’s twisted plot to mete out vigilante justice. She joins forces with security expert and daredevil Sean Rogan, and together they track their elusive quarry from anonymous online chat rooms onto the mean streets of Washington, D.C. But someone else is shadowing them: A merciless stalker has his savage eye on Lucy. The only way for her to escape his brutality may be another fight to the death.

You know a <500 page book isn't good when it takes me more than two weeks to read it.

I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, despite the name.  At first, it seemed as though it would rise above and make its way to  become an acceptable mystery, but it started to lose my interest by page 100.  The first half introduced a plot that could have had potential - a former victim of assault working with a volunteer group to keep parolees in  jail suddenly discovers that the criminals that she comes into contact with are being murdered.  Unfortunately, it wasn't presented in a manner that kept my attention.  I found my mind wandering, and more often than not, I had to reread pages because I'd been going over my grocery list or thinking about work.  

As if that's not bad enough, eventually the main character meets up with the man of her dreams and then everything goes down hill from there.  I'm not against a good romance, in fact I quite enjoy them; but this was not good.  In fact, there were times that the book made me uncomfortable.  It made me think of the middle age, over the top couples who are all about Public Displays of Affection and really need to get a room.  There's only so much hugging, kissing and cuddling that a murder mystery can take, and this one went too far. It made the female lead - who is supposedly an FBI applicant - seem weak and helpless when a kiss from her  beloved hero could make everything seem all better.

This is my first foray in to Allison Brennan.  From the recommendations that I'd gotten, I had hoped to have found a new source of easy to read but entertaining mysteries.  Unfortunately, I did not.