Snowdrops by A.D. Millerwh

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller
Thriller

Nick is a British lawyer that moves to Russia for some excitement. He finds it in sisters Masha and Katya. The three have a lot of fun together and Nick starts to think he's falling in love. He meets the girl's aunt and starts to help them draft contracts to move the aunt out to the country. Nick knows in the back of his mind something isn't right but he's having too much fun to ask any important questions.

You can tell that the author lived in Russia for a while, as there are some very interesting insights in to life there from a foreigner's perspective. I think this is what I enjoyed most about the book. The story itself moved a bit slowly at the beginning but you could feel the tension build in the middle and I wondered what was going to happen to Nick. At the end, it didn't feel to be anything major which was a bit of a let down.

First Line: "I smelled it before I saw it"

Rating:
(3/5)

The Butterfly Tattoo by Philip Pullman

The Butterfly Tattoo by Philip Pullman
Fiction/Literature

Chris meets Jenny while he's working a party, after she runs away from some guys because they found out she crashed the party. It's love at first sight for Chris and Jenny agrees to meet him again. The two get closer, though Chris loses touch when Jenny's home is raided for drugs and she can't return. At the same time, Chris' boss is having Chris help him fix up a remote cabin. The reason he gives is that there's a bad guy looking for him after he helped put his brother behind bars. Chris isn't sure if it's true but helps him out anyways.

This is a pretty short book and it felt like things just weren't explained enough throughout the novel. There was romance and there was a mafia type story, but they didn't work well together at all for me, which I think was in part due to the fact that the book was so short and there wasn't enough time to make the two themes work with each other. Having read His Dark Materials, I don't feel like this lived up at all to how good that trilogy was. I was pretty disappointed with this one.

First Line: "Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm night in early June, when one of the colleges in Oxford was holding its summer ball."

Rating:
(2/5)

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

A Lesson Before Dying by Earnest J. Gaines
Fiction/Literature

Grant Wiggins left his small Cajun community as a young man to attend university, though he returned to his hometown to teach the other children of the community. When Jefferson, a young black man, is convicted for killing a liquor store attendant when he really was only in the wrong place at the wrong time, Grant is asked to help. Jefferson's godmother and Grant's aunt persuade him to try to make Jefferson see that he is a man. Grant doesn't want to confront Jefferson because there are a lot of hidden feelings he has about having to return to his hometown rather than becoming a successful black man in the world.

There are a lot of characters in this novel that seem to have no relevance to its outcome. Many children that Grant teaches are frequent to the story, as well as his girlfriend. They don't add too much. The story really could take place with Jefferson, Grant, the two elderly ladies, the reverend, and a few of the folks at the jail.

I can understand why people really enjoy this novel but it didn't really resonate with me. The only part that I really enjoyed was one of the last conversations that Grant and Jefferson had together, where Grant realized that this was about more than just Jefferson but about himself and the rest of the community too. The rest of it I neither loved nor hated.

First Line: "I was not there, yet I was there."

Rating:
(3/5)