Tuesday Teaser: The Camel Club by David Baldacci

My two 'teaser' sentences are from page 27 of The Camel Club by David Baldacci.

Stone took comfort that the thickening fog made them practically invisible from shore. Federal authorities didn't tolerate trespassers very well.

TEASER TUESDAYS is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
- Grab your current read.
- Let the book fall open to a random page.
- Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
- You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
- Please avoid spoilers!

Check out other teasers around the blogs.

Review: Professors' Wives' Club by Joanne Rendell

Last year, I added Professors' Wives' Club by Joanne Rendell to my list of book club ideas. This addition was based on a recommendation from Julie at Booking Mama. My LOLAs book club added it to this year's schedule. And even though I am no longer local to the LOLAs (boohoo), I am trying to read what they read.

I am glad I did!

Summary: A debut novel about the intertwining lives of college faculty wives.

Nestled among Manhattan University’s faculty housing, there is a garden where four women will meet—each with a scandalous secret that could upset their lives, destroy their families, and rock the prestigious university to its very core.

With its maple trees, iron gate, and fence laced with honeysuckle, Manhattan U’s garden offers faculty wives Mary, Sofia, Ashleigh, and Hannah much needed refuge from their problems. But as Mary’s husband, the power-hungry dean, plans to demolish their beloved garden, these four women will discover a surprising secret about a lost Edgar Allan Poe manuscript—and realize they must find the courage to stand up for their passions, dreams, and desires.

I enjoyed these ladies! They were quite interesting, had real issues within their marriages and their lives, and I could easily see them as being people that I know. I especially could relate to the beginning when they meet - they've all used this small garden for quite some time but always keeping to themselves until one day... How many things do I do that I never actually talk to anyone while I am doing them? (Not so much now in the new place as I am desparate to meet new folks! LOL) But really. How many times have I gone to the grocery or the park with my kids, taken a book and just read, not talking to those around me. Or even soccer practice, for that matter. Anyway, I digress from the review...

This book is one where you want to know more of what happens 'after'. I could see them all growing throughout the book and wonder how that will affect their future selves. I definitely recommend reading The Professors Wives Club. I need to find out what the LOLAs thought of it!

Rating: 4.5/5

Review: Sweet Waters: An Otter Bay Novel by Julie Carobini

My latest book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program, Sweet Waters by Julie Carobini was okay.

Summary: There’s nothing left for Tara Sweet in landlocked Dexton, Missouri. Her fiancé called off their wedding, her sister is moving to Manhattan, and now her mother is marrying a much younger man with plans for a yearlong honeymoon in Europe. Tara believes a move back to her childhood home of Otter Bay, California, will help restore the fun and fearlessness she’s already missing in her twenties. Playing back memories of idyllic times spent there with her father along the majestic coast, a fairytale seems just around the corner.

Better make that a soap opera. After Tara finds a job in Otter Bay, makes friends at The Red Abalone Grill, and perhaps even a new flame in firefighter Josh, she begins to uncover shocking secrets about why her family left this heaven on earth all those years ago. And though she will have to question everything she has ever known, the faith that Tara must depend upon will be sweeter than ever before.

I am not much of a romance reader, but I do love a good story about women overcoming and women friendships. (And plenty of my mystery and other favorite books have romance in them.) This book had elements of both but didn't really make me 'feel' the connections. I enjoyed the characters and felt they were quite interesting and real. But the story just didn't compel me, if that makes sense.

The story has some Christian elements in it which do fit well with the story. The book is labeled in different spots as romance, christian fiction, and women's fiction. I think all those fit. The book will be available in August of this year.

If there are other opinions out there about this book, especially folks that enjoyed it more than I did, I'd love to link to them to give other perspectives. Let me know.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Review: 14 by J.T. Ellison

Last summer I read lots of books recommended by J.Kaye and was not disappointed in any of them. One of my favorites was a book from first-time novelist J.T. Ellison - All the Pretty Girls (my review). The second in the series, 14, came out earlier this year and I loved it!

Summary: Ten victims, each with pale skin and long dark hair. All have been slashed across the throat, the same red lipstick smeared across their lips.

In the mid-1980s the Snow White Killer terrorized the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. Then suddenly the murders stopped. A letter from the killer to the police stated that his work was done.

Now four more bodies are found, marked with his fatal signature. The residents of Nashville fear a madman has returned, decades later, to finish his sick fairy tale. Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson believes the killings are the work of a copycat killer who's even more terrifying. For this monster is meticulously honing his craft as he mimics famous serial murders…proving that the past is not to be forgotten.

This was a very detailed, interesting plot that had me guessing throughout. Even when the killer is revealed to the reader but not yet to the lieutenant, there's so much drama and intrigue it kept me glued to the book. Quite fascinating, really.

My one, small, beef with the book was the predictability of the kidnapping near the end and the resolution of that - kind of unrealistic. Not enough of an issue to affect my enjoyment.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Review: The Associate by John Grisham

I have been a John Grisham fan from the beginning. I have read all of his books and thoroughly enjoyed each one. I do have my favorites as you can imagine. His latest book, The Associate, will not make my list of favorites as it wasn't quite up to his normal standards, but it was still an enjoyable book.

Summary: Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.

But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want—even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.

Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.

With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains—from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country—and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.

It was a page turner. It had great potential with interesting characters. However it felt more like a new writer who didn't quite know how to flesh it all out wrote the book. The ending was a bit anti-climatic. But, I still enjoyed the book. It was good but not great as expected.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Review: Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein

The latest in the Alexandra Cooper series, Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein, is a good one. I definitely enjoyed the characters as much as the mystery story. Last fall I read the previous novel in the series, Killer Heat (my review), and I enjoyed this latest book more.

Summary: When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family, major benefactors of the New York Public Library and passionate rare book collectors.

Eventually Alex connects their internal family rivalries to a priceless edition of Alice in Wonderland, which also contains the world’s oldest map. Would one of the well-bred Hunts be willing to kill for the treasures? The search for the answer takes Alex and her team on a breathtaking chase from Manhattan’s grandest apartments to the secret tunnels and chambers of the New York Public Library, and finally to a nineteenth-century underground vault. There, in the pitch-black darkness, Alex comes face-to-face with the killer who values money more than life.

I still recommend starting at the beginning of this series because it's such a good series. The characters are rich, the stories intense and interesting, and Ms. Fairstein keeps you guessing throughout. Start with Final Jeopardy. You want to know why you didn't read her books before.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Review: Blown Coverage by Jason Elam

Blown Coverage by Jason Elam came to me via the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. The book contains some of my favorite things: NFL football, mystery, intrigue and ties them together with Christian fiction elements.

Summary: Linebacker Riley Covington returns to another season of mini-camp for the Colorado Mustangs just as a wave of terrorist attacks begin to occur across the country. Sleeper cells are being awakened--likely by the leader of the Cause, who has recently escaped from captivity and is coordinating attacks not only on America but also on Riley and his loved ones. As Jim Hicks, Scott Ross, and the rest of the Counterterrorism Division follow leads in Europe, Riley goes on the offensive to draw out his attackers. But can the Cause be stopped before they're able to reach their ultimate goal?

I enjoyed this story. It was a good plot, interesting characters and some intensity. Not the best in any of those categories, however it's a good, solid book. This is the second in the series but I didn't feel like I was missing information. I am interested in going back and reading the first one. Sounds like it was a good story.

One thing I did not like about this book was it's treatment of Muslims. All but one Muslim in this book was a terrorist, mostly as a sleeper in the US. I realize these folks are needed for the story-line, but it leaves the reader (or at least me) with the impression the author thinks all Muslims in the US are sleepers. Which I know not to be the case and hope the author didn't mean to imply.

I recommend this book to folks who like a good mystery, intrigue story. It's not a preachy Christian book, but does talk about Christians and Muslims.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars