Book Review - Mr. And Miss. Anonymous

Mr. and Miss Anonymous by Fern Michaels
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Okay, so I didn't love this book. It went just a tiny bit too far with a little weirdness I couldn't reconcile.

Mr. and Miss. Anonymous is the tale of two donors - college students who make those extra few bucks they need to pay tuition by donating sperm and eggs to a fertility clinic near the Berkley campus. They both eschew the offered counseling, and find themselves suffering from terrible regrets twenty years later, when they run into one another at an airport while heading back to Berkley for a fundraising event. Their paths had only crossed briefly when they were students, but they never forgot one another. While in the airport, footage of a school shooting comes on the news and a child that looks remarkably like the gentleman donor is billed as an escapee of the melee.

The two set off to find out where there donations wound up, breaking all kinds of laws along the way, and track down the kid who looked so familiar on TV. Along the way they uncover a huge plethora of conspiracies, corrupt government officials, hitmen, scary old men, and ghosts.

Yeah, it was the ghosts, of all things, that bothered me. I couldn't figure out why they had to muddy the waters of my nice, neat little mystery novel.

It was an okay read, but nothing spectacular, and left me feeling a bit unsettled.

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Book Review - Identity Theft and Other Stories

Identity Theft and Other Stories by Robert J. Sawyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a wonderful surprise this book was.

I grabbed it at the library, on impulse. I didn't even read the blurb before grabbing it, and I was surprised to find that it was sci-fi (I think I expected some kind of mystery/thriller from the title!).

Not only sci-fi, but sci-fi with a noir detective. It would be an understatement to say that my last foray into fiction with both of those elements did not go well. (A vast, vast understatement of epic proportions. So much so that I would have thrown this book aside if it hadn't been dark, and if I hadn't already been tucked into bed and wary of waking a snoring husband).

Boy am I glad I gave this book a chance. It was awesome! Funny, smart, witty in all the right ways, full of action, and kept my interest the whole way through. Yep, I loved it. Go figure.

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Book Review - I've Got Your Number

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Why, hello Flavia!??

Okay, confession time here - this was an audiobook read for me. And the voice actor is the same person who narrates the Flavia De Luce series - all of which I've also listened to on audiobook. As a result, I found myself often thinking "how did Flavia grow up and get engaged and where are her sisters and-" well you get the picture. This may or may not have coloured my impressions of the book. I can't really tell.

While this was a fun, chicklit romp of a novel, I did find it to stretch it's credibility at points with me. I can understand exactly how a romance can develop, in this digital age of ours, through emails and texts. I can sort of understand how you might find a discarded cell and take control of it, at least in an emergency and at least for a few hours. What I can't understand is why the owner of that phone, when they discovered you had it, wouldn't cut off service to it. I also can't understand some of the developments later on in this book that just made me blink and go "Whaaa?"

I like Kinsella's books in general,and there are many that I consider solid, fun, five star reads. This was not one of them. There were a few plot inconsistencies, some character development that seemed totally off-base, a few bizarre twists that made me roll my eyes, and some very not-real moments. That said, there were also some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, some very witty dialogue exchanges, some interesting, quirky characters, and some down-to-earth, very real moments too.

With all that said, it left me smack in the middle of the road. I did like the book overall, but didn't love it. I would recommend it maybe as a side read, but not to someone who doesn't have a lot of time to read and wants their books to have real punch. It's okay. And sometimes that's enough.

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