The One That Got Away

The One That Got Away by Simon Wood is a contemporary mystery/crime thriller, and a good one at that.  Zoë and Holli are grad students at UC Davis who went to Las Vegas to let their hair down and de-stress, but on the drive back, something terrible happens.  Zoë wakes up to find herself naked and bound in a dirty toolshed, and she can hear someone screaming - it's Holli.  They had stopped for food and gas in a small town, but everything is fuzzy and Zoë can't remember what got them into this situation.  All she can think about is getting out of it.

Fifteen months later, the events of that night have changed Zoë completely.  Her life is on a much different track and she's a different person now.  She hasn't gotten over what happened - not even close - but she's coping in her own way.  That is, until something happens that sends her right back into the path of the man who abducted her and Holli.  The media has nicknamed him the "Tally Man," and it seems he has a score to settle with Zoë.

Confessions of an Angry Girl

Confessions of an Angry Girl is a debut novel by Louise Rozett, and the first book in her Confessions series.  Rose Zarelli is starting her freshman year at Union High School, and if you thought your high school days sucked, there is a good chance Rose's freshman year tops that.  Practically the whole town is walking on eggshells and the faculty at school are treating her like she's fragile because her dad died over the summer; he was an engineer, and when he lost his job, he went to Iraq on a contract with the military.  He was riding in a convoy when they went over an IED.

Her mother has been in shock since she got the call, and is completely distant.  Her brother is off at college and he seems to have changed, too.  Rose is angry.  She's cynical, irritable, and everything seems to be going completely wrong this year.  It's not just her family, either - her best friend, Tracy, is a fashion-conscious cheerleader on a quest to be popular.  Rose doesn't really give a shit whether or not she's one of the "cool kids."  She doesn't understand Tracy's new obsessions with partying and losing her virginity to her jerk jock boyfriend, Matt.  She doesn't seem to understand anything that any of her classmates find interesting or cool or fun.  But whatever.

And then, there is Jamie Forta.  She used to have a crush on him, back when he played hockey with her brother.  Seeing him again, maybe she still likes him.  He seems interested in talking to her, maybe being friends, but there's no way he could be into her - she's not pretty, and she's pretty much his complete opposite.  I mean, she's an AP student, and he's in remedial English.  He got kicked out of hockey for high-sticking another kid, and he's still apparently kind of a badass.  Nope, no way a guy like that would be interested in a girl like her.  Oh, and there's also the fact that he's dating a cheerleader - Regina.  One of her ex-best-friend's new best friends.  Regina's psychotically jealous and kind of a bitch, and has convinced herself there is something going on between Rose and Jamie; so of course she makes it her singular ambition to make Rose's life hell.

Things kind of spiral way out of control, as you may have guessed.  So yeah, Rose is angry.  She's sorta pissed, actually.  How can you not become completely irate, enraged, furious...when your life is falling to pieces all around you?

It's Time: Writing on the Wall

Pavel Kostin's It's Time is a somewhat philosophical novel set in contemporary urban Russia.  Max is a young man working as a night watchman who doesn't do much besides work and hang out around the city with his friends, a small group of street artists.  At the book's opening, Max is sitting on the edge of the roof on a tall building - there seems to be a sort of panic below him on the street, but Max is rather calm.  He isn't up on the roof alone, either; a strange and beautiful young woman who calls herself "Lady F" appears near him and they chat.  After this, she shows up throughout the story at the most random moments.  Mysterious and a little cryptic.  Max and his friends contemplate life, the future, and art, and Max tags along as his friends tag the walls of the city.  Every blank wall is a potential canvas, and the city is their gallery.  

This might sound so far like some kind of pretentious hipster philosophy, a beatnik novel for this generation.  When I read the synopsis on LibraryThing (I received the book through their Early Reviewers program), I kind of expected some sort of modern day Russian La Bohème.  That isn't quite what I got, though.  Honestly, the very beginning was a bit slow.  Boring, almost.  It took me a little while before I really got into it.  

And then things get more and more weird, and the rest of the book had me questioning at every turn whether what was happening was real or whether Max was hallucinating.  Lady F keeps showing up and the questions just pile on until at a certain point, I couldn't put the book down until I'd finished it and found out what in the heck was going on.  Things ended up getting very strange, yes, but also rather interesting.  Much like with Julie Cross's Tempest, I'm unsure just how much I can even say without ruining some twist in Max's story.  The philosophical discussions and comments in the book are worth considering as well; some of them are quite poignant, sometimes so much so that they made me stop and really think for a moment, not about the story exactly, but about what was just said and how it does or does not seem to really apply to my own life and my own experience.

Spin

Spin by Catherine McKenzie is a novel about 30-year-old Kate Sandford, a struggling music journalist in the  big city.  She freelances for small publications, writing about local bands.  Half her friends are still in college and think she's a 25-year-old graduate student, and they spend an awful lot of time partying.  Her best friend from home is on the opposite end of the spectrum - responsible and successful working hard in her career at a bank.    Things seem like they might actually be on the up for Kate, though, when she lands an interview for a position at her dream job:  writing for an edgy music magazine, The Line.  She completely tanks it, though, when she goes out to celebrate the interview and her birthday the night before, and shows up late and still drunk.  

So it's a huge surprise when Kate gets a call asking her to come back for another opportunity - and if she does well with this, she just may be able to get the job she applied for after all.  The assignment?  Going undercover at a rehab facility to get the dirt on Amber Sheppard, the celebrity It Girl of the moment, whose latest exploits have her the focus of every gossip source.  It's not The Line, but the tabloid is published from the same office, and the promise of another shot at her Dream Job is too good to pass up.  All she has to do is make it through the program with Amber, then deliver a juicy article afterward.

Things get complicated, though, when Amber becomes a person to Kate...a friend, actually...rather than just some messed up celebrity brat, and frustrating when friends and family don't seem surprised that she would be in rehab.  Then there is the further complication of Henry.  She needs to decide, and soon, whether her dream job at The Line is worth putting her new friendship (and possible blooming romance) on the line.