Review: The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

Parasomnias are a big part of the plot in The Sleepwalker. They are more than just sleepwalking, There are additional sleep problems like sleep sex, night terrors, and nightmares. Typically a person experiencing a parasomnia might be hard to wake and once awake they might not remember at all what happened while they were experiencing the episode.

Lianna's mother is a sleepwalker. One night while everyone is asleep, she leaves the house and disappears. It's presumed she was sleepwalking and something happened to her that prevented her coming home. Lianna experienced episodes of sleepwalking and night terrors when she was younger. Now she is worried a little about what might happen to her and her sister if they experience the same sort of behaviors.

During a massive search for her mother, Lianna meets a detective with the State Police who was also a friend of her mother. Gavin and her mother had formed their own sort of mini support group since they had parasomnias in common. Lianna finds herself drawn to the detective. They begin a covert sort of dating relationship.

The Ahlberg family doesn't want to give up hope on finding Annalee, but the longer she is gone, the less likely it is they will recover her alive. This kind of tension in the family is hard on them all, but particularly it would seem on Paige, Lianna's younger sister.

The mystery continues for the rest of the book. There are red herrings and suppositions. As the book progresses, the speed of the action increases. By the time I reached the end I was reading as fast as I could. It was a real page turner.

Structurally, each chapter is introduced by what could be a journal entry by another voice. The rest of the book is pretty much written from Lianna's point of view. You wonder who it is that is saying the things in the beginning of the chapter about their experiences with parasomnias. As the mystery goes on, the things seem to take on more and more potential for revelation, but without an identity.

The writing is beautiful. The sentence structure is varied and words are well chosen.

Overall, I give t his book 5 out of 5 possible stars. It's a good mystery/thriller written beautifully. Lianna makes a great narrator. I liked the structure of the different voice at the beginning of each section. And I stayed up half the night to finish it risking a book hangover, but I had to know what was going to happen next. This is the first book I've read by this author. I will have to read more of his works,

If you enjoy books where you might learn a little (in this case about parasomnias)  and a  mystery that becomes a bit of a thriller then you should find this book enjoyable.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Waiting on Wednesday #171: Masked to Death by Christina Freeburn

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event which has been hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

A Caribbean cruise is the perfect setting for a Roget wedding, and Faith meeting Ted’s family. She also hopes the vacation gets their stalled romance moving, but it doesn’t take long for that dream to capsize. Ted’s daughter hates her. The ex-wife is adored. Odessa Roget is surly. And the banned father of a groom, John Roget, requests Faith’s assistance in bringing down a jewel theft ring masterminded by his ex-wife. 

Having had a man she loved accuse her of a crime, Faith won’t let Odessa travel down the same path and agrees to help. Faith sets her course on uncovering the true criminals—which might be a groom’s best friend. The romantic week turns disastrous as a wedding is interrupted, suspicious deaths point to murders, and Ted’s daughter schemes to reunite her parents. Instead of diamonds being a girl’s best friend, Faith finds they’re cruising toward Davy Jones’ Locker. 

Why am I waiting on this one? It's a humorous cozy. It's put out by Henery Press - part of their "if you like one, you'll probably like them all" humorous mystery series. Even though I haven't read this author before, I look forward to the enjoyable, light reading of a good cozy. It's due out on January 24, 2017. This is number 5 in the Faith Hunter Scrap This mystery series.

What book are you waiting on this week? Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our TBR lists. Thanks for coming by and Happy Reading!

Teaser Tuesday: The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Ambrosia of The Purplebooker.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

And so when the state police from the New Haven barracks were interviewing Paige and me later that morning while they waited for my father to fly home from Iowa City, they probed the possibility that our mother had run off or was having an affair. (location 409)

.........................................................................

It was infuriating and I felt my family was being violated. I understood why they had to ask, but that did not make this line of investigation seem any less absurd or, on some level I could not quite parse at the time degrading. (location 413)

Lianna and Paige are speaking to the state police because their mother has gone missing presumably during a bout of sleepwalking.

I'm not that far into the book yet, but I'm enjoying it. While these two sentences are very long, in general, the sentence length is varied.

The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian is due out January 10, 2017 from Doubleday Books.

What's your teaser this week? Share it or a link in the comments. Are you enjoying your book? Let us know! Happy Reading!

Review: I Hate Everyone, Except You by Clinton Kelly

I Hate Everyone, Except You by Clinton Kelly is a book of autobiographical essays. I didn't know much about him before reading the book. I enjoyed getting to know more about him through the essays.

One of the things we learn about Clinton through his writing is that he isn't afraid to use profanity. And it seems no topic is off limits. This is a book for adults.

The book opens with an essay about his strong desire to go to a water park at 13 and ends with one where he is giving the commencement address for a high school graduation.  So, he sort of seems to come full circle. The path to getting there is circuitous and includes essays from many different events and time periods in his life.

I love the confidence he shows in his writing and hope it truly carries over into his life. It was interesting reading how he got into fashion writing, and about how he got his job on What Not to Wear, and how he met his husband among other things. Besides being informative, most of the essays are humorous. There were several times I laughed out loud.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. It's an entertaining batch of autobiographical essays definitely written for an adult audience. I Hate Everyone, Except You is due out January 10, 2017 from Gallery Books.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Review: Dead Sleeping Shaman by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

Emily Kincaid settled in what seemed to be a quiet corner of Michigan. There is no lasting peace there as she finds a dead body of a woman who had appeared to be sleeping, a cult-like group descends on the town spouting end of the world rhetoric, and now her best friend and detective Dolly seems to have gone off to join the cult.

Emily is on assignment for the local paper covering ghost towns when she stumbles upon what she takes to be a sleeping woman, but turns out to be a dead woman. She is identified as a shaman from Ohio by her friends. As the mystery progresses, it gets more complicated. Why was this woman here from Ohio? Did she have something to do with the end of the world group? What about her roots in the area? Is that what brought her back?

Emily finds herself smack dab in the middle of the investigation since Dolly has been hanging around at the campground for the "end of the world" group. Add in a politician, a mysterious older woman, and Sister Sally and Brother Righteous from the group and you get quite a  mystery. There are also what seem to be the usual happenings in town. The woman that owns the main restaurant is caught posting someone's family tree without permission. Emily and her dog, Sorrow, romp the land near her home. And the old bachelor nearby to her home seems to have finally found love.

The book starts out good. Then it slows down for a bit. It took persistence to finish it. I wanted to know what was going to happen, but there were times I found myself reading very slowly.

The character of Emily is interesting and is the most fleshed out in the story as the main character. I have the feeling that in the earlier books Dolly is more fleshed out as is their relationship. So, while this book can be read as a standalone, you might get more satisfaction if you've read other books in the series as well. This is the third book in the Emily Kincaid series.

The mysteries themselves have red herrings. You are given everything from Emily's point of view, so you can solve the mysteries along with her, or at least come to similar conclusions.

This book was originally published in May of 2010 by Midnight Ink. This review is of the Kindle edition published December 2016 from Beyond the Page.

I gave this book 4 stars out of 5. Overall I enjoyed it. It was slow in parts, but the events kept me reading. I wanted to know what was going to happen both with the "end of the world" group and with the mystery of the dead sleeping shaman.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Waiting on Wednesday #170: The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event which has been hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating.

Synopsis from Goodreads: 

In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg and something is wrong; a statue moves, his grandfather’s pines explode, and his brother accuses him of madness.

When the India Office recruits Merrick for an expedition to fetch quinine—essential for the treatment of malaria—from deep within Peru, he knows it’s a terrible idea. Nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who’s made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is desperate to escape everything at home, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for a tiny mission colony on the edge of the Amazon where a salt line on the ground separates town from forest. Anyone who crosses is killed by something that watches from the trees, but somewhere beyond the salt are the quinine woods, and the way around is blocked.

Surrounded by local stories of lost time, cursed woods, and living rock, Merrick must separate truth from fairytale and find out what befell the last expeditions; why the villagers are forbidden to go into the forest; and what is happening to Raphael, the young priest who seems to have known Merrick’s grandfather, who visited Peru many decades before. The Bedlam Stacks is the story of a profound friendship that grows in a place that seems just this side of magical. 

Why am I waiting on this one? It sounds interesting. It seems like a blend of historical fiction and the fantastical or paranormal. I'd like to see how it plays out. The Bedlam Stacks is due out August 1, 2017 from Bloomsbury USA.

What book are you waiting on this week? Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our TBR lists. Thanks for coming by and Happy Reading!

Teaser Tuesday: I Hate Everyone, Except You by Clinton Kelly

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Ambrosia of The Purplebooker.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

He wanted so much to go home, to go anywhere actually, to relieve himself of this obligation. But he had committed himself to showing her around town. He could feign a headache or emergency, but she would be able to detect the lie, wouldn't she? Then she would go back to her apartment, feeling rejected and alone. He couldn't do that to her.

~77% through on my Kindle

I Hate Everyone, Except You by Clinton Kelly is a sort of a collection of memoirish essays. Most of them are humorous in nature. The book is due out January 10, 2017 from Gallery Books.

What's your teaser this week? Share it or a link in the comments. Are you enjoying your book? Let us know! Happy Reading!