Three very different recent reads are shown above.

The Last Place You Look was a free book on Amazon for Kindle.  I haven’t read the author before to my knowledge.  The book centers around a wife and mother, Faye, who has life start to throw a series of curve balls at her one after another.  Alicia, the birth mother of her adopted son, who also happens to be Faye’s husband’s sister reappears after a long absence.  Faye develops a cough that leads to the discovery of a shadow on an x-ray and a whole new slew of medical tests and procedures.  Faye’s friend, Susie, has set her sights on Faye’s husband, Nick and Nick isn’t trying very hard to avoid her.  Faye’s father attempts to reconnect after “abandoning” her many years before.  The story is interesting and I found myself rooting for Faye to overcome each of these difficulties.

Faye is a strong character, who finds even more strength as she overcomes each obstacle thrown in her path.  Nick, her husband is an utter jackass.  His behavior and Susie’s  is just appalling and it makes you root even harder for Faye.

I did enjoy this book although I will say I wasn’t thrilled with the resolution at the very end, but it worked, it just wasn’t the ending I wanted for Faye.

On the Rocks is by Erin Duffy, the author of Bond Girl.  This is classic chick lit/beach read material.  Abby, the protagonist, is in the middle of trying on her perfect wedding dress with her best friend in tow, when her fiance, Ben, who she has been dating for 10 years, breaks up with her via a Facebook status update.   Abby then goes through the crying, catatonia, and ice cream break up phases, until her friend Grace convinces her to go away for the summer to get over Ben.

Not really original, but a decent beach read nonetheless.

Death Cart is one of this month’s reads for the English Kindle Mystery Club on Goodreads. I really thought I would like this book because of the combination of archaeology and murder mystery, similar to Elly Griffiths’ work, which I love.  This one simply didn’t work for me.  The characters were mundane and not well drawn.  I didn’t really get their attraction to one another as friends or lovers.  They were all mainly Phd candidates or University staff and yet they didn’t come across like that at all.  The police officer seemed like a cartoon character.  On top of that the pacing seemed overly slow.  Perhaps a good editor could tighten the plot and more emphasis could be placed on character development.  I did find the archaeological detail interesting and enjoyed that.