Sewing Chick's Book Club

Yes it is that boring time when I switch from sewing stuff to books. There are days I wish I had become a librarian. I love books so much and feel the incredible urge to share them with the world. Seriously, there are times I'm in a bookstore and I feel like pulling people over and handing them books, crazy I know. There is nothing better than coming home with a giant bag of fabric full of project ideas, and I feel the same way when I come home with a bag of books just waiting to be read. I savor the time until I can crawl under the covers and read, and if it's cold and raining outside, it makes it that much more perfect. I know most people prefer nice sunny days, but give me a cold dark thunderstorm and I can't wait to crawl in bed and read all afternoon.

So here are a couple of books I just finished, both by Jennifer McMahon. It was quite the task to find Island of Lost Girls. Of all places, it showed up at Target when I checking their itty bitty book section.
This is her first book called Promise Not To Tell. It's not a very long book, but I loved that I could not guess the ending. I had suspicions of who was the murder but kept questioning myself, and I really enjoy a book I can't completely guess the ending. This book is about a school nurse named Kate. She is called to go back home across the country because her mother has developed Alzhemier's. She grew up in a hippie commune with her mom, and as a child her best friend, Del, was murdered and it was never solved. She left Vermont as soon as she could after that. The day she comes back to town, another little girl is murdered exactly like Del. So suspicions are all around including about Kate, and it seems her mother is somehow channeling Del in her Alzheimer state to help Kate find the killer. It's a very good story. I devoured it. I really liked how chapters would flip flop, one in the present and one in the past when Kate and Del were children.

This book is Jennifer McMahon's second book called Island of Lost Girls. McMahon does the same flip flopping of chapters with one in the past and one in the present. This book is about a girl who just graduated college and she witnesses the abduction of a little girl at a gas station by a giant white rabbit. It is a small town so people are pissed she didn't do anything when she witnessed the kidnapping. So her guilt forces her to volunteer with the efforts to find the girl. Soon she and another volunteer begin their own investigation into the abduction because she wants to prove the police wrong because they are suspecting her childhood friend, Peter. Soon she starts to believe it is him too, and this leads her back into her past because she remembers a white rabbit from her past too and she and her friends have some odd things happen. She remembers Peter and his sister Lizze, her best friend -- their dad just disappears one day back when they are kids, then Lizzie also disappears a few years later on the way to school one day. And with this abduction, she starts to examine her childhood with these friends. The ending is a big surprise. I was trying to figure it out in my head, but the story takes a complete twist and the kidnapper is not who you think they are. The way McMahon wraps everything up at the end is very good because secrets coming spilling out of her childhood. This one was a short read as well, but I couldn't put it down. I read it in 2 afternoons.

I love period books, and I absolutely love reading fiction on Asian cultures from the past, so I happened upon this book (at Target too!) called The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrzavani and thought I might love it as much as the Asian period books, and it's really good. I think it is her first novel. It's a period novel about a Muslim girl's life from 17th century Persia. I just started it yesterday and had to peel myself away. It is getting very interesting. Her father dies and she and her mother are so poor they ask their only relative, her father's rich distant half-brother to live with him, so they move to this huge city from their small village, and life is so different. They become servants to his half-brother's family. I am only 100 pages into the book and it's pretty thick, but from other reviews, I have read she decideds to free herself and her mother from this family and I can't wait to get back to it tonight to see how this plays out.