July Reviews: High Five and Memory Keepers Daughter

High Five by Janet Evanovich.
Fifth in the Stephanie Plum series. I wonder if I'm ever going to get tired of these? Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I probably wouldn't give it an A, simply because a book needs to do more than entertain to really hit the "A" level in my personal, completely subjective grading system. However, I love that Stephanie's world has moved forward from the 1980's to the 1990's, seemingly without taking much time at all.

The Memory-Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards.

I listened to this as an unabridged audiobook. It is a very flowery book, with tons of over-description decorating it everywhere. Normally, I would find the style irritating. In audio format, however, it's not quite as bad. I listened to it while driving and, more often, while knitting. It's definitely a good "while knitting" book. Your eyes are already engaged in something treat-ful, and then your ears start passing all this flowery imagery to your brain, so it basically gives you an overdescription high.

As for the content of the book, I sort of liked it. I think I was looking for something a little different than these very sad lives orbiting each other, each person unaware of the pain the others are in. I never found any emotional honesty between the main characters (the people who actually had agency to change). For that reason, I would label this as a family tragedy.

I give this one a B. It's good, but has some flaws that make it less than excellent.