THE SILENT WIFE (A.S.A. Harrison) - February 15/14

I definitely enjoyed this book, although I did think that Harrison occasionally bogs the narrative down with overly descriptive passages, including long, drawn-out stretches devoted to the main character's psychotherapy. But the characters are extremely well defined and there is an underlying current of suspense here, though I find it odd that the book divulges his murder right on the back cover even though it doesn't happen until more than 200 pages in! I also thought it was interesting that Jodi had remembered being molested by her older brother, but I felt it was a little weird that there wasn't a confrontation towards the end. *** out of ****

THE DEVIL'S HEART (Carmen Carter) - February 10/14

Yikes, what an ordeal. Easily the worst of the Trek books, The Devil's Heart takes an absolutely boring story and makes it so much worse by including flashbacks and side stories into the lives of characters I couldn't possibly care less about. There are stretches here that feel as though they've emerged directly from a generic fantasy novel and I found myself skipping over whole chunks of several chapters as a result. Even the stuff on the Enterprise doesn't work; Carmen doesn't seem to have an understanding of the characters, with, for example, Worf painted as a rigid and downright rude jerk. It's just weird and off-putting from start to finish. Ugh. (The sole scene that isn't terrible involves an imaginary Borg attack, but that's something like two pages out of 300+.) * out of ****

SHANGHAI GIRLS (Lisa See) - February 2/14

The best comparison I can come up with for this book is if someone took a 90 minute movie and somehow stretched it out to 12 punishing hours. There's definitely some interesting stuff here and the characters are quite well defined, but the book just goes on and on to an extent that's ultimately somewhat interminable. It got to the point where it would take me a hell of a lot of motivation to read even 10 pages at a time. It probably doesn't help that the story is just unrelentingly grim; Pearl is gang-raped, her husband commits suicide, she and her sister are locked up for months on end, her daughter discovers that May is her real mother, etc, etc. It's a little comical just how badly things go for Pearl. Supposedly things improve in the sequel but it seems highly unlikely that I'll ever read it. ** out of ****