BEFORE THE FALL (Noah Hawley) - July 31/16

This is better than Hawley's last book but I still found this to be more frustrating than entertaining. The story is compelling and the structure of the novel is interesting, but Hawley's incredibly pompous writing style grates and the book is much, much too long. I get the feeling that Hawley is one of those people who thinks he's an amazing, generation-defining writer, as his prose comes off as someone who's showing off rather than someone interested in telling a consistently captivating story. The final stretch, in which it's revealed that the plane was crashed by a spurned pilot, is fairly engrossing, at least. **1/2 out of ****

SEE ME (Nicholas Sparks) - July 22/16

Oh Sparksy, what are you doing?? This is a typically engaging Sparks read that's rife with his usual shtick but man oh man is this thing long. It feels about five times longer than it has any right to be, and Sparks pads out the novel by emphasizing the tedious investigation into Maria's stalker. Sparks has clearly entered the I'm-too-big-for-a-goddamn-editor phase of his career and it's not good. **1/2 out of ****

NIGHT (Elie Wiesel) - July 13/16

Big ol' meh to this one. It's a very familiar story that at least has the benefit of being true, but I think this must be a pretty bad translation because the writing is not very impressive, frankly. (It's just so choppy.) The book's only 100 pages but it felt much longer, mostly because there weren't really any interesting characters. **1/2 out of ****

AFTER HER (Joyce Maynard) - July 4/16

This is an incredibly long read but I nevertheless enjoyed it. The coming-of-age aspects work pretty well and so does the serial killer subplot. The ending was a little too neat and tidy (why was her newfound sister following her in the first place?) but I'm glad I read this. *** out of ****