THE GRIFTERS (Jim Thompson) - April 29/20

I feel like this should've been better than it was. There's some interesting stuff here and the three main characters are interesting, but there's virtually no forward momentum to the narrative. There's a lot of description of the protagonists' internal thoughts, but plotwise there's little to hold the reader's interest. The ending was impressively grim, I guess. **1/2 out of ****

THE NEW ME (Halle Butler) - April 17/20

Chose this one on a whim from the Best Bets section and I really enjoyed it. Butler delivers a fairly vivid portrait of a twentysomething temp worker who just can't get her life together, but it's really not as cheesy as that description makes it sound. It's often quite a bit darker than I expected, and I was almost convinced that the book was going to end with the main character just completely snapping. (Her grip on sanity seems to grow more and more tenuous as the book progresses.) I'm excited to read more of Butler's stuff. ***1/2 out of ****

THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE (Adam Kennedy) - April 2/20

I basically enjoyed this one, though it's occasionally a little too descriptive for its own good. But there are definitely some exciting moments and the main character is quite vividly sketched out (and I certainly couldn't help but picture Gene Hackman while reading). *** out of ****