THE INNOCENT MAN (John Grisham) - August 27/20

 I feel like I've had this book forever, but it's actually not bad. I wasn't super into the courtroom stuff - too many names to keep track of - but I definitely got into it during the prison portion (which is the entire second half of the book). Too long but mostly rewarding, ultimately. *** out of ****

THE WHISPER MAN (Alex North) - August 20/20

This impressive thriller is a little too long, but I was generally engrossed from start to finish and the characters (and mystery) were all quite compelling. *** out of ****

LEGENDS OF THE FALL (Jim Harrison) - August 14/20

 Oddly enough, I liked Legends of the Fall the least out of these three short stories (which I read months apart). Harrison's poetic and insanely descriptive writing style - this dude does not like dialogue - was an interesting novelty at first but eventually grew exhausting. ** out of ****

I'LL BE GONE IN THE DARK (Michelle McNamara) - August 12/20

 I think I have to accept that the true-crime genre just isn't for me. I enjoyed certain portions of this book, mostly when McNamara told personal stories about herself and some victims, but mostly I was bored by the emphasis on the minutiae of her investigation into the Golden State Killer. I would've been perfectly happy reading a 10 page version of this story. But it's well written and some stretches were admittedly pretty engrossing. **1/2 out of ****

THE SUNLIT NIGHT (Rebecca Dinerstein) - August 3/20

I'll be honest, I was seriously skimming the second half of this book. But that's only because the first half is pretty much unreadable; the book is unreasonably quirky, devoid of fleetingly interesting characters, and overwritten to an absurd degree. Dinerstein seems incapable of stringing together enough words to form even one compelling sentence. I really, really hated this. no stars out of ****