Just Jennifer

The Burning Air by Erin Kelly (Pamela Dorman Books, February 2013)

The MacBrides have gathered in their English countryside retreat, a converted barn, for the first time since matriarch, Lydia’s death.  Rowan was the headmaster at the prestigious school, allowing his three children to attend tuition free, Lydia a magistrate, the family seemingly leading a charmed life, but there is a stranger who has always been in their midst, convinced that the family is responsible for a life wasted, and more sinisterly, holds Lydia responsible for a death.  Plotting and planning for many years, the time has come for vengeance to be wrought on the unsuspecting family.  Told effectively through flashbacks, the identity of the stranger is slowly revealed, the plot slowly unfolds as the suspense builds until the final scene that not only threatens the bonds of a family, but the life of the family’s youngest member, baby Edie.  Fast paced with a brooding atmosphere, The Burning Air is a chilling story of festering vengeance and the kind of hatred that ruins lives. 

Just Jennifer

Crime of Privilege by Walter Walker (Ballantine, May 2013)

A young woman is raped in Palm Beach after an evening of college students drinking and partying.  A young woman is killed on a golf course in Cape Cod and no one is asking too many questions.  Except George Beckett, a young attorney working for the Cape Code district attorney’s office.  Beckett feels his life since he graduated college is more than one of patronage, he often feels he is a puppet, his movements and decisions controlled by someone else.  From a modest family, George became entangled with the rich and privileged in college, not realizing that with the good life, comes consequences, but he is quickly learning he does not like to be beholden or controlled by anyone and starts searching for answers, traveling from the Cape to Idaho to Hawaii to Costa Rica to France and back to New York, tracking down people who should have answers but are now living with the consequences of their silence.  With little concern for his safety, reputation or future, George knows the only way he can live with himself is to find and reveal the truths that have escaped him, yet haunted him for most of his adult life. 

Just Jennifer

Indiscretion by Charles Dubow (Harper, February 2013)

“Every story has a narrator.  Someone who writes it down after it’s all over.  Why am I the narrator of this story? I am because it is the story of my life---and of the people I love most….” So begins the story of Harry and Madeleine Winslow, talented, charismatic couple, he a National Book Award winner, she a gracious, beautiful woman of exceptional breeding.  Whether they are hosting a formal dinner in their Manhattan brownstone or a weekend at their East Hampton cottage, the pair makes their guests feel comfortable and like part of the family.  In their early forties, Harry and Maddy are still admired by their peers but both find themselves attractive to ingénue Claire who easily fits into their lives and becomes a part of their circle.  Claire is delighted to be welcomed so warmly by such charming, real people, but soon their friendship isn’t enough and an odyssey begins that will take the trio in various configurations overseas to Rome, to France  and back to New York where they all learn the consequences of overreaching and wanting more than is yours to have.  Walter, a lifelong friend of Maddy narrates the action, proving to be an unreliable narrator when readers realize he too is in love with Maddy but is too reserved to have ever told her, much as Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway.  Debut novelist Dubow writes with the surety and sensuality of a veteran novelist spinning a story that will keep pages turning, exploring relationships, marriages, friends and lovers and all the variants.  Subtle in places, overt in others, this is a novel with writing to be savored even as the plot has you racing to an inevitable ending you hope never to reach. 

Just Jennifer

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight (Harper, April 2013)

Single mother and junior partner in a high-powered Manhattan law firm Kate knows she doesn’t spend as much time with her teenage daughter Amelia each day as she would like to.  She and Amelia have carved out time each week to spend time together and both seem satisfied with their relationship and smart, bookish Amelia has never given Kate a moment’s trouble.  When Kate is called to Amelia’s prestigious Brooklyn school to take Amelia, who has just been suspended for cheating, home, Kate is in shock.  She cannot imagine why Amelia would feel the need to cheat and is shocked and devastated when she arrives at the school to learn that Amelia has jumped from the school roof and is dead.  The police quickly rule Amelia’s death a suicide, something Kate finds hard to believe but cannot argue with until she receives an anonymous text message that reads “She didn’t jump”.  Kate immediately throws herself into learning everything she can about what Amelia did in the last weeks of her life using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Amelia’s texts and e-mails and realizes she didn’t know her daughter as well as she thought she did.  With the help of a sympathetic cop who lets Kate assist in the investigation, a little more than is believable, Kate unravels the last weeks of Amelia’s life and learns that her daughter was not as adjusted as she believed and may have been the victim of bullying.  Kate also learns how easy it is to manipulate people using cyberspace and becomes disillusioned as she realizes how little attention she was paying and wonders if this tragedy could have been avoided.  A gripping novel, there are certain parts of this novel, which is very busy at times, that are a little unbelievable, but the pace keeps the plot moving and allowing for these uneven parts to be overlooked.  As Kate reaches the end of her search, there are many more things at play than she expected, and perhaps are necessary, but Kate and Amelia are such real, characters, Amelia very likable, that hearts will break for their loss and for what could have been.