Book Review: The Silent Patient: Alex Michaelides

This book needs to be gripped with two hands - it is quite the ride!

Prologue: Alicia Berenson's Diary - July 14th 
Here we learn about Alicia's love for her husband, Gabriel. She talks about enjoying watching him cook, how he is "elegant, balletic, organized". So opposite of Alicia herself. She also shares how she is struggling, how she feels that she is wading through mud, how Gabriel gave her this journal to help her get her feelings out. And how she plans to use it as a place to write "positive, happy, normal thoughts."

And then the first chapter begins with, "Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband."
Boom - and we are off into this psychological thriller.

This book is so very much about human nature with some therapy tossed in, a whole lot of  mystery, and plot twists and turns that will surprise you.  Pick this book up if the inner workings of the human mind interests you.

I accessed this book through my SORA account which is linked to Nashua Public Library.

 

Book Review: Waiting for Fitz by Spencer Hyde

Addie gets up early each school day to get ready for school. Her morning rituals, caused by her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, can take three or more hours and often make her late for school. She has pushed her friends away because it is easier to stay within the walls of her home where her tics don't stand out. OCD impacts her life so much that she finds that it is time to get treatment in a psychiatric unit in a hospital.

In the hospital she meets other patients with various struggles including Fitz who at 17 looks like an all-star athlete and has: a quick wit, a caring nature, an amazing sense of humor - oh, and schizophrenia. Fitz feels a need to bust out of the unit and make his way to San Juan Island and he needs help. Together the teens on the unit create a plan so that Fitz can escape and Addie is going with him.

The very coolest thing about this book is that each character is a person with all the struggles, attributes, and challenges that we all face and their mental illness is just another challenge. 

If you are interested in mental health - this would be a really fun read. If you like literature, problem solving, persistence, humor, birds, or love stories - this is a good read. There is a lot to like here.

We have a copy in our library or you can check out the online catalog at the Nashua Public Library for more information. 

 

Book Review: The Hot Zone / Richard Preston

Read a book about a "hot" virus during a pandemic? Are you crazy?

This book, which was published in 1999, tells the story of a bunch of people who were studying a viral outbreak in a bunch of monkeys in a quarantine facility.  Animals who come from outside our country are routinely quarantined and this was the case for these monkeys. The monkeys started getting sick - listless, not eating, then dying. When investigating their deaths, it was noted that the virus wasn't round like many of our viruses but it looked like worms and this sounded the alarm. Worm-like viruses are what cause Ebola and Marburg - viruses that are REALLY terrifying - look them up. 

The Hot Zone actually begins before that outbreak - it opens with the people who wrangled with this virus and their back stories - specifically how they got involved in investigating HOT viruses. It lays the groundwork so the reader can understand the processes that the players went through, both scientifically and mentally. This is rich reading and offers additional understanding of how scientists wrangle with new viruses like COVID19.

What I took away from this book?

• We don't know about novel viruses until they can be studied
• Any crisis begins with chaos
• We need to be prepared for the future
• We need to be patient with each other because we cannot see what others are facing

Read this story - there is a good ending (and another book released in 2019 - Crisis in the Red Zone which is available in print through the Nashua Public Library and available in both ebook and audio book formats through the state library - have you investigated SORA and connected it to the Nashua Public Library? I totally put this on my To Read list) Read this book - it will make you think.

One of my favorite quotes concerns the doctors that went to Zaire learn about Ebola during the outbreak in 1976 (Interesting as in why didn't I think of that - if you drive by my house and find tree branches across my driveway, you will know):

"Occasionally they came to villages, and at  each village they encountered a roadblock of fallen trees. Having had centuries of experience with the smallpox virus, the village elders had instituted their own methods for controlling the virus, according to their received wisdom, which was to cut their villages off from the world, to protect their people from a raging plague. It was reverse quarantine, an ancient practice in Africa, where a village bars itself from strangers during a time of disease, and drives away outsiders who appear."

Here is a community practice coming from years of remembered history. It leaves you thinking, right? And sounds familiar guidance in a time of pandemic.

 

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

 

This was just the book I needed to get me back into reading. While reading is usually my escape, I think the pandemic was just really messing with my mojo the past few months. But, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan wrote a funny and hopeful love story that reeled me back in.

Just before Christmas, holiday hater Dash finds a red notebook on a shelf at his favorite bookstore. Opening it up, he finds a challenge  and decides to play along. Lily, a lover of all things holiday, is the one who left the red notebook. What follows is a series of dares in that notebook that send Lily and Dash all over NYC. The dares get bolder as they reveal more of themselves to each other while keeping their identities secret. But should they meet up in person? What if the person doesn't live up to expectations? 

Snarly Dash and quirky Lily seem like opposites and it's not "love at first read" for them. However they find each other - and the idea of this scavenger hunt - intriguing. Both are surrounded by a great cast of supporting characters that fill this story with life, love, laughter and hope. If you like books that make you feel warm and fuzzy, grab your comfiest blanket, a cup of cocoa and check this one out.

The book is available for curbside pickup from South and the book, ebook and audiobook are available through the Nashua Public Library. (Yes, there is a Netflix series based on this book. Already watched that? Check out the other two books in the Dash & Lily series: The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily and Mind the Gap, Dash & Lily)