Diane Chamberlain's latest, "The Good Father", was pretty good until about 3/4 of the way through, and then it got pretty ridiculous. But I was really enjoying it up until then, and wondering how she was going to resolve things. Not the way I would have, but that's okay. Travis is a young dad to Bella, who is his whole life. When their modest home burns down, killing his mom, Travis is left with no money, no home, no job, and no one to watch Bella while he looks for work. Things go downhill for him pretty quickly, and he ends up deciding to take someone up on a shady offer to do something illegal. He leaves Bella with Erin, a lady he met at a coffee shop who is going through some grieving of her own: her own young daughter died recently. As if all this isn't enough, Bella's biological mother Robin is discovering she regrets agreeing to give up her child for adoption and misses her. When Travis doesn't return when he promised Erin he would, she decides to take Bella and try to find Robin. Hmm...okay. That's when the book fell apart for me. But still, it wasn't bad, just not her best.
I've only read one other John Irving book, "Prayer for Owen Meany", and while I liked it, I thought he kind of beat us over the head with his political agenda. In his latest, "In One Person", he basically does the exact same thing and I was irritated by it. I did like the characters well enough, but I thought the whole storyline was kind of exaggerated. The book is about the main character, Bill, who is raised by his single mom, his domineering grandmother, and his cross dressing grandfather. Bill determines fairly early on in life that he is attracted to both men and women, and while he realizes liking men is wrong he feels powerless to stop it. The majority of the book takes place in Vermont in the 1950s and 60s, at an all male prep school. Bill's first sexual encounter is with a transsexual, and he ends up meeting a lot of other people who are bi or gay in some way. This stretched believability for me just a smidge. It reminded me of a Perry Mason book I read where there were like, 25 different people in this one guy's pool during the course of night. It was just like what? That's not possible. I think Irving is just one of those authors I'm not cut out for.
"Zombie Blondes" by Brian James was an interesting YA take on the zombie phenomenon. Hannah and her dad move a lot, ever since her dad lost his job as a cop he's had a hard time finding decent work and they're always skipping out on bill collectors. They end up in Maplecrest, and it doesn't take Hannah long to discover who the popular kids in school are: the picture perfect blonde clones that make up the cheerleading squad. One of the boys she meets, Lukas, warns her about the girls on the squad. He says they're all zombies who recruit normal girls and change them. Hannah thinks he is exaggerating, and is excited when one of the girls, Meredith, takes a liking to her and suggests she try out for the squad. Hannah makes it and the process of changing her begins: she loses weight from the nonstop practices, they bleach her hair blonde, etc. She then discovers Lukas was right--they really are dead and are using the blood from people they've killed off to keep themselves from rotting. It had an open ending leaving way for a sequel, if he wants, but either way it was definitely different and I liked it.
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