So, a crop of YA fiction and biographies. Yay!
"I Hunt Killers" by Barry Lyga was a recommendation from a coworker. I went after work last Saturday to B&N, bought it, and spent all morning Sunday unable to put it down. It was terrific, and I can't believe it's classified as YA. It was definitely gross and creepy! Jazz's father is a notorious serial killer named Billy Dent. Billy's in prison, and the entire town avoids Jazz, except for his friend Howie and his girlfriend Connie. The small town of Lobo's Nod is once again rocked by a series of murders, and everyone is looking at Jazz. It doesn't take him long to discover that the new killer is copying his dear old dad. It was great: suspenseful and taunt and had a great, satisfying ending.
I'm not a big fan of Valerie Harper or anything, but I wanted to read her memoir "I, Rhoda", mostly to see what she had to say about the whole Hogan's Family debacle. Not much, as it turns out. The rest of her story is interesting, and probably would have been more so if I'd watched the Mary Tyler Moore Show or Rhoda.
"Unsinkable" by Debbie Reynolds was really heartbreaking. This poor lady has been through so much, and yet she keeps on going. Her first husband left her for Elizabeth Taylor, her second husband gambled through his fortune and then hers, leaving her millions in debt she had to work her butt off to pay for, and then her third husband turned out to be a lying cheat would stole even more of her money. After spending nearly 50 years collecting Hollywood memorabilia like Marilyn Monroe's subway dress from "The Seven Year Itch" and trying to find someone to sponsor a museum and failing, Debbie was finally forced to sell most of her treasures off in order to pay her debts. She was incredibly upbeat and optimistic about the whole thing, which is incredible.
I'm ambivalent about "Stranger Here" by Jen Larsen. At over 300 pounds, she decides to have weight loss surgery, hoping it will magically change her destructive eating habits. Of course it doesn't, and she makes herself sick time and time again by eating more than her new smaller stomach can handle, or eating all the wrong things. But she does lose the weight, and realizes that while it's easier to be skinny than to be fat, being skinny doesn't automatically make you happy like she assumed it would.
And the sequel to "I Hunt Killers", "Game" by Barry Lyga was incredible. The NYPD asks Jazz to come lend his unique insight into their manhunt for a killer they've named Hat Dog, because he either carves a hat or a dog into his victims. Billy is still on the loose, so Jazz is keeping an eye out for him as well. It turns out there are actually two killers, Hat and Dog, playing a sick, twisted game of Monopoly orchestrated by none other than Billy Dent himself, who is rolling the dice and calling the shots. The ending is a huge cliffhanger, so I hope to god Barry Lyga is busy putting the finishing touches on the next book and getting ready to publish it. Like, yesterday. Please hurry! :)
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