Two Bear Mambo; You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

Rolling right along with Hap and Leonard. "Two Bear Mambo" was a tough read, it was really dark and gritty. Leonard burns down the crack house next door for the third time, and he and Hap get hauled in to jail, even though Hap was an innocent bystander. Detective Hansen offers Hap a deal: he'll let Leonard go, if Hap will travel to Grovetown to see if he can find Florida, Hap's ex-girlfriend and Hansen's ex-fiance. They had a falling out and Florida went to Grovetown to investigate the hanging death of a young man in police custody. Grovetown is known for being particularly racist, the Klan is active, and black people are not welcome, so Hansen is worried, since he hasn't heard from Florida in awhile. Hap agrees to go and takes Leonard with him, which was probably not the brightest move. They get to Grovetown and discover it's even worse than Hansen and Charlie warned them. They find a pretty cold trail as to Florida's whereabouts, and end up getting beat within an inch of their lives when they have the audacity to show up in a cafe together in town. Yikes, this place sounds horrible. They manage to make it home, only to decide to come back when Hap finally figures out what happened to Florida, and they almost end up dying again in a huge flood. Guys. Stop pressing your luck, you aren't cats.

I checked this book out ages ago, and kept renewing it, and I finally decided to just read it. Right away I could tell I wouldn't like it, but I kept going, even though I should have just thrown in the towel. The premise sounded good: twins Adina and Tovah are each overachievers in their own way: Tovah is determined to get into Johns Hopkins and be a surgeon, Adina is a viola prodigy. Neither girl is very likable, honestly, they're both pretty obnoxious, even for teenagers. Their mother was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease four years earlier, and now that the girls are 18 they are getting tested to see if they're at risk for developing it, too. One of the girls is positive and one is negative. The positive one feels cheated and is on a path of self-destruction while the negative twin feels guilty. Even so, I found it hard to muster up any sympathy for these two brats, I honestly felt the worst for their dad.