Survive the Night

 

I put off reading Sager's latest because I didn't love "Home Before Dark", and a friend at work told me this one wasn't great, either. I really liked it, though. 

Charlie is still in a fog after her best friend and roommate, Maddy, was murdered a few months earlier. Charlie's parents died in a car crash four years ago and ever since Charlie's had hallucinations. She slips into what she refers to as "movies" in her mind and she can't tell what's real and what's fake. She saw Maddy talking to the man who most likely killed her but she doesn't know if the man she saw was real or made up. She's made the painful decision to leave college and her boyfriend, Robbie, and go back home to Ohio. The only problem is she needs a ride since she hasn't driven since her parents died. 

She meets Josh at the rideshare board. He's headed to Ohio too and offers to take her. Robbie isn't thrilled with her catching a ride with a complete stranger, but Charlie insists she'll be careful and call him from the road. They even come up with a code system if she's in trouble (the book takes place in 1991, so before cell phones were a thing). 

Their ride starts off uneventfully but quickly turns weird. Josh is clearly not who he claimed to be but Charlie isn't sure if she can trust what her mind is telling her. It was full of twists and turns and of course red herrings. I was trying really hard to see if I could figure out the ending before I got there but I had no clue. 

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures

 

I saw a short documentary on Netflix about Louis Le Prince a few months ago, and this book just came out, so that was good timing!

Le Prince devoted most of his adult life to inventing a camera that could capture motion and project it. He had high hopes for his invention, telling his children it would change the world. He imagined people from all over being able to see what other countries and exotic animals looked like. He also thought it would be great to capture loved ones before they died. Le Prince did everything right as far as filing patents, but his lawyers changed something on one of them without letting him know because the patent office wouldn't approve it. 

Le Prince's oldest son, Adolphe, was in Europe helping his father with his camera when they shot what is considered the oldest motion picture in existence in October of 1888: Adolphe, Le Prince's in-laws, and a family friend moving around a garden. The timing was fortuitous: Le Prince's mother in law would pass away just a few weeks later, thereby firmly cementing the date of the film. 

Adolphe went back to New York to his mother and siblings. Le Prince continued to refine his machine. In September of 1890 he went to Dijon to visit his brother Albert. He supposedly got on a train to Paris, but he never arrived. It took weeks before anyone realized Le Prince was missing, and by that time the trail had grown cold. His body was never found. 

Here's where it gets even worse: because he wasn't officially dead and couldn't be declared dead until he'd been missing for 7 years, his family could do nothing to enforce his patents since they were in his name only. His family watched by in horror as Thomas Edison took all the credit for "inventing" motion pictures and made a fortune off of it. There was nothing they could do: even once they had Le Prince declared dead, Edison was too rich and too powerful. Adolphe ended up committing suicide because he felt like he had failed his father. 

His family believed Edison had something to do with Le Prince's mysterious disappearance, but Fischer actually had a really plausible theory. I don't want to spoil it, but it makes more sense that thinking Edison did away with his rival. That wasn't really Edison's modus operandi--he sued rivals and bankrupted them or bought them out. Edison did not come across as a very nice man in this book, and I'm sure he probably wasn't, but I'm also pretty sure he didn't have anyone killed. What happened to the Le Prince family was heartbreaking. I'm glad he's finally getting the recognition he deserved as the real inventor of the motion picture camera. 

Hometown Victory

 

I'm a sucker for these types of feel good high school football stories. It was a quick read and I enjoyed it. 

Keanon Lowe grew up in Portland, Oregon. His mom raised him and his siblings pretty much on her own. His dad was an alcoholic and popped in and out of his life. His mom worked her butt off to send Keanon to a private school so he could play football. He ended up getting a scholarship and played for the Ducks. I realized that I probably saw him play UCLA at some point, since I had tickets and went to the home games for years (I always hated the Ducks, since they usually walloped the snot out of my Bruins). After college he went on to coach in the NFL and was with the 49ers when his best friend died of a drug overdose after taking too many painkillers following a football injury. Lowe returned home to Oregon to figure out what to do next and ended up taking a job as the head coach of a dismal high school football team, the Parkrose Broncos. The school never really had a decent football team and no one expected much of Coach Lowe and his players, but he managed to turn the team around and teach the kids at his school the importance of hard work and respect for the game as well as each other. In May of 2019 he was working as a security guard during the offseason at the school and disarmed a student with a gun. He saw the kid was hurting and just held him, telling him he cared about him. I'm glad it worked out for him and hopefully the student was able to get the help he needs. 

Victoria the Queen

 

While I know quite a bit about certain time periods in history, I really didn't know much about Queen Victoria, other than the fact that her husband died fairly young and she seemed to live in mourning for the rest of her life. 

Victoria became queen when her father and uncles all died, leaving her next in line. She was just 18 years old. She had a strong personality, though, and soon proved she was up for the difficult task. She married her cousin Albert and they went on to have 9 children. Albert died twenty years after they married in 1861, and Victoria went on to live until 1901. She seemed to underestimate herself, thinking she wasn't as capable or ruling as Albert had been, but she seemed to have done a good job. It was a really interesting account of her life and reign. 

The Children on the Hill

 

This book started out decent enough and then about 2/3 of the way through there was a terrific, terrifying twist I didn't see coming and I got super excited for the ending, which fell completely flat.

I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say too much about that aspect of it. Vi and Eric live in Vermont with their grandmother, Helen Hildreth, who runs a mental hospital known as "The Inn". Vi and Eric's parents were killed in a car crash. They lead an interesting but solitary life. Gran homeschools them and they're not allowed to play with the other kids in town. Gran thinks they aren't appropriate playmates for her exceptionally bright grandchildren. Vi and Eric have a lot of fun, though. They both have great imaginations and spend time putting together a book on how to kill monsters. Then one day Gran brings home a girl she calls Iris and tells them to treat her like a sister. Iris doesn't talk at first but eventually she comes around and the kids all play together. 

The story switches back and forth between when the kids were young, in the late 1970s, and Lizzy in 2019. Lizzy is a professional blogger and monster hunter. She goes around the country, wherever there's been a reported sighting of some supernatural creature, like Bigfoot, to interview witnesses. But really, she's looking for her long lost sister. She thinks she's been kidnapping girls for the last 20 years. 

I would be shouting from the rooftops about how awesome this book was if the ending had been different. It was okay, but damn, it could have been great. 

Woman, Eating; The Ravaged

 

I think I've read more in the last three days than I have in three months. I was on jury duty so I had a lot of breaks and got through these two books plus almost finished a third and got halfway through a fourth!

I didn't particularly care for "Woman, Eating". I don't know why. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't my thing. Lydia is a vampire, her mother is also a vampire (her father was human, but he died before Lydia was born) and turned Lydia shortly after she was born because she was dying. Lydia is now in her early twenties and appears normal. She can go out in the sun if she wears lots of sunscreen. She just can't eat normal food but she really wants to. A lot of the book talked about the different foods she wished she could try and how she had to eat this disgusting dried pig's blood she found online. She was slowly starving because she couldn't find enough blood to sustain herself. Honestly it just made me really hungry. 

"The Ravaged" by Norman Reedus was more up my alley. Reedus plays Daryl on "The Walking Dead" (played? Is it still on the air? I stopped watching years ago). This book told the stories of three people who were each going through something similar but their lives never intersected. Hunter, who is a mechanic, finds out his dad passed away in a "mysterious" house fire out in California. He and two of his buddies, Nugget and Itch, hop on their motorcycles and head out for a cross country drive, making some friends and enemies along the way. Hunter also uncovers some family secrets. Jack is in South America. He's a successful and wealthy businessman who lost his family: his daughter committed suicide, his wife died, his mother died, and he and his son are estranged because his son didn't live up to Jack's ideals. Jack is trying to figure out what to do with his life. He has some interesting adventures, including being kidnapped twice. And then there's Anne. She has abusive parents and terrible siblings, so she and her best friend, Trot, hop a train and head out of town, looking for a brighter future. They hook up with some other teenagers who ride the rails. It was a fun read, Hunter's story kind of left itself open to a sequel but I'm not sure about Jack and Anne.