GREEN TO GO BY JOHN H CUNNINGHAM

This is the second in the Buck Reilly series by John H Cunningham. It is an e-book so you can only get it on your computer or e-reader.     Buck is a seriously down on his luck ex-corporate type, current treasure hunter living in Key West, Florida.  Trouble seems to follow him around.  In this book a friend is kidnapped and Buck is commissioned to find him. 

This is an adventure/mystery story with lots of twists and turns.  The story takes place in Florida and Cuba and has Buck again facing some seriously bad guys.  I started reading it in a walk-in-clinic where I was waiting to get a prescription; it was a two hour wait and the time flew by as I got absorbed in the story and the chase.

Buck is a cliché name for a character who is not at all a cliché.  Sure he’s flawed but he has a definite sense of right and wrong; an ability to make good friends and has a strong sense of responsibility.   In my last review (Red Right Return)  I complained about the language and it wasn’t an issue in this book.  Buck is a likeable character. The story is told in the first person so we have the benefit of his thoughts and feelings.  This isn’t just an adventure story; it’s a story about the ability to move on with life even when bad things happen to you; it’s evolving into a love story and above all it’s a good story. 

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

This was another book club pick that I normally wouldn’t have read on my own.  But from the first chapter I was hooked.

Towner Whitney fled her childhood home of Salem, Ma in order to escape her crazy family and after the death of her twin sister.  But she’s been drawn back by the disappearance of her Great-Aunt Eva.  In the opening paragraph Towner admits that she herself is crazy and lies all the time.   Her mother Mae is a recluse, living on an island and rescuing abused women and supporting them by teaching them how to make lace and selling it.  Both her mother and her aunts are lace readers; women who can see the future in the patterns of the lace they make.

This is a complicated story that flits between fantasy and reality; past and present.  Told mostly from Towner’s point of view the lines are always blurred as she tries to piece together the reason why her Aunt has disappeared and how that will affect the rest of her life.  This is a mystery on many levels; the disappearance of Eva; the mystery of what happened to Towner and her twin sister; who really is Cal Boynton, the resident cult leader.  Naturally since the setting is Salem, there are witches who are on a collision course with the Cal Boynton and his particular brand of religion. 

This book was hard to put down.    It’s fast paced with twists and turns that I wasn’t expecting.  The ending is particularly shocking but does help to make the rest of the story make sense. 

This is Barry’s first novel and I’m looking forward to reading her second one The Map of True Places. I highly recommend this book.