Permanent Objects

A collection of miscellany

Mystery & Thriller

52 IN 52, Book #16: Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

I am glad I read the author’s notes on this one because I was thinking “damn, this is like Gossip Girl was even more racist and the stakes were way higher,” and then at the end I read how the author was inspired to write it by watching Gossip Girl and observing how few people there were on that show who looked like her. So in that respect I think the idea definitely got across! The tension-building in this story is so excellent to the point that by the end you really don’t know who the characters can trust, and there were a couple of scenes that made me feel like, for-real genuinely palpable fear for the characters. Beautifully executed.

Rating: ★★★★☆ – The book was great and I would recommend it to anyone who likes this subject or genre, and I am likely to re-read it at least once.

52 IN 52, Book #6: Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

After her son goes missing in the middle of the day at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, Marin’s life falls apart. The FBI search doesn’t take long to go cold, and Marin turns into a shadow of herself–unable to dedicate time to her business, herself, or anything other than her utter depression over the loss of her child. She and her husband hardly speak anymore, he’s spending longer and longer times away from her and their home, and when Marin hires a private investigator to pick up where the FBI left off, she finds out why–Derek is having an affair.

Oddly, this seems to be the spark Marin needs to bring herself back to life. She might not be able to find her son, but at least she can stop herself losing her husband, and his affair partner is a problem that she can take it upon herself to fix… permanently.

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52 IN 52, Book #4: The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Daunis is a child of two very different worlds, descended from both the historically French settlers of her Michigan town and the native Ojibwe people who live on a reservation nearby–and yet, she doesn’t quite fit into either place. After putting her dreams of university on hold to care for her mother following a family tragedy, Daunis doesn’t have too much going for her, except for Jamie–a new recruit on her brother’s hockey team, who’s kind and charming and very similar to Daunis in his relationship to his own Native family.

Soon thereafter, though, tragedy strikes Daunis’ community yet again, thrusting her into the heart of a criminal investigation that takes her undercover to investigate the very tribe that she grew up with. But the more death, betrayal, and deception she witnesses, the more it calls into question how far Daunis is willing to go to protect her community, and in fact who her community needs protection from.

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52 IN 52, Book #3: The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell

Having just moved to a new house backed up to a shared garden square in a neighborhood of London that seems to be all about family and community, newly single(?) mom Claire is hoping for a new start. She’s estranged from her husband, doesn’t know any of the neighbors, and is stressed about how to make ends meet when the insurance money runs out–but at least her daughters have new friends nearby, and the garden into which their back gate opens seems like an oasis for kids and adults alike.

But when preteen Pip finds her older sister Grace unconscious and bloodied in the corner of the shared rose garden one midsummer night’s evening, forcing Claire to reckon with how safe her girls really are and how well she actually knows the people around her.

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