People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Perry

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo – and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Perry
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan
Review copy received at SIBA

In the summer of 2000, twenty-one-year-old Lucie Blackman traveled to Tokyo with her best friend to spend several months living and working there. One night, she simply didn’t come home, and her family and friends never saw her again. Months later, her body was found, and the investigation into her disappearance became a murder investigation. Richard Lloyd Perry spent more than ten years covering Lucie’s disappearance and later investigation into her murder. He earned the trust of her family, friends, and even the Japanese authorities, who normally are some of the most tight-lipped investigators in the world. By the end of his time spent on this case, Perry even got to know the man accused of kidnapping and killing Lucie, and determined that this man is one of the most evil people Perry had ever come across.

I very rarely read true crime, but if all true crime were as captivating and compelling as People Who Eat Darkness, I would certainly read it more! Although the book is a chunkster at almost 500 pages, I flew through this thing in no time. I was alternately fascinated, shocked, intrigued, and horrified at the events that took place in Lucie’s life once in Tokyo and at the psychopath that is Joji Obara, the man accused of killing her.

This book reads almost like a novel, in that Perry successfully helps the reader get to know Lucie, building to the point where she moves to Tokyo, and then walking the reader through her life in Tokyo, slowly getting to the point at which she disappears and then details the investigations that follow. Since the reader knows Lucie’s ultimate fate, anticipation slowly builds over the course of the book as Perry gets closer and closer to revealing what actually happened to her.

Perry also gives the reader a very detailed, intimate look inside the Japanese justice system and its many imperfections. In some ways, their system is better than ours in the United States (and I’m sure others around the world), but in other, some essential ways to this particular case, it is much worse. It was so interesting to me to learn about the way their laws, interrogations, and investigations work because the Japanese do things so vastly different from how investigations are conducted in the US. One might expect that Perry’s meticulous attention to detail could bog the reader down with facts and police procedurals, but for me, it was the exact opposite – I was fascinated by these parts of the book and couldn’t stop reading, anxious as I was to keep learning more.

Reading this book was really going out on a limb for me, something very outside my comfort zone, but it was an incredibly compelling book that I highly recommend. This is a must-read if you are into true crime, but also if you like thrillers, mysteries, and horror, because People Who Eat Darkness truly reads like a novel. Highly recommended!

A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White

A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White
Published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Review copy provided by the publicist

Bobby, Amelia, and Alice don’t have very much in common at first glance: Bobby, a gay man from Georgia, has been shunned by his family and so has moved to New York City to start a new life, Amelia is a well-to-do woman from Connecticut whose happy face hides the secrets of her abusive marriage, and Alice is an African-American chef whose recipes founded a famed New York City restaurant. However, they are connected in surprising ways, and as they get to know one another, each of their lives will be forever changed.

My summary above barely skims the surface of what A Place at the Table is about, and it definitely doesn’t do justice to this beautiful novel. Guys, I loved this book! It is such a heartfelt, gorgeous, true novel and I can’t come up with the right words to tell you why. Let me at least try.

The main reason I loved this book so much is that Bobby is one of the best characters I’ve seen in fiction in a while. He is such a genuine person, so desperate to be loved for who he is, and so loving and forgiving of his family even when they cast him aside and refuse to accept his sexuality. I loved reading about his journey to find himself in New York, his adventures in becoming a chef, and his first experience with finding true love. He was such a joy to read about and truly, my emotions as I was reading his story mirrored his. He was happy, I celebrated with him, he grieved, I sobbed with him. It is such a lovely thing for a character in a novel to get this close to the reader, to submerge themselves in the reader’s brain, and this totally happened to me with Bobby. I loved every minute I spent with him.

Another thing that was so wonderful about A Place at the Table is how so much of the book centers around cooking and celebrating with food. I love food, and I love to cook, and foodie books are great because of those two facts. This isn’t exactly a foodie book, but it does have those elements within its pages – drool-worthy descriptions of what the characters are cooking, much of the book take place at a restaurant, and two of the main characters are chefs. The book would have been great without these elements, but having the foodie stuff in the novel took it to that next level for me.

The novel takes place mostly in the ’80′s and a lot of attention is paid to the AIDS crisis of that time. White handled this subject with a careful touch, giving it the respect it deserves and the heaviness that is associated with the vast number of people who died of AIDS in America when it was an unknown, not understood disease, but the overall tone of the novel was not heavy at all. There is also a bit of attention paid to racism, definitely attention paid to abusive relationships, issues with religion – basically, lots of stuff happening here but never does White make it an “issues” novel. Instead, it is about the characters and the ways in which these issues shape their lives – and how they rise above these challenges even when it seems all in the world is against them.

There is SO MUCH I loved about A Place at the Table that I didn’t even touch on here. Honestly, I cannot more highly recommend this novel. It is such a gorgeous piece of fiction that I think everyone can benefit from reading.

Gold by Chris Cleave

Gold by Chris Cleave
Published by Simon & Schuster
Review copy provided by the publisher

Zoe and Kate have been competitors and friends since the age of nineteen when they both made the national training program for track cycling. They’ve been through a lot together, including Kate’s getting married and having a child and Zoe’s Olympic gold medal, among all the regular aspects of life that best friends share over the years. Now, at thirty-two, they are facing their last and most important race of their careers: the 2012 Olympics. With Kate’s daughter sick with leukemia and Zoe’s intense drive and desire to win at any cost, the fact that they are competing against each other for a spot at the Olympics has the potential to sever the bond they’ve shared as best friends all these years.

It’s been quite a while since I read this one so let’s see how well my memory holds up. This is why I need to get better at writing about books right after I finish them! Ah, well …

Anyway, I really liked Gold! I can see why people enjoy Cleave’s novels so much because his writing is excellent and these characters were incredibly vivid and interesting to me. The competition/Olympics aspect of this novel was exciting and kept things pretty fast-paced, but it was the relationships between the characters and the major things they had to overcome that really held my attention.

There was a lot of focus in this novel on Kate’s being torn between her career as an athlete and her life as a mother to a very sick little girl. I think this is a struggle many women can relate to and it’s clear throughout the book that Cleave recognizes there are no easy answers for working moms. Not only would Kate be considered a working mom, but she is passionate about cycling beyond the normal person’s passion for their work. So she’s really conflicted when, at critical moments in her career, she has to make a choice between cycling and her daughter. It’s incredibly difficult to read and I think Cleave did a nice job showing how these decisions are gut-wrenching for the women who divide their time between work and family. One scene in particular illuminated this so heartbreakingly: when Zoe won her first Olympic medal, Kate would have qualified for the Olympics but instead stayed home with her daughter so that her husband, also on the Olympic cycling team, could compete in that same Olympics. The fact that Kate put her own career on the back burner so her husband could have a chance for success mirrors what many women do, in smaller ways, each and every day.

Things are not exactly what they seem between Kate and Zoe, and as the novel progresses, the reader comes to understand exactly how their friendship has developed over the years, and how it’s been tested over and over again, in tiny ways, and in some huge ways too. I liked reading about their friendship because I think it was realistic – to have a best friendship that works perfectly all the time is impossible and Cleave did a nice job showing how people can grow and change over the years and still remain close friends, if work is put into the relationship from both parties.

Well, I remembered more than I thought I would! I did like Gold quite a bit and I absolutely recommend it. There are a lot of great elements to this story and I think it will work for lots of different types of readers. Definitely give it a chance if you like character-driven stories OR plot-driven stories – Gold has it all.

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review copy received at SIBA

Malencia Vale is days away from her high school graduation, and is desperately hoping to be selected for The Testing at graduation day. The Testing accepts only the most intelligent and talented students to compete in a several-weeks long program to determine who among them will be selected to become future leaders of Cia’s society, the United Commonwealth. To her great relief, Cia is chosen for The Testing, and heads off to Tosu City. As her father participated in The Testing years ago, she brings his words of advice with her to what she hopes will be an exciting, although scary, process. What Cia finds is nothing like what she expected, as she embarks on the most dangerous and important journey of her entire life.

I didn’t pay too much attention to this title when it was featured at SIBA, mostly because I hadn’t heard of the author and, let’s face it, there are about a million YA dystopias these days competing for my attention. But I did see Charbonneau on a panel that week, and she was funny and bright and even sang opera for us! I later learned that she’s made a name for herself writing cozy mysteries (not my thing) but I’d heard from other bloggers that her writing is really quite good. So I figured, what the heck, and picked up The Testing just before its release date this week.

And holy shit! This book shocked me. It shocked me with how compelling, how completely unputdownable, how well-written, and how GOOD it was. I fell into the story immediately and felt that I knew Cia incredibly well after just a few chapters. The events that took place during The Testing were shocking, yes, but in just the right way – still almost believable.

This book reminded me a LOT of The Hunger Games, and I think a lot of people will have that reaction to it, which can be a great thing. But it might be seen as a negative, too, so let me tell you that I found the concept of this book to be much more believable than that of Hunger Games. Basically the premise is this: humans caused war and destruction for many years, mostly because the world leaders weren’t strong enough, or smart enough, or creative enough to prevent and/or stop it. So in this new world, the world leaders will be carefully selected and tested in the hopes of avoiding all that war and destruction that plagued the generations of the past. To me, this makes a lot of sense and I can actually see where there is some truth to it.

So, let me give you a quick run-down of why I loved The Testing. Creative concept? Check. Great characters? Check. Fast-paced, incredibly compelling story? Check. PERFECT ending that left me begging for the next book? Check. Basically, this was almost a perfect book to me and one that I won’t stop recommending. I’m super excited for this series and very hopeful that it will continue in its greatness or even (dare I say) get better. I would call this one a must-read.

Love Times Three by Joe, Alina, Vicki and Valerie Darger

Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage by Joe, Alina, Vicki and Valerie Darger
Published by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins
Review copy received at SIBA

From the publisher:

He runs his own business and coaches Little League. She drives a minivan, and she’d be lost without her trusty BlackBerry. They go on date nights. Their kids attend public schools, play sports, and take music lessons. They live in a roomy house in the ‘burbs. They’re about as mainstream as families come.

They’re also polygamists.

Love Times Three, the first-ever memoir of a polygamous family, is a riveting inside look at a world most of us can hardly imagine, revealing the extraordinary workings of the Dargers’ day-to-day life.

In this intimate, inside story, the Dargers explain why they chose this path despite the pressures of keeping their relationships secret and the jealousy and personal challenges that naturally ensue, why they believe polygamy should be an accepted lifestyle, and, ultimately, why they hope that by revealing their way of life in public, laws that criminalize their lifestyle might change.

I’m not afraid to admit that the whole concept of polygamy is fascinating to me. I’d venture to say that I’m like most women in that the idea of sharing my husband with another woman is horrifying and not something I’d even consider. What’s fascinating about it is that I’m appalled by the idea, yet completely aware of the fact that there are women who actually choose this life, actually want to share their husbands with another woman, or in this case, with a couple of other women. And I have to admit, in this book the Dargers made me believe that they believe in it, that they truly believe that this is what God wants for them, and that this is the right choice for each one of them individually and for the four of them as a family.

While Love Times Three isn’t the most well-written book out there, the four members of the Darger family presented a compelling case for why their life is just like ours, except for the fact that they have more people in their household than most families. Once I got into the book, I was almost able to forget that I was reading about a polygamist family and instead felt like I was reading about how each of these couples (Joe with each of his wives) met and fell in love, and created a home, family, and life together. I have to say, the four of them come off as incredibly genuine, real, honest people who are just trying to be accepted for who they are, and for who they believe God has created them to be. I couldn’t help making a comparison in my mind to the concept of gay marriage, which I firmly believe should be legal. So many of the arguments the Dargers make for why they should be allowed to be legally married echoed those of the pro-gay marriage arguments that it woke me up and alerted me to the fact that, hey, these people just want their love recognized under the law just like you or I. I gotta say, I can see their point.

This book was honestly a kind of revelation for me. I am still fascinated by this concept, and cannot even imagine living this life myself, but I have to tell you that Love Times Three opened my eyes a bit. If these four people are all consenting adults in their relationship, what’s the harm in that? I think there’s definitely some questions in my mind as far as raising kids to believe that polygamy is the “right” way to do things, but what’s the difference between that and raising kids to believe any particular religion is “right”? Kids grow up and make their own choices anyway. I don’t know. Bottom line, I’m glad I read this one because it forced me to look inside myself and take apart my own preconceived notions, assumptions, and judgement about the polygamous culture and “lifestyle” (although I hate that word when used towards the LGBT community so I probably shouldn’t use it in this context either, but whatever). Anyway … recommended!

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks, an imprint of HarperCollins
Review copy provided by She Reads

From the publisher:

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adolescence of hard labor and servitude?

As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.

Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they appear. A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past.

Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful tale of upheaval and resilience, second chances, and unexpected friendship.

When I found out the lovely ladies behind She Reads chose Orphan Train for our May read, I was beyond excited. I’d already been eyeing this title – ever since reading The Chaperone the concept of orphan trains has fascinated me, and I was looking forward to reading more about this interesting topic, something I’d never heard of before The Chaperone exposed me to the concept. So it goes without saying that my expectations for Orphan Train might have been a little on the high side.

Happily, this novel lived up to these too-high expectations! Orphan Train is my favorite kind of historical fiction – the kind that is built around a particular time in history, and teaches me something, but mostly is about the characters living inside the piece of history. And these characters were great. I particularly felt a connection with Molly, and truly I would have liked even more of her story to have been told in this novel. She was such a good person, deep down, who just needed an adult in her life to draw out her potential and show her what love looks like. It was such a pleasure to read as her character grew over the course of the novel and began to come into her own, inspired by the love she found in the few people around her who bothered to care.

And Vivian! The awful conditions she was forced to live with as a child astounded me, and how horrific that these adults who were charged to “take care of her” treated her in such vile, inhumane ways. It truly made me want to throw up. Or cry. Probably both. At the end of the book, when a few loose ends have finally been wrapped up for her, I wanted to sneak inside the pages and hug her like I would my own grandmother. What a sweet, but incredibly resilient and strong woman she was.

Christina Baker Kline’s writing is simple but incredibly effective. I found myself racing through the pages, desperate to get to the bottom of Vivian’s story and find out if Molly would, finally, find some peace within herself. I clung to these characters and, while I wanted to know how their stories ended, I didn’t want the book itself to end. I found so much to appreciate and enjoy about this book, I truly don’t feel that I’ve explained it well enough.

Orphan Train is a beautiful historical novel that I honestly could not put down. I loved these characters and if I have any complaints about the book, I would have liked it to be even longer. I could have easily spent another 100 pages curled up with this story, with these women, as I learned about them and from their lives. Once again, She Reads does a great job with choosing their monthly selection – this was an excellent choice. I’m so glad I got the opportunity to read it.

The Memory Thief by Emily Colin

The Memory Thief by Emily Colin
Published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House
Review copy received at SIBA

One devastating night, Maddie Kimble receives the news she’s been dreading ever since she met her husband, Aidan – his adventurous, thrill-seeking ways have finally caught up to him and he was killed in an avalanche while climbing Mount McKinley. Maddie is left alone to care for their young son, Gabe, and the only person who can even begin to understand what she’s feeling is Aidan’s best friend, J.C. – who also happens to have been in love with Maddie for years. Hundreds of miles away, Nicholas Sullivan, upon waking up in a hospital bed, learns he’s just barely survived a motorcycle crash. With no memories of his life accessible to him, he strangely begins taking on new habits and behaviors, as well as dreaming about a woman and young child he’s never met before. As Maddie’s and Nicholas’s worlds collide, their lives will both be changed in dramatic, unexpected ways.

I’ve had this one languishing on my shelves since I received it in September at SIBA, so the fact that Emily Colin will be at the UCF Book Festival THIS weekend was the exact kick in the pants I needed to read it.

So, I feel compelled to mention this right off the bat – there is a bit of a supernatural thing going on in this book. You kind of can’t let the stuff that is not actually possible get in your way of enjoying the book. You just have to go with it and let Colin take you on this beautiful journey. Which she does – but you need to suspend your disbelief for a while to go there.

That being said, I found The Memory Thief to be a wonderful novel with so much to love. Maddie tugged at my heartstrings and oh my gosh, Gabe! What an adorable, insightful child he was. The reader gets to know Aidan only through Maddie’s memories, so I can’t say that I got to know him very well, but I must admit that I liked J.C. quite a bit more than the Aidan Maddie presented to the reader. This of course made it much easier for me to appreciate the fact that J.C. is also in love with Maddie, but I’m sure that was a move on the author’s part to get the reader to feel more sympathy for Maddie and J.C.’s situation. Which I definitely did.

At its heart, this is a love story. It’s a story of Maddie and Aidan’s love, but it is also the story of how Maddie found love after his death. It’s a love story fraught with complications, so it definitely is more interesting than your typical romance, but I was pulled into the book most often by the romantic aspects of it. And I rooted for Maddie to find the peace and happiness she truly deserved the whole time I was reading the book – to the point where I wanted to stand up and cheer when things went the way I was banking on them going!

So. The supernatural stuff was difficult for me to swallow, but once I got past it (in my mind, not in the book), I was able to really enjoy this beautifully crafted story Emily Colin has put together. If you like women’s fiction, or romance, or a combination of the two, I’d highly recommend trying out The Memory Thief.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson
Published by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette
Review copy provided by the author

Three generations of women, living in the same home, with only fifteen years between each generation – Mosey is fifteen years old and knows that this is the year her grandmother, Big, and mother, Liza, are convinced that she’ll end up pregnant just like the two of them did in their fifteenth year, so Mosey is just as convinced she will not succumb to the same fate.  But when a small grave is uncovered in their backyard, Mosey is left reeling and questioning everything she’s ever known about her life. Big is determined to find answers, because she knows that her daughter has something to do with it, but unfortunately Liza’s mind hasn’t recovered much from her stroke so she’s not able to offer any explanations. As Mosey and Big arrive independently at the same truth, they realize that they must face it together or their family of three doesn’t stand a chance.

I was almost dreading reading this book because upon finishing it, I have now read everything Joshilyn Jackson’s written. And that is sad because I love her books and always want there to be another one. Write faster, Joshilyn!!

So, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty was everything I’ve come to expect from Jackson’s books and maybe even a little more. At its core, this is a book about family. About what makes up a family – is it the family you’re born into, or the family that you create? About how when something happens to someone in that family (such as a stroke, in Liza’s case), you do whatever you can to take care of them, even if you’ve hated every single decision they’ve made in their life, even if that means rearranging so much of your own life and making huge sacrifices for their benefit. About how just because you don’t love what a family member does, you still love them, and you still must offer up forgiveness and acceptance and love at every turn.

As I was reading this novel, the characters jumped off the page and made their way into my own life and heart. I felt so attached to them, so deeply interested in what this mysterious grave meant for them all, that it caused me to compulsively read this book until I finished it. I couldn’t step away from these women or their secrets because I cared so desperately about what this grave would change about their lives.

Honestly, I can safely say that A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is my favorite of Jackson’s novels to date. I truly cannot wait until she publishes again as I’ve loved her books so much. These novels are so full of heart, amazingly realistic characters, and snappy dialogue. Her excellent writing and intricate plots (always involving some kind of mystery) are just the icing on the already fantastic cake. Highly recommended!

And Then I Found You by Patti Callahan Henry

And Then I Found You by Patti Callahan Henry
Published by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan
Review copy provided by the SheReads Book Club

On the surface, Kate Vaughn seems to have it all – she’s close to her family, she has a wonderful boyfriend, Rowan, who is ready for marriage, and she owns a successful business. But secrets from her past continue to haunt her, and when she is faced with the possibility of settling down with Rowan, she panics and travels back to the place where her life took a devastating turn thirteen years ago – and to the person who caused this huge life event to occur. But opening up pieces of her past she’s kept hidden all these years makes things even harder for Kate, and she must figure out how to come to grips with the choices she’s made and move forward so the people who love her can do the same.

Reading And Then I Found You was a total win-win for me – not only is it the SheReads book club April selection, but also the author is going to be at the UCF Book Festival in a couple of weeks! Meeting authors is incredibly fun no matter what the situation, but when I’ve read and enjoyed one of their books, the meeting is SO much more rewarding. So I’m now really looking forward to meeting Patti Callahan Henry!

This is a novel with a ton of heart, and honestly it captivated me from the very first page. I’m not afraid to admit I even shed a tear or two at the end. Kate had to make a decision, at a relatively young age, that many women face at some point throughout their lives – what to do about an unplanned pregnancy. The choice that she made at that time, while in hindsight still was the right thing to do, shaped so much of Kate’s life from that point on. She wasn’t able to fall completely in love with Rowan or any man before him because of this huge choice she made that continued to be heavy on her heart, and I found myself feeling incredibly sympathetic towards Kate because of this. She definitely wanted to let the past go and move on with her life, but she was so emotionally tied to everything that happened that she was unable to do so.

There’s a lot happening in this story that I’d rather not spoil for you, so I’d rather not talk too much more about the plot. Instead I’ll let you know that these characters became real to me as I read this novel – I hoped for Kate to find a resolution and some peace in her life, I wanted good things for the kind and patient Rowan, and ultimately I wished for a romance to happen that was pretty touch and go for most of the novel. I was definitely hanging on to every word Callahan Henry wrote in this novel and waited desperately for the ending I was really hoping to see.

I truly enjoyed And Then I Found You. This is a sweet, lovely novel that deals with a serious topic. I found a lot to love about these characters and rooted for them the whole way through. This was my first time reading a Patti Callahan Henry novel but it will not be my last! For lovers of women’s fiction, this is a great one to pick up.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
Published by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Review copy received at SIBA

When Susannah Cahalan was twenty-four years old, she found herself strapped to a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. She learned that she’d spent the past month undergoing hallucinations, violent behavior, seizures, and had consequently been in the hospital that entire time with no doctors able to figure out why. This memoir is Cahalan’s story of how she went crazy and came back from the madness, thanks to a team of doctors that searched hell and high water for a diagnosis.

I was interested in reading this book because anything related to psychology fascinates me. If you read the book in its entirety you will learn that what happened to Cahalan had little to do with any kind of psych disorder, but that’s not the point – everyone in her life believes, and she believes, that she’s gone crazy.

It was amazing to me how many doctors spent time with Cahalan and dismissed her symptoms as something other than what they ended up being. It seemed like so many of the medical professionals she worked with just wanted to give her an answer, any answer, instead of really digging deep to figure out what was wrong. I felt so deeply for what she was going through, but honestly I felt worse for her family – Cahalan was in a haze most of the time and has few concrete memories from this time in her life, but her family, boyfriend, and close friends had to watch her as she dwindled down to a shell of the person she used to be. It must have been absolutely heartbreaking to watch that happen to someone you love.

As for the book itself, it definitely held my interest and I was fascinated by Calahan’s story and everything she went through. I felt an immense sense of relief for her and her family when doctors FINALLY got to the bottom of this horrific situation. I have to admit that I felt the book dragged in some spots, especially in the middle, but for the most part I was anxious to find out what would happen to Cahalan, which kept me turning the pages.

I would absolutely recommend Brain on Fire for those interested in medical mystery type books, as what happened to Susannah Cahalan can only be described as a medical mystery. Recommended!