ARC Review The Tulip Eaters Antoinette van Heugten

The Tulip Eaters by Antoinette van Heugten
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Nora de Jong returns home to find her mother murdered and her baby missing. Frustrated with the lack of developments from the police department Nora decides to find her baby on her own. In doing so she discovers family secrets that change everything she thinks she knows.
I loved Those that Save Us by Jenna Bloom and Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay and was really hoping for a similar read with a World War II theme. Unfortunately, this book fell far short and I struggled to get through it.
My main issue with the novel was the writing, I found it to be very juvenile and it did not convey the emotion or depth the novel should have had.
Immediately, in the first chapter when Nora discovered her deceased mother the writing threw me off. Passages like, "Nora tried to push the gray lumps back into her mother's skull. They felt like buttery worms and smelled like spoiled eggs." Often times, through out the novel the author became very descriptive but it did nothing to convey emotion or depth in a character, it seemed like she was trying to hard.
In other instances the dialogue between characters and inner dialogue was forced and very simplistic or stereotypical.
Nora de Jong was not a fully fleshed out character. She never seemed to be a grieving or distraught mother of a missing child. She was certainly frantic and very focused on her research of her family secrets but she seemed too focused on that. Her reaction to finding her dead mother and eventually her missing baby was odd and once the investigator came it got even worse. Nora and her friend were allowed to remain in the home and meander through the crime scene repeatedly, eventually having tea in the kitchen while the investigation continued. I found this highly unlikely. Later when the detective comes back for a follow up, he and Nora have coffee in the living room where the mother died, a blue blanket thrown over the blood and brains on the carpet. Again, who would stay in a home after that "awful day" as it was often referred to.
When Nora went to Amsterdam to search for the kidnapper she became even more unbelievable as a mother of a missing child, focused on her research and family secrets and eventually her former lover. At one point she is sipping wine in a bar thinking about how relaxed she is, totally unrealistic.
Then there is Nico, her former lover and as it turns out the child's father. Conveniently, he is the director of the historical society Nora needs to do her research at. She left Nico after he refused to move to the U.S. with her where she had a neuro surgery fellowship and soon after arriving in Houston she found out she was pregnant and decided to not reveal this to Nico. He has since remarried but that doesn't stop the feelings between the two and neither does her confession of a shared child. I found their relationship to be very shallow and Nico unbelievable as a father denied his baby.
The supporting characters Amarissa, Ariel and Dirk were very one dimensional and stereo typical as well and did little to improve the story. I really hated Amarissa not just because she was a horrible person but also because she was a very very cliche character.
The premise of this book was very interesting, the title interesting and the preface got my hopes up, the actual story disappointed. I would like to give this story idea to other authors and see how differently it could have played out, to see it reach its potential.

I received a copy of this novel from Net Galley in exchange for a fair review

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I Have Been A Bad Reader but a Great Pickler!

It is sooooo hot.  I should be laying in the air conditioning, on the pool deck or beach reading my heart out.  But I am not.  Instead, I am trapped in my kitchen hovering over boiling pots of water, pickling, making jam and blanching.
I had this great idea that we were going to save money, eat healthier and know where our food came from.  I had visions of our pantry packed full of homemade tomato sauces, salsa, pickles and jam and our freezer full of green beans, corn and peas, homemade pesto and a cabinet full of dried herbs from our own garden.
I did not envision how much time this would take.  So 16 quarts of pickles, 2 gallons of frozen green beans, 4 pints of dilled green beads, 12 pints of blackberry jam and 10 ears of corn later I am exhausted, and I still have lots of tomato's that need to be taken care of and a raspberry patch that will be ripe in a week or two. 
I have to admit I abandoned my herbs a while back, let them go to seed and cut them totally out of the garden over the weekend - I need to scale back!
But I did make delish German Dill Pickles, Polish Dills, Refrigerator pickles, bread and butter pickles and pickled green beans - I need to figure out what else I can pickle!!  Labor day weekend I plan to can salsa, my green peppers and Serrano peppers should be ready and I did hold on to some home grown cilantro.
And, I promise to read!  I am nearly finished with my first ARC, The Tulip Eaters, watch for my review soon!.  It helps that it is baseball season I can read in the late evenings while my husband watches the St Louis Cardinals.

My first ARC: The Tulip Eaters by Antoinette van Heugten

In a riveting exploration of the power the past wields over the present, critically acclaimed author Antoinette van Heugten writes the story of a woman whose child's life hangs in the balance, forcing her to confront the roots of her family's troubled history in the dark days of World War II.
It's the stuff of nightmares: Nora de Jong returns home from work one ordinary day to find her mother has been murdered. Her infant daughter is missing. And the only clue is the body of an unknown man on the living-room floor, clutching a Luger in his cold, dead hand.
Frantic to find Rose, Nora puts aside her grief and frustration with the local police to start her own search. But the contents of a locked metal box she finds in her parents' attic leave her with as many questions as answers;and suggest the killer was not a stranger. Saving her daughter means delving deeper into her family's darkest history, leading Nora half a world away to Amsterdam, where her own unsettled past and memories of painful heartbreak rush back to haunt her.
As Nora feverishly pieces together the truth from an old family diary, she's drawn back to a city under Nazi occupation, where her mother's alliances may have long ago sealed her own and Rose's fate. (taken from Goodreads)


First Impressions:  The premise of this book sounds very interesting, however; my initial thoughts are that the writing is weak and this novel will fall short of its potential.  53 of 368 pages read.



 

Review Sharp Objects Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have read Gillian Flynn completely backwards! I started with Gone Girl., which was the first time I had even heard of Flynn. Gone Girl blew my mind, it was probably one of the most exciting books I had read in a long time. It took me nearly year to pick up Dark Places mind blown again, I loved it! Two months after I finished Dark Places I got my hands on Sharp Objects - I was really excited to read another exciting, dark, mind blowing book. Sharp Objects is dark, gritty and disturbing, however, I didn't blow my mind.
Camille Preaker is a mediocre reporter working the police beat for a mediocre newspaper in Chicago when her boss gives her an assignment in her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri. One young girl has been murdered and another is missing. Camille is forced to reconnect with her estranged mother, step father and her half sister she barely knows as well as confront some nasty family secrets as she works to get a scoop.
Sharp Objects started out slow and I had trouble connecting initially, Camille's reintroduction to Wind Gap was really lack luster despite our introduction to her bizarre family. And they truly are bizarre. Adora is cold, calculating and extremely wealthy. Alan is one strange cat, totally dominated by Adora. Amma, the step-sister, is creepy, manipulative, sick and just plain scary.
About half-way through, it picks up speed and I couldn't put it down - I had to figure out who was the killer. I found this book to be a bit more predictable than Flynn's follow up works - not totally predictable but I had it narrowed down to a couple options, and I was right.
I liked Camille and rooted for her, despite her flaws, and there were many. Scarily, I could see bits of myself in Camille, she was searching for acceptance, love, respect and because she searched desperately for those thing she acted out in some destructive ways.
"Sometimes when you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them."
Sharp Objects explores some really dark areas Munchausen by Proxy, cutting, murder, sex, abuse and the relationships women have with one another. This is not an outright exploration of bullying but the way the women's relationships and power struggles played out was very insightful and real writing.
"They were women not strong enough or smart enough to leave. Women with out imagination. So they stayed in Wind Gap and played their teenage lives on an endless loop. And now I was stuck with them, unable to pull myself out."
Having grown up in a small town I related to her descriptions and the characters of Wind Gap as well as her insight as to the type of damage living in that environment can do.
"A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. It’s the kind of place that leaves a mark."
Had I read Sharp Objects, Flynn's debut novel first it may have changed my view of it, but having read her subsequent works I have to say this one just isn't as good. It's good, a great first novel but it did not blow my mind like the other two. I recommend it if you are a Flynn fan or enjoy a dark, creepy, twisted read.

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