Novel Review: House of Secrets by Tracie Peterson

            The time I post these are always contrary to the time I write them. FYI, it is currently 1:48 AM. I—cannot—sleep.

            To the matter at hand.

            Now. Normally when a normal person reads a fantasy book, they feel the need to go back to the real world with a life-fiction, as I call them. For me, it’s the other way around. I can only take so much life-fiction before I have to delve back into the realm of the speculatively concrete world of fantasy, where anything is possible. To test a popular CBA author, I wanted to read one of her most recent books that my mother just so happened to have (thanks, Mom!). House of Secrets by Tracie Peterson . . . the cover entranced me. Usually books have elaborate layouts with inset text giving reviews or little teaser taglines. Not House of Secrets. The cover is simply three sisters holding each other in a family embrace, their backs turned to the viewer, and a forest in front of them. The title and author’s name are simply typed onto the picture in such a plain way, I was immediately drawn to the novel. Which is unusual, considering a year ago, I probably would have never considered this book to be on my TBR list.

            Anyway, to the writing. Bailee Cooper, the main character and oldest Cooper sister, had a distinct-ish voice. You could tell that she was trying to keep the family secrets and keep her sisters safe from what she thought would harm them. However, something about her felt a little too plain. A little too . . . expected. This was the case with most of the characters in the novel. Too much expectedness.

            A lot of the book involved talking, too. I mean, don’t get me wrong; novels are comprised of 85% dialogue. It’s what moves the story forward. But a little action now and then wouldn’t hurt, and I’m not talking about cooking a simple meal. Yeah, that’s action, but when the meal is alluded to instead of some talking while cooking (seeing as how the sisters had some special spaghetti recipe) irked me. Instead the talking was done mostly around seating areas and the seaside. These intimate spaces served well for the dialogue exchange but impeded any real movement that could have added to both the characters’ personalities and the story’s lack of action.

            Dialogue aside, there were few twists, and the one I didn’t completely see coming wasn’t all shocking because I had a niggle about it anyway. I think that Geena, the second-oldest Cooper sister, should have been diagnosed with their mother’s psychological disease to make things more intense. Geena could have added a lot of tension with normality one second, craziness the second. That would have been a twist we wouldn’t have seen coming but only suspected, because Piper, the youngest Cooper, displayed signs of the illness (I won’t tell you what it was in case you want to read the book). It turned out that Piper only had hypothyroidism, not the mental illness, but Geena should have had it. I can only grieve the lost action and detail that could have been added, the tension that could have smoked things up.

            Now, these aren’t the major reason I had a problem with the novel. My biggest irk was the romance plot. It—was—blatant—and—obvious. Bailee hardly struggled with herself, Mark seemed far too perfect to be human, and their kiss? Pah. I expected fireworks. I got a sparkler. A good novel is supposed to make you feel. I felt nothing. I wanted more heat, more struggle, more undeniable passion that made the two unable to stay away from each other, but Bailee could have fought against that even more and made the first kiss that much more explosive! Sadly, it didn’t happen.

            All in all, I wouldn’t call House of Secrets a bad book. It was good to read. Easy. But it didn’t challenge me. Not in life or faith or writing skill. And I never got punched in the face. (A good book always punches you in the face somehow.) Tracie Peterson kinda fell flat on this one, folks. Five flipped pages out of Ten.

Novel Review: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

            Well. We’ve all had our share of depression, right? Right. Sometimes authors just want to shed a little light on a topic that’s hard to swallow, and suicide is one of those stickers that lodges itself in your throat. No one wants to talk about it. Why? I don’t know, but Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher gave me a little more insight into how everyone affects everyone.

            I had never really thought about it before, but Hannah Baker is right. Everyone does affect everyone, and whether we like it or not, our lives intertwine with EVERYONE ELSE’S ON THE ENTIRE PLANET. Let me give you an example.

            I may know someone who lives in Colorado who teaches a kid whose parent runs a business that has dealings in California. Well, the California business trades and has close ties with corporations in Japan, and this corporation deals with the distribution of emergency supplies to third world countries, and one shipment going out has the boss’s right hand man on board. The right hand man knows a worker in Africa that’s from New Zealand, who’s a recorded artist with three albums, who works with relief efforts to dig wells in this country their relieving. The kids in the country go to schools built by a Russian missionary who attended seminary in France and made several European friends, including a French woman who works with an American who lives in Sweden now, and this American is married to an Icelandic woman who has British friends, including my own cousin. My cousin knows me. And I may know someone . . . .

            You get the picture.

            That being said, we affect everyone we come into contact with. And Jay Asher displays this really well in Thirteen Reasons Why. Clay Jensen’s receiving of the tapes is a catalyst to a whole world of introspection. How did he make Hannah Baker’s life different? How did he interact with the very people who betrayed her and made her life miserable? Did he take time to know her parents and even her? He felt extreme guilt, overall, because her reputation scared him. And because he didn’t get to know her so they’d talk and she’d have someone to vent to, she bottled everything up. And when she bottled everything up, she got to thinking. And when she got to thinking, she thought no one truly cared and decided that her life was meaningless anyway; why not end it?

            You see? Human strings are entangling.

            The novel hit close to home for me. With God’s amazing help, I’ve persuaded two friends out of suicide. They started caring because someone else did. They saw the value in life because someone saw value in them.

            Looks like this review turned into more of an essay-like thing, huh?

            Well, let me quickly break down what I thought of the novel. Plot was interesting, and I’ve never seen a book that deals with suicide deal with it like this before. Everything else has the victim’s family and stuff looking back, but this was from the victim’s viewpoint herself, which was neat, and sad. Characters were real—and sometimes infuriating. I wanted to personally kick Bryce Walker below the belt, and the same with Justin, who let Courtney get raped. And I felt bad for Clay because he wanted so badly to tell Hannah not to do it, that she was valuable . . . but it was too late. That hurt the most. Mechanics and grammar were fine, and the viewpoint was really done well. The book would have dragged and suffered under anything other than first-person present tense.

            Overall, Jay Asher did a really good job handling a prickly topic with gentle hands. Brutal, but gentle. Eight flipped pages out of Ten.