You by Caroline Kepnes - (Publisher Summary: When a beautiful,...

You by Caroline Kepnes - (Publisher Summary: When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card. A terrifying exploration of how vulnerable we all are to stalking and manipulation, debut author Caroline Kepnes delivers a razor-sharp novel for our hyper-connected digital age.)

This book is incredibly creepy and unsettling–a bizarre look into the mind of someone that could actually exist in real life and probably does, which makes it all the more creepy. The book is written from Joe’s point of view and he spends most of his time internally talking to or about Beck, the girl he’s stalking. Kepnes occasionally takes the book into soap opera territory, but she manages to keep the sense of dark foreboding ever-present throughout each of Joe’s interactions with Beck. Writers don’t always have their characters using or exploiting technology in believable ways, but Joe’s infiltration of Beck’s email account and constant stalking of her social media profiles feels all-too realistic. I hesitate to call this suspenseful because of how predictable the story played out. A constant feeling of impending doom is a more appropriate description of how it read to me. Unrelated, but this book is surprisingly long. It just kept going and going and going. It wasn’t boring or slow though, and I think the length of the story helps the reader really feel Joe’s believable, long-term investment in Beck and their “love.” Good summer read. Add it to your list.

Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht - (Publisher Summary: A powerful debut novel about a group of 30-somethings struggling for connection and belonging, Migratory Animals centers on a protagonist who finds herself torn between love and duty.)

In this book, a group of adults who became friends in grad school reunite when one of the members–Flannery–returns to Texas from Nigeria where she’s been working in climate research for several years. She leaves behind her fiance, Kunle, but promises to return to him soon. Each chapter follows a different person, starting with Flannery. There is Santiago, Flannery’s former boyfriend, and Molly, Flannery’s younger sister who is beginning to show signs of Huntington’s disease (which killed their mother). And then there is Alyce, Flannery’s best friend, who is married with two young children and struggling mightily with depression and anxiety. The writing in this book is exquisite–poetic and beautiful, especially in the Alyce chapters. You can feel her palpable, simultaneous numbness and pain, and when she finally smiles at one point, you feel the beauty of that too.

The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly - (Publisher Summary: From former NPR correspondent Mary Louise Kelly comes a heart-pounding story about fear, family secrets, and one woman’s hunt for answers about the murder of her parents.)

I read her first book (reviewed here) and thought it was just so-so. This book is much better. The protagonist, Caroline, is a professor of French literature at Georgetown and when she goes to her doctor for an MRI (suspecting she has carpel tunnel in her wrist), they discover a bullet near her spine. She has no memory of how it got there or why she might have been shot. I thought it might conclude a little predictably as I read, but there were several plot twists that caught me by surprise. It was an engaging, quick read, and I love that Mary Louise Kelly (a DC native) inserts many local landmarks into her stories.

Bad Faith by Paul Offit - (Publisher Summary: In recent years, there have been major outbreaks of whooping cough among children in California, mumps in New York, and measles in Ohio’s Amish country—despite the fact that these are all vaccine-preventable diseases. Although America is the most medically advanced place in the world, many people disregard modern medicine in favor of using their faith to fight life threatening illnesses.)

If you want to feel some serious outrage, grab this book. It’s a scathing look at the relationship between religion and medical care, encompassing everything from Christian Scientists who let their children die of preventable illnesses because they fear medical care to anti-vaccine movements among some fundamentalist Christian groups. Offit attempts to be somewhat fair to the earnestness of the beliefs that would allow parents to essentially murder their children in their own homes in the name of religion. But, he also makes it clear that he finds the prevalence of these deaths in this country both appalling and in need of greater state oversight and/or legislative intervention. I feel like Bad Faith was maybe rushed to publication in the wake of the recent Disneyland measles outbreak because it could have used more fleshing out in certain areas. He spends a lot of time on faith healing, for example, but less time on other, equally important medical issues. The anti-vaccine portion of the book, for example, would have benefited from a methodical study of the current state of affairs and how our children’s future could be affected by this persistent pseudoscience bullshit. I mean, “belief system.”

Living with Intent by Mallika Chopra - (Publisher Summary: Living with Intent is a chronicle of Mallika Chopra’s search to find more meaning, joy, and balance in life. She hopes that by telling her story, she can inspire others with her own successes (and failures) as well as share some of the wisdom she has gathered from friends, experts, and family along the way— people like her dad, Deepak, as well as Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, Arianna Huffington, Andrew Weil, and Dan Siegel.)

This positive, practical book about living with more intention and gratitude (with a healthy dose of meditation) was enjoyable but I found it a little shallow and repetitive.