Bloodstream

by Tess Gerritsen

I like Tess Gerritsen and enjoyed Bloodstream. The book is about a doctor who moves to a small town in Maine that experiences an outbreak of violence. She learns that something similar happened 52 years earlier and sets out to find the cause. The ending was a little abrupt. It seemed to wrap up a little too quickly. But the characters were well developed and the plot moved a lot quite nicely. A good suspense book.

Looks

by Madeline George

Looks (the story of a fat girl and anorexic girl, both school outcasts, who team up to bring down the "perfect girl") had a lot of potential, but was ultimately disappointing. The characters were interesting but not fully developed and the ending left a lot of questions unanswered. There was really no sense of resolution. It seemed like the author lost control of the narrative, realized she'd written about 200 pages, and just stopped writing when the story was just beginning.

I Love You, Beth Cooper

by Larry Doyle

I bought I Love You, Beth Cooper in a bookstore in Berkeley when we were on vacation in 2008, but I never could get into it. I realized this fall that it had been made into a movie and kept meaning to pick it back up, but I never got around to it until this Christmas break.

This book is absolutely hilarious and was totally meant to be made into a movie. It's about a nerdy boy who professes his love of a beautiful cheerleader in his high school valedictory address, and then winds up spending a wild evening with her, trying to escape from her jealous, homicidal boyfriend. There's no deep meaning here, but it's a fun romp.

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Diaz

I ordered The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (which won a Pulitzer in 09) last fall after hearing an interview with the author on NPR. When I got the book and realized it contained things like footnotes (a lot of them), I decided it was far too deep for my sleep-deprived mommy to a newborn brain. I set the book aside until I was looking for something to read this past Christmas break.

I love the voice of this book, which is about a fat, nerdy Dominican boy living in New Jersey. There are a lot of Dominican Spanish phrases sprinkled liberally throughout the book, which I think kept me from getting everything out of the book. (I know, I could have looked them up...but that was too much work for me.) Even so, the book is both touching and funny, and I learned quite a bit about the history of the Dominican Republic.