Week 2 Assignment 2

Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland by Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Mary Jordan, and Kevin Sullivan





Written from the prospective of two of the three young women held captive in Cleveland, readers grasps a first-hand account of the horrors these women had to endure while being held captive by Ariel Castro for ten years. Majority of the story takes place in the backdrop of the house where the girls are held, but reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan provide the reader with information the girls are not privy to until after their escape. Written similar to diary entries, information about child rape and physical, mental, and emotional abuse is raw, and in-your-face honest. While I enjoyed the book overall, I must admit there where times when I had to walk away because the information told we heart-wrenching and hard to digest. The language is that of the young teenagers they were when first kidnapped, and  found myself having to go back to my teenage mind frame. The tone is mostly dark and grim, with a comforting ending. We hear the stories on huge news, but it was interesting to have first-person information on the angst these young women dealt with for more than ten years.









Finding Jake by Bryan Reardon


As parents we want to think that we know what our children will or will not do, but this novel begs to acknowledge if we know our children as well as we think we do. The story jumps from past to present to give us the background of Jake, a high school student who is accused of the unthinkable, and his family. The book is told through his father, Simon Connolly, and his trials and tribulations of being a stay-at-home Dad while raising Jake and his younger sister Laney. The author did an excellent job of letting the reader know when the scene was jumping from one time frame to the next, and the characters were flushed out well. There were twists and turns throughout the novel to keep your head spinning and on an adrenaline rush until the very last page.




Every Fifteen Minutes by Lisa Scottoline


How do you win a game that you do not know that you are playing? Dr. Eric Parrish is a character anyone can love. He is the Chief of a Psychiatric Unit that is number two in the country, dealing with a fresh divorce from his wife, and trying to be the best dad he can be to his seven year old daughter. His world is turned upside down when he meets Max, a seventeen year old with self-diagnosed OCD who is head-over-heels in love with a girl. The problem? The girl turns up murdered and all fingers point to Max, but he is nowhere to be found. This fast-paced novel with relatable characters keep you guessing. The novel's tone varies from end-of-your-seat suspense, to mild light-heartedness, to extremely dark. Just enough detail is provided to paint a vivid picture of the life of Dr. Parrish, but there is enough missing information to keep you guessing.