Story for the Week
True statement: I will never be bored. I’m a reader. As long as I have a good book, I have something to do. Who am I kidding? Even a mediocre book will stave off boredom. A good book…that will take you places.
Books describe countries we’ve never been to, music we’ve never heard, relationships we aspire to, foods we’ve never experienced. They provide an escape from the mundane details of our everyday lives and introduce us to new worlds.
Dishes to wash? I’d rather be reading. Laundry to fold? I’d rather be reading (I can actually do those at the same time.) Bills to pay? I’d rather be reading. Grocery shopping? Read in line at the checkout. School pickup? Reading. Sleeping? Reading. Sucked into a movie I really didn’t want to see? (I’m talking about you, The Super Mario Bros. Movie.) Reading…with my phone on the very dimmest setting of course. Writing a blog post? Read…oh wait…ok, reading and then writing.
I can (and do) read anywhere and everywhere. I don’t always carry my Kindle, but I do always have my phone with a Kindle app on it. As long as I’ve synced my Kindle content, it will take me to the last page read on either device, so I can pick up wherever I left off.
Understanding that you have to be an avid reader to appreciate all those scenarios, I have raised a reader (The Joy of Raising a Reader), but alas, she is not an avid reader like her mother. I think she almost became an avid reader. Corinne prefers physical books, but she reads much slower than I do and she struggles to really absorb the story. We purchase audio books for her required school reading, and it’s helped, but she doesn’t read for fun like I do.
When Corinne was younger, she was obsessed with the Wings of Fire series—literally could not get enough of it. As she’s gotten older in our extremely digital world, she has found other…distractions. Short-attention-span distractions. The fifteenth and final book in the Wings of Fire series released in April of 2022. She still hasn’t read it.
If it were me, I would have started the new book as soon as I finished whatever I happened to be reading at the moment (because I’m always reading something). I don’t think she’s lost interest in the series, and it’s definitely not because her TBR list is too long. She’s just not an avid reader. And that’s ok.
She did just ask to buy Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died. She hasn’t started it yet, but she asked for it, so here’s hoping.
I finished I Know What You Did recently, a debut novel by Cayce Osborne whose main character isn’t a reader. She never saw the appeal until she finished a book that turned her life upside down. After she finishes the book, she says, “The story had cast a spell on me. Was that what reading did, if you let it? Did you get so consumed by the story that the world fell away? I’d felt that way with a movie before, or a video game, but never a book. Too bad it had to be this book, but still. I thought I might get the whole reading thing now.”
Getting consumed by the story…I love it when I find myself smiling at a sweet conversation during a new relationship. Or speeding through chapters as fast as I can because I need to get back to the last point of view to see what’s happening. Or closing a book and having to take a moment to feel and appreciate the story I just experienced.
That’s what it is. A great book doesn’t just make you feel something. It’s an experience, and the possibilities are limitless.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for I Know What You Did by Cayce Osborne
272 pages
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: July 18, 2023
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.
Publisher’s Description
Petal Woznewski is content with her quiet, introverted life in New York City: she has her junk food, her movies, and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Gus. That peace is shattered when her name appears on the dedication page of an anonymously written thriller with a cryptic note: “I know what you did, Petal Woznewski. And now everyone else will, too.”
As she reads, Petal realizes the story is rooted in a secret she buried thirty years earlier, when she was fourteen. A secret involving the tragic death of her friend, Megan. A secret that only one other person knows—their old friend, Jenny. Armed with a copy of the book and her own suspicions, Petal returns to her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. There, she discovers more questions than answers. Jenny has disappeared, and Petal’s old high school crush, Ben, doesn’t know anything about the book—at least not anything he’s telling.
As sinister clues pile up, and the thriller’s plot detours dangerously from the facts, Petal has no choice but to confront her past and solve the mystery of who wrote it—before her very real life ends as tragically as the novel.
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Main Characters:
- Petta (Petal) Woznewski – late 40s, does data entry work in New York, lives in a studio apartment in the Garment District, lover of movies but not books, raised with wealth until her parents died when she was 11 and then she lived with her Aunt Shelly until she graduated high school, Aunt Shelly died from cancer the year after Petta left Madison
- Gus Johnson – Petta’s on-again/off-again boyfriend, she tends to be the one to pull away, but Gus seems to get her, he works as a day shift security guard in her office building
- ME Littleton – unknown author of No One Suspected who Petta spends all of her time trying to identify
- Ben – met Petta their sophomore year, and the only person Petta would consider an old friend, he was her local weed hookup then and she hopes he will still have a hookup in the present day, still lives in Madison and owns a sign-making business
When a book starts with the sentence “Substitute gynecologists are the worst,” it really sets the tone for the main character’s narration style. I love Petta’s voice. This is a fantastic debut novel, a very quick read, and I had a really hard time putting it down to…well…sleep.
Petta is in her late 40s (high school class of 1994), and she stopped going by her given name of Petal years before. Her voice is much younger than her years though. Half of the chapters excerpt ME Littleton’s novel, which takes place when Petta was a teenager, so I think the book would appeal as a young adult title as well. My teenage daughter found the description intriguing enough that I’ll be ordering the book for her.
Here’s the gist. When Petta was 14, she befriended Megan and, to a lesser extent, Jenny. She pretty much pushed Jenny out of the #2 spot with Megan. When Megan tragically dies, Petta and Jenny are the only two who know what really happened. So either Jenny wrote the book (renaming only herself and Megan), Jenny told someone what really happened, or someone witnessed the whole thing. Honestly, there’s even the possibility that Megan survived.
So Petta needs to find the author of No One Suspected because the book implies that she murdered Megan, even though it claims to be a work of fiction. I suspected pretty much everyone in this book of being the author of No One Suspected, with the exception of Petta of course. I even thought that the local police could be involved.
Osborne does an amazing job of concealing the author as well as the truth of what happened with Megan and Jenny when they were all in high school until Petta reveals it to the police. This book is fast-paced with the perfect amount of suspense to make you want to keep reading.
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