The baby’s birth parents are briefly introduced and then come back for more of a role once the secret of the baby is in the open.  The delicate balance of an untraditional family (Skip, Lydia and Faith) is easy to upset.  I admire (although don’t always like) the characters in this book, particularly Skip, who demonstrates a type of unconditional love in his willingness to let Faith go if that is best for her.  While this book moved swiftly for me, it was not one that I couldn’t put down.  If I were to give it a rating out of five stars it would be about a three.  I was glad I read it but probably won’t read it again.

I had heard about Pat Tillman as most of us have.  It is one of those events like the Jessica Lynch capture and rescue that were construed as defining moments in the Iraq/Afghanistan war by the media.  The interesting part of this story is that Jon Krakauer writes about how Pat Tillman had gone out of his way to avoid media attention since leaving the NFL.  He did not do interviews and did not want to be made into anything special.

The biographical information that Jon Krakauer provides describes Pat as someone who was always driven and worked hard to meet his goals.  He was small when he was young and still went on to be a great football player in high school, college and later in the NFL, mostly due to hard work.  He challenged himself in many ways through doing marathons and triathalons in his off season.  It sounds as though he lived to experience life and did his best to learn and challenge himself.  After 9/11 Pat started having doubts about his career as a football player and felt that he needed to do something more and he joined the military.  His brother, Kevin, joined as well and served with him throughout his time.  This made the cover up of what truly happened even more remarkable, to me, since his brother was on scene when it happened and just out of view from what had happened.

From the way the book describes the circumstances surrounding Pat’s death, it was obvious pretty quickly that it had been due to friendly fire.  Their platoon had been split in two and one section ended up firing on Pat who had thought he was coming to their aid.  The videos of the battle went missing, the clothes that he was wearing were destroyed and those who were aware of what had happened, which was the majority of the platoon were ordered to keep it a secret as a deliberately misleading account was provided in order to garner better press.

Pat’s wife, Marie, worked with the author in providing information for this book but most of the rest of Pat’s family declined to take part.  His mother has also written a book Boots On the Ground Before Dawn which I am interested in reading.  The one thing that this book really brought to my attention is that the people who are serving in the military and their families are so greatly affected by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for many of the rest of us we live our daily lives without really thinking about it.  The sacrifice is so great for those involved.

This book also looks at the different components of fast food such as the meat industry, farming (potatoes/french fries).  I am not a vegetarian but after reading about the slaughter house industry I have to admit I’m looking at my meat a little differently…and thinking more about the people who need to work in those jobs.  One interesting thing I did learn (for those vegetarians out there) is that McDonald’s french fries were cooked in vegetable oil with beef tallow until just recently.  Even though they were described as being vegetarian.

This book made me think a lot more about the food that we choose to put into our bodies and the price that cheap, affordable fast food comes at.  I do have to admit that through a lot of the chapters I was craving french fries, but that also shows how strong those associations are that I only need to read the word McDonalds and think about french fries.  I’m glad that I read this book and I hope in a little while I will be able to say that it has effected my food choices in more of a long term way.

Leonard is a man whose business is of unsavory origins.  James works for him for a little bit delivering briefcases to different locations, but decides that he wants a completely clean life and stops to work on becoming a writer.  Leonard continues to show up in James life at times of sorrow and joy.

James lives life hard and it is very evident in his books.  Like his other novels, his punctuation and capitalization is far from what we all learn in school, but it somehow works instead of bothering me in this book.  I read this while visiting family over Christmas, and still managed to finish it in two days as I would read at night before falling asleep.  I just wanted to know what was going to happen.

Detective Ryan and his partner, Detective Cassie Maddox, are the only ones who know of his history and his personal link to the case.  They are very good friends and work together to try to break this big case.  They investigate the family, political involvement that may have been motivation, and an archeological dig that is taking place in the area.  I’m not going to ruin the ending but I will say that it was well written and until the end of the book I still was not sure what direction it was going to take.  There’s a good balance between the police work and developing the stories of both the present time and the unsolved cold case.

I read this book pretty quickly once I started it.  It was entertaining and I wanted to find out who had done it.  I’m excited because when I checked this book out I also got The Likeness so now I can look forward to reading that.

In Twenties Girl Lara is a twenty something woman who is having problems in her love life and her professional life.  She goes to a funeral for her 105-year-old great aunt Sadie, who she had only ever met once, and while at the funeral a younger version of Sadie appears to her and asks her to stop the funeral as she does not have a certain necklace on.  Lara does stop the funeral by saying she thinks that her great aunt has been murdered…by the nursing home staff…and an investigation follows buying her time to find the missing necklace.

Lara proceeds to try to find Sadie’s necklace with the help of Sadie who is able to transport herself wherever she wants to go.  Other people such as Lara’s ex-boyfriend can be influenced by Sadie talking to them but no one can hear her or see her the way Lara can.  Sadie helps Lara with her business, plays matchmaker, and together they discover the secret behind the missing necklace and it’s importance.

I know that this should have been a fun, enjoyable read, yet I just never really got into it.  I promised myself that I would read a book through if I was going to write about it, but if that had not been the case I would never have finished it.  The characters were not believable and the story just never developed into anything great.  I had read on some other book sites that this was a good summer read but I enjoyed other books Sophie Kinsella had written a lot more.