Review: The Lost Years

Author:  Mary Higgins Clark
Genre:  Mystery Fiction
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster
Release Date: April 3, 2012

Paperback: 304 pages

Buy The Book: The Lost Years

Book Description

In her long career as America’s most beloved suspense writer, Mary Higgins Clark’s The Lost Years is her most astonishing and dramatic novel to date. At its center is a discovery that, if authenticated, may be the most revered document in human history—“the holiest of the holy”—and certainly the most coveted and valuable object in the world.  Dr. Jonathan Lyons, a seventy-year-old biblical scholar, believes he has found the rarest of parchments—a letter that may have been written by Jesus Christ. Stolen from the Vatican library in the fifteenth century, it was assumed to be lost forever.

Under the promise of secrecy, Jonathan attempts to confirm his findings with several other biblical experts. But on the eve before his own murder, he confides to Father Aiden O’Brien, a family friend, that one of those whom he trusted most is determined to keep it from being returned to the Vatican.

The next evening Jonathan Lyons is found shot to death in his New Jersey home. His daughter, twenty-seven year old Mariah, finds her father’s body sprawled over his desk in his study, a fatal bullet wound in the back of his neck, and her mother, Kathleen, an Alzheimer’s victim, hiding in the study closet, incoherent and clutching the murder weapon. The police suspect that Kathleen, who in her lucid moments knows that Jonathan was involved with a much younger woman Lily Stewart, has committed the murder.

But Mariah believes that the key to her father’s death is tied to another question: Where is the missing parchment? Whom, among his close circle of friends, might he have consulted? And did one of them kill to keep possession of the letter?

What Mariah doesn’t know is that there was an eyewitness to the murder, someone whose unwise attempt to blackmail the killer begins a new circle of death, with Mariah as the ultimate target of one person’s obsession with a priceless historical treasure.

With all the elements that have made her a worldwide bestseller, Mary Higgins Clark’s The Lost Years is at once a breathless murder mystery and a hunt for what may be the most precious religious and archeological treasure of all time.

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Mocha Girl Rochelle: Greetings to my Mocha Girls I have been reading The Lost Years this book has kept me in suspense, I would think that I had solved who the guilty party was only to keep reading and discover not lol pretty good easy read. Tempe Chapter, Rochelle

Mocha Girl Yvette: I’m reading it too! It’s pretty good. Can’t wait to discuss with the group.

Mocha Girl Alysia: The book is a quick read and I thought the overall storyline was interesting. What would people and the church do if there was a real letter from Jesus in existence? Mary Higgings Clark throws that out there with an affair and a murder. I liked the pace of the book and I actually thought I knew what was going to happen in the end.

Did you read The Lost Years?  What did you think of the book?  Leave your review in the comments section below.
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Review: Love in Time of Cholera

Author:  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Genre:  Fiction
Publisher:  Penguin Books
Release Date: October 30, 2007

Paperback: 368 pages

Buy the Book: Love in the Time of Cholera

Book Description
In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs–yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.
Mocha Girl Reviews
Mocha Girl Shayla’s review:  ARGHHH! I took the time to write this review, but I guess I took to long because it didn’t take.
Anyway, here is the short version. I decided to take a break from Garcia Marquez because I read Chronicle of a Death Fortold and thought it was “eh” after I read 100 Years of Solitude which I really liked. Love in the time of Cholera makes me like GGM again.  The book is wonderfully descriptive and gave me a clear understanding of all the characters.  No one in this book escapes the impact of love, or for that matter cholera, but they all view and experience love in a different manner.  Florentino despite taking many short-term and long-term lovers and finding love with them, he maintains a love for Fermina Daza that is deep and different, albeit based on the adolescent “love”(?) of many decades ago.   This wasn’t a sappy idealized love story, but one that felt real. There is love, obsession, marriage, adultery, death, reconciliatio  I picked up the book. I put it down. I read a few pages. I put it down again (although I was taken by the first sentence: “..the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love”). But I pushed through which ultimately wasnt half the struggle I anticipated. As soon as Florentino appears after Dr Urbino’s death and declares his love once more for Fermina (“Femina…I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love”), I got into it! Florentino is beyond the extreme of a hopeless romantic and there were times when I rolled my eyes at him. He was pretty intense lol. Yet I liked the book. It’s fascinating how a story translated in English sustained me and the pages just turned and turned within my weekend. To a certain extent some things reminded me of “The Count of Monte Cristo” and even “Great Expectations”, also Fermina somehow reminded me of Anna in “Anna Karenina”. Nevertheless, the story stands for itself and forces you to stop and consider: How long are you willing to wait for love? Would you persist in the face of adversity and even rejection? I would categorize this book as a classic love story. I loved it!n and aging and not all in that order, with the troubles of Latin America, the Magdelena River and cholera providing an interesting back drop.
Mocha Girl Alana’s review:  I picked up the book. I put it down. I read a few pages. I put it down again (although I was taken by the first sentence: “..the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love”). But I pushed through which ultimately wasnt half the struggle I anticipated. As soon as Florentino appears after Dr Urbino’s death and declares his love once more for Fermina (“Femina…I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love”), I got into it! Florentino is beyond the extreme of a hopeless romantic and there were times when I rolled my eyes at him. He was pretty intense lol. Yet I liked the book. It’s fascinating how a story translated in English sustained me and the pages just turned and turned within my weekend. To a certain extent some things reminded me of “The Count of Monte Cristo” and even “Great Expectations”, also Fermina somehow reminded me of Anna in “Anna Karenina”. Nevertheless, the story stands for itself and forces you to stop and consider: How long are you willing to wait for love? Would you persist in the face of adversity and even rejection? I would categorize this book as a classic love story. I loved it!
Mocha Girl Hodan’s review:  I loved this book and it made me want to believe in love(nah!). The best of Gabriel Garcia-this tale of heartbreak,lose and love is classic. The story is as hot as the Caribbean climate and it reminds me of an old Arabic poetic verse that translates roughly to (what is love but to the first lover) which is true, we all remember the first person that knocked on doors of our hearts whether in adolescence or later on in college .
The main character Fermina Daza is the love interest of Florentino Ariza (my favorite) he’s love for her is bold,passionate and unfortunately young too young.
Simply put, the story doesn’t go as planned and Fermina realizes under pressure from her father that love is not enough, that she needs security both financial and emotional(in my opinion i think she feared the thing she needed the most)and erroneously she marries an older doctor who is stable, smart and organized. Our hero Florentino carries the love of his youth to adulthood to old-age and through the change in time that romance is never changed. He realizes that the reason Fermina left him because of his naïveté(she’s his first-awww)thus he goes and transforms himself to a modern day Casanova and writes his exploits in black notebooks as i remember. Nevertheless, what is meant to be will always be in terms of love stories and I won’t say more You should read it for yourself. I just have to quote Paulo here “All love stories are the same”
Did you read Love in the Time of Cholera?  What did you think of the book?  Leave your review in the comments.
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Review: Assata: An Autobiography

Author:  Assata Shakur
Genre:  Autobiography

Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books
Release Date:  November 1, 2001
Paperback: 320 pages

Book Description
On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka Jo Anne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local state and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper.  Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder.

This intensely personal and political autobiography bellies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the stare.  With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weakness, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at he hands of government officials.  The result is a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in America that has already taken its place along side The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou.

Two years after her conviction, Assata Shakur escaped from prison.  She was given political asylum by Cuba, where she now resides.

Reviews by Mocha Girl Book Bloggers
Mocha Girl Tazzy’s Review:  Loved it! A very interesting read! A powerfully strong woman of color!
Mocha Girl Sherrill’s Review:  Interesting, enlightening, and thought provoking.

 

Did you read Assata: An Autobiography?  What did you think of the book?  Leave your review in the comments.
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Review: The Darkest Child

Book CoverAuthor: Delores Phillips

Genre:  Historical Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Release Date:  January 1, 2005
Paperback: 462 pages
Buy the Book: Amazon
Book Description

Rozelle Quinn is so fair-skinned that she can pass for white. Her ten children are mostly light, too. They constitute the only world she rules and controls. Her power over them is all she has in an otherwise cruel and uncaring universe.

Rozelle favors her light-skinned kids, but Tangy Mae, 13, her darkest-complected child, is the brightest. She desperately wants to continue with her education. Her mother, however, has other plans. Rozelle wants her daughter to work cleaning houses for whites, like she does, and accompany her to the “Farmhouse,” where Rozelle earns extra money bedding men. Tangy Mae, she’s decided, is of age.

Reviews by Mocha Girl Book Bloggers
Mocha Girls Tigg’s Review:  I rarely give 5 stars in my reviews, but this book was definitely deserving of that and so much more!! Ms. Phillips spun a tragically beautiful story had me captivated from the first page, I was so angry when I had to put it down to go to work. It reminded me of my grandmother, she was from New Orleans and once told me that she ran away from home because her mother tried to sell her off at the age of 13 to an older man for a cow. It’s deplorable how young black women and girls were undervalued and treated back then. I never wanted it to end. I don’t want to give too much away, but read this book.
Mocha Girls Tahmeka’s Review:  I wanted to love this book but it never really came together for me. The characters had potential to be great but they weren’t fleshed out. I think there were too many. Mattie, Harvey, the white lady that Tan worked for (I can’t think of her name), Skeeter, Jeff,… the list goes on. So many people who weren’t relevant to the story.
I think that the secondary plot, the county in the beginning phases of integration, was too much. The main plot was intense enough.
This book could have been perfection had the author spent more time with the characters. I don’t feel like there was enough.
Mocha Girl Pearl’s Review: I am giving this five stars because it was well written, although this was the most painful and emotional novel I have read in a long time, she described the events and characters with such detail and definition. I was so hoping for a happy ending and it almost was one, but the only happiness is that one day Tangy Mae will look by and be happy the she and Laura made it out of Pakersfield. I am still to emotional to even write a review.
Did you read The Darkest Child?  What did you think of the book?  Leave your review in the comments.
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Review: The Hunger Games

Genre:  YA Fantasy/ Dystopian
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date:  Reprint edition  (4/3/10)
Paperback: 384 pages
Buy the Book: Amazon
Book Description
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games,” a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed.
Reviews by Mocha Girl Book Bloggers
Mocha Girl Tia’s Review:  I really liked this book. It was unlike any other book I have read before. It kept me entertained the whole way through. I look forward to reading Catching Fire.
Mocha Girl Shannon’s Review:  There was so much hype surrounding the recommendation of this book that I feared it would be a big disappointment. How wrong I was! It may not be the most original idea, but it was an extremely refreshing read and incredibly well-written. I especially liked how the story ended, with loose ends still trailing along behind it instead of everything being all tied up nice and neat. I enjoyed the story from beginning to end and am looking forward to the second installment.
Mocha Girl Rochelle’s Review:  Good Morning Mocha Girls and Happy Monday just finished the book, this book kept me on the edge of my sit, it kept me intrigued and anxious to get to the end and then there is the end, (don’t want to spoil the end for those that have not finished,) overall good book.
Did you read The Hunger Games?  What did you think of the book?  Leave your review in the comments.
Please use the 1 click Review as well.  Pick one of the following selections for your overall feeling of this months book.

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