I miss the book club I was part of before I moved to my current town. I've known for a while that there's a book club at the local public library, but I've always found out about their current reads way too late, only a day or two prior to their next meeting. Also, they have a tendency to choose books I wouldn't in a million years pick for myself.

But I'd love to go to book club meetings again. So I sent the public library a message, asking about the book club's next book. They have, unfortunately, chosen To Siri With Love by Judith Newman for their August meeting. Do I want to read a book in which the author states her wish to sterilize her autistic son when he turns 18? Not particularly. But I requested it via interlibrary loan anyway and will probably be giving it a go. ::sigh::

Starting this mystery for a booklikes book club -- YA Book Club. Feel free to join us.

Completely unfamiliar with book and author.  Kinda sounds like YA meets chick flick meets mystery meets Gallagher Girls meets Get Smart.  First in the Lexi Carmichael series.

Some parts were beautiful. A few examples:

"Pfiffikus!" she echoed, quickly adopting the appropriate cruelty that childhood seems to require.

...humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, house of cards...

Others were just weird. Look at this one:

I carried them in my fingers, like suitcases (he is talking about souls)

It was narrated by Death. That was not an attraction when the book began and it simply became a bore as I read ahead.

There was no subtlety at all. Look at the following examples:

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: There's a Jew and German standing in a basement, right?

This was fine until he added

This, however, was no joke.

Then there was:

...everything went smoothly

Where the author just had to add:

Qualities of Smoothness... Trudy came and went without suspicion

We get what you meant when you said smoothly. The book was full of examples like the ones given above!

Lastly, there were parts that looked as if included to gain the reader's sympathy. One of them was the excerpt from Death's Diary where he talks about the events that took place in Cologne.

The book did have me shed a tear or two as I finished it, which means that I connected with it on some level. Papa and Mama were my favorite characters. The rest were all right. Death, the narrator, I hated.

#ReadForABookClub #DeathIsABadNarrator

Chocolat begins with the arrival in a tiny French village of Vianne Rocher, a single mother with a young daughter, on Shrove Tuesday. As the inhabitants of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes clear away the remains of the carnival which heralds the beginning of Lent, Vianne moves with her daughter into a disused bakery facing the church, where Francis Reynaud, the young and opinionated curé of the parish, watches her arrival with disapproval and suspicion.

When he realizes that Vianne intends to open a chocolate shop in place of the old bakery, thereby tempting the churchgoers to over-indulgence, Reynaud’s disapproval increases.

As it becomes clear that the villagers of Lansquenet are falling under the spell of Vianne’s easy ways and unorthodox opinions, to the detriment of his own authority, he is quick to see her as a danger. Under Vianne’s influence an old woman embraces a new life, a battered wife finds the courage to leave her husband, children rebel against authority, outcasts and strays are welcomed… and Reynaud’s tight and carefully ordered community is in danger of breaking apart. As Easter approaches, both parties throw themselves whole-heartedly into the preparations; Vianne for the chocolate festival she plans to hold on Easter Sunday, Reynaud into a desperate attempt to win back his straying flock. Both factions have a great deal at stake; the village is bitterly divided; and as the big day looms closer their struggle becomes much more than a conflict between church and chocolate – it becomes an exorcism of the past, a declaration of independence, a showdown between dogma and understanding, pleasure and self-denial.(source)