Book Review | Losing Faith by Adam Mitzner

Losing Faith is a legal thriller by Adam Mitzner.

From the acclaimed author Publishers Weekly called “a gifted writer” comes this nail-biting legal thriller in the bestselling tradition of John Grisham and Scott Turow.

Aaron Littmann, the chairman of one of the country’s most prestigious law firms, has just been contacted by a high-profile defense attorney, whose client is Nikolai Garkov, a Russian businessman arraigned on terrorism charges for pulling the financial strings behind recent treasonous acts. The attorney informs Aaron that Garkov is looking to switch representation and will pay one hundred thousand dollars just to take the meeting. But Aaron doesn’t have any choice, as Garkov is ready to go public with the damning evidence that Aaron and the judge in the high-profile case—Faith Nichols—had a torrid affair during another recent case.

Filled with suspense, twists, and turns, Losing Faith will captivate legal thriller fans everywhere.

This may not be readily apparent given the books that are typically on my reading list, but I love legal thrillers. Love them. They are the logic puzzles of the literary world, and the legal system provides a set of rules by which everyone must abide. I love trying to figure out how the characters are going to pull off their case within the confines of the law.

And then there’s Losing Faith. Law shmaw.

Losing Faith started out really great. It’s been a while since I’ve read a good legal thriller so I was fully invested in the book. There was a lot of detail given on legal procedure, which I happen to enjoy. Your mileage may vary. There was also an unexpected twist that really set up the plot and took the book in a great direction.

This is where I get spoilerish on why I hate this book.

I was enjoying the proceedings up until the defense decided to base their entire case on perjury. Perjury from the wife, perjury from friends, perjury from the defendant. I think my blood actually began to boil. It’s lazy, illogical, and just plain anti-what-legal-thrillers-are-all-about.

Losing Faith was a complete disaster after that point.

I see the potential in Adam Mitzner’s writing so I plan to pick up another one of his books. As for Losing Faith, it was totally not my thing.

4/10: Not My Thing

Review copy provided by publisher

April 27 | Currently Reading

Last week I posted my review of When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord.

This was a pretty awesome reading week. I finally read The Princess Bride which I will be posting my thoughts on soon.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Losing Faith by Adam Mitzner

Within These Walls by Ania Ahlborn
Wilder Boys by Brandon Wallace

What about you? What are you reading this week? Be sure to let me know in the comments or leave me a link!

Book Review | When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord

When We Were Animals is Joshua Gaylord's latest novel.

A small, quiet Midwestern town, which is unremarkable save for one fact: when the teenagers reach a certain age, they run wild.

When Lumen Fowler looks back on her childhood, she wouldn't have guessed she would become a kind suburban wife, a devoted mother. In fact, she never thought she would escape her small and peculiar hometown. When We Were Animals is Lumen's confessional: as a well-behaved and over-achieving teenager, she fell beneath the sway of her community's darkest, strangest secret. For one year, beginning at puberty, every resident "breaches" during the full moon. On these nights, adolescents run wild, destroying everything in their path.

Lumen resists. Promising her father she will never breach, she investigates the mystery of her community's traditions and the stories erased from the town record. But the more we learn about the town's past, the more we realize that Lumen's memories are harboring secrets of their own.
A gothic coming-of-age tale for modern times, When We Were Animals is a dark, provocative journey into the American heartland.

When We Were Animals is getting a lot of high praise, and it’s all true. Every bit of it.

And then there was me.

The writing in When We Were Animals is fantastic. I must read all the things by Joshua Gaylord. I’m happy to hear Alden Bell is a pseudonym for Joshua Gaylord because I have a copy of The Reapers are the Angels and I will be tearing into that soon.

I was hooked by When We Were Animals right away. Lumen grew up in a very strange town, and I loved the alternating timelines between her childhood and the present day. Somewhere in the middle, though, the book got stuck for me. There was no shift in time, no forward movement of the story, so much so that I almost didn’t finish reading it. I imagine readers with strong skills in literary analysis will have a field day with all of the allegory present in Lumen’s teenager years, but I’m not that reader.

I am glad I persevered and didn’t miss out on the ending of When We Were Animals. This is a special book that I won’t easily forget.

Like I said, this book is getting high praise and it is well deserved. For me, I just can’t get past the fact that I wanted to put it down.

6/10: Good Read

Review copy provided by publisher

April 20 | Currently Reading

Last week I posted my review of Blake Crouch's Pines. The entire Wayward Pines series was really good.


My giveaway for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies ends today. Be sure to enter if you want a chance at winning a Blu-Ray combo pack.

Wayward (Wayward Pines #2) by Blake Crouch
The Last Town (Wayward Pines #3) by Blake Crouch
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

The Winter Family by Clifford Jackman
The Princess Bride by William Goldman

I am really loving The Princess Bride.

What about you? What are you reading this week? Be sure to let me know in the comments or leave me a link!

On My Wishlist {10}

It's wishlist time! These are the books I added to my wishlist this past week:

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps—gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t the first time that someone had slipped away and left Finn and Sean O’Sullivan on their own. Just a few years before, their mother had high-tailed it to Oregon for a brand new guy, a brand new life. That’s just how things go, the people said. Who are you going to blame?

Finn knows that’s not what happened with Roza. He knows she was kidnapped, ripped from the cornfields by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember. But the searches turned up nothing, and no one believes him anymore. Not even Sean, who has more reason to find Roza than anyone, and every reason to blame Finn for letting her go.

As we follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap—their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures—acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness—a story about how the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.

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Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis

Maren Yearly doesn’t just break hearts, she devours them.

Since she was a baby, Maren has had what you might call "an issue" with affection. Anytime someone cares for her too much, she can’t seem to stop herself from eating them. Abandoned by her mother at the age of 16, Maren goes looking for the father she has never known, but finds more than she bargained for along the way.

Faced with love, fellow eaters, and enemies for the first time in her life, Maren realizes she isn’t just looking for her father, she is looking for herself. The real question is, will she like the girl she finds?

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The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

“Ori’s dead because of what happened out behind the theater, in the tunnel made out of trees. She’s dead because she got sent to that place upstate, locked up with those monsters. And she got sent there because of me.”

The Walls Around Us is a ghostly story of suspense told in two voices—one still living and one long dead. On the outside, there’s Violet, an eighteen-year-old dancer days away from the life of her dreams when something threatens to expose the shocking truth of her achievement. On the inside, within the walls of a girls’ juvenile detention center, there’s Amber, locked up for so long she can’t imagine freedom. Tying these two worlds together is Orianna, who holds the key to unlocking all the girls’ darkest mysteries.

We hear Amber’s story and Violet’s, and through them Orianna’s, first from one angle, then from another, until gradually we begin to get the whole picture—which is not necessarily the one that either Amber or Violet wants us to see.

Nova Ren Suma tells a supernatural tale of guilt and innocence, and what happens when one is mistaken for the other.

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Have you read or are you planning to read any of these? What books have recently made it onto your wishlist?