Book Review: Murder at the PTA (Maya and Sandra Mystery, #1) by Lee Hollis

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Murder at the PTA (Maya and Sandra Mystery, #1) by Lee Hollis is the first installment in the Maya and Sandra Mystery series, a cozy mystery series centered on private investigators. The story follows Sandra Wallage , the wife of a U.S. senator and the newly elected president of Portland High School’s PTA, who becomes the latest target of a vicious gossip website called Dirty Laundry . After a heated PTA meeting, Sandra crosses paths with Maya Kendrick , a private investigator who has uncovered the identity of the person behind the gossip site. When the two women attempt to confront the culprit, they instead discover a dead body. Was it really a suicide, or did someone have a motive for murder? I’m a longtime fan of books by Lee Hollis , which is actually the pen name for sibling writing duo Rick Copp and Holly Simason . They’ve written several cozy mystery series, and what I appreciate most about their books is that they aren’t overly kitschy, unlike some other cozy mysteries I’ve ...
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Book Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

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1850, Adam Ewing, a notary, is traveling home to California on a ship. 1931, Robert Frobisher, a composer, orchestrates a way into a sickly maestro's home. 1970's, Luisa Rey, a journalist stumbles across a story that threatens her life. Present Day, a Korean superstate has overtaken England. Post-apocalyptic Iron Age, the last days of Earth on Hawaii. Then, we go back in time in reverse order, finding that all the characters are connected and intertwined.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell was a book selection for the first book club I ever joined. It isn't a book that I would've ever picked up to read on my own. I loved the concept of the story when I read the synopsis and was looking forward to reading it.

Typically, I don't mind when a book jumps from one time period to the next, but with Cloud Atlas I did mind. It took away from the overall story line and made it very choppy. It felt like five distinct short stories, not a cohesive story. The only two story lines that I somewhat enjoyed were the stories of Robert Frobisher and Luisa Rey, but by the time we got to finish their stories, I had to go back and reread the first half of their story because I had forgotten some of the small details.

Another thing I disliked about Cloud Atlas was the post-apocalyptic story line wrote words like they might have been spelled before human kind became a civilized, educated society . . . the spelling of words made it difficult to get through.

There are so few books that I can say that I disliked reading, but Cloud Atlas is one of those books. I felt like David Mitchell was trying to force a moral story down my throat to teach me of what could happen in the future if we didn't heed the mistakes of the past. Don't get me wrong; I don't mind stories that have a moral to teach, but I just wasn't in the mood for this type of story. I gave it one star out of five stars.

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