12. Run You Down by Julia Dahl

#2 Rebekah Roberts
read on my iPhone
2015 Minotaur Books
287 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 1/26/19
Goodreads rating: 3.76 - 1344 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary NYC and Roseville, NY, just north of NYC

First line/s: "Florida was not what I imagined.  There was no ocean where your father lived, that was the first thing."

My comments: (I wonder why, of all the possible titles this could be given, they decided on this?)  I don't remember much of the nitty-gritty of what happened in Invisible City, but I remember I liked it a lot.  Therefore, I read this book almost as a standalone.  There were a number of things that bothered me, but they didn't bother me enough to lower my rating.  The close connection - and I do mean close - between reporter Rebekah and the people of her news story was soooo impossible, but I didn't care.  I didn't mind switching back-and-forth between Rebekah and the mother who had abandoned her 20 years before, other than in a couple of places that information was revealed by Aviva and I attributed that information to Rebekah having known those details, so that was a little confusing until I figured it out.  It was an interesting story, perhaps unbelievable in spots but for some reason I didn't care.  I really enjoyed it, and the peaks into the strict Orthodox Jewish community,

Goodreads synopsis:  Aviva Kagan was a just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida-and then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from is a NYC tabloid reporter named Rebekah Roberts. And Rebekah isn't sure she wants her mother back in her life.
          But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Roseville, N.Y. contacts Rebekah about his young wife's mysterious death, she is drawn back into Aviva's world. Pessie Goldin's body was found in her bathtub, and while her parents want to believe it was an accident, her husband is certain she was murdered.
          Once she starts poking around, Rebekah encounters a whole society of people who have wandered "off the path" of ultra-Orthodox Judaism-just like her mother. But some went with dark secrets, and rage at the insular community they left behind.
          In the sequel to her Edgar Award finalist Invisible City, Julia Dahl has created a taut mystery that is both a window into a secretive culture and an exploration of the demons we inherit.

18. American Street by Ibi Zoboi

read on my iPhone
20117, Balzer & Bray
336 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 3/25/17
Goodreads rating: 4.14 (601 ratings)
My rating: 2 and 4
Setting: Contemporary inner city Detroit

First line/s: "If only I could break the glass between me and Manman with my thoughts alone."

My comments: I have no clue how or what to rate this book.  It took me to a place that I don't know.  At all.  What happens when a smart immigrant girl from Haiti is thrust directly into the midst of the toughest streets of contemporary Detroit without the mother who has always nurtured and guided her and with only her voodoo spirit guides and street-savvy cousins?  Will that girl do anything - anything - to get her imprisoned mother back?  I don't know what it's like to be a black American or a black immigrant, I don't know what it's like to live in the inner-city with its full share of violence and drugs.  I don't know anything about Haiti, or voodoo.  And a much as I try to empathize, all I know is what I hear on the news.  This book takes you much closer than the news.  Much.  Closer.  And it's heartbreaking.

Goodreads synopsis:  The rock in the water does not know the pain of the rock in the sun.
          On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie—a good life.
          But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own.
          Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream?