Book 61 (2011): The Uncoupling

From Amazon:

When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play Lysistrata-the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war-a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women. One by one throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don't really understand. As the women worry over their loss of passion, and the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and above all, confused, both sides are forced to look at their shared history, and at their sexual selves in a new light.

Even though it sounds like something I should enjoy with it being set in a school, about sex, directing plays, relationships.... well, I just didn't like The Uncoupling at all. I didn't care for the subject matter. I figured out the "conceptual ending" about 40 pages in. I didn't like the voices of the characters or of the author. It's not a favorite book, obviously and it just didn't set well with me--- the characters rang so false and I don't like "all angry, all the time". Feh. (288 pages)

D

Book 60 (2011): Cemetery Girl

When I read Cemetery Girl I thought I liked book overall but it left me feeling creepy about the end, something just so off and wrong and it gave me the heebeeejeebees, it was so twisted. With a society like ours, unfortunately, maybe the twisted part that creeped me out was too real and it felt like a story we could hear on 20/20 or read about in the papers. So I think that means author David Beil did his job. This story was good but still left me.... icky at the same time.

Summery from Amazon:
Four years after Tom and Abby's 12-year-old daughter vanishes, she is found alive but strangely calm. When the teen refuses to testify against the man connected to her disappearance, Tom decides to investigate the traumatizing case on his own. Nothing can prepare him for what he is about to discover. (400 pages)

A-

Book 59 (2011): Fragile

Here is a summery of the book Fragile by Lisa Unger that I've taken from Amazon who took it from Publisher's Weekly:

Set in the Hollows, a secluded town about 100 miles outside New York City, Unger's contemporary thriller offers solid entertainment, but lacks the tension of her 2008 stand-alone, Black Out. Psychologist Maggie Cooper and her husband, Det. Jones Cooper, disagree on how to handle their rebellious son, 17-year-old Rick, who prefers to spend time with his band or holed up with his girlfriend, Charlene Murray. When Charlene disappears one night after a fight with her mother, Maggie and Jones wonder if she ran off to Manhattan, but are reminded of the disappearance 20 years earlier of Sarah Meyers, whose mutilated body was found after she vanished on her way home from school. Though the alleged killer confessed, there are still unanswered questions, and Maggie and Jones find themselves forced to revisit the past as suspicion falls on Rick.

I liked the book well enough. It was better than some I've read this year. There's a very small group of characters and their development is shallow. (336 pages)

B-