Book Review: A Circle of Souls

Title: A Circle of Souls
Author: Preetham Grandhi
ISBN: 978-1-59955-235-4

If you are searching for a turn paging, thriller of a story, then pick up this first time novel by Preethan Gandhi. The short chapters and shifting viewpoints and characters made this such a quick read for me; I could have finished this in a couple of evenings, maybe even a day if I didn't have an almost 8-month old.

His working knowledge is reflected in the story surrounding a child psychiatrist and even to the minor details of dealing with insurance companies to the details of children psych wards. But that's not what this whole novel is about. A child is murdered and begins contacting this young doctor's patient, Naya, and visiting her in her dreams. For an 8 year old, Naya is quite the artist, and draws her dreams out with such great detail, that her pictures are the needed clues to help guide the police in this horror of a crime.

You can't help but be sympathetic to the murderer and his past. What he witnessed his father doing, the threats his father placed on him, to losing important people in his life. However, that doesn't make his actions right or even ok. We at least know the ghosts that haunted him.

The story just touched on the surface of Indian astrology and I would loved to have read a little more about that, maybe even played a little more in this book. I'm not real sure, all I know is I had a taste of it and I wanted more.

I want to thank the author again for contacting me to read and review his book. I thoroughly enjoyed this thrilling. I also want to mention that this review is based on the advanced readers copy.

Book Review: I Can See You

Title: I Can See You
Author: Karen Rose
ISBN: 978-0-446-53834-3
Publication: August 5, 2009

WOW!! This book had me hooked. Know the saying.. "hooked, line and sinker". That was the case with me. Page turner from beginning to end. Rose did a wonderful job in keeping the reader guessing as to who the killer is for a good portion of the story.

Eve is a brave character to have gone through the horrific dieing experience from several years pass. Her thesis project which surrounds an online second life of her test subjects. Someone is picking off women, setting up the "second life" scenes to look like the "real life" scenes.

Webster, a decorated detective has his own ghosts in his closet. A past that dealt with alcoholism, but yet makes regular visits to a particular bar and orders the same tonic water. Why does he visit there so much? Well.. Eve of course.

With so many twists and turns and many characters and keeping one guessing as to the murderer, reading this book is a little confusing, but just back up a paragraph or two. Also, I think this is only the 2nd Karen Rose book that I have ever read and even though I never read the book that covered Eve, I didn't feel like I missed out on that. This is a 5 star book.