Sounds like Titanic

Sounds like Titanic: a memoir by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman, 250 pages

Summary from Goodreads: "A young woman leaves Appalachia for life as a classical musician—or so she thinks.
When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she has achieved her lifelong dream. But the ensemble proves to be a sham. When the group “performs,” the microphones are never on. Instead, the music blares from a CD. The mastermind behind this scheme is a peculiar and mysterious figure known as The Composer, who is gaslighting his audiences with music that sounds suspiciously like the Titanic movie soundtrack. On tour with his chaotic ensemble, Hindman spirals into crises of identity and disillusionment as she “plays” for audiences genuinely moved by the performance, unable to differentiate real from fake."

The summary is pretty good but I have a problem with one part of it and the memoir is more complicated than what is in the summary. I don't agree that the Composer was gaslighting his audiences. I think he was sincerely trying to entertain and help people. 

By the time Hindman joined the ensemble and went on the tour that is at the center of the book she already knew that she wasn't the greatest violin player and had changed her major to Middle East studies. She wanted to become a journalist after 9/11 but found it hard to get a job. She stuck with the ensemble as a way to make ends meet. She also deals with mental illness. 

Overall, I would characterize the book as a young woman trying to find her way in the world. I appreciated her perspective on 9/11 and the aftermath. I would recommend this book to those people that like biographies and memoirs.

Tell Me No Lies

Tell Me No Lies by Lynn Chandler Willis                      Audio Book:  7 hours, 54 minutes       Paperback Book:  238 pages            

Good story told very well.    Just in the first few  pages a grissly murder occurs and all throughout the book there are clues.    There are so many possibilities as to who the perpretrator could be.   So many motives, so many sleazy characters and links that the reader will have a lot of choices as to who did it and why.    Very good detail and emotions conveyed here.    I don’t want to give the plot away but it seems everyone in this book has a whole lot more going on than it first seems on the surface.   This would make an excellent film, in my opinion.     The main character Ava Logan is a likeable widow with two kids of her own and who through her business as publisher of the local newspaper knows pretty much everyone in town really well but then everyone has the face they show and the dark side they don’t always make known.   Sometimes the chances she took and the warnings she disregarded frustrated me – that is how I know a story is good when it has me so drawn in that the characters can elicit emotional reactions from me.    It is a really good mystery that will have the reader playing amateur sleuth all the way through.    Don’t want to give it away but keep an eye out and see if you can guess.   I see the author must really like the lead character as she lists this as the first book in the Ava Logan series.   She is the owner of the newspaper, that would open up a lot of potential stories to be told so yeah I can see this becoming a series.     Good one.    If you like murder mysteries add this one to your list.