Insane City

Insane City by Dave Barry      Audio Book: 7 hours, 58 minutes          Paperback Book: 400 pages           Genre:  Adult Fiction        Bachelor Parties, Hi-Jacked Weddings, Hilarity!

If you like the Hang Over films you will LOVE this book.   It is a riot all the way through from beginning to end.    So much happens and this book is so funny you will be laughing out loud throughout.    The characters and the adventures they go on willingly and unwillingly, the locations all they needed is an orangutan, oh wait, they’ve got one!    I don’t want to give too much away but I recommend this book to anyone - it is the funniest book I have read in a long time.     It will seriously put you in the mind of the film, “The Hangover.”    There is so much happening to the groom-to-be from rescuing boat people to borrowing the car of the stripper and her boyfriend who was hired for the bachelor party then stiffed for her money, I don’t want to give too much away but you will laugh till you have tears in your eyes from all that goes on in this story it is delightful.    Accolades to Dave Barry, surely one of his best works if not the best.   I LOVED IT!

 - Shirley J.

The Guest Room

The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian   336 pages

I’ve been a huge fan of Chris Bohjalian’s since he burst onto the literary scene with his Oprah Book Selection, Midwives. The Guest Room is his 18^th book, and, I believe, his finest.  As I Facebooked to Bohjalian: Oh Wow! Oh WoW! Oh WOw! OH WOW! 

Richard Chapman, his wife, Kristin, and their young daughter, Melissa, live in Bronxville, New York, a suburb of Manhattan. Richard is an investment banker, and Kristen is a history teacher. Richard’s idiot younger brother, Phillip, is finally getting married and Richard and Kirstin agree to let the bachelor party. Kristen takes Melissa into Manhattan to spend the weekend with her mother, as the couple is sure strippers have been included in the evening’s festivities.

Phillip’s friend, Spencer, doesn’t just hire strippers; he hires call girls. The girls, Alexandra and Sonja, arrive with what the guys believe to be bodyguards. As the evening progresses, stripping turns into sex. Richard finds himself enamored with Alexandra and alone with her, both naked, in the guest room. No spoiler here, so you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens.

It’s after Alexandra and Richard return to the party that all hell breaks loose. Sonja jumps one of the bodyguards and repeatedly plunges a knife into his neck. Blood is everywhere. Everywhere. The gunshots are heard and the other bodyguard’s blood is adding to the horror. The girls throw on some clothes and escape before the guys can come to their senses enough to call 911.

The story is told in alternative chapters: Richard and Kristen’s point of view and Alexandra’s viewpoint. Readers soon learn that the girls aren’t college students trying to earn money for tuition; they are Armenian girls who have been kidnapped and used as sex slaves.

There are so many threads in this one story. How did Alexandra and Sonja get caught up in this life? Where are they now? Are their kidnappers, the Russians, looking for them? Will Richard and the guys go to jail for having hired prostitutes? Will Richard and Kristen’s marriage survive? What will Melissa think of her father? How will the family ever go back to their home and life, knowing that it had been a crime scene?

Be prepared to stay up late as Bohjalian ties all the unanswered questions together into a riveting novel that left me gasping by the end. I give The Guest Room, 6 out of 5 stars.