Where’d you go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Genre:  Fiction

Published by:  Little, Brown and Company

Pages:  Hard Cover

Rating:  8 JAGS

Meet Bernadette Fox, one part architectural genius and one part social recluse. Living with her Microsoft husband and gifted fifteen-year old daughter Bee in a large home overlooking Seattle’s upper crust moms from her daughter’s school, Bernadette’s life quickly unravels because of a vacation.

After dodging mothers from the PTA on a daily basis and shopping through a virtual assistant online, Bernadette Fox simply disappears. What started as a promise to travel to Antarctica because of Bee’s excellent grades, leads to everything from a mudslide to the FBI.

Where’d you go, Bernadette is a hilarious read with a perfect combination of cheeky humor and sharp intelligence. This book is a definite keeper. It’s interestingly told from faxes and emails that keep you guessing as to who Bernadette Fox really is-and how did she just disappear. I really enjoyed this book. I cannot emphases it enough. I purposely kept the blog post short so as I wouldn’t ruin it for anyone interested in reading it. This is a definite great purchase or a gift.

Dry Ice by Bill Evans and Marianna Jameson

Genre:  Fiction

Published by:  ForgeBooks

Pages:  Paper Back

Rating:  4 JAGS

The Dry Ice review or red flag about this read should have been the reviews by ABC’s Good Morning America Anchor George Stephanopoulos and GMA’s TV Weather Editor Sam Champion-not to mention Bill Cosby and Regis Philbin that should have made me, the reader, refrain from purchasing new. 

Engrossing?!  No!

Compelling Reading?! No!

Terrifying?! If by terrifying you mean my mind would wander to something scarier, than yes. Terrifying as a paper cut.

Deep in the Antarctica frozen wasteland lays a weather monitoring installation known as TESLA. The brain child of Dr. Greg Simpson, TESLA is a fully functioning global weather station bankrolled by an equally large global agricultural conglomerate that can control the weather. Dry Ice opens with the sudden removal of Dr. Simpson because of recent rouge weather patterns created by Dr. Simpson for the U.S. Intelligence agencies.

Tess Beauchamp, up and coming Climatology scientist and rival of Dr. Greg Simpson, is pegged to replace him as head of TESLA, but Dr. Simpson will not give up control of a weapon of such scale.  Simpson triggers a planetary Armageddon in retaliation, and it is up to the brilliance of Tess to stop the global genocide that Dr. Simpson has initiated.

Purchase Used! Good quick read, but definitely not worth the $9.99 to purchase new. See if you could get someone to buy it as a gift.