Teaser Tuesday: Two New Reads

Resisting is often futile, and so I usually don't.  Resist that is, when it comes to books and starting new ones.  There was a little shifting going on over the weekend and as I've finished a few it's only natural that I am reaching for something new to lose  myself in.  Now is the test however. 

I think in the case of the first book, I have chosen a winner and it will be a keeper.  I've read really good things about Lawrence Osborne's Beautiful Animals.  It promises to be an excellent summer thriller.  I am already caught up in the story, which is set in contemporary Greece.  Two young women vacationing on one of the isles with their families strike up a friendship.  While out hiking one day they come across a stranger, a migrant from Syria.  They decide to help him, but things go awry and with horrible consequences. 

My teaser is that moment when wealthy Naomi (who vacations on the isle with her father and stepmother every summer) spots two women on the beach below her home.  The women will turn out to be Samantha and her mother.

"Before long, her eye was drawn to the lines of navy towels spread out on the sun loungers in the heat.  It was shabby but secluded; sometimes the former was the price for the latter.  The bay was so small that the ocean in front of it possessed a wide-angle immensity in comparison with the cramped beach.  There, in any case, two women had already arrived, clambering down from the path with their beach bags, straw hats quivering as they moved, with the prudent agility of beetles."

I have a feeling about this story that it is going to turn out to be one of those best reads sort of books.  I'm not quite sure why, maybe just due to how easily ad quickly I have been sucked into the story.

***

I'm not so sure about my other choice.  I am in the mood for a little pure escapism, some romantic suspense a la Mary Stewart, and maybe I should just pick up an unread Mary Stewart to simplify things, but my eye was caught by Barbara Michaels's Wait for What Will Come, which has a Cornwall setting in the mid-70s.  I am a great fan of Barbara Michael's books.  They are definitely suspense- lite and while the stories might be somewhat dated, I still enjoy them.  I know what I am getting into when I pick up one of her books, but I made the mistake of reading a few reviews on Amazon, and sadly they were not favorable.  Do I care?  Well, not really actually.  I know this is not going to be a literary read of high art and that is okay, but just enough doubt has set in to make me wonder if maybe the time with this book might be better spent with another book (and ahem . . . I have a couple of other new reads sitting on the very near horizon.  

Ah, the dilemma.  Should I continue or not.  My teaser is literally the first paragraph of the story.  I do like Michaels's heroines who are always smart and spunky.

"Carla Tregellas--born 1952, and very much alive [there is a quote at the top of the chapter from a woman's diary from 1762 by the way] and very much alive--was also thinking about the beauties of nature and the fabled cliffs of Cornwall as she approached the home of her ancestors for the first time.  She was not stirred to rapturous appreciation.  On the contrary, she muttered profanely under her breath and brooded on the disadvantages of living in a mechanized world."

To be honest I like Carla (some if the criticism for the book was leveled against her)--at least as a first impression.  Would you keep reading?  Or maybe you have read this one and can offer a firmer opinion?  Maybe I will sleep on this one.  And maybe I will look at those other books that are waiting for me, which book(s) do I feel most like reaching for?  Hmm.

Comments

[cath]

I can't help you with the chosing as I haven't read the stories but consider spending a week (or two ... or longer...) in either Cornwall or Greece, or still better both? I for sure would enjoy it. I even can imagine myself sitting sipping a glass of wine, ouzo or a cup of tea (biscuits please) a Greek classic (book I mean), a Mary Stewart or Daphne Du Maurier at hand. Ah, the power of imagination.
Maybe just read both:)

[Danielle]

I have started with Greece and the Osborne novel since I bought it in hardcover (which I try hard to avoid) and I like it so far. I am keeping the Michaels book in reserve. I like her (no matter what criticisms other reviewers have), so perhaps I will read her as well. I have my August prompt to think about, however . . . ;)

[Danielle]

And I can readily imagine myself with you sharing the wine or ouzo and biscuits look out over the Aegean Sea! (Wishful thinking!!).