You Were Always Mine by Nicole Baart is about a woman who learns that life can change in mere moments when she learns of her husband's death. Evan and Jessica Chamberlain have been separated for a few months, leaving her life with her two sons in turmoil. Things get worse when Evan is found dead, and the questions keep piling up and keep Jessica awake at night. Everything seems to revolve around their adopted son, Gabriel. Gabe's mother wanted a closed adoption, and Jessica was fine with that, but when she stumbles upon clues that things weren't as they seemed, she becomes suspicious that Evan's death was not an accident at all.
 
I actually quite enjoyed this novel. This is the first book I've read by Nicole Baart, and I might in fact try to find another by her to see if her books stack up to this one. There are some issues with this book, but the characters were interesting, and Jessica was realistic in her grief. I thought how she went from day to day and through each step felt true to what someone does go through. Trying to pull herself together enough to deal with her children and continue to take care of life as things come and go.
 
When Jessica finds that a lot of things were not as she thought they were she realizes how much she wanted Evan back, and how little she knew about what he was trying to do. In the end Jessica learns that those who she trusted were the ones who betrayed her, and that her husband was doing more good, even though he was keeping some serious secrets from her..
 
The family dynamic was interesting, yet is was clear that the family loved each other. The ending wasn't quite what I expected, but I did in fact see it coming, in some of the ways that it did. One of the characters I thought suspiciously about from early on in the novel.
 
It was not a bad novel at all, and I thought it was a good read. It was an interesting book, with a lot of secrets to figure out. I'd recommend it to people who enjoy Jodi Picoult, as this did seem a little along the lines of the few books of hers that I have read.

Phantoms by Christian Kiefer is told from a recent Vietnam Vet's point-of-view. John Frazeier comes home from Vietnam not knowing what to do with his life. A broken young man, like most who came back, and has decided to spend time with his Grandmother and a distant Aunt. The story floats through several decades, from before World War II to 1983. It also includes the lives of several different families, the Takahashis, who were displaced and sent to an interrnment camp during the second world war, the Wilson's, who owned the land the Takahashis lives on and rented a place on, and Frazier himself, as a war hero who wonders what happened to another war hero, of a different time. Ray. Ray Tahahashis arrived home after serving in WWII to find that his family had been removed, and that he was no longer welcome. Then he disappeared. After losing friends, John finds that he can't let the story go, and finds himself obsessed later in life with the outcome.
 
As a story that involved different time periods it was interesting how these stories intertwined. Seeing a man coming home from the Second World War to find his family and everything he loved gone, then to find out later what happened and how much life had screwed him over, was upsetting and fascinating. Most won't think of the repercussions of the life some leaves behind and the life they return to, especially given the time some soldiers spent away, and still spend on deployment. After most wars, the man or boy sent away is not the man or boy who comes back, and often the lives they are coming back to is not the same either.
 
Ray finds this to be the truth when he returns to what he thought of as home, only to find that everything has changed and he is no longer welcome. As the story moves on the reader gets to see how unwelcome Ray is when the woman he loves and the people of the town react to him in an unexpected way. Decades later, when John returns from Vietnam with the same kind of feeling about where home is, he find himself embroiled in discussions between his distant Aunt, Evelyn Wilson, and Ray's mother Kimiko Takahashi, who only want to know where her son is. Evelyn Wilson however is full of secrets that she is unwilling to share, keeping a family in the dark, and creating more and more unnecessary heartache.
 
John, is dealing with his own issues, memories and ghosts from his time in Vietnam. He spends some time with another soldier who was with him, Chigger, but in the end, no really gets their happy ending.
 
This novel not only shows a portrayal of what it looks like for a soldier to come home, but also what secrets can do when left unspoken. One family doesn't find out the entire truth, and another searches for something they let go of. In the end, there isn't justice for anyone, even John loses by not reaching out to someone he should have reached out to.
 
There are parts of this novel that were hard to read, especially as someone who has been military for most of their life and who has sent men off to war. Parts of this novel were hard to read because of the blatant racism and disgust that some of the character portrayed, Evelyn Wilson was not a pleasant person, and neither was her daughter, Helen.
 
In the end, the only issue I had with this book was the slipping of time forward and backward. There were moments that were confusing, and there were moments that were overdone, but overall, the book was pretty good.

So, what can I say about IT: Chapter Two? It is the second half of the first movie, where all of the children we have met in the first movie have grown up and changed, and forgotten what happened to them that one horrible summer.

I hated this movie. I thought it was dull, and it only kept some some of the good parts of the novel, or even the television mini-series. I would have liked it to be a little closer to what the first movie, the novel, or even the original mini-series was like. I did not think that the use of Pennywise was well done, and I do not think that the characters were more interesting or more developed.

One scene I really, really hated was the scene when Beverly visits her old apartment, and is greeted by an old woman who is very welcoming. I think the director or writer or whoever developed this awful scene should have been fired. there was unnecessary humor, that was not only not needed, but it didn't add anything to the story, or the entire film. It was so silly I almost left the theater, because it was ridiculous.

Another thing I didn't care for was the length of this movie. It is an hour and forty-nine minutes, and it felt like it was an hour and forty-nine minutes. When I took a look at my phone to see only an hour had passed I was very frustrated. So yes, yes this was very slow and ridiculous. There were several moments in the movie that frustrated me. I didn't need this to be a humorous movie, I needed this to be a scary movie. I needed for this to be Stephen King scary. Instead I got a whole lot of discussion, a too little Pennywise. What made the mini-series and the novel scary was the clown. The history behind him, what he was, and how he behaved, this made people everywhere scared of clowns, and here there was a lack of clown.

I also still stand by my original assertion that I don't think Bill Sarsgard is scary as Pennywise. He just doesn't have it in him.

Luckily, I only paid three dollars to see this movie, but even that seems too much. It was not only too much money, but it was too much of my life spent on one thing, which neither scared me or held my attention. I should have been home reading, or sleeping, or having sex, anything but watching this movie.