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"  Close Your Eyes (Random House), by Amanda Eyre Ward  Almost unanimous acclaim greeted this twisty tale about a sister and brother in Austin, Texas, whose father has long been in jail for murdering their mother. No, things don&amp;#039;t turn out to be at all what they seemed\u2014and readers loved the ending.  This story grabs you by the shoulders and hits you with a brick. Lauren, who is eight, is enjoying a summer night at home with her parents and close friends. Before you can register what has happened, her mother is dead and her father is accused and then convicted of the murder. Fast forward to Lauren&amp;#039;s adulthood, and pieces of that night start to come back to her, and her brother continues to plead with her to uncover more details. Enter two new characters, Sylvia and Victoria; they seem, at first, to share no connection to Lauren&amp;#039;s fate. But as the book progresses, all the characters become intimately entwined, and the real story of what happened that long-ago summer night finally comes to light. This book does not disappoint! Its plot is carefully woven together in a way that seems unbelievable at first but in the end it makes perfect sense.\u2014Lori H. Matthews, San Francisco I liked everything about this novel. The protagonist&amp;#039;s pain\u2014of losing her mother in a brutal murder, of ceasing relations with her father, of watching her brother go off to Iraq on a selfless medical mission\u2014is all too real, and beautifully depicted. Halfway through the novel, without warning, the story shifts completely to a different protagonist. We know that the two stories will somehow merge, but Ward does so in such unpredictable ways that she keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.\u2014Evie Maciel, Teaneck, NJ  Izaan Mahdian\u2014convicted of murdering his wife\u2014has been in prison for almost 24 years. It is startling how much your influence can orbit around the lives you have touched even if you are not physically present. His children, Lauren and Alex, grow up fearful of love and attachment, except toward each other. Ward has such a talent for weaving stories together that she is able to bring several decades, characters, and circumstances together in this book with precise clarity. Emotions jump off the page, and I will admit that this story brought me to tears. I closed this book with a sense of gratitude.\u2014Annie Horsky-McDonnell, Mastic, NY There are two converging stories here: that of Lauren, who believes her father murdered her mother, and that of Sylvia, who&amp;#039;s pregnant, has left her boyfriend, and goes looking for her childhood friend Victoria to help her out. With the exception of Lauren&amp;#039;s brother Alex, I didn&amp;#039;t find the characters likeable. Lauren is a pill-popper prone to dizzy spells and numerous panic attacks. Sylvia is a former pill-popper, and her friend Victoria is a drunk. Amidst all of Lauren&amp;#039;s histrionics, there were times I wanted to follow the advice of the title and close my eyes instead of finishing this book.\u2014Valerie Wieland, Murfreesboro, TN  The End of Everything (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown), by Megan Abbott   A Twin Peaks\u2013flavored tale of 13-year-olds Lizzie and Evie and their bummer summer in a suburban hormonal hothouse among some very deceptively nice people, this \u00ADsuspenseful story got a lot of our readers going but was judged to falter on some plot implausibilities.  Abbott&amp;#039;s novel reminds me (in more ways than one) of Alice Sebold&amp;#039;s The Lovely Bones. There&amp;#039;s a mystery (the protagonist&amp;#039;s best friend has gone missing), a police force that doesn&amp;#039;t know how to read the clues, and a young protagonist who takes it upon herself to show the police how wrong they are. Lizzie, while frantically searching for clues regarding her best friend Evie&amp;#039;s whereabouts, is utterly seduced by her best friend&amp;#039;s father and slowly unravels the dysfunction\u2014which is at the core of her friend&amp;#039;s disappearance\u2014behind a picture-perfect life.\u2014Evie Maciel, Teaneck, NJ This story grabs your heart and doesn&amp;#039;t want to let go. We watch a tragedy affect three families: Evie&amp;#039;s, Lizzie&amp;#039;s, and that of a criminal suspect. We&amp;#039;re thrust inside the adolescent mind of Lizzie as she deals with the burden\u2014but also the special-ness\u2014of seeming to be the last one to see Evie before she vanished. Compounding this is Lizzie&amp;#039;s mother&amp;#039;s affair, Lizzie&amp;#039;s crush on Evie&amp;#039;s dad, and the confusing scenarios\u2014in reality, dreams, and imagination\u2014that Lizzie visits.\u2014Valerie Wieland, Murfreesboro, TN A compelling and compact read that begins with reminisces of carefree summers and innocent recollections of friendship and family, this story soon turns dark as Abbott tellingly takes us back to the tragic, terrifying weeks after the disappearance of 13-year-old Evie Verver. The struggle to make sense of the questionable circumstances surrounding Evie&amp;#039;s disappearance is pursued through the eyes of her best friend, Lizzie Hood. Evie returns home with an unexpected twist that may leave some feeling frustrated, aghast, and slighted by an author unwilling to unveil the truth and entrust us with it.\u2014Beka Shane Denter, Boston While the premise of this story made it seem like it would be interesting, I quickly got bogged down in the excess description.\u2014Kate Esposito Annapolis, MD  This Beautiful Life (Harper), by Helen Schulman  Prep-schooler Jake Bergamot forwards around a girl&amp;#039;s graphic sex-video e-mail, which blows up his family&amp;#039;s world. Readers had a hard time feeling sympathetic toward these privileged Upper West Side New Yorkers and their cossetted sense of entitlement.   The Bergamot&amp;#039;s are a seemingly rock-solid family that, on the outside, looks like they have it all: Two successful, loving parents, promising son Jake, and an adorable adopted daughter from China. However, after Jake becomes the unlucky recipient of an explicit video via email from a female classmate, the family&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;all&amp;quot; quickly implodes. Jake rapidly spirals into big trouble at his school, while his mother tries to maintain a normal schedule for her other child and his father, immersing himself in work, selfishly tries to remove himself from the situation. The story is told from each family member&amp;#039;s viewpoint, eventually arriving at an ending that seems virtually inevitable.\u2014Lori H. Matthews, San Francisco, CA This is a book for our time! It&amp;#039;s an eye-opening tale about a family dealing with the aftereffects of their teenage son Jake&amp;#039;s decision to simply forward an email. The implications of what he did are not only huge but span distances that he could not even imagine. I wish the ending were as intense as the rest of the novel: There&amp;#039;s a huge buildup that in the end only frustrated me. \u2014Annie Horsky-McDonnell, Mastic, NY Schulman begins with a compelling cast of characters and easily shifts between them in describing the emotional downfall of a New York City family caught in a scandalous situation. She ingeniously integrates the impact and importance of instant gratification that our culture has acquired via technology, and she also warns us of the damaging effect it can have on peoples&amp;#039; lives. As the story wraps up, Schulman sadly loses focus and the plot plateaus and becomes uninteresting. Characters who started out strong and believable are abruptly dismissed and tossed into a quick, empty, and unsatisfying ending.\u2014Beka Shane Denter, Boston This Beautiful Life isn&amp;#039;t beautiful. The mom, Liz, comes across as snobby and cold. The dad, Richard, comes across as uninterested in his family&amp;#039;s life. And Jake, their son, is just another sex-obsessed teenager. In short, there is too much sexual discussion with no substance in this book, which leaves the story falling flat.\u2014Rachel Heller, Santee, CA I found it extremely difficult to like any of the characters in this novel. The protagonist, Liz, a wealthy Upper West Sider, spends all of her time in a sort of existential crisis that is unconvincing and simply annoying. She doesn&amp;#039;t work (by choice), spends her days running &amp;quot;errands,&amp;quot; going to yoga, attending sleepover parties at the Plaza Hotel, and smoking pot. She worries incessantly about what the other mothers will say about her, about her clothing, hair, makeup, etc. The fact that she fails to understand the gravity of her son&amp;#039;s situation just adds to the annoyance. Unless you&amp;#039;re a rich, bored wife, there&amp;#039;s nothing pleasant about this story or the way it&amp;#039;s told.\u2014Evie Maciel, Teaneck, NJ "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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