Book Review: Inside Passage

   Yo, friends. Have you, like me, been reading heavy stuff for months on end? Are you nourished, edified, and inspired, from the inside out, but at the same time feeling a bit threadbare around your sweet little bibliophile eyeballs? Have you enjoyed the snuggly winter and then the tumultuous springtime, and now are you perhaps in need of a big gulp of summertime reading pleasure? I mean, it is summer now, right? Yes, yes it is. Okay, then. I have a great book for you.

   Just last night I was very happy to polish off a relatively new title by Burt Weissbourd called Inside Passage. Released last year by Rare Bird Lit,   ***hi there sweet Julia!***  this novel of only 282 pages is part thriller, part mystery, and all suspense, human psychology, and natural beauty. Weissbrourd has added several healthy doses of sexy in there, too, so please don't hand this over to your teenager when you're done. Or your Mom. Trust me.

   We once took my Mom to see Superbad. In the theater. On the big screen. Not cool.

   That's a weird story. Let's get back to the book review.

   Set in the gorgeous and foreign-to-me Pacific Northwest, Inside Passage is no long winded epic, a fact I greatly appreciated after the reading that's been going on here lately. No, Inside Passage follows a short time line of tense and dangerous interactions between characters who hook you from the first introduction. A woman, Corey Logan, is fighting both for her life and for a life lived safely with her teenage son, who is trying to make sense of it all while going through every normal teenage boy experience. Together with allies they collect along the way, this strong but desperate mother and son duo is battling a powerful and vengeful man and all of those under his influence. Monstrous people. 

   Another woman and her son are involved, too. This woman proves herself to be desperate like Corey, but in wildly different ways. The family dynamics and insights to human behavior had me reeling several times. It's all juicy, fascinating stuff, and it is written with a light enough hand that the reader is drawn in but never exhausted. I really liked that. I need to learn how to write like that. How to speak like that. Think like that.

   I exhaust my own self is what I'm trying to say.

   Weissbourd writes efficiently, packing each paragraph with several cleanly written, informative sentences; yet his descriptions are luscious. At times I could feel the cold, salty ocean spray and smell salmon being grilled over a beach bonfire. 

Somehow this part of the world keeps cropping up in things I read. 

It all sounds incredibly beautiful, and I hope to visit someday.

   I definitely felt invested in the characters, the "good" ones, and repulsed by the "bad" ones. In fact, these dark characters rank in my opinion with some of Koontz's and King's worst imaginaries. Given more stage time, they could become cult characters themselves.

   I had not read anything by this author before, and ***TINY SPOILER ALERT*** apparently this is part of a series of books centered around a main character, the heroine Corey Logan. I only gave you that spoiler alert in case it would ruin any suspense for you regarding that character's longevity. Trust me, no matter what you think you know about the outcome, and that fact doesn't tell you much, the book is so much fun to read. Pick it up and dive in. Surrender yourself to each setting, each detail. Get inside the head of each fascinating character and work out the intricacies yourself, following the swell of action page after page. It's quite good.

   I would like to thank Julia for offering me this fun and succulent read. I would like to thank the author Burt Weissbourd for writing it. And I hope many of my friends give it a go. Good stuff you guys! Really tightly written and fast paced. Lots of action, lots of insight. If you need a reprieve, you'll like this. 

   Over and out.

   xoxoxo