Book thirty: Trompe L'oeil by Nancy Reisman

To save you the necessity of Googling it yourself, "trompe l'oeil" means "optical illusion".

It seems weird to say this but this book was too wordy for me. I applaud the reviewer, Michael Schaub, over at NPR for succinctly putting it this way, "Reisman is an excellent sentence-level writer -- for the most part -- but frequently the writing gets the better of her, as if she can't find her way out of her own descriptions."

Yes, yes, yes. That's what I thought, too. More often than necessary (or appreciated), Reisman's wordiness gets the better of her. There's just too much.

That being said, the story itself is heartbreaking and the moments that are good, when her words are just enough but not too much, they are incredibly impactful. You feel the pain, you feel the hurt, you feel the loss.

30 down plus 22 to go.