Serena by Ron Rash has the character everyone loves to hate. Serena is ruthless, evil, and brilliant.

Serena marries George Pemberton in 1929 in Boston, and it only takes them a couple of months before they travel to North Carolina where they will together run a timber company George owns. When they arrive at the camp, Serena picks out a man who doesn’t have much respect for her and challenges him to a contest: whoever can total board feet of a particular tree would pay the other two weeks wages. When Serena wins, she and George decide that once this man has worked his two weeks off (without wages), he’ll be fired. Heartless doesn’t even begin to describe Serena.

It is with this cunning and ruthlessness that Serena and George run their timber company. Shortly after Serena’s arrival, she buys a hawk and trains it to hunt snakes, lending a mythical quality to the rumors that already ran rampant through the camp about her.

When Serena miscarries her first child and is unable to bear more children, she sets out to kill the one woman with whom George had fathered a child, a woman who George had had an affair with before he married Serena.

The book alternates from following George and Serena to following Rachel Harmon (the woman who bore George’s child), and while the voice is in third person, the reader is never given insight into Serena. Any insight into Serena is doled out second-hand, through George, the timber workers, or Rachel. I wished that Serena’s character could have been fleshed out a little more, perhaps by having her as the narrator or by allowing a more omniscient view.

Much is lost to the reader in the choice of narration. While a large part of the story is touted on the book’s jacket flap as being Serena hunting down Rachel, all the reader knows is that Serena is hunting Rachel, but we never get a look into her twisted mind, leaving us to guess at Serena’s motivations and feelings.

While I wished the narration had been different, I really enjoyed the story. You wonder how far Serena will go to advance her business intentions, and by the end of the book you realize that Serena will not let anyone or anything stand in her way.

********(added in after review was written) When I was having lunch with a friend, he told me about a short story he read that showed the characters in a way that an artist will show an image by using negative space. That is what the author does here: we see Serena through the eyes of others, thereby leaving us a picture of the main character by seeing what those around her think. I like this idea in theory, though Serena’s husband never sees Serena as she really is, partly because he is very much like her, so he becomes somewhat of an unreliable narrator.************(end added inspiration)

At the end of the book, the author says the story is based on a a real Serena Pemberton, a timber baronness, who was murdered with a knife when she was old, and the guard to her house says he saw her try to pull the knife from her chest and when he found her, she was still standing but she was very much dead. People who knew her didn’t doubt the veracity of the guard’s account. This woman was so headstrong and determined that she wouldn’t even lay down to die. How is this a story you wouldn’t want to read about?

Rating: 89 out of 100

Unfortunately, Ron Rash doesn’t have his own website, but you can find out more about Ron Rash on HarperCollins.

Buy Serena from Powell’s | Buy Serena from Amazon

Other reviews:

Breaking the Fourth Wall

Both Eyes Book Blog

I just want to thank everyone for doing such a great job of supporting the read-a-thon today! It’s with a little bit of melancholy that Hannah and Nymeth and I run this read-a-thon, because it’s the first read-a-thon without Dewey. Dewey was such an inspiration to all of us as she was one of the people who brought book bloggers together into a community. You never realize what you have until that something’s gone, and it’s very apparent as we work on this read-a-thon what we’re missing.

We’re comforted, though, in knowing that in continuing events like the read-a-thon and weekly geeks that not only does Dewey live on in our memory, but we’re passing her on to other people who’ve never met her. She will be talked about for years to come.

Thank you for all your support!

Disclaimer: this post is not a request for you to tell me how wonderful I am (though that’s ALWAYS welcome). Rather, this post is intended to name some feelings I’ve had (whether now and in the past) in the hopes that others will relate and gain something from what I have to say.

A while ago I read a blog post on a non-book blog about how blogging reminds her of high school and all of the insecurities she felt: wanting to be accepted, wanting to be part of the “cool crowd”, etc. I wish I’d kept the link, but I didn’t.

So then I was reading at one of my favorite non-book blogs, Smoothpebble, and SHE had a post about blogging and high school and feelings of inadequacy.

And then just today, Bethany from B&b ex libris posted about whether the book blogging community has a cool and uncool group, and her post was the impetus I needed to finally publish this draft that’s been collecting dust.

I think feelings of inadequacy are more prominent in creative blogs (I have a friend who’s really creative and I’ve tried to convince her to start a blog, but she doesn’t want to because she’s not as good as the bloggers she reads), but I can’t imagine that I’m the only book blogger who sometimes feels like they’re back in high school. Let me explain.

In high school, I wasn’t an outcast but I certainly wasn’t popular. I was pretty quiet and generally kept to myself except with my circle of friends. I was usually in the advanced classes, so I was with all the other “nerds” anyway, so I never felt particularly nerdy myself. I don’t think the word “cool” would have described me at that time. I was nice to everyone, so I was never picked on. But having graduated more than 10 years ago, I’d be surprised if anyone other than my circle of friends remembers me.

But now, with blogging, I have a lot of the same feelings I had in high school. I wonder if people like me. I wonder if I’m nice enough. I wonder if my posts are good enough (even though I was in the advanced classes, I was never the smartest. In English, my teacher never held up my paper and said, “THIS is good writing.” like she did for another student (that happened to be struggling with anorexia….but I digress.)). What does this translate to? What does all this angst really spill over as? This:

Why don’t I get linked to more often?

Why aren’t my stats as good as so-and-so’s?

Why don’t publishers send me more books?

Why don’t I get as many comments as so-and-so?

Why doesn’t so-and-so like me?

Why aren’t I as funny as so-and-so?

Why can’t I be as chummy with authors as so-and-so? (erm…that might have something to do with my amazing ability to stuff both feet in my mouth at the same time and still talk)

Perhaps all of this has to do with my Type A personality, my drive to do better, do more, and do it all perfectly. I really want to do a good job.

Here’s a quote from Blue Yonder:

On the other hand, blog surfing can be, well, kind if intimidating. It can make you feel pretty inadequate. You can start to think that “So and so would handle this so much better than me” or “SHE would probably never raise her voice” or “That person would never forget about the birthday party and buy some plastic noise making junk to wrap in the car on the way over. Oh no, SHE would make something beautiful, something that would be treasured into the birthday boy’s retirement.” or “I’ll bet SHE never has piles of unfolded laundry on her couch for days.”

When I peruse the blogosphere, I often have to remind myself that I’m looking at someone’s life through a pinhole. I’m only seeing the wee-est little bit. If I knew them in “real life” I would see all the rest, and it would probably look as messy as my life.

I love this quote because while I struggle with feelings of inadequacy about my blog, I remind myself that I’m not someone else. I certainly don’t begrudge blogger’s their success! But it’s hard not to compare myself to others, so I have to remember that my life is what it is. I have a husband. I have a full time job and a part time job. I enjoy knitting. I have (however few) real life friends that I hang out with. And in the end, not everyone has the same circumstances and it’s not fair to compare myself to someone else, because it’s comparing apples and oranges.

I can only compare myself to me. Is my writing getting better? Are my insights into books getting more thoughtful? Is the traffic to my blog, which is tangible, growing each month?

But I think what might sum up this whole post is what Marta said on Twitter when talking about Bethany’s post:

I think whether you feel like you’re in or not depends on hormones and your chocolate supply also.

I’m thinking I need an extra supply of chocolate.

I want to reiterate that this is not a request for you to tell me how wonderful I am. Rather, this post is intended to name some feelings I’ve had (whether now and in the past) in the hopes that others will relate and gain something from what I have to say.

I asked Amy from My Friend Amy and Natasha from Maw Books to record a video on why they started a book blog. I then spliced everything together into this video!

For some reason, my own audio is off, so my parts looked like an old dubbed over foreign film. My mouth will move and no words will come out, then words start spilling out, but then my mouth will stop moving and the words keep coming. If I’d known this was going to happen, I would have played it up.

We’re hoping to do more of these, so if you have any topics you’d like us to discuss, let me know!

This project is only my second crochet project and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

Amigurumi is the “art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals.” I found this pattern on the Lion Brand website long before I ever took up crocheting (it’s a free pattern, but you’ll need to sign up for an account in order to get the pattern). I thought it was cute enough that I should learn to crochet just so I could make this giraffe.

Since this was my first project, I stuffed it to the point that it’s solid. Solid like a bowling pin. I’d already stitched the body up when I realized it would have been nice if it was a little softer. Oh well. Isn’t that what a baby’s mouth is for?

I followed the pattern exactly, all the way to the end when I had to crochet the horns (you crochet everything separately). You end up with 8 stitches that you have to decrease down to 4, and I was finding that I had gaps in my stitches (which I didn’t like) and I was having a hard time finding those four stitches in order to crochet the bottom part of the horns. So instead of decreasing to 4 stitches, I only decreased to 6. That made it so that I didn’t have any gaps in the stitches and crocheting those few rows was much easier with 6 stitches than it was with 4. Maybe this is something that will get easier the longer I crochet.

This giraffe worked up really quickly. If I’d had more time to devote to it, it probably could have been done in a week or two.

I’m trishc on Ravelry if you want to be friends!

What projects have you been working on lately?