I have a new favorite author — Gillian Flynn. I’d read “Gone Girl” because it was getting so much attention in so many places. “Gone Girl” was good — very well written with some wonderful plot twists. I put her other two books on my wish list on Amazon, and for my birthday, HighGuy bought them for me. I was a little surprised that he didn’t buy the Kindle version of them, but that’s OK. With the dead-tree version, I can loan them out easier.

I read “Sharp Objects” while on vacation. Not quite your easy-reading-on-the-beach book. Camille works for a second-rate newspaper and has been charged with getting the story on two girls who were murdered in her hometown. That means she will have to face her toxic mother, her equally-messed-up half-sister, and her pale stepfather.

Camille has taken cutting to a different level. Instead of just cutting herself to ease the pain, she carves words into her skin. “Wicked” above her hipbone, “whore” on her ankle, the only place she hasn’t scarred is the middle of her back. Her much-younger half-sister is a baby in her mother’s presence, and a Queen Bee in the presence of her small circle of friends.

The two girls who were killed weren’t totally innocent either. They had each made a name for themselves as destructive brats. But is that the reason they were killed and left without any teeth? The FBI agent on the job presses Camille to tell him about the small town where she grew up. Their working theory is that the murderer was a passing stranger, or perhaps someone from the small town. Not much of a theory, so Camille does her best to tell the town’s secrets.

“Dark Places” is an equally taut thriller. The story is told from the viewpoint of Libby, Ben and Patty Day. In January 1985,someone killed Patty Day and her two daughters, Michelle and Debby. Libby, the youngest daughter, escapes the murderer and is one of those testifying at the trial. Ben is convicted of the murders and is serving a life sentence.

Ben, the oldest child, was in the middle of his own crises at the time – his girlfriend was pregnant and he was being accused of molesting young girls. The children’s father, Runner Day, is an alcoholic and already divorced from Patty when the murder happens. He’s also a gambler, and only turns up to ask Patty for money.

After the murders, Libby lives with her aunt Diane for a while and then is bounced around to foster homes. She’s a messed up character — she’s never held a job, and lives off donations to a fund after she writes a book about her family. But now she meets a group of people who investigate murders and want to make hers their latest case. Although Ben was convicted, partly on the basis of Libby’s coached testimony, they don’t believe Ben is guilty.

Over the past 20 years, Libby has never contacted Ben or her father. Now the Kill Club is willing to pay her to interview them and get to the bottom of the murders. We find out what an ineffective mother Patty is, and what a creep Runner is, and how sympathetic a character Ben is.

Libby has been marked by the loss of her family. Who wouldn’t be? But will she be brave enough to find out who really killed her family?

The Forum’s editorial page editor Jack Zaleski recommended an author in one of his columns, partly because he met the author and partly because he’d read some of his books. Jeffrey Lent lives in and writes about New England — I read his novel, “Lost Nation.” So when Zaleski recommended more of his novels, I went online and bought another book for my Kindle. This time I purchased, “A Peculiar Grace.”

Normally I read pretty fast and retain information well. With this book, however, I’m forced to go slower. I think it’s because all his sentences are long, drawn-out affairs. He’s very descriptive without being flowery. I don’t know if the Kindle version is different because of spacing or page breaks, but it feels like it’s taking me forever to get through each chapter.

I have a hunch that Lent doesn’t like commas. He doesn’t use them very often, and sometimes I have to read a sentence more than once to get the clearer meaning. That’s really annoying to me because I think it’s better to have your meaning clear the first time and not make the reader stop, come back and reread. It makes me wonder what Lent’s conversations with his editor are like.

“No, I don’t want all those commas in there. Just leave it the way it is. That’s my style.”

Hmmm, well, I suppose there are other authors out there who felt the same way — James Joyce and his book, “Ulysses,” comes to mind. I wonder what his conversations were like with HIS editor!

I thought I would compare and contrast Lent with another James whose work I’ve read more than Joyce — James Patterson. I enjoy Patterson’s work immensely — and he has a huge body of work. Purists might consider Patterson more of a commercial hack than a novelist, and to some extent I agree. What sets Patterson apart is his ability to describe the action and leave the rest to the reader’s imagination.

Patterson uses short snappy chapters, each one ending with a mini-cliff-hanger. He diverts the action from one point of view to the next, keeping the reader on his toes in a different way than Lent. With Patterson, you remember each character based on their motivations; with Lent, you remember the characters based on their idiosyncrasies.

They’re the Tortoise and the Hare — the Hare being Patterson, of course. I can read a Patterson book in a weekend. This book by Lent is going to take longer. Sometimes I swear I don’t even get through a page during my 15-minute breaks at work. That’s nuts. But I’m just compulsive enough that I need to finish reading this story. I want to find out what happens to the main character.

That’s what both authors share: the ability to write a story that needs resolution. Lent is good at hinting at secrets kept by the characters, while Patterson tells what each person’s secret is and then makes us wait for the Big Reveal. Patterson has also hinted at secrets by the characters, but an astute reader can guess what that back-story is.

Patterson excels at the murder mystery, a little humor thrown in by witty characters, and the thrilling conclusion. Lent’s stories build slower, and in the case of “A Peculiar Grace,” I have no idea how it’s going to end.

Since receiving a Kindle as a gift, I’ve been keeping it filled with books to read. Amazon is good about offering old books for free or reduced prices. One of them was Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

I’ve seen the movie, but never read the book. It was too soon to start the book club selection, so I picked up The Color Purple. I was happily surprised. I think the movie version was very well done — in fact, it might have been better. The movie version telescopes a large amount of time into under two hours, so something has to be left to the imagination.

In the book, Celie leaves Mister and makes her own life, sewing pants to sell in her father’s store and living in the house that she didn’t know was hers all along. She also makes peace with Mister, to the point where she actually calls him Albert, too. They spend evenings on the front porch, sewing and talking. You get the feeling that a lot more time has passed.

When Nettie and her family finally come back to America from missionary work in Africa, they are all old. Adam has married and brought his bride with him. They are both marked by tribal scars on the face. Nettie has married the widowed preacher and finally told the two children that they were adopted. Their mother is her sister, Celie.

All this time — 30 years in the book — Nettie and Celie have been writing back and forth. Celie never received the letters, because Albert hid them from her out of spite. Celie has been writing to God, but when she finds out Nettie is alive and well in Africa, she starts writing to her instead. The sisters’ story is told through those letters.

In the movie, Celie leaves Albert and sets up her store. Nettie and her family come back to America in a much shorter time span. The children are grown, but I don’t think Adam is married. We don’t hear about all their adventures in Africa — only that the preacher’s wife died and Nettie and the preacher are married.

Also in the movie, I don’t get the feeling that Celie and Albert are on speaking terms. Remember that Celie was ready to kill Albert when she found out he was hiding her letters from Nettie. Another larger difference between the book and movie is Celie’s sexuality. In the book, Celie comes to terms with her homosexuality, while in the movie it’s more implied than stated directly.

Alice Walker gives more background on Celie and Nettie’s mother in the book, and talks about African Americans going to Africa to be missionaries. She also includes the rape of the African jungle by businessmen planting cash crops and building roads. The book encompasses a lot more territory — which is both good and bad.

The movie concentrates more on the plight of Celie, rather than mix in a bunch of other issues. Celie is so downtrodden that one wonders if she’ll ever rise above her oppressors. It’s truly a joy when she reunites with her sister — an ending that strikes a chord with me since I have two sisters with whom I’m close.

Now, my next choice: Do I read The Hunger Games first or watch the movie?

I enjoy belonging to a book club — it expands my reading horizons so much more than what I would choose or what an editor would pick for me to review. “The Thirteenth Tale” is just another example of a book that’s been on the New York Times bestseller list that I’ve totally missed until now.

“The Thirteenth Tale” is a story inside a story; on the surface, an elderly woman has asked a young woman known for her biographies to come and write the story of her life. Vida Winter is known as a writer of fiction, and every time media types come around, she just tells them more stories — completely fictionalizing her background.

This time, however, Vida tells the young woman, she will tell the truth. So every other chapter in the novel is Vida telling her life story. And what a story it is. Most journalists would have thrown up their hands and moved on if they had to wade through Vida’s history.

This novel has been compared to “Rebecca” and other gothic novels, and I can see where that comparison would be justified. There are elements of the supernatural, written so lightly and so deftly, that the reader could skip over them if they were skimming the pages rather than reading.

“The Thirteenth Tale” reminded me of another book that had been recommended by a book club member: “The Night Circus.” Neither book has any car crashes or thrilling suspense-filled chases. Both have mysteries that need to be solved, and both authors took their time building the stories. They didn’t rush headlong into the heart of the story — they circled around it for a while and then came to the point.

“The Thirteenth Tale” is about families and unhealthy relationships. It’s about how an abandoned child can make his way in the world, despite growing up among dysfunctional people. And the best compliment an author can receive: the novel seems autobiographical when it really isn’t. It makes me say, “I wish I’d written that.”

Harry Potter was one of the first big names that crossed over from children’s fiction to adult readers and fans. Certainly other books have made that transition; the Hunger Games books have gained more attention with the release of the movies. Another book series that would fit into this phenomenon is “The Giver” series by Lois Lowry.

This futuristic novel has been chosen as the One Book One Community selection in the Fargo area. The Fargo Public Library will hold various events in conjunction, including a book talk in October. I saw a billboard on Main Avenue, and it caught my eye because it showed the cover of the book.

“The Giver” had been recommended by a member of my book club, and I hadn’t given it any more thought until this last meeting. I finally downloaded it to my Kindle, and jumped into it when I needed something else besides murder and mayhem in a novel. This fit the bill.

Jonas is an Eleven, meaning he’s 11 years old, and at the end of the year, he’ll become a Twelve. That’s when all the children are given their assignment for life — a career chosen by a committee of wise people. Some children will be assigned to become caregivers for the old, caregivers for the babies, birth mothers or laborers.

Others will be assigned to further their education to become doctors or engineers, while others will complete their education and go on to some other employment such as trash collectors or food preparers. The Elevens have been watched to see where their talents lie, but it’s still a surprise to some of them.

In this over-structured community, everything is laid out for the people. When you want a partner, you apply for one and one is chosen for you. When you want children, you apply for one and one is assigned to you. At the supper table each night, Jonas and his family talk about their feelings.

It’s pretty tame; Jonas’s sister talks about getting angry that someone didn’t follow the rules on the playground. Her anger is discussed and then dissipated by explanations of the other child’s motivations for butting in line on the playground slide.

Each person also tells about their dreams, too. When Jonas’s dreams reveal stirrings of a sexual nature, he is instructed to take a daily pill, just as his parents do. End of problem. And then Jonas is chosen as the Receiver at the Ceremony of the Twelves. His job will be to receive the community’s memories, and along with them, their emotions.

Jonas stops taking his daily pill and gains certain freedoms: he can ask anything of anyone and receive an answer. He can lie. He isn’t allowed to discuss his training with anyone. That’s because the memories of what the world used to be like are only kept by the Receiver.

The current Receiver – an elderly-looking man who received the memories from his predecessor — is dubbed the Giver since Jonas is now the Receiver. The memories are both good and bad, painful and enjoyable. Jonas is no longer allowed to take pain medication to help with receiving the memories.

Jonas learns about snow, hills, war, dying and colors. Apparently in this sanitized life, no one sees colors anymore. The weather and landscape is modified for growing crops, and no one has anything to complain about or worry about. Everyone is equal and peace prevails.

In addition, there is no longer any need for emotion. Real emotion, that is. Jonas learns what it is to see colors and to feel love. And that’s when he finds out what Release is. Release in this society is death. Release of an old person is celebrated. What Jonas finds out is that people are intentionally killed and their bodies discarded following the Release ceremony.

What a strange world. And yet, it is orderly, peaceful and without stress or angst. Babies are raised by caring people — just not their birth mothers. When a birth mother has given birth a certain number of times, she is “retired” and becomes a laborer. Being a birth mother isn’t a very prestigious position. So, there IS some pecking order in this very orderly society.

What a great book to discuss! What happened so that people wanted to live this way? Perhaps it began as one sheltered community and then spread to others as a sought-after Utopia. The idea was well-intentioned, but those intentions went awry.

I have to admit that “The Visible Man” by Chuck Klosterman is the first book by him I’ve read. He has a few other books out there, most notably, “Fargo Rock City” and “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.” Although they have intriguing titles, I doubt I’m going to use my Amazon gift certificates on even an e-book version of them.

“The Visible Man” was the book club selection for September and we met Tuesday night to discuss it. I was only 82 percent done with it, so I put in a couple of hours of reading before and after supper to finish the novel. One thing I agreed on that one of the book club members said, “It is original.”

Yes, it certainly doesn’t fit into any one genre. But I can’t say that it’s literary fiction either. It’s a little sci-fi and a little … um, something else. While some of the blurbs talk about how “The Visible Man” is a commentary of life absurdities, we at book club thought it was more about relationships.

Vicky is a therapist with an unusual patient: he can make himself invisible. He wants to talk to Vicky about his perceived guilt at some of the things he’s been doing while unseen. From the outset, he hijacks the therapy sessions, telling her at first he only wants to talk over the phone. She finally gets him to come in for face-to-face sessions because she figures he needs more help than what she can provide if he’s truly psychotic and believes he can become invisible.

Knowing only a little about Klosterman — that he grew up in North Dakota and worked at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead — I didn’t know what to expect. Would the ability to become invisible be real or just a part of this fellow’s psychosis? At one point, I asked myself, “Where is this book heading?”

The answers? Yes, the fellow had a suit and a spray that rendered him invisible, and the book concludes open-ended. Vicky was excoriated by book club members for being a therapist without ethics, since she meets the man outside of therapy and begins a personal relationship with him. She lies to her own mentor and lies to her husband about this mysterious man.

Meanwhile the man, referred to throughout the book as Y__, carries on his storytelling with Vicky. He talks about all the people he’s observed in order to get to know them better. His theory is that one can’t really know another person unless you’ve observed them when they’re alone.

I was half-expecting to learn that Vicky was the one with the mental illness and that Y__ was a figment of HER imagination. Alas, that might have made the book more interesting to me. Oh, well, maybe I’ll have to write that book.

The book’s redeeming quality? It made for some great discussion at book club.

Reading “The Last Juror” by John  Grisham was a nostalgic trip for me. It’s basically about a young man, fresh out of college, who takes over a small-town weekly newspaper. I’m not a young man fresh out of college, but I can recall working for a weekly newspaper.

There were so many similarities — the small but dedicated staff; the printing press in the back that printed other little newspapers in addition to the one I worked for; the weekly deadlines; the flexibility of writing everything, including feature stories, straight news, engagement announcements and obituaries.

Grisham wrote about a time when little newspapers practically printed money. They were prolific enterprises. Being a county-wide newspaper, we covered a large area and were the official newspaper for a number of townships and school districts. Legal ads were lucrative, as well as the insurance statements.

I remember once getting a notice of a meeting after the paper had gone to press. We couldn’t notify anyone else about the meeting, but we could be there. And we were. We reported on lots of different school districts, including the one in town where the paper was printed. When the school board and teachers couldn’t agree on a contract, we were there.

Grisham captured perfectly what it was like — journalists could smoke at their desks, and sometimes have a drink there, too. I didn’t do either one, but I heard stories about the brother of the publisher ordering in a keg when the publisher was out of town. I’d go home and the kids would hug me and say, “Mom, you smell like ink and smoke.” Maybe that’s why they both tried smoking.

Each week after the paper was put to bed, I’d heave a sigh and then start thinking about what I was going to write about for the next edition. The staff was small — the editor and I did the majority of the writing. We’d divide up the school districts and city councils and take turns covering the parades and city festivals.

In Grisham’s book, the young man from the North who ultimately buys the newspaper covers a murder trial. The suspect is arrested with all kinds of incriminating evidence. It was an unplanned murder following a rape. The victim identifies her killer before she dies. Open and shut case. His family, however, has money and influence. They also have a long history of criminal behavior which includes intimidation.

The murderer threatens the jury before he is taken to prison for “life.” The jury can’t agree on the death penalty — there are three hold-outs. So the judge orders life. A life sentence in Ford County means ten years, more or less, which is a slap on the wrist. Grisham admits that he made some changes in the law to advance the story, and I think this is where he made it.

So the murderer is paroled, and two jurors are gunned down — one in broad daylight on the job. Of course, they suspect the murderer. His threat had kept him in jail a little longer, but no one from the victim’s family could attend all of the parole hearings. They have no evidence with which to link him to the shootings. They can’t arrest him.

The rest of the jurors are being protected by family and friends — this is the South where everyone is toting a rifle in their pickup. Among the jurors is an educated black woman of strong convictions and an equally strong faith. She has befriended the journalist and meets weekly with him to give him a proofreading of the newspaper. She also serves him some down-home cooking.

 She does die in the end, but not how you’d think. The story ends with the journalist selling the newspaper and writing her obituary as his last act. Very fitting. Very satisfying ending.

I’ve been on vacation, so of course, I took my Kindle with me and read and read and read. Thankfully, I can read in the car, just not while I’m driving. My husband and I drove to a resort in Minnesota, where lately they’ve had LOTS of rain, so I got in a lot of reading.

The first book I finished on the road is Jeffrey Archer’s “A Matter of Honor.” I thought Archer’s name was familiar — now that I look at his list of other books I see why: “Kane and Abel,” ‘The Fourth Estate” and “The Eleventh Commandment.” I think I’ve read the last two on the list, and I KNOW I’ve read the first one.

“A Matter of Honor” is one of those “blend fiction with fact” novels. It has to do with the purchase of Alaska from Russia, and a lease agreement that’s hidden inside a work of art. After World War II, an American soldier gets a letter from one of Hitler’s henchmen and then passes the letter to his son without opening it. (I can’t imagine getting a letter and then not opening it.)

Inside the letter, Herman Goering bequeaths the contents of a lock-box in Switzerland to the soldier (and now the soldier’s son). Inside the lock-box is a work of art known as the Czar’s icon. Before the Czar was ousted, he had a copy made of the mosaic and hung that on his wall, because the original had a secret compartment where he stored the purchase agreement concerning Alaska.

The soldier’s son goes to Switzerland and retrieves the Czar’s icon, but doesn’t discover what’s inside until long after there have been several attempts on his life. There are Germans, Russians and Americans looking for him — and he doesn’t know whom he can trust. It’s a thriller — the novel kept me up past my bedtime a number of nights.

When that roller-coaster ride was done, I wanted something more staid to read. I chose, “The Search for Major Plagge,” by Michael Good. This nonfiction memoir concerns Michael’s parents who are survivors of the Holocaust. The German major realizes what the Nazi party is doing to the Jewish population and refuses to comply. He actively finds reasons to keep them alive at the car-repair facility.

I got the updated version of the book — which is one really good feature of e-books — and found the search interesting. The author gets a little wordy at times and a little preachy in places, but it’s hard not to be passionate about the Holocaust. They submit Plagge’s name to a Jewish organization which designates rescuers in the Holocaust as Righteous Among Nations.

The author forms a group that investigates and researches Plagge and all his motivations, and apply three times to the organization. It’s apparently like being canonized. There’s a certain threshold one must meet in order to qualify. Their work is successful, and the survivors can rest easy, knowing that they’ve recognized Major Plagge for his sacrifice.

After that book, I wanted something really benign, so I picked up “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating,” a memoir by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. This was really a strange book, but yet, it was compelling in a quiet sort of way. The author is felled by a strange virus and spends months flat on her back in bed. Her only steady companion is a wild snail that her caregiver brought in from the forest.

At first the snail lives in an occupied flowerpot, and travels up and down the side of the pot for water and fading flower blossoms. Then the caregiver sets up a terrarium and the author does some homework about snails. Spending that much time in bed could have been mentally challenging, but the author found that the snail was the perfect companion. He didn’t go far and she had all the patience in the world to wait to see what he did next.

I learned way more about snails than I really wanted to know, but it was still interesting. I can remember being bedridden and not being able to sleep because I’ve slept so much. I can see how a nocturnal creature would help pass the time. And I can understand why the author did so much research — snails are curious gastropods.

I finished reading the memoir just as I was starting to get bored with it. I think the author probably did too. But I had another book I was ready to tackle, “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn. It’s a murder mystery with a twist, according to everything I’ve read about it. So far, so good.

The narrator is Nick, a New York writer who is laid off from his job at a magazine. His first chapter is mostly a rant about the death of books, newspapers and magazines, all due to the Internet. I can relate. I still have dreams about getting paid to write. Maybe I’ll have to change “dreams” to “fantasies.”

Somewhere in the book, Nick’s wife goes missing, and he’s charged with her murder. I like crime novels — they’re so deliciously escapist. So now I can get a second vacation from reality by reading. It’s all good.

I don’t know what possessed me to open up the book, “The Cider House Rules” by John Irving. I’d bought the book some time ago in paperback with a picture of Tobey McGuire on the front. He played the part of Homer Wells in the movie version.

Pfft. I can’t imagine trying to convert this book to a movie. It’s so LONG. Maybe it just seems that way because I’m not making very quick progress in reading this book. John Irving is very, very wordy. His sentences are paragraphs, all by themselves.

Not that they’re not interesting — they are. It’s just that John Irving likes to describe everything to the nth degree. You have to be able to picture absolutely everything. I have to admit I saw parts of the movie before I ever picked up the book, so I already have Michael Caine in my mind as Dr. Wilbur Larch, and McGuire in my head as Homer.

But what part does Charlize Theron play? I can’t even remember how the movie ends, except for Homer picking up where Dr. Larch left off — right down to sending the boys at the orphanage to bed with the benediction, “Good-night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”

I remember when Fuzzy dies — Fuzzy was a premature baby whose lungs never fully matured. What I didn’t know is that the nurses at the orphanage named all the babies born there — one used the names of her kittens (thus Fuzzy and Snowy) and the other named them after Dr. Larch. There were several Wilburs, both as first and as last names.

Irving gives us Dr. Larch’s back-story, too, which wasn’t likely even touched upon in the movie. I have a hunch there’s a LOT that couldn’t be included in the movie. Dr. Larch does the “errands of God” and the “errands of the Devil” when he delivers the babies and performs abortions.

Larch has no qualms about performing abortions. He’s seen the results of women going to butchers, and he himself turned down one woman only to see her later at the hospital where she died. He realizes then that he could have saved her life. That knowledge affects the rest of his medical practice.

I don’t know if I’m going to read the entire book — it’s interesting and the characters are keeping me entertained. I also have more books waiting for me that will be a whole lot quicker to read and will be equally as entertaining.

And speaking of entertaining — the topic of “Fifty Shades of Grey” came up at book club on Sunday. We agreed that it wasn’t particularly well-written, but it was entertaining!

Someone at my book club recommended “One Day” by David Nicholls. I didn’t even know it was a movie until my sister told me minutes before I left to go to book club. Eh, wouldn’t have made a difference.

It was an OK book — I enjoy reading stories with “British-isms.” The first time they talk about fags shocks me for a moment until I realize they’re talking about cigarettes. And then the voice inside my head narrating the story speaks with a British accent.

We all agreed that Dexter was a selfish jerk and that he didn’t deserve Emma. And we liked Emma — a lot. And then she dies?!? I just felt so cheated! The premise of the whole novel is that these two people keep meeting on St. Swithin’s day — July 15, if Iremember correctly.

Each year is different. They met in college after graduation, and each year after that, you realize how much they’ve changed. Dex is a self-absorbed creep, born into money, and never really does have a plan or a goal about what he wants in life until it’s too late. Em, on the other hand, knows she wants to be a writer and goes after it. She works for every rung on the ladder to the top.

This premise isn’t altogether new. “Same Time Next Year” was a movie with Alan Alda and Carol Burnett. They get together every year at the same time, and you see how they’ve changed. They can never quite mesh timelines — one or the other is always unavailable.

In “One Day,” Dex and Em have some of the same trouble. She grows up while he just keeps partying through life. One year they meet at a wedding held in an ”upscale wedding Disneyland.” (I love that description.) They go into a hedge maze together to talk. The maze is a symbol of their relationship — and Em is the one who rescues them from being totally lost.

Finally, after years of denying their attraction, they marry. Everything is going OK for them: they’re trying for a baby and looking at homes. And then she gets run over on her bike! Boom! Gone! No lingering in the hospital in a coma; no struggling with paralysis; just dead. And it happens so abruptly in the book, that I nearly stopped reading.

I’m glad I didn’t. One of Em’s former boyfriends writes to Dex and tells him that all the time they were together, he knew that she was still in love with Dex. That’s comforting to know. And ironic, too. If he’d known, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten involved with all those other women. He could have had more than two years of marriage to Em.

I guess the moral of the story is to live every day like it’s your last, and make sure the loved ones in your life know how you feel.

But I still feel cheated that she died.