Even after reading Mr. Peanut by first time novelist Adam Ross I'm not entirely sure what to make of it.
 

Mr. Peanut is the story of David and Alice Pepin, whose childless marriage is severely tested by a series of miscarriages until one day David, a successful computer game programmer,comes home to find his wife poised to eat a handful of peanuts, which they both know will result in anaphylactic shock. Alice has struggles with depression and obesity and is stressed at a job teaching developmentally challenged children. The to and fro of modern marriage acts as the catalyst between the aforementioned couple and the circumstance of the two detectives assigned to Alice's death.
Detectives Hastroll and Sheppard have marital skeletons in their closets as well.
 

Hastroll's wife rebels against her marriage by one day refusing to get out of bed.  Sheppard has re-invented himself after a life as Dr. Sam Sheppard, the real life philandering doctor who beat a murder rap in the 50s in a show trial concerning the murder of his wife. This kind of unique plotting is emblematic of Ross's ability to move things along, and a lesser writer would have either never had the nerve or would have presided over a broken book.  As it happens, Ross doesn't sink every trick shot, and at times it feels like the author may have tried to tie things up a bit too neatly, but he writes great characters, and I was particularly surprised by this first timers comfort with all of his female characters.
 

Each relationship is deftly handled and before long the similarities bleed into the other two marriages.  Mr. Peanut is structured very similarly to Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, and there are similar themes here.  How well can we really know another person? Does an increasingly virtual world make it easier to tweak one's identity, and what ramifications does that have for the nuclear family?
 

One hesitates to give the ending away, but it does fit the confines of the book.  It may just not work for everyone; but I'm not going to give it away here. This is an auspicious start to a career that I'm going to have fun watching. 

Neal Shusterman is one of my favourite authors. I recommend his books to everyone, especially teen and pre-teen boys, or reluctant readers. He just knows how to write an engaging story that happens to be exciting and thought-provoking at the same time.
 
Bruiser is his newest novel. I thought I had an initial handle on the story-- brother and sister are close, but bicker and when the sister starts dating the school meathead, the brother gets understandably protective. As it unfolds, the reader finds out that the "bully" is possibly beaten by his uncle, and I thought that I knew where it was all going.
 
But I had no idea. And that's all I can say about the plot and the characters without giving away too much. What I can say is that Neal is known, at least by me, as a writer of stories involving fantastic situations. Everlost is set in a world after death where kids are stuck until they can find a way to move on, and Unwind (my favourite) is set in a futuristic society with a gruesome twist. Both books have a wonderful sense of imagination; Neal gives a lot of thought to the emotional lives of his characters and the world they inhabit. And Bruiser is no exception.
 
Set in a contemporary world, Bruiser completely surprised me. A great way to kick off your summer reading, you'll have this book read in a sitting. You'll need to know how it ends!