Waiting on Wednesday (35) AMERICAN ELSEWHERE by Robert Jackson Bennett

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Breaking the Spine, and one of my favorite days of the week! After yesterday’s Top Ten Tuesday, however, I almost decided to skip it this week. I mean, how can you top your Top Ten Most Anticipated Books of 2013? But there is indeed always one more book that I need to read, so here is the latest addition to my TBR pile:

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett. Release date:  February 12 2013 (Orbit). I have to admit it was the cover that caught my eye, before I even read what this book was about. Isn’t it fantastic? I also have to admit I’ve never read any books by this author, and I’m not sure why. American Elsewhere received a boxed review from Publishers Weekly (that’s a really big deal), and even though its length (almost 700 pages) scares me a bit, I’m dying to read it. Here’s what Publishers Weekly has to say:

Bennett (The Troupe) gives the idealized image of the American dream a pan-dimensional twist with this alien invasion tale, part Bradbury and part L’Engle with a dash of Edward Scissorhands. Mona Bright, a former cop with a tragic past, inherits her long-dead mother’s house in Wink, N. Mex., a picture-perfect hamlet built as a support community for a government lab conducting experiments in quantum physics. As Mona pieces together a history that bears no resemblance to the childhood she remembers, Bennett’s epic narrative unveils a chronicle of dysfunction masked by Wink’s mechanical obsession with normalcy. The quibbling, displaced characters are vile and sympathetic by turns, and always startlingly American. Through sharp empathetic detail, the horrific becomes both achingly poignant and comic; a wholesome diner where no one can ever order just one piece of pie shares space with a harsh alien landscape where a quivering blue imp cowers in terror while pleading for his life. Readers will be captivated from start to finish. (Publishers Weekly 11/19/12)

It’s been a while since I’ve read a good alien invasion story, and this one will do nicely, I think! What are you waiting on this week?