December Minireviews // Part 3

A Will and Way by Nora Roberts – 4*

So I had set aside this book with two Roberts stories in it, assuming that with a title like First Snow they were probably Christmasy.  Well, they weren’t haha  However, I did enjoy this one – classic trope where two people who don’t like each other have to live together in a giant mansion for six months in order to inherit the money.  Along with (naturally) falling in love, there’s a suspense element as well.  Nothing groundbreaking, but a fun read.

Local Hero by Nora Roberts – 3.5*

I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much.  A single mom moves into a new apartment.  Her son hits it off with one of their neighbors, Mitch, who ends up also being the author/illustrator of her son’s favorite comic book series.  While overall this was a fun read, I did find Mitch to be kind of pushy, and it also felt a little weird that the mom was so immediately willing to trust him with babysitting her kid.  Not a bad one-off, but it definitely had the 1980s vibe going on.

Loves Music, Loves to Dance by Mary Higgins Clark – 4*

//published 1991//

Another not-Christmas read, this one was to fill in my 1991 slow for the 1982-2022 challenge on Litsy.  The entire premise centers on the idea of people placing and answering personal ads for potential dates, so that was kind of a fun throw-back.  A serial killer leaves behind just one shoe of each of his victims, which is really the only way the police have of connecting his crimes.  This one was quite suspenseful, and since we get some scenes from the killer’s perspective, pretty creepy, too.  A solid installment in Clark’s long list of writing.

Christmas With Anne by L.M. Montgomery – 4*

A little collection of Christmas-themed short stories by Montgomery.  Like most of the short story collections featuring her work, some of these were stronger than others.  A few were a bit on the saccharine side, but many were quite enjoyable.  It did feel odd to include two random chapters from Anne books in this collection – as someone who has read and is very familiar with the original novels, I enjoyed the revisit of these scenes, but if I had never read the Anne books, I think they would have felt a little out of place.  Enjoyable, but nothing that really stood out.

Raising the Horseman by Serena Valentina – 1*

//published 2022//

Not remotely Christmasy, I read this one for the traveling book club.  A retelling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, sort of, this one had loads of potential but instead decided to spend most of its time telling readers how terrible men are.  I ranted about this one at length over on GoodReads, and am actually going to link you there instead of copying it all over here.  In short, though, this one was just genuinely boring, the characters weren’t remotely believable or interesting, there were a lot of instances where character decisions/dialogue didn’t match up with earlier character decisions/dialogue, and the whole thing just felt jumbled and directionless.  This book just didn’t deliver. The writing was lackluster, the characters terrible, the plot nonexistent, the story repetitive and dull, and not a single moment of Halloween creepiness to make up for it.  Just.  Ugh.  No.

A Wedding in December by Sarah Morgan – 4*

//published 2019//

This is typical Morgan-fare.  Rosie is getting married in Colorado, so her family comes from England to Aspen.  They’re somewhat concerned because it’s been a rather whirlwind relationship – especially Rosie’s older sister, Katie, who is determined to breakup or at least postpone the wedding.  Rosie’s parents have been together a long time, but have secretly been separated for a few months and are planning to divorce – they just haven’t figured out how to tell their children yet.  As with all of Morgan’s novels, my only complaint is that it could have been longer and more detailed.  We have Rosie dealing with wedding complications, meeting her soon-to-be-husband’s family, and fending off the doubts Katie is planting.  We have Katie, who is so blinded by her assumptions that Rosie must be doing the wrong thing that she can’t actually see what their relationship looks like – despite the help of the best man, Jordan, who happens to be hot and single.  And then the parents, who feel like their marriage has just hit a dead end, but since their daughters don’t know that, have decided to pretend to be as happy as ever for the next few weeks, and then tell them the truth about their upcoming divorce after the wedding – but in the meantime, they’re sharing a cabin and Rosie keeps setting them up on romantic dates, determined that they should be enjoying a “second honeymoon.”  There’s some drama, some good conversations, and some fun scenarios.  Not my favorite book of hers, but still very enjoyable.

Running Total: Books that I’ve read but haven’t reviewed yet: 87!!!  High/Low: 97/87

July Minireviews // Part 3

I’ve long decided that the idea of me ever being caught up on reviews is kind of hopeless.  But now I find myself wondering the opposite – is it possible that I will eventually become so far behind on reviews that readers won’t even know which July I am referring to without further explanation??  Only time will tell.

At any rate, Happy New Year!! And here are some books I read back when it was a million degrees out and super muggy.

Nightwork by Nora Roberts – 4*

//published 2022//

Continuing my July Roberts binge, I also picked up her latest novel.  I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews for this one, and even though I, personally, enjoyed it, I can understand why a lot of people didn’t.  It’s really more of a story about the main character, Harry Booth, than it is about romance or suspense – which is a bit of a departure from most of the Roberts books I’ve read.  The story starts with Harry as a small boy.  His single mother has cancer and can only work irregularly so they struggle to make ends meet.  Harry starts stealing, and, as he grows into adulthood, becomes a con artist and a professional thief.  Despite Harry’s job, this story was slow, and the heists never felt particularly pulse-pounding.  Personally, I liked Harry as a character, and I enjoyed the descriptions of the various places he lived and worked (especially New Orleans), so I enjoyed the book.  But both the romance and the suspense are on the slow side, so this one probably isn’t for everyone.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym – 4*

//published 1952//

I read this one as a buddy read with a group on Litsy.  It definitely wasn’t a book that I would have picked up on my own, but I ended up enjoying it, especially at the chapter-a-day pace.  It’s not a particularly fast-paced read, a story of an older spinster just after WWII.  It’s an interesting look at a specific layer of British society, one of a generation of women whose potential husbands were slaughtered on the battlefields.  I ended up liking Mildred and sympathizing with her quiet, industrious life, where most of her work was taken for granted.  I was a little let down by the ending, which felt rather sitcom-like, where everyone just ends up exactly where they started, but overall while this wasn’t a new favorite that I see myself reading time and again, I found to be an engaging, quiet novel.

A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery – 4*

//published 1931//

It had been probably 15-20 years since my last reread of this one.  It was never one of my favorite Mongomery’s growing up, but I appreciated it a lot more now than I did when I was in my early 20s, finding several of the storylines a bit more sympathetic.  There are a lot of characters here and a lot of threads (hence the title), so there are definitely stories within this one that I prefer to others.  The Sams were never my favorites before or now, and it does make me sad that their weird racism bit is the what comprises the final pages of this book, considering that the rest of the novel is old-fashioned but pleasantly so.  This isn’t where I would start with Montgomery’s books, and it’s definitely more adult than many of her other novels, but there are plenty of enjoyable characters and interesting motivations here.  This was an especially fun one to read with the Kindred Spirits group on Litsy as there is a lot to discuss!!

Lost Lake by Phillip Margolin – 3.5*

//published 2005//

I really enjoy Margolin’s legal thrillers.  This one wasn’t my favorite, but it still kept me turning the pages.  Ami is a single mother and struggling attorney.  She rents out the apartment above her garage for extra income, and her latest tenant seems like a regular, kind man a little older than herself.  But when he goes berserk at her son’s baseball game and almost kills someone with his bare hands, Ami sees an entirely different side of him.  Now in prison, he shares an almost unbelievable story with her, about a secret group of trained killers, hired by the government entirely off the books and headed up by a famous general who is now running for president.  His story is corroborated by the General’s own daughter, Vanessa – who had a mental breakdown in her past and spent time in a mental hospital, meaning that now no one takes her accusations very seriously.  Margolin does a great job of presenting information against the General that makes you think Carl and Vanessa are right, followed by the General explaining away everything in a perfectly reasonable manner, leaving you convinced that Carl (a Vietnam vet) and Vanessa are actually just paranoid and delusional, pitiable individuals who need help.  However, this did mean that book was slightly repetitive at times, especially when we would hear about something from Carl’s view, than Vanessa’s, then the General’s.  And towards the end of the book there is a big courtroom scene where everything is summed up in far too much detail – like, I literally just read the book?? I don’t need an entire chapter-long synopsis!  However, I genuinely didn’t know who to believe up until the ending, so, a good one-time read, but not my new favorite by this author.

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan – 4*

The final book in the Percy Jackson series wrapped everything up nicely.  On the whole, while I enjoyed the series just fine, it didn’t really reach out and grab me.  There are various spinoff and other related series, but I don’t see myself picking up any of the others.

April Minireviews – Part 2

Well, peach season starts next week, so I never did get caught up… amazing how far behind I can stay!!

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

Nine Lives by Peter Swanson – 4*

//published 2022//

I always read a new book by Swanson.  I frequently get done with his books and think “Well, that was nonsense,” but I rarely think while I’m actually reading his books, which is what counts haha

Nine seemingly unconnected individuals each receive a letter in the mail with a list of (the same) nine names. It seems like a prank – until each of those people start getting murdered. While this wasn’t exactly a slow book, it was slow compared to Swanson’s usual frenetic pace. There isn’t really an investigation – instead, each section (which counts down from nine as people are killed) hops between the different people and what is happening with them as different ones of them either completely ignore the circumstances or try to fit together the pieces. This definitely wasn’t my favorite Swanson book because of the pace and because part of the story just didn’t jive with me (spoiler below) but it was still an engaging read with a generous nod to Agatha Christie.  While it wasn’t my new favorite, it was still a solid thriller with some fun little twists.  But in the end, I just didn’t really find the motivation of the killer to be sufficient for what had happened.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER:  Concerning the motivations… Basically, this book was a homage to Christie’s And Then There Were None, possibly one of the greatest mysteries ever written. However, in ATTWN the victims (theoretically) deserve to be killed because they have gotten away with with murder in the past, which is why the killer lures them all to a remote location and picks them off, one by one.  And so, even though people are dying, you’re also finding out that they literally killed someone else in the past so you don’t exactly feel bad for them.  Here, the killer decides to murder the (adult) children of those he blames for his sister’s death (which was definitely a tragedy, but also – they were ALL children when she died??).  Consequently this one really felt like a downer since (mostly) innocent people were killed for revenge instead of vigilante justice being handed out.  I think the story would have read better – and made more sense – if the actual people involved in the sister’s death had been the ones to die.  Killing off their kids just felt… off… and I never quite bought it.

London Under by Peter Ackroyd – 3*

//published 2011//

This nonfiction book looks at the “secret” underground world of London, which, like many large cities, has a complete city-under-the-city, where an astounding amount of infrastructure resides. Unfortunately, I found this book ultimately disappointing, mainly because Ackroyd didn’t particularly take the time to organize his information or go in depth about many of the things he mentioned. Instead, this book felt very fragmentary, almost like an outline for a book instead of the actual book. It’s only 205 very small pages and contains no maps! He would toss out intriguing factoids, but never follow up on them. In the end, I just found myself wanting more. This book didn’t really teach me anything, and Ackroyd seemed more interested in emphasizing (constantly) how “mysterious“ the underground is and how it’s associated with things like death and darkness, yet also safety and security… but then just kind of wandering away without really getting into it.  There is a lot of potential here, and this wasn’t a BAD book per se, as I did find bits of it interesting, I just wish that this book was about twice as long and full of maps!

Flowers on Main by Sherryl Woods – 3*

//published 2009//

Book 2 in the Chesapeake Shores series, and another middle-of-the-road read.  Honestly, if I was reading this series all in one go instead of at a rate of one per month (ish), I probably would have already given up on them as they really aren’t that great!  In this story, focusing on a different O’Brien sibling, Bree has returned to her hometown after a big kerfuffle in her play-writing job in Chicago. She decides to use her savings to open a flower shop downtown, and it turns out (you won’t believe this) that the only place to wholesale flowers within a reasonable distance is a greenhouse owned by her old boyfriend, the one she abandoned to chase her big-city dreams!!!

This wasn’t a bad story, per se, the drama just never felt balanced.  I was so over Jake whining about his feelings and how much Bree had hurt them and how scared he was about letting her potentially hurt him again, and how he could never believe that she was really here to stay, blah blah blah blah blah  Just, oh my gosh, get OVER yourself, Jake!  I would never have been as persistent as Bree, and honestly never felt like Jake was worth all the effort she put into their relationship.  I’ve also noticed throughout this series (I’ve read two more since this one in April) that Woods has an extremely annoying habit of creating genuinely reasonable issues between her main couple, and then instead of actually RESOLVING the issue, just completely blows it off!  We spend a few hundred pages of Jake refusing to believe anything Bree says – then all of a sudden, he just magically wakes up one day and feels the complete opposite way!  Nice!  It’s uneven and annoying, and leaves me feeling more frustrated with the story on the whole than I otherwise would be.

The Honey-Don’t List by Christina Lauren – 3.5*

//published 2020//

The concept here is that Carey has worked for Melly and Rusty Tripp for years, back before they were famous.  Now, the Tripps are huge home-remodeling gurus with their own show, books, etc. etc. The problem is that even though they seem wonderful and lovable in public, their marriage is actually falling apart, and Carey is the one trying to hold things together.  James, in the meantime, was hired as an engineer, yet seems to be working more as Rusty’s personal assistant than anything else.  He and Carey end up heading off with the Tripps on their book tour, trying to keep everything together so they can all keep their jobs.

While I found a lot of this to be fun and funny, this book also low-key stressed me out.  Watching the Tripps marriage fall apart was kind of depressing, and the whole book ended up feeling a lot more about Melly and Rusty than it was about Carey and James – which would have been fine, if we had more resolution with the Tripps in the end, instead of a HEA for James and Carey and yay! The end!  I needed an epilogue reassuring me that the Tripps went through counseling and are doing better!  Also, supposedly Melly was this amazing mother-figure to Carey yadda yadda, but now she’s treating Carey horribly, so I also wanted more resolution with their relationship as well, because I wanted to see them rebuild the friendship they had had in the past.

I guess in a way I found some of this to be more serious than I want my romcoms to be, which meant I wanted some more serious resolutions.  Instead, the book felt a little choppy because parts of it were just silly pranks gone wrong, followed by “oh this person is actually emotionally abusive and totally using you,” kind of giving me some reading whiplash.  I did overall enjoy this one, but it’s not one I see myself rereading.

Great Northern?  by Arthur Ransome – 5*

//published 1947//

My final Swallows & Amazons book, and I loved it just as much as the rest!!  I have no idea of Ransome intended this to be the final book, or if it just happened to be so, but it was an absolutely delight to see the entire gang all together for this final story involving birds, boats, misunderstandings, and adventures.  I loved every page of all 11 of the books in this series, and wish there were 11 more.  I laughed out loud reading this one, and was honestly on pins and needles as to what would happen with the birds.  It’s rare for me to read a children’s book and wish that there was a book about the same characters as adults, but I would totally read about this gang in adulthood – I love to picture them still messing about with boats and teaching their own children to do the same.  I can’t recommend this series highly enough, and am thinking about rereading them right through again!

North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell – 2*

//published 1854//

This was April’s buddy-read with the PemberLittens, and another classic I hadn’t read before.  I pretty much disliked this entire book and struggled to understand why people consider it romantic in any way.  I found to be pretty relentlessly depressing, and Gaskell’s only “plot twist” she seemed to know was to just kill off someone else every time things seemed like they were getting a little slow.  Poor Margaret!  Of course, I didn’t really feel that bad for her as she’s self-absorbed, mealy-mouthed, and unutterably dull, but still!  Thornton was also just painfully boring, so I guess they probably are set for long-term felicity, but I absolutely never felt remotely interested in seeing these two get together.  In fact, I felt like they were actually a pretty bad match.  And talk about insta-love!  Thornton just sees Margaret and falls in love, and then that’s it!  The entire rest of the book is him being dumb about it, or his mom being dumb about it, or Margaret being dumb about it.  Everyone wanders around and whines about things and worries about whether or not they’re doing the right thing, and then every fifty pages or so Gaskell would kill off some other perfectly nice character who didn’t deserve to die.

The whole story was just Margaret mooning around, taking care of everyone because she’s literally surrounded by child-adults who don’t know how to do anything beyond hand-wringing (apparently killing off everyone was Gaskell’s way of giving Margaret something else to do – i.e., mourn and also think about how she could have been a better person and so we could read about how her eyes are constantly full of unshed tears). I absolutely never liked Margaret – and I say this as a religious person with a strong moral black/white life-framework – because she spends the time that she’s not devotedly caring for those close to her worrying about her conscience and whether she’s said or done something that shouldn’t have been said or done, or not said or done something that she should have said or done. So tedious! So self-absorbed, clothed as unselfishness! We get it. You told a lie. ONE LIE in a moment of panic. Yes, you’ve determined that was wrong. BUT YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE PAST SO PLEASE FREAKING MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE. If I had to hear about that lie ONE MORE TIME I was going to PERSONALLY turn her brother in myself just to give Margaret something else to worry about oh my GOSH.

There were moments that I thought it was going to be okay – I loved Mr. Bell, for instance (spoiler: don’t get too attached -_-). I did appreciate the character growth that Thornton eventually showed – how interesting this book could have been if we spent more than about five pages on that aspect of the story! I did admire Margaret’s strong convictions and unwavering commitment to them. But for the most part, I was bored out of my mind and sighed every time I picked up the day’s chapter, wondering what sort of emotional torture Margaret was going to be put through today. I can see why many people admire Margaret and find her story romantic, but this one was not for me.

April Minireviews – Part 1

I didn’t read as many books in April so I’m sure that means I’m going to get caught up, right?  LOL

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

A Dance With the Fae Prince by Elise Kova – 4*

//published 2021//

I read the first book in the Married to Magic series, A Deal With the Elf King, for the traveling book club and found it surprisingly enjoyable.  The books are set in the same world but don’t really overlap very much, so they can be read independently.  I liked this one even better, actually, because I found the main characters more likable.  While not my new all-time favorites, these books were really enjoyable romantic fantasy.

The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers – 3*

//published 1903//

This is one of those classics that is considered so because of the way that it created a new subgenre.  A sort of spy-thriller, when it was published this book was a bit controversial because of the way it pointed out weaknesses in Britain’s naval defense.  However, I really struggled with this book because I was reading it as an ebook, which did NOT include the original story’s charts and maps!  These were referred to regularly throughout the text, and half the story is the main characters exploring these complicated channels, bays, inlets, rivers, etc. so not being able to visually reference the charts made the story confusing and also someone boring.  This wasn’t a book that was big on the action anyway, but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if, when the text told me to refer to a chart, I could have actually done so.

Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery – 4*

//published 1910//

This was a buddy read with the Kindred Spirits group on Litsy, and a reread for me, as most Montgomery books are.  This has never been a particular favorite of mine.  It’s perfectly pleasant but not magical, and I’ve never been completely comfortable with the romance, because Kilmeny has been so incredibly isolated her entire life and then just falls in love with the first decent guy she meets and it feels a little weird.  One of the other members of the group said this story seemed like something Anne and her friends would have written for their Story Club, and that cracked me up because it’s SO true.  This one is just a little too melodramatic.

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow – 3.5*

//published 2020//

There are some books that I read a chapter-a-day and that keeps me plugging away at them when I honestly may have not finished them if I had just been reading them straight through, and this was one of them.  This story focuses on the “forgotten” sister in P&P, Mary.  There was a LOT of time spent on Mary being miserable and sad and people being mean to her and her feeling rejected – it just went on and on and on.  While Mary’s character growth seemed natural and good, some of the other characters were uneven, especially Charlotte.  The concluding drama also dragged out way longer than it needed to.  So, basically, a pretty good read that needed about a hundred pages edited out haha

I’ll Take Forever by Barbara McMahon – 2*

//published 1988//

This one was pretty bad, although I’ll admit I somewhat softened my attitude when I realized it was published in 1988.  This was a free Kindle book from back in the day, and the entire story is about an undercover federal agent trying to find out where illegal marijuana is being grown and he has to stay with a civilian – literally NONE of it felt remotely realistic haha  There are several instances where Kyle just assumes Jenny is going to be doing this cooking/cleaning/laundry that felt really awkward because he’s literally just mooching off of her.  Jenny herself was honestly kind of stupid and always did stupid things that miraculously would turn out to be the right thing.  For some reason, McMahon decided Jenny should be a widow at the age of 25 (her husband died in a car wreck a year earlier) – I have no idea why she needed to be a widow, I guess so the agent could be “her husband’s cousin” but it just felt awkward, especially since we are told a lot that they had a really lovely marriage but Jenny is totally over it!  After a year!  Woohoo!  Like I realize everyone has a different grieving process, but I’m still not over my grandma dying in 2009 so I didn’t find it particularly convincing that Jenny is basically like, “Oh yeah, I was married, I remember that guy!  He was cool!”  The attitude towards marijuana in this story is definitely very 80s.  I’m not here to advocate marijuana usage, but I also truly don’t think smoking a joint will immediately lead you down the path of hard drugs for life.  This was a super short book so I skimmed a lot of it just so I could be amazed at how it made no sense.  Sometimes it’s fun to get a little hate-reading in!

Shetland Island Mysteries – Books 1-4 // by Ann Cleeves

• Raven Black
• White Nights
• Red Bones
• Blue Lightning 

This series has been on my radar for a while (haven’t they all??) and I finally read the first half of them in October.  Litsy has a month-long readathon focusing on mysteries/thriller/horror/etc. and while I don’t enjoy anything in the horror/graphic violence area, I decided it would be a great opportunity to make some forward progress on several mystery series I’ve been working through, including finishing the 87th Precinct, the first half of this series, the next five books in the Leaphorn & Chee series, plus knocking out a few standalone thrillers that have been on my shelf for way too long.

Set in the Shetland Islands, the main character/detective of this series is Jimmy Perez, a detective on the police force.  However, Cleeves takes her time with these stories, giving back stories and insight into multiple people involved in each murder.  Even though these are a little longer than the average thriller (350-400 pgs), they felt a LOT longer as the pace is rarely urgent.  Instead, there is plenty of time to examine and contemplate the interactions of the main players.  Somehow, instead of being boring, Cleeves makes this work.  It fit the setting of an isolated and insulated community, where the seasons take their time, and the methodical rhythm of the natural world is reflected in the human residents.

I have mixed feelings about these books.  I enjoyed them while I was reading them, but never felt an urgency about picking up the next book.  Cleeves made a decision to kill off a character at the end of Blue Lightning that I didn’t really like as well, and I’m not completely sure that I’ll get around to finishing this series (there are four more books).  Yet on the whole, I think I do recommend them if you enjoy your mysteries thoughtful instead of frantic.  They could definitely do with a bit of editing, yet at some level I rather enjoyed the contemplative pacing, feeling that I was really getting to know the motives and relationships of the characters involved.

These weren’t my new favorites, and they didn’t make me want to rush out and read everything Cleeves has written, but I probably will read those last four books one of these days, just to see how everyone adjusts to the sudden death at the end of Blue Lightning.  

Leaphorn & Chee – Books 2-4 // by Tony Hillerman

• Dance Hall of the Dead (1973)
• Listening Woman (1978)
• People of Darkness (1980)
• The Dark Wind (1982)

I read the first book in this series, The Blessing Way, in June, but for various reasons wasn’t able to get to the next few books until the end of July/early August.  When I read the first book, I really enjoyed the setting and thought the concept was interesting, but the mystery itself was a little weak, and I also struggled with the fact that we aren’t really given any personal information about the protagonist, Joe Leaphorn.  However, I decided to give the next books a chance, and I’m glad I did, as they have steadily improved.  Hillerman does a great job giving us plenty of context and background information to create a unique and engaging setting.  In Listening Woman, there is a whole subplot involving the AIM (American Indian Movement), which was very current for the time the book was published.  I was a little concerned as the books pushed into the 80s because so many crime writers seemed to think during that decade that you couldn’t be a real crime writer without lots of weird sex (I’m looking at you, Ed McBain), but these books have actually stayed pretty clean, greatly adding to my enjoyment of them.

I got a little confused because in People of Darkness, the protagonist abruptly changed from Joe Leaphorn to Jim Chee.  We’re given a little paragraph of reference to Leaphorn now being Lt. Leaphorn and working in an office in the norther part of the reservation, but both People of Darkness and The Dark Wind completely focus on Chee.  I really like Chee a lot, so it wasn’t like this was a bad thing, but it felt really weird and abrupt to suddenly have the stories focus on a completely different guy with a very different method of solving mysteries.

About halfway through Dance Hall of the Dead I finally found a map of the Navajo reservation and printed it off.  Reading these books without a map was just incredibly frustrating because the characters are constantly driving around to different places – everything is very spread apart out west – and Hillerman uses names without a lot of explanation (for instance, getting the map made me realize that Mexican Water is actually a town, not a lake or river, and Window Rock is both a town AND a mountain).  Finding the map increased my enjoyment of these books a LOT.  I’m just a super visual person, and being told things like “they drove from Albuquerque to Shiprock that evening” without any concept of how far apart those two places are was driving me batty.

Hillerman does a great job introducing aspects of the Navajo culture with respect.  I love how Chee really embraces his family’s traditions and is interested in becoming a Singer, learning many of the healing ways.  I’ve just finished the next five books in the series, and both Chee and Leaphorn (who returns as a protagonist later haha) have become a lot more personable, so that’s been lovely.

All in all, this has been a really worthwhile series that is getting steadily better as it goes.  These were all 3.5* & 4* reads for me, and the second batch were all 4*, so I’m quite excited to continue on!

July Minireviews – Part 2

Over halfway through October already!!! Time is running away so fast!!  I’m still living in July!! :-D

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

And All Through the House by Ed McBain – 2.5* 

As I continue my journey through the 87th Precinct, this short story (with pictures…) was next on the list, although it appears that it was actually published in 1984 rather than the mid-90s, so I’m not exactly sure why it’s listed as book #46.  This was a bit of an odd one, just a short (less than 50 pages) story of a “typical” Christmas Eve at the precinct.  There wasn’t really any kind of plot or story, so it felt a little weird.

Romance by Ed McBain – 3.5* – published 1995

This one is about an actress who gets stabbed… twice!  And since the actress is the main character in a play that is about an actress who gets stabbed, there are a lot of rather ridiculous scenes that read a bit like an Abbott & Castello sketch, which is great fun.  McBain is always mildly preachy in his books and it came through a little heavy-handed in this particular one, which brought down my overall rating of the book, but still a solid installment to the series.

Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling – 4* – published 2003

Definitely my least favorite of the series, I’m just not sure why we have to listen to Harry be a jerk for so long.  Rowling makes a few plot decisions in this book that I also don’t like.  However, overall still an enjoyable read.

Nocturne by Ed McBain – 4* – published 1997

This was another one where the main mystery, about an elderly, once-famous concert pianist being murdered, was really good, but the secondary plot, about a prostitute being slaughtered, was a bit much.  For the most part these books aren’t that gruesome, but the murder of that poor girl will stay with me for a long time, and not in a good way.  It just didn’t feel like we needed that much detail for that part of the story.  Still, the rest of the book was a solid read.

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis – 5* – published 1956

This is always a really hard book for me to read, and I’ve actually read it the fewest times out of the whole series.  I can understand why Lewis decided to end the series the way he did, but it’s still tough.  Although I will say that, reading this as a child, this was the first time I ever understood wanting to go to Heaven because of it being a beautiful and perfect place rather than just as a better option than hell!

The whole deal with Susan, which I believe has been completely misrepresented and poorly interpreted, always makes me somewhat hesitant to review this one, because how much do I really want to get into this controversy?  Suffice to say that I think it’s clear that Lewis wasn’t trying to say that Susan no longer believed in Narnia because she decided to embrace “womanly” things like makeup and dating, but because she had embraced worldly things to the detriment of her priorities.  Makeup and dating aren’t bad things objectively, but it’s clear from the context that those types of things have become Susan’s driving force.  Susan wasn’t on the train with everyone else, so I personally believe that the deaths of her loved ones helped her to readjust her life.

I actually wrote a little piece on this on tumblr wayyy back in the day – https://manycurrentssmallpuddle.tumblr.com/post/105298215925/can-you-explain-the-susan-pevensie-post-the and when I was looking that one up, I found another post that I really liked – https://manycurrentssmallpuddle.tumblr.com/post/129939476895/just-to-clarify – that summarizes why Gaiman’s “The Problem With Susan” just absolutely misses the ENTIRE point.

Sons of Pemberley by Elizabeth Adams – 3.5* – published 2020

Basically, this AU of P&P explores what would have happened if Darcy’s mother hadn’t died when Georgianna was born.  Adams gives us just bucketloads of extra characters, which while fun, also made this story extremely bulky and somewhat confusing, especially when she works both backward and forward in time AND decides multiple characters should have the same name from different generations – there are at LEAST two characters for almost every name, which really doubled-down on the confusion aspect.  Adams also takes pretty much every unlikable “villain” character from the original and gives them a backstory that makes them understandable and a forward-story that makes them redeemable, which is nice but… also means the entire story is somewhat boring.  I did enjoy this one, and recommend it to people who enjoy a good P&P variation, but it’s not one I see myself revisiting.

The Big Bad City by Ed McBain – 4* – published 1999

Overall, once McBain got through the rather dreadful 80s entries, the series really improved.  Most of the 90s books were done really well without nearly as much gratuitous (and bizarre) sex.  I also really appreciate when he would have a plot line for one of the detectives and then follow it through in the background of multiple books – here, we finally see the main conclusion of what happened when Carella’s dad was murdered a few books ago, although McBain makes sure to still show us how Carella continues to work through his grieving process over the next several books after this one as well.

March Minireviews – Part 4

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

Heartstone by Phillip Margolin – 4*

//published 1978//

I’m still working my way through Margolin’s back catalogue after the Amanda Jaffe series got me hooked on his writing.  This one was a little darker than I like, but was still just thoroughly engaging writing.  As always, my biggest complain with Margolin’s writing in general is his habit of dumping about 50 names on you in the first 50 pages without really indicating which of those names are going to be important later on.  My bookmark for a Margolin book is always an index card with names/notes on it, which is just a little ridiculous.  It  evens out as I get into the story and the main players emerge, but still.  While this isn’t one I would read again, it was definitely worth the one-time read.

On Equal Ground by Elizabeth Adams – 4*

//published 2017//

We all know that I go through kicks where all I want to read is P&P variations, and I hit a mini-kick at the end of March.  I’ve really enjoyed a couple of Adams’s other variations so I read two more lol  This was one of those ones that’s actually just a different story with the same characters.  While staying with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth catches the eye of a wealthy widower some 20 years her senior.  Adams has them marry and love each other without it feeling creepy or weird.  Of course, the reader knows that the poor man is just a plot device, and probably the biggest drawback of this book was that I actually really liked earl and thought he and Elizabeth were a great match, and I spent the entire first half of the book dreading his untimely death.  Still, it was handled really well, and Elizabeth falling in love with Darcy felt natural and was done well.  Because Elizabeth has married an earl, she actually outranks Darcy in both class and wealth, so the big twist here is a difference in their prejudices from the original.  This wasn’t my new favorite, and it’s definitely a little more thoughtful than a lot of P&P variations tend to be, but I overall really enjoyed this one.  NB, this one didn’t have any explicit sex scenes, either, which was super nice.

The 26th of November by Elizabeth Adams – 4.5*

//published 2018//

A mashup of P&P and Groundhog Day??  Sign me up!  The best part of the Netherfield Ball from Elizabeth’s perspective – when it’s OVER!  So it’s rather unfortunately that, for some reason, she has to keep living that same day, including the dreadful ball, over and over again.  This is a very lighthearted variation, so don’t expect a lot of life philosophy, but I really enjoyed watching Elizabeth try to figure out why she is having this experience, and wondering if she’s supposed to “fix” something so that she can move on.  This was an entertaining way for her to come to grips with some her prejudices and blind spots.  Darcy isn’t living the same day over and over, but because his interaction with Elizabeth is different each time, he also has some changes of character as well.  The ending is the whole final rendition of November 26 from Darcy’s perspective, so it was a little repetitive, but still interesting to see what, from his view, was just one day.  If you’re looking for a low-angst P&P variation with some definite funny moments, this one is totally worth a read.

Pemberley: Mr. Darcy’s Dragon by Maria Grace – DNF

//published 2016//

Usually I review DNFs at the end of the month, but I feel like I’m on a P&P roll here.  I gave this one up about halfway through the story, despite loving the concept of an England full of dragons, with each estate having a dragon guardian.  However, the story itself was sooooo slow.  Everyone was spending all their time bickering and arguing (including the dragons) and Mr. Bennet was an absolutely GRUMP.  There were random chunks of the original P&P just plunked in here and there, which really disrupted the flow of the story.  I was already getting over the way no one in this version was likable, and threw in the towel when Mr. Bennet very condescendingly told Elizabeth that a man would be able to do her job better.  It was just so completely out of character for Mr. Bennet to say something so derogatory to Elizabeth, and the way he said it was just beyond insulting and rude.  Even my high tolerance for bad P&P variations was over this one.

Darcy Comes to Rosings by Andrea David – 3*

//published 2018//

Technically, this was the first book I finished in April, but like I said, I feel like I’m on a P&P roll haha  This one was a classic tale of two halves.  The first half of the story takes place at Rosings during Elizabeth’s visit to Charlotte.  However, Darcy and Elizabeth end up with a few more opportunities to converse, and Charlotte takes a much more proactive role in encouraging romance between the two.  This part of the story was really engaging and I felt like it actually totally fit Charlotte’s character as well.  But then I hit the second half, after Darcy and Elizabeth get engaged.  All of a sudden, it was page after page of Elizabeth panicking and stressing out that she’s not good/rich enough for Darcy, going on and on and on and on and on despite reassurances from everyone.  It was sooo repetitive and boring and I honestly didn’t feel like it was resolved all that well.  I just found it hard to believe that saucy, self-confident Elizabeth, who was willing to write off Darcy for being a jerk in the original, would spend so much time agonizing about her self-worth.  Lame.

March Minireviews – Part 1

Greetings, friends! Here I am with more reviews from the way-back. Let’s see how good my memory/notes happen to be!!

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

Books 41-45 of the 87th Precinct Series by Ed McBain

Yes, I’m still working my way through this series. There are only (!) 55 books so I have two batches left!! This group, comprised of five one-word-title stories (Lullaby, Vespers, Widows, Kiss, and Mischief) were a 3.5* average group without anything especially outstanding.  My favorite was Kiss, and my least favorite was Lullaby.  In a weird way, Mischief was the most disappointing, though, because the Deaf Man was the returning villain and it was definitely the worst Deaf Man story yet – jumbled and overly complicated.  This batch (published 1989-1993) continued the trend of weird sex situations, which I find rather bothersome.  Hopefully, as the books move into the 90s, we’ll get over the 80s everything-is-sex motif.  Still, I’ve developed a huge soft spot for the detectives of the 87th and will be a little sad to bid them farewell when I get to book #55.

Meet Me in London by Georgia Toffolo – 3.5*

//published 2020//

I’m always a sucker for a fake relationship trope, and while this one wasn’t anything groundbreaking, it was a nice palette-cleanser in the midst of the gritty 87th Precinct books.  I really appreciate modern romances without explicit sex scenes, so that bumped this one up a little in my ratings even if it was a little slow in spots.

Tonight & Always by Nora Roberts – 2.5*

//published 1983//

It’s rare that I’m disappointed by Nora Roberts, but this was one of those times.  This book was just SO 80s.  The drama was over-the-top, the hero was ridiculously brooding and macho, the heroine was ridiculously independent, several borderline-rapey scenes where the hero grabs the heroine and kisses her into submission, and I spent most of this book just rolling my eyes.  The concluding drama genuinely infuriated me (hint: nothing makes me more angry then women who get pregnant and decide it’s “for the best” to not tell the father), and this is one Roberts book I don’t ever see myself revisiting.

If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane – 4*

//published 2020//

McFarlane is one of those authors I keep meaning to read since I’m always on the lookout for good romcoms.  I decided to choose this one for my contribution to the next round of the traveling book club.  In the end, I did enjoy this one a lot, but it definitely was more of a novel than a romcom.  It’s one of those books that while I did like it a lot, I’m going to end up talking about the negatives more than the positives, but you’ll have that haha

So basically the main character, Laurie, is devastated when her live-in boyfriend not only breaks up with her – but announces that his new girlfriend is already pregnant.  Because they also work together, Laurie has to see Dan/hear about his new family on the regular.  Through a series of events, she agrees to a fake relationship with another coworker, Jamie, with a convoluted plan of staged pictures and social media posts.  Of course, this is romance, so eventually the fake romance turns into a real one, and everyone lives happily ever after.

The problem with this book is that Laurie and Dan had been together WAY too long to make this a fun and fluffy romance – almost 20 years!  So the majority of the book ended up being about Laurie working through the grief of having such a long-term relationship fall apart, which meant loads of flashbacks to their relationship throughout the years.  I felt like this book was a lot more about Laurie and Dan than it was about Laurie and Jamie.  It gave the whole story a really down tone and also meant it felt incredibly unrealistic for Laurie to be into Jamie so quickly.  McFarlane would spend pages telling us about special moments between Laurie and Dan, about the many times Laurie knew that Dan was “the one,” etc. – but then we’re supposed to turn around and believe that Laurie and Jamie are the ones with something special between them.  The whole book would have been so much more believable (and enjoyable) if Laurie hadn’t been with Dan for so long.  As it was, I was almost uncomfortable with her getting with Jamie so quickly, despite the fact that I shipped the two of them and thought they were a great match.

The overall tone of the book also tends to be really sexist against men.  There were a lot of one-off sentences basically dismissing men as sex-hungry neanderthals, and Jamie and his dad are the only two decent guys to make an appearance.  Literally every other male in the story is a total dick.  Laurie also spends loads of time whining about sexism at work and how the men have it easy and the women have it hard yadda yadda yadda despite the fact that her (male) boss is constantly telling her what an awesome employee she is, frequently stands up for her against anyone who says anything remotely negative about her or her work, brags about her to everyone, and recommends her for promotions.  I just couldn’t really buy the “oppressed woman at work” story when Laurie wasn’t remotely oppressed!  A lot of Laurie’s “problems” came across that way – I realize she’s at a low point in her life, but she’s also just so whiny about everything.  It’s hard to empathize with a character who is successful, makes good money, has a boss who respects her and treats her well, has good and supportive friends, and spends all her time whining about how hard her life is.

BUT despite all that I actually did enjoy this book haha  The parts with Laurie and Jamie were SO fun, their banter was fantastic, and they had great chemistry.  I loved the random set-ups they created, and loved watching them both get over their initial prejudices against each other and come to appreciate the other.  I really wish this book had focused more on the two of them and LOT less on Laurie and Dan and the way their relationship failed.

I’ll definitely be checking out more of McFarlane’s books, and if you don’t mind your romances a little angsty, there’s a lot to enjoy with this one.

December Minireviews – Part 2

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

Onward with more December fluff reads!!

The Christmas Sisters by Sarah Morgan – 4*

//published 2018//

While this one was a little more “novel-y” that I usually like, it ended up being one of my favorite reads of the month. At first, I was afraid that it was just going to be super angsty with a bunch of discontented, whiny women who have perfectly nice lives except they spend all of their time complaining about them. But I was pleasantly surprised by this story about three sisters who love one another but have grown apart. As we come to learn more about their childhood and the circumstances that have shaped them, I was completely drawn to the entire family. While yes, this is a feel-good Christmas story, it’s also a really lovely story about forgiveness, family, and realizing that even the people that we love the most have parts of themselves that we don’t know – everyone has something in their life that’s hard, no matter how perfect that life may look from the outside. I really enjoyed this one and will definitely be on the lookout for more books by this author.

Silent Night by Mary Higgins Clark – 3.5*

//published 1995//

Just to keep things lively, I picked up this short thriller. Clark does a great job giving motivation to multiple characters, which is what keeps this story from feeling completely ridiculous. It’s a fast read – nothing incredibly ground-breaking, but intense and hard to put down.

Christmas Gifts Collection by Elena Aitken – 3.5*

//published 2018//

In my mind, a “stand-alone” book is one that is not part of a series. However, some people use that term to label a book that theoretically can be read independently of the series of which it is a part. So while this collection was billed as a group of stand-alone stories, they were actually all part of a series that centers around a hotel called Castle Lodge. I hate reading books out of order but didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late, so for once I just went along with it. These were perfectly enjoyable stories, although I will say that the last story in the trio was the weakest – supposedly she, as the maid of honor, is helping her best friend plan her best friend’s wedding, but then in end – surprise! It’s her wedding! Except… literally the original bride was the one who was going to get married?? I just ended up feeling annoyed that the original bridesmaid was stealing the beautiful day away from the woman who was supposed to be the bride.

But anyway, they were fine stories, but didn’t make me feel like I wanted to jump in and read the whole series.

Husband Under Construction by Karen Templeton – 2.5*

//published 2011//I didn’t even read the other book in this anthology… I don’t do the ‘surprise baby’ trope lol//

I should have been warned from the title that this wasn’t going to be my kind of book. The problem was that Templeton creates two perfectly likable characters that I totally shipped, and puts them in a no-win situation. Either the female MC is going to have sacrifice her dream job, or the male MC is going to have to leave behind his wonderful, warm-hearted family AND family business to move hours away. I’m sorry, but that just isn’t my idea of a happy ending. Yeah, they end up together, but they do the one where the leave behind Noah’s entire family so they can live where the woman’s new job is – which okay, except literally the female MC goes on and on and on and on about how what she wants to do is have a huge family with lots of kids and spend her time hanging out with them etc etc so – in the epilogue now they have several kids and she’s only working part time here and there. So Noah sacrificed his spot in his family business AND left behind his completely awesome family (and the female MC – sorry, can’t remember her name haha – only has one living relative who also lives in the same town as Noah’s family) so that they could be close to the job that she isn’t even really doing?!?! It felt like a completely stupid way to end the book.

How the Dukes Stole Christmas – 3*

//published 2018//

This one had four stories written by different authors – Meet Me in Mayfair by Tessa Dare, The Duke of Christmas Present by Sarah MacLean, Heiress Alone by Sophie Jordan, and Christmas in Central Park by Joanna Shupe. All of them were pretty lame, although Dare’s was probably the best of the bunch. They weren’t horrible as one-off reads, but I already passed this book on because it’s not one I see myself rereading for next year’s Christmas binge.

The Christmas Wish by Nora Roberts – 3.5*

//published 1994, 1984//

Two stories here – All I Want for Christmas and First Impressions – both of which were pretty standard Roberts fare. I had read the first story before, about twin brothers writing a letter to Santa for a new mother since theirs died several years earlier. It’s pretty adorable and I really liked the two main characters. First Impressions was published in 1984 so it has that 80s edge to it, but was still fun and frolicky even if the male MC is a little over-the-top grumpy.