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.
The Aroma of Books 