September Minireviews – Part 1

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.

September is buzzing by at a frightening clip.  We’ve been quite busy at the orchard, so I haven’t had as much time for reading or for writing reviews.  Plus, once again, I haven’t been reading anything that’s really excited me, although I’ve had several reads that get described with words like “solid” and “decent.”  So here are a few of those decent reads…

Update:  It’s now 28 September, and I haven’t posted a single thing this month…!!!  As mentioned before, the orchard has sort of taken over my life, plus there have been a lot of random family things going on.  Still, I’m hoping to at least complete THIS post before the end of the month!

Blind Spot by Dani Pettrey – 3.5*

//published 2017//

I read the first three books in this series a while ago, when I got Blind Spot as an ARC.  This summer, the fourth (and final) book was released.  I got it from the library and started to read it, but realized that I really couldn’t remember what all was happening with the terrorist plot line, so I decided to give this one a quick reread.  While I did like this book, I was nagged by the same things that mildly aggravated me the first time around.  The main one is something that annoyed me about this entire series – that Pettrey would have two completely separate plots in the book, and they never tied together.  Consequently, one of those always ended up feeling like filler to me, like she was writing to parallel series at the same time or something.  In this case, there’s the terrorist plot (main) and then a random murder (secondary).  Not only does the murder feel shoehorned into the story, it seemed completely ridiculous to me that the characters in this book were allowed to process/be in charge of the crime scene since they actually knew the victim/possible criminal, and there were questions as to whether or not the dead guy had killed other people and then committed suicide, or been murdered and set up.  I just still can’t believe that friends of his would be allowed to process the crime scene.

But despite this, I still overall enjoyed the book and I really do like the characters.  I was intrigued to see how everything was going to get wrapped up in Dead Drift.

And Both Were Young by Madeline L’Engle – 3.5*

//published 1949//

I’ve gotten a bit off track from my L’Engle reading, dashing off on tangents with random books of hers as I keep drifting further and further backwards in time through her bibliography.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this one, but I’m always drawn to stories that take place in boarding schools, so I thought I would go ahead and give this one a whirl.  While I wasn’t blown away by it, it was a really enjoyable story.  I loved the way that Flip’s discontent with her situation was due to both her actual circumstances, which are kind of lame, but also her own attitude.  As she grows the realize this through the story, she is able to start changing the parts of her life that she actually can change – so while some of the lame parts are still there, she’s overall happier and more contented because she has started to learn how to be proactive in her own life.  This story also had an interesting setting, being in Europe just after WWII in a boarding school with girls of all different nationalities.  While most of them were small children during the war, they have all been touched by it, and L’Engle did a really excellent job of weaving that background in very naturally.  Although this story was sometimes a bit melodramatic, it was overall a really pleasant read.  I don’t see myself going back to it again and again, but I still think I would recommend it, especially if you enjoy thoughtful, character-driven stories.

Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch – 3.5*

//published 2014//

This is actually the first book in a series, and I’ve heard some good things about it – and who wouldn’t be drawn to that gorgeous cover art??  However, while I found this to be an alright read, I didn’t really find it compelling.  The world-setting was interesting, but didn’t really make practical sense to me – I mean, seriously, four kingdoms, and each one is always the same season?  How does that even work?  What does it mean to always be Autumn – a perpetual state of harvest?  The whole idea just confused me a bit when I started trying to think of what it meant to actually live there.  While this was an okay read for me, I didn’t like it well enough to bother with the other books.  Not a bad read, just kind of boring.

Dead Drift by Dani Pettrey – 3.5*

//published 2018//

This is the final book in the Chesapeake Bay series, and I definitely enjoyed seeing everything get tied up, especially Jenna’s murder.  I still think that this entire series would have benefited from having just one story line, as they consistently felt rather choppy and disconnected, but I still did like them and would read something else by Pettrey if it came my way.  I really liked the characters in these books, and it was fun to see them all get some closure with all the stuff that had been happening throughout the stories.

Gold of Kings by Davis Bunn – 3.5*

//published 2009//

I’ve read a couple of Bunn’s books before and found them to be decently interesting, so when I saw this one for a quarter on the library discard shelf, I went ahead and picked it up.  It kind of made me realize that while Bunn’s writing is alright, it doesn’t really grab me all that much.  This book did definitely have me turning the pages by the halfway point, but it didn’t really make me want to pick up the sequel.  Not bad for one-time reads, but not interesting enough to keep returning to time and again.

Blind Spot // by Dani Pettrey

Chesapeake Valor #3

I received this book from Bethany House, which does not impact my review.

//published 2017//

Back in the spring, I received Still Life from BH and reviewed it; before I read that one I went ahead and read the first book, Cold Shot.  I would definitely recommend reading these books as a series, as I think they would be a bit confusing as standalones.  They focus on the same group of friends, and their relationships build and evolve throughout the series.  I actually went back and reread Still Life before jumping into Blind Spot, just to get myself back up to speed.

Overall, I like these books and am comfortable with the 3.5/5 rating I have given them all, including this one.  They are decent mysteries with an engaging group of characters, but really lack a solid focus within the story.

Throughout the second book, I found myself irritated as the main mystery was actually quite intriguing – but Pettrey kept veering off into this entirely unrelated mystery with these people who were smuggling terrorists.  In Blind Spot, the terrorist plot becomes the main one, but this time she kept flipping to yet another completely unrelated mystery about this guy who gets murdered.  The secondary mystery in both cases comes across as filler/padding/a way to keep other characters busy and involved, and the primary mystery suffers because of it.  Switching to the secondary plot throws off the pacing of the primary, and consistently feels like we are just killing time.  I really, really wish that Pettrey would just focus on the primary mystery, because in both books this could have been filled out and made a lot more intense.

In this book, there was also this weird situation where a guy gets murdered while a bunch of the characters on a retreat.  There is a possibility that instead of murder, it’s actually suicide and the dead guy killed other people before killing himself.  Yet despite the fact that all the main characters of the book knew this dead guy really well, and despite the fact that he may be a murderer, they are all allowed to process the crime scene??  This felt completely unrealistic (since they would have a strong motive for contaminating the crime scene to make sure the dead guy doesn’t get blamed for murder), and it’s weird details like that that throw off the overall groove of the story.

Even though I’ve been griping about it, I really did enjoy reading this book.  I like all of the characters and have enjoyed watching them come together.  Throughout the first two books, we find out bits and pieces about another good friend of theirs who disappeared several years earlier.  This whole plot comes back into play in Blind Spot, and left me really intrigued to find out how things are going to wrap up in the end.

I’m looking forward to reading the fourth book when it appears, and still intend to eventually check out some of Pettrey’s other books as well.

Still Life // by Dani Pettrey

//published 2017//

Still Life is the sequel to Cold Shot, and as the books focus on a group of friends, my guess is that there will be a few more books in the series.  While there were several things that I enjoyed about this story, it also fell into some ruts in places, so overall I’m going with the same rating as I gave the first book in the series – 3.5/5.

The initial mystery in this book is great.  It starts with Avery visiting the opening of an art show.  Avery used to be a photographer, but was blacklisted (before the events in the first book) because of a controversial political shot.  After that, she worked for a while as a crime-scene photographer, which is where we met her in Still Life.  However, she felt like her feelings were growing too strong for her employer, Parker (a crime-scene analyst), so since the ending of the last book, she has gone back to doing some free lancing.

At any rate, this art show is one of the first times that she’s reentered the professional photography sphere and she is a bit nervous.  But she promised her friend that she would come.  Skylar and Avery grew up together, and even though they aren’t as close as they once were, Avery still feels a lot of responsibility for Skylar.  While Skylar isn’t an artist, she is the focus of the art show that is getting ready to open, as the photographer used her as his model.  Weirdly enough, the artist chose to use a theme wherein he posed his subject as though she had died.  Kind of creepy, but artists can be a strange lot.

When Avery gets there, she is surprised that she can’t find Skylar anywhere.  But Avery doesn’t really begin to worry until the photographs are revealed – and the artist becomes enraged because not only has someone stolen one of his photographs, it has actually been replaced by another picture of Skylar posing as though she has died… except Avery isn’t convinced that it is actually a pose…

Soon Avery and our friends from Cold Shot (which you definitely need to read before reading this book to really understand the interactions between the main characters) are scampering all over the place trying to put together the clues.  And while some of them have jurisdiction over what they are doing, I was sometimes confused about how they would just knock on doors and ask questions and people would just chat it up with them without requesting any kind of proof that these people should be asking these questions.

Then there was this weird secondary plot with a terrorist who snuck into the country illegally on a boat, and that thread just didn’t seem to fit with the Skylar story at all.  Instead, it felt like a heavy-handed contrivance so Pettrey could keep setting up another couple for the next book.  I found myself mildly aggravated, because with a little more attention, I think that the Skylar mystery could have been much stronger.  Like I understand that you want to make characters flow from one story to the next, but I don’t have to be repeatedly told about the confused/conflicted feelings that these other two have for each other just so I’ll understand the next book.  Instead, it felt like the other couple was stealing the show from Avery and Parker.

As with Cold Shot, there was more romance/relationship than thriller, which would have been fine if the focus had stayed on Avery and Parker.  I think that Still Life would have greatly benefited from focusing on the Skylar mystery and the Avery/Parker relationship, and relegating the build up for the next book to the background.  Still, this was a solid read with engaging characters, and I do see myself continuing through the series.  The ongoing mystery of what happened to Luke several years ago is being woven into these stories, so I’m hoping for a grand finale tale at some point that will answer all of those questions as well.

My only other issue with this book is the cover art.  This one isn’t quite as bad as Cold Shot, but I’m just really not a fan of carrying around a book with a brooding hero on the cover, especially when I felt like the book was actually a lot more about Avery than it was about Parker.

Many thanks to Bethany House, who provided me with a free copy of the book.  My sincere apologies for taking so long to get to this review, but life has taken one of those turns for the crazy!

Cold Shot // by Dani Pettrey

I received Still Life from the publisher in exchange for a review, and because of who I am as a person, I knew there was no way that I could just jump into the second book in a series, so I checked Cold Shot out of the library so I could read it first.  I’m really glad that I did that in this instance – these two books are really closely connected, and Cold Shot gives a lot of the background for the group of characters whose stories continue in Still Life.  I think I would have been confused if I had tried to read Still Life on its own.

These were the first of Pettrey’s books that I’ve read, although I’ve had her Alaskan Courage series on the TBR for a while now.

Both books focus on a core group of friends.  Griffin, Luke, Declan, and Parker all grew up together.  Several years ago Luke disappeared.  Another dramatic event had already fractured the relationship between Griffin and Parker, so while the remaining three friends have stayed in touch, things just aren’t the same.

//published 2016//

Cold Shot opens with Griffin working as a park ranger at Gettysburg.  It was actually kind of funny to me because my husband and I had been talking that day about going to Gettysburg this spring, and I had been reading some stuff online and recalling other trips I have made there (he’s never been), then I flip open Cold Shot and bam!  Gettysburg!  Another funny thing was that despite the fact that I’ve been to Gettysburg several times, I somehow never really realized how close it is to the Chesapeake Bay/Baltimore, Maryland.  So there was this kind of weird ocean/bay vibe that wasn’t remotely bad, but just funny because I never really think about Gettysburg in those terms.

Anyway, in the first chapter, Griffin interrupts some guys trying to do some grave looting in the park. Except it turns out that skeleton they’ve found is much more recent than Civil War era.  Griffin calls in forensic anthropologist Finley Scott to check out the body, and she confirms that the body has been here less than a year.  As the case unwinds, both Declan (now working for the FBI) and Parker (a crime-scene analyst) get called in as well, and soon the three are working through not only the case, but their shared past as well.

So overall I did like this book and was engaged in the story.  It kind of reminded me of Dee Henderson’s O’Malley series, where everyone in this group of friends just-so-happens to do something super helpful for crime solving, but I was willing to roll with it.  I really liked Griffin and Finley together and felt like they developed a solid relationship.  Pettrey also did a good job a weaving a theme of the importance of forgiveness (of others and of self) throughout without turning preachy.

However, the thriller/mystery aspect wasn’t particularly strong.  In some places, the twists felt a little left-field, and in others things fell into place a little too smoothly.  Also, they determine at one point that the sniper was shooting from a range of 1500 yards, and I looked it up and while it is possible, it’s like ridiculously difficult, to the point where it seemed hard to believe that a sniper that skilled would be able to just sort of fade away and no one would know where he was or what he was doing.  And while I liked Griffin and Finley together, their continual internal dialogue about not feeling good enough for the other began to get a little repetitive in places, feeling more like filler than actual story.

Still, a decent book, which was also encouraging because it meant that the book I had actually agreed to review probably wouldn’t be terrible!  Overall, 3.5/5.  Recommended if you like your thrillers to have a bit more romance than thrill.

Also, Stephanie reviewed this book last year when it first came out, so you should check out her review here.

PS I think this book lost a half star just because of the cover.  Like what is with that dude?  He looks like he’s cold and also possibly having some gas pain or something.  Weirded me out.  Although I will say that I’m overall not a fan of just a PERSON on the front of a book; that always seems weird and awkward to me.