July Minireviews // Part 1

Okay, July!! Woohoo!!

Also!  I happened to be on my phone the other day and looked at something on my blog and realized that the mobile version has decided to completely ignore my paragraph breaks!  I don’t really know how to fix that – maybe I should go back to the old-school method of inserting the paragraph symbol whenever a new one is started?? ¶  So apologies to anyone who may attempt to read these posts on mobile as apparently WordPress is determined to make me look a bit ridiculous, probably because I insist on using the Classic Editor instead of the horrific Block Editor that I genuinely hate.  Lack of paragraph breaks is a small price to pay to avoid that atrocity!

Escape from Warsaw by Ian Serraillier – 3.5*

//published 1956//

Apparently this one was also published as The Silver Sword.  Set in Warsaw during WWII, the story follows a family whose parents are arrested by the Nazis, leaving the children alone and homeless.  Their father manages to escape the prison camp, but doesn’t know how to find the children.  Meanwhile, the children decide to try and make it to Switzerland to their mother’s family and begin a cross-country journey.  Along the way they pick up another orphan who has been living on the streets even longer than they have, mostly by stealing stuff.  He’s quite obnoxious and drove me crazy for the entire book.  This wasn’t a bad story, but was a bit disjointed.  An author’s note explained that although he made up this story, he based their adventures on various true stories, which could account for the way this book felt like it was kind of pulling together bits and bobbles that didn’t always go together.  I think this also greatly increased the “we need a coincidence to move this along” factor.  It wasn’t at all a bad book, and I can see the middle grade audience for which it’s intended getting very caught up in the drama and excitement, but this one did go into the giveaway box when I was done reading it.

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson – 4*

//published 2015//

I’ve been working my way through Swanson’s backlog of books, and I feel like this is the one that always comes the most highly recommended.  While it was a good, pacey thriller, I didn’t absolutely love it.  Swanson has an amazing knack for being able to keep me 100% engaged in a book to the point that I really don’t notice all the niggling coincidences and inconsistencies and completely lack of character development until I’m done!  So he gets great kudos for keeping me in the moment, but maybe not so much for actual writing lol  I also get a little exasperated that he seems to think that sex is the ONLY motivation for 100% of men and 98% of women.  Like no one does anything unless the angle involves sex in some way, and that gets old to me.  But still – his pacing is impeccable.  It’s rare for me to start one of his books and not finish it within 24 hours!

Harbor Lights by Sherryl Woods – 3*

//published 2009//

Another mediocre installment to the Chesapeake Shores series.  Woods has a great habit of writing a book that I’m totally fine with it until she gets to the final drama and then I just want to bonk everyone’s heads together.  Just.  Why.  In this one, Kevin is a widower with a young son (I think… maybe it was a daughter, I can’t remember, this was back in July haha) and he meets the new girl in town, Shanna, who is opening a bookstore.  Kevin spends literally the entire book (because he has ZERO character growth) saying things like, “I really like Shanna but I want to take it slow” which honestly makes sense given his relationship history.  Consequently, while I generally enjoy books with large, boisterous, slightly-obnoxious families, the O’Brians really got on my nerves here as they just were constantly trying to force Kevin to up his relationship with Shanna, to the point that I was starting to cringe every time they all got together.  There was one particularly dreadful scene where Kevin’s in-laws (parents of his deceased wife) are there to visit their grandson, and while at supper with the whole family, Kevin’s sisters start teasing him about Shanna, despite the fact that it’s obviously making the in-laws, who are still, you know, mourning the death of their daughter, seriously uncomfortable.  It was terrible!  This isn’t that much of a spoiler, because these books are designed to have the HEA, but even the proposal at the end made NO sense.  Kevin literally says something like, “I still really think we need to take this relationship slowly because I’m not sure of myself” and Shanna is like, “Look, I need some actual commitment from you if you want to keep going” (which I honestly also thought was fair) and Kevin IN THE SAME CONVERSATION where he has JUST SAID that he IS NOT READY to progress this relationship PULLS AN ENGAGEMENT RING OUT OF HIS POCKET and says, “oh wow you’re right, we should go ahead and get married, I am 100% on board with this”  WHAT??!?!?!!  I couldn’t deal.

Summer Days and Summer Nights by various authors – 3*

//published 2016//

I got this collection of short stories from Book Outlet for a dollar or two, but didn’t pay very close attention and thus didn’t realize that they were actually all YA stories.  Whew boy, there were some doozies in here.  And maybe it was just me, I actually didn’t realize it but I was getting sick the two days I was reading this book (maybe this book got me sick?  Could be), but none of these stories hit right for me.  They were pretty much just girl meets boy, they argue, they fall in love, now they’re together forever!  I read these kinds of collections in hopes that a new author will tickle my fancy, but while most of these were okay, none of them really wowed me.

A Chesapeake Shores Christmas by Sherryl Woods – 3.5*

//published 2010//

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I went ahead and picked up the next Chesapeake Shores book even though Kevin had driven me batty in the previous book.  The background story of this entire series is that the parents, Mick and Megan, got divorced back in the day, but now that all the kids are grown, Mick wants to try their relationship again.  It’s actually handled pretty well, with all of the now-adult children coming to grips with their parents having their own reasons for why the relationship didn’t work, and neither Mick nor Megan completely blaming the other for the failure of their marriage, and both of them admitting that they screwed up with how they handled it.  But for the last couple of books they have slowly been trying to rebuild something between them, and this book focuses on the two of them.

Here’s my problem with all of the books by this author that I’ve read so far.  She introduces a legitimate concern between the two potential lovers.  The characters discuss it and try to work through things throughout the story.  Then, in the end, they’re just like, “yay, we’re in love, everything is good!” WITHOUT ACTUALLY FIXING THE PROBLEM.   Like I get that I’m supposed to get a HEA here, that’s the whole point of reading this, but why introduce a problem that you aren’t going to solve??  It leaves me feeling like these characters aren’t actually going to have a successful relationship long-term.  And that was the case here – I actually really like Mick and Megan together and feel like they have made some great progress over the course of the first three books, but there is this whole thing with Megan’s art gallery that is a huge part of what they are trying to work out, and in the end it’s just kind of glossed over like of course everything is going to fall into place, despite the fact that it has NOT fallen into place during ANY conversation so far!  It’s what keeps making these books a soft pick for me.  Why do I keep reading the next one???  I can’t even explain it LOL

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.

June Minireviews – Part 2

Well, we are almost done with peaches – on to apples!!  Things continue busy at the orchard, but I’m home today and it’s gloomy enough to feel like it’s a good day to catch up on some computer work!!

Edit: That was actually several days ago, but I’m finally going to post this for real!!

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.

All About Us by Tom Ellen – 4*

//published 2020//

In college, Ben had a bit of a crush on his friend Alice, but one night changed everything – just when he was thinking about asking Alice out, he met Daphne and fell in love.  But now, years later, he’s starting to wonder if Alice was “the one who got away” and whether marrying Daphne was actually a mistake.  When a mysterious stranger in a bar gives Ben a watch that sends Ben back in time to relive some of the critical moments of his life, he’s suddenly faced with the real-life opportunity to change his fate…

There was a lot about this story that I really enjoyed.  I was afraid that it was just going to be about Ben cheating on his wife, but it’s actually about Ben reassessing his marriage and his life and recognizing his shortcomings and the way that he can make things better going forward.  I liked Ben a lot and found him an easy character to root for – it was really nice to have a male main character in this type of story, and extra nice to have him be a total jerk as so many fictional men are.  (Real-life men, too, I realize, but I feel like the jerks are disproportionately represented in romantic fiction.)  The time-travel aspect was also handled really well.  My main issue with this one involved the incredibly heavy-handed TOXIC MASCULINITY message.  There were constant passages about how ALL MEN hide ALL THEIR FEELINGS from ALL THE PEOPLE because that’s what they were taught by other men in their lives, yadda yadda (“Our friendship – like most male friendships – has been built primarily on ripping the piss out of each other”).  Like actually while most of the men I know aren’t likely to sit down and pour out every deep feeling they have, they’re fine with sharing what they need to share.  I genuinely do believe that there is a difference between men and women and the way they process feelings and emotions, and that men don’t actually have the same need to “get it all out” like women do, so this constant reiteration that the only reason men have problems is because they aren’t SHARING enough starts to really annoy me after a while.  Connected to that, but different, was my other big issue with the story – magically, Daphne is actually PERFECT and 100% of ALL their marriage issues are Ben’s fault (because he doesn’t share all his feelings!).  Absolutely NONE of them are hers!  She’s a PERFECT COMMUNICATOR and an ideal human being in every way and ONLY Ben needs to change to make their marriage blissfully happy.  This just… literally can never be true.  Human beings make mistakes and none of us are perfect, so it’s impossible that Daphne made zero mistakes in their marriage.  Laying all the blame on Ben just felt unrealistic and unfair.

BUT overall this was still a fun little story.  Serious enough that I wouldn’t quite call it a romcom, but lighthearted enough that it didn’t feel like a drudge.  If you like your romances with a dose of thoughtfulness, this is probably one you’ll enjoy.

The Sleeper & the Spindle by Neil Gaiman – 2*

//published 2013//

I’ve had this book on my TBR for a while.  It’s a picture book kind of thing with a retelling of Sleeping Beauty… ish… honestly, do you ever read books and wonder what the heck you’re missing??  That’s how I felt reading this one.  To me, it was just kind of bizarre and didn’t hang together very well, but I have seen so many raving reviews for this one.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the artwork, either.  I think this would have worked better as a full novel instead of a short story – the concept was interesting but not fleshed out at all, making it hard for me to connect with the characters.  Not for me, but loads of people love it, so it may be for you!

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry – 3*

//published 2021//

My lower rating for this one is a combination of having higher expectations for it because I really enjoyed Beach Read last year, and the fact that the main character would literally NOT STOP hating on Ohio.  Like basically every couple of chapters there had to be another paragraph or two of Poppy going on and on and on about how horrible it was to grow up in Ohio and how literally the worst thing that could ever happen in her life would be if she was forced to move back to that dreadful place.  Obviously I’m extra sensitive to Ohio because I freaking LOVE IT HERE, but in general I’m over novels having characters grow up in small Midwest towns that they can’t escape fast enough and then finding fulfillment and joy in the big city… like that would be okay if they didn’t then spend their entire time in the big city moaning about how they barely escaped the Midwest with their lives, as though they were literally going to DIE if they had to live there for another day.  I just.  Eye roll.  Whatever.  Believe it or not, most people who don’t live in a big city have CHOSEN to not live in a big city because they think cities suck, so you can stop feeling sorry for us.  We’re actually super happy with our lives in the countryside, so please find someone else to pity and insult.  I’m pretty over the whole “only people too stupid to escape live in the Midwest”… like actually we chose to stay here because it’s awesome so… suck it lol

ANYWAY the actual story itself was so-so.  Apparently literally all of Poppy’s problems (and everyone else’s) could be solved just be seeing a therapist, so it’s nice to know that that fixes everything.  I never really shipped Poppy and Alex – although I enjoyed their banter and thought they were great friends, it never felt like they were actually on the same page about what they wanted from life.  I personally found Poppy to be super self-centered and annoying.  It wasn’t a terrible read – there were a lot of funny and fun moments and some entertaining characters and adventures – but it definitely wasn’t one I would read again, although I’ll still try whatever Henry writes next, because I really did enjoy Beach Read.

Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater – 4*

//published 2021// And yes, this is the reversible OwlCrate cover with artwork from Stiefvater and I love the way the sword lines up on the spine. //

Earlier in the year I finally got around to reading The Raven Cycle and the first book in the spin-off series, Call Down the Hawk – just in time to read the second book in the spin-off trilogy, Mister Impossible.  While I kind of wish that Stiefvater had chosen to do more with the ley line magic instead of the dreamer magic, I’m still really enjoying these books.  I also loved that Ronan’s brothers were a more important part of this story – I really love Declan, who is definitely my personality match of the brothers, so spending more time with him was great.  I really don’t want to wait an entire year to see how this story wraps up!!

Side note: Sometimes books in a series can be read as stand alones, but definitely not here – I even went back and read the last 50 or so pages of Call Down the Hawk to refresh myself as to where things had left off because Stiefvater jumps directly into the action!!

Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson – 4* or maybe 2* or possibly 3*

//published 2021//

So on Litsy when you post a book review you can choose to rate it as a Pick, So-So, Pan, or Bail. My contention is that they need to add a “WTF” option for books that are, frankly, batshit insane yet compulsively readable.  This would definitely fall into that category!

I blew through this entire book in one evening because I did not want to put it down – despite the fact that no one was particularly likable, the plot was completely unbelievable, every twist just made the story more absurd, and the more I think about it the more questions I have… But I couldn’t stop reading!! Does that make it 2* or 4*? Do I rate it on whether I would recommend it to others or on how much I wanted to keep reading when I was reading it? It’s hard to say, so I guess I’m just going middle of the ground for my rating. If you don’t mind thrillers that are just genuinely over-the-top ridiculous, this may be the read for you!

May Minireviews – Part 1

Oh look, every time I think I’m gong to get caught up – I stop posting for days!!!  Things are legit quieting down at work now, so I’m super excited about my little summer break between greenhouse work and orchard work.  Loads of things to catch up on!!  In the meantime, some random thoughts on some random books!

The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan – 3*

//published 2014//

After mostly enjoying A Natural History of Dragons, I decided to give the second book in the series a try.  Like the first book, Tropic is written as though it is a memoir of Lady Trent, who lives in a Victorian-like era in a different world.  My biggest complaint about A Natural History was that setting this story in a different world felt very laborious for the reader, who now has to try and learn loads of new cultures and countries and languages, when all of that would have been mostly unnecessarily if Brennan had simply set her story in AU England, since that’s the vibe the book had anyway.  Well, I had that same complain about Tropic except even more so.  Literal CHAPTERS of Tropic are spent on history and politics, all of which was utterly boring because it was completely made up.  I just couldn’t bring myself to care at all, and that part of the story went on and on and on and ON.  Where are the dragons????  I asked myself repeatedly while dragging my way through this tale.

The other extremely annoying part about this book was Isabella’s attitude towards motherhood.  At the end of the first book (spoiler here), her husband dies (which was a whole other level of aggravating), but Isabella is pregnant.  When Tropic opens, her son is now a toddler, and Isabella basically finds him to be a huge cramp in her style.  She hires someone else to nanny him, noting, “Is the rearing of a child best performed by a woman who has done it before, who has honed her skills over the years and enjoys her work, or by a woman with no skill and scant enjoyment, whose sole qualification is a direct biological connection?”  Well, thank goodness not everyone’s mother feels this way, my gosh.  She further excuses herself by stating that no one would hold a man to the same standards – one of THE most annoying arguments people craft, as though the fact that Group A doesn’t do X means that rather than changing culture’s expectations to demand more of Group A, instead Group B should be allowed to lower themselves to the same expectations!  Throughout the entire story Isabella refuses to acknowledge any true responsibility as a parent, and frequently sighs over the fact that she has a child at all, and between that and the long, drawn out political aspect of the story, I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to bother finishing.

However, the pace did eventually pick up, bringing my rating up to a rather reluctant 3*.  I already own the third book in the series (I got it as as a set on eBay with Tropic), so I probably will read it someday, but my experience with Tropic didn’t really make me feel like reading it right away.

The Big Four by Agatha Christie – 4*

//published 1927//

In this Hercule Poirot book, Poirot becomes a bit obsessed with the concept that there is an organization, comprised of four powerful people, slowly undermining the governments/economies of the world.  Poirot is determined to discover the identities of these individuals and bring them to justice, especially the one who does the dirty work, known as the Destroyer, a master of disguise and duplicity.  This book is comprised of several short stories that are all connected by the theme of the Big Four.  Hastings narrates, at times convinced that Poirot is right and other times convinced that he’s seeing shadows.  All in all, while this is one of Christie’s novels that goes a bit over-the-top on the “secret society is taking over the world” theme, it’s still good fun with several twists.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – 5*

//published 1868//

It’s kind of hard to write any kind of review for a beloved classic that has been in print since 1868.  This is one of my all-time favorite books, and I couldn’t believe how long it had been since I had read it!  This is an old-fashioned story for sure, but still has plenty of thoughts and lessons that are both timeless and timely.  I love the themes of sisterhood and family.  While most people seem to view Jo as the protagonist of the story, there is so much time spent with the other sisters and their life lessons as well – Meg is always my favorite.  All in all, this was one trip down memory lane that did not disappoint.

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson – 4*

//published 2020// Bonus – picture of the buffet & shelf Tom built me this spring!! AND Roger Miller’s picture! :-D //

Swanson has become an author whose books I try to read when they come out.  Each one has its own style, and I really like that.  This one is about a guy who owns a bookshop.  At one point, back in the day, he published a blog post about eight perfect murders in fiction – they weren’t necessarily perfect books, but the murders themselves are clever and nearly undetectable.  Now, in the present day, it appears that someone is using his list to kill people.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable mystery with excellent pacing.  The bookshop owner, who is also the narrator, is quite likable, and the way the dominoes fell into place felt realistic.  This book definitely has loads of spoilers for several classic mysteries.  Besides the ones on the list of eight murders, there are a few others, including a few of Christie’s classics.  I definitely recommend looking up the books that are spoiled and making sure none of them are ones that you want to read before reading this book.  However, if you don’t want to read those books, and haven’t read them before, it shouldn’t really reduce your entertainment from this story.  Swanson does a great job of organically explaining the plot of each one in a way that didn’t feel boring or out of place, but meant that I could grasp the way that the classic mystery tied into this one.  I had read a few of the books mentioned, but definitely not all of them, and I never felt lost.  I really appreciated the way that Swanson credited and basically bragged on the classic mysteries he used – the way that he incorporated them felt like it came from a place of genuine admiration and love for those stories, and I liked that a lot.

While I really have enjoyed all the Swanson books I’ve read, this is the first one that I see myself maybe revisiting again someday.  Recommended.

Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome – 5*

//published 1947//

I really don’t know how every book in the Swallows & Amazons series can be just as delightful as the one before it, but here we are!  As always, literally every page is a delight.  This is the sixth book in the series, and I’m not even sure I could pick out a favorite because I have enjoyed each of them so much.  They are simple, funny, and delightful, and I highly recommend them to anyone who has a soft spot for simple stories about children having adventures.

November Minireviews

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.

Most of these books were from the very beginning of October, so the details may be getting hazy…

The Beast’s Heart by Leife Shallcross – 3*

//published 2019//

Look at this gorgeous cover!  How can anyone resist this cover??  This book had some potential, but the pacing was sooo slow.  I also felt like the actual reason/purpose behind the Beast’s curse was rather muddled and not explained particularly well, so it made it difficult to bond with the tale.  There were a lot of aspects of the story that I enjoyed, but it definitely wasn’t one that leaped onto my bookshelf forever.

Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson – 4*

//published 2017//

I really do like Swanson’s writing.  The pacing here was excellent, especially in regards as to when to switch perspectives/introduce a new perspective.  Anytime a story is based on someone else being in your house when you are there, but you don’t know they are there, I’m completely creeped out.  (Yay small houses with multiple dogs; someone would be hard-pressed to hide in here haha)  Even though the police didn’t get the whole story, the reader does, and that’s what counts to me.  I also liked the little hint of a happy ending, because I’m a happy ending kind of girl.  This may have been my favorite Swanson yet.

Double Folly by Marnie Ellingson – 4*

//published 1980//

Years ago I purchased a book by Ellingson at a thrift store (The Wicked Marquis), which I absolutely loved.  Not so long ago it occurred to me that, with the power of the internet, I could probably find some of her other books, and this is one of them.  It was quite the adorable story, and I enjoyed every page.  I will say that at one point the hero was in a carriage accident, and it felt like the heroine’s feelings underwent too much of a change to quickly, but other than that the story hummed right along in a delightful fashion.  It’s one of those little stories that is just plain good fun, although it’s possible that Ellingson lifted part of her plot concept from Georgette Heyer’s False Colours…

Neanderthal Seeks Human by Penny Reid – 3*

//published 2013//

I got this one for free on Kindle and thought I would give it a try.  While it was an alright contemporary romance, Janie annoyed me SO. MUCH. Like, I get it.  She babbles when she’s nervous.  It was bad enough to have to hear what she said out loud; having to listen to all of her babbling thoughts was even worse.  This book would have benefited a LOT from having Quinn’s perspective as well, because his actions really did seem inconsistent a lot, so if we had known his thoughts, it would have helped the story a great deal.  As it was, this was a fine one-off read, but it definitely didn’t inspire me to finish the series.  I was also expecting there to be a lot more about the knitting club, but they only appear a couple of times and don’t really become individual characters, so I didn’t care enough to read other books and find out about their stories.

Your Perfect Year by Charlotte Lucas – 2*

//published 2016//

This was a classic case of the book not being what I expected.  The synopsis definitely makes this sound like a lighthearted, romcom type of story.  Jonathon is a super rigid, scheduled, Scrooge-ish kind of person.  On New Year’s Day he comes back from his morning run to find an appointment diary hanging on the handlebars of his bicycle.  Inside, every day has been already filled in with assignments, and all of those assignments are about embracing and enjoying life.  According to the synopsis, Jonathon begins to follow the directions, which change his life, and throughout the course of that he falls in love with the author of the diary.  That’s all technically true, but instead of it being lighthearted and fun, it’s quite serious, verging on sad.  The suicide of one of the characters plays a major part in the plot, as does the residual grief and guilt of the people left behind.  One character has terminal cancer, another discovers that the death of a loved one was due in part to a letter he wrote.  All in all this just wasn’t a book for me.  It wasn’t a bad story, but it was definitely a downer.  Consequently, the romance part didn’t feel like it fit into the rest of the story at all.  Having Jonathon fall in love with the diary’s owner was weird instead of fun because of everything going on in Hannah’s life.  I kept waiting for the tone of the story to go up instead of down, and it just never did.  I was already feeling a little depressed when I started this one, and I felt even more depressed when I was done, despite the technically “happy” ending.

In the Forests of Serre by Patricia McKillip – 3.5*

//published 2003//

I’ve found McKillip’s books to be a mixed bag of magical, bizarre, and mysterious.  This was the type of story where I didn’t quite “get” everything, yet still found it enjoyable.  As always, her language is lovely and world-building excellent.  I would have liked to have seen some more character depth, but overall this was still a book I liked reading.

Before She Knew Him // by Peter Swanson

//published 2019//

I have to give Swanson kudos – he has a genuine knack for writing books that I can’t put down.  Whenever I finish one of his books, I’m immediately struck by his strong overuse of coincidences, his insistence that all men are obsessed with/only motivated by sex, and the fact that I didn’t really like anyone in his story… yet the writing is so gripping that I barely notice any of those things when I’m actually reading the book.  Before She Knew Him is the third of Swanson’s books that I’ve read, and it was just like the others: completely addictive.

Hen and Lloyd appear to be a more-or-less regular married couple.  They’ve just moved to a suburb of Boston.  Hen has had a bad couple of years as far as her mental health goes, and is looking forward to a fresh start in a new space.  She’s an artist and an illustrator, and has a new studio close to their new house.

By page 25, Hen and Lloyd have met and had dinner with their next-door neighbors, Matthew and Mira.  While taking an informal tour of their house, Hen sees an item in Lloyd’s study that triggers a memory for her – she’s positive that it belongs to a young man who was murdered several years earlier, an unsolved crime that became something of an obsession for Hen.  Hen immediately begins to wonder if she’s right – which means Matthew is actually a murderer – or if she’s imagining things.  But here’s what Swanson does:  he let’s you know, also by page 25, that Hen’s suspicions are completely founded.  Not only did Matthew kill Dustin Miller, he’s killed others as well…

This book is a bit of a twist on the unreliable narrator concept, in that the reader knows that Hen is actually completely reliable, but no one around Hen fully trusts what she’s saying because of her mental health problems and her earlier obsession with Miller’s homicide.  I thought that I might become rather bored with a story where I already know such a big part of the story, but instead I found myself completely racing through the short, snappy chapters, keen to see where things were headed, and becoming more and more horrified with Matthew.  I also really appreciated that Hen did talk with the police instead of trying to do everything herself… it wasn’t her fault that they never quite believed her…

For me, the worst part of this book was the dreary insistence that literally every single male alive today is a cheating, sex-obsessed douche, and if you think that’s wrong, it’s just because you are too trusting of your man (who is actually a cheating, sex-obsessed douche, you just haven’t realized it yet).  One of the “twists” in the story is where one of the characters is revealed to be a cheating on his wife… I would honestly have been much, much more surprised if it turned out he wasn’t.  This plot device gets very, very old to me.  I see it especially applied in thrillers, where apparently it’s too much work to write multi-faceted men, or even men who are decent people.  So much easier – and trendier! – to just make them all terrible people.  I’m really quite over it.  As someone who is incredibly happily married, and has parents who are happily married, and grandparents who were happily married, and multiple friends who are happily married – I just really wish authors would stop acting like happy marriages are just made up of women who haven’t yet realized their husbands are already cheating on them.

In the end, a bit on the fence between a 3.5 and 4* read.  There were several coincidences that played a pretty big part in driving the plot forward, the men were completely dreadful, and I felt like Swanson went one twist too far.  But on the other hand, I basically couldn’t put this book down, and I’ll definitely end up reading whatever Swanson produces next.

All the Beautiful Lies // by Peter Swanson

//published 2018//

Sometimes I read books and I literally can’t decide how to rate them because the book has left me feeling so conflicted.  This is definitely one of those books, as I’ve ranged anywhere from 2 to 4 stars.

The pros:

• I couldn’t put this book down.  I read it in basically one day, reading snippets (yay short chapters!) whenever I could.
• The writing is excellent, with perfect pacing.
• The use of past and present timelines really, really works with this book, adding to the tension and working to perfectly change the reader’s perception of various characters.

The cons:

• Basically, this book is about sex.  Virtually every relationship explored is a sexual one.  While the book isn’t super explicit, it’s still, in my mind, the main theme since it is the driving force between almost every pair of people in this story, no matter who you draw the lines between.
• The majority of the sexual relationships in this book are between people with inappropriate age gaps.  While most of them aren’t necessarily adult/minor relationships, they nearly ALL begin that way, with the younger person being emotionally groomed by the older person.  I was extremely uncomfortable with the “we’re consenting adults” attitude, when one of the adults is barely 18 and the other is over 25 years older.
• The ending was really weird to me, and I didn’t like it.

So I guess at the end of the day, my rating based on the actual writing is a confident 4*.  My rating based on the subject material is more like 2*.  And I feel like I should clarify that Swanson wasn’t presenting these relationships as positives (although he didn’t always present them as specifically negative, either).  In a way, he was pointing out the way these types of relationships cycle through generations.  I think I would have been okay with it in that sense if it had just been two relationships, like one when a person was the younger part of the pair and then later when that person was the older part of the pair, because it would have made more sense.  But instead there are at least five different scenarios, not counting the ones that are mentioned off-handedly as part of one person’s past where this person was involved with multiple young people/minors.  That was just too much for me.  And it wasn’t even the age gap that got me as much as the creepy way that the older person manipulated things to make sure they could be with the younger person, and then groomed that person to become their lover ICK.

On the flip side, I really wanted to see where things were going in this book.  I had some theories and ideas, some of which were right and some of which weren’t.  I loved the way that Swanson cleverly manipulated my feelings about the present timeline by giving me something in a character’s past timeline to make me readjust my overall thinking and feelings about them.

This isn’t a book that I would ever reread, but I’m still keeping Swanson on my radar.  I really enjoyed The Girl With a Clock for a Heart when I read it last year, and have every intention of picking up more of Swanson’s books in the future.

The Girl With a Clock for a Heart // by Peter Swanson

//published 2014//

This is a book that has been on the TBR since Cleopatra reviewed it in 2016.  As regular readers know, the TBR is a massive thing that continues to grow, rather than shrink, but I do eventually tackle books that have been on there for years, and I’ve started to make more of an effort to note who inspired me to add it in the first place, so that even if it takes a while, I can still give a good review credit!  :-D

I was quickly drawn into this book, and really had no idea where it was heading most of the time.  I finally set aside a bit of time on a quiet Sunday afternoon to just sit and devote myself to reading the last third of this book because I HAD TO KNOW.  In retrospect, this book definitely had some weak points, but it definitely gets high marks for keeping me thoroughly engaged while I was reading it!

Our story opens with a prologue in which George enters a house that has been marked as a crime scene, looking for a message that “she” left for him, some clue that the police would have overlooked as insignificant to their investigation.  He finds a postcard.  And then we go to chapter one.

Basically, throughout this book kept kind of reminding me of something, and when I finished it and was skimming through a few reviews on Goodreads, I came across someone describing this book as “old-school noir” and I realized that that was what I had been thinking of.  In some way, this book reminded me of the Phillip Marlowe books that I read last year – George is the traditional serious, steady guy who gets caught up in circumstances beyond his control because he is drawn there by a beautiful and irresistible femme fatale.

With that in mind, I think this book becomes more enjoyable.  There are, frankly, multiple points in time where I simply could not believe that George would yet again do something crazy for this woman, but I still found myself going with it because even though it’s set in modern times, it had this flavor that felt like they ought to have been in a smoky bar in the 1920’s.

The information throughout the story is revealed at just the right time.  We are following the current events in the present, but also learning of when George first met this mysterious woman – so his reasons for both his loyalty and hesitancy are being presented at critical moments in the current storyline.

In the end, this is a book that I hovered between a 3.5 and a 4.  Ultimately I settled on 4 because I do definitely see myself reading more of Swanson’s books in the future.  While The Girl With a Clock for a Heart wasn’t the most amazing thriller I had ever read, I did find it completely engrossing at the time, and the excellent pacing made me willing to overlook what felt like ridiculous judgments on the part of George.  It was a book that made me race to the conclusion, and then reread the prologue, and then reread random chapters throughout looking for the clues that I had missed now that I had the key.

While I don’t heartily recommend this book, I do recommend it to people who enjoy quick, snappy thrillers that may have a few gaps in character actions.  There was a lot to enjoy here, and I look forward to checking out some more of Swanson’s books in the future.