CBR16 Book 36: "Leather & Lark" by Brynne Weaver

Page count: 400 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 15 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Bananas

Lark Montague and Lachlan Kane have an unfortunate first meeting, when Lark during Halloween has had an "accident" and needs a car and a body fished out of a lake. Lachlan is the man forced by his employer to come help her do this. Lachlan is in scuba gear, Lark is heavily made up in a Halloween costume. Lachlan chooses to force Lark into the car of his trunk to transport her unseen away from the incident site, not realising that Lark has intense claustrophobia. She breaks out of his trunk, and runs off. Lachlan's employer is NOT impressed, and any hopes Lachlan had of escaping his violent fixer jobs go up in smoke.

The two meet again when Lark's best friend Sloane and Lachlan's younger brother Rowan celebrate their engagement. They are initially very attracted to one another, but once Lark figures out exactly where she recognises Lachlan's voice from and confronts him about their previous encounter, any sexy time feelings they felt towards the other are as dead as one of Sloane and Rowan's serial killer victims. They try not to let their dislike show too much, as the people they care most about are about to get married, but the animosity between them is palpable.

Lark's dying aunt runs a very successful, but cut-throat cupcake empire. Apparently,  someone (they suspect a business rival) is killing off some of their associates. Lark's parents suspect Lachlan is the man doing the hits, and Lark hears them threatening not only to take out Lachlan as a defensive measure but both of his brothers as well. Lark will not let anything get in the way of Sloane's happiness, and when her aunt points out that her parents won't threaten anyone considered family, she hatches a plan. She and Lachlan will have to get married, and convince her parents that they are actually in love. 

Lark promises Lachlan that she will get him free of his capricious and demanding employer if he helps her figure out who is killing her family's business associates. As it turns out, the guilty party isn't a business rival at all, but someone who wants very bad things to happen to both Lachlan and Lark. 

While not as wonderfully compelling as Butcher & Blackbird, the first book in the Ruinous Love trilogy, Leather & Lark was still a fun read (and listen), and I feel it fits into the "Bananas" square on the CBR16 Bingo card, because there is a leather working crime fixer, a cute folk singer who happens to have a side hustle murdering sexual predators, drugged cupcakes, serial killers getting married, murder victims being turned into crafts project, you name it. There is a long list of content warnings at the start of the book, although there's a lot less squicky stuff with eyeballs in this one. 

Considering I was entirely unprepared for how much I adored the first book, this book was unlikely to live up to my expectations. It was still a fun read, but I found neither Lark, nor Lachlan as charming and interesting as Rowan or dorkily insecure as Sloane (loved their cameo appearances in this book, though). Lark's aunt was a lovely supporting character, however. I had no need to immediately re-read this one, and while I might not want to revisit it in the future, I'm still very much looking forward to the third book in the series, where we get Rose and Fhion's story. 

Judging a book by its cover: I possibly like the turquoise and black better than the hot pink and black of the previous book, but the various objects representing the protagonists are less fun. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 35: "Ronja Rövardotter" (Ronia the Robber's Daughter) by Astrid Lindgren

Page count: 235 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Cozy (this was my absolutely most favourite book as a child)

Nowhere Books Bingo: Has been adapted into a movie or a TV show

CBR16 Bingo: Horses (the back cover has a picture of the horses that Ronja and Birk tame during their stay in the forest)

Ronja is the only daughter of the chief of a robber band. She's born during a particularly stormy night when a lightning strike creates a giant gorge in the stone fortress where she grows up. Beloved by her father and his robber band, Ronja is kept sheltered through the early years of her life and then is allowed to venture out into the woods surrounding the fortress. She gradually learns not to be afraid of anything and grows strong and independent, thriving in the woods. 

For much of her childhood, Ronja is a lonely but content child. When she meets Birk, the son of her father's arch-enemy, the chief of a rival robber band, they are initially hostile towards one another because of their fathers' animosity, but soon become close as siblings. When the rivalry between their fathers worsens, the children decide to remove themselves from the situation entirely. They move into a cave in the forest, using the tricks and skills they have acquired to fend for themselves, waiting for their parents to come to their senses and end the bloodshed between the two robber bands.

My older brother (9 years older than me) taught me to read when I started showing an interest in the alphabet. I was about three years old. I was a voracious reader even before I started school, and according to my late mother, this was the first proper chapter book I finished reading to myself. The film adaptation that was made of this book from 1984 is also the first film I ever saw in the cinema. My mother took me while I was still 4 years old (I remember clearly because the age limit was actually 5, and I was shocked that my mother lied at the ticket counter and said I had already turned five. I think it was my first realisation that grown-ups didn't always tell the truth). 

Both this book and the movie adaptation are beloved children's classics for Swedish and Norwegian kids who grew up in the 1980s and 90s. The book has also been adapted into a stage play, a musical, a Studio Ghibli animated series, and now most recently into a new Swedish series that debuted on Netflix earlier this year. I love this book and re-read it to see whether it was age-appropriate for my six-year-old. Since the story is rather slow, but there are also some serious themes explored, I have concluded that we should probably wait a year or two before I introduce him to it, but it's a wonderful story, and should absolutely still be recommended to middle-grade readers. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover art of the book and the inside illustrations in this book were done by Ilon Wikland, an Estonian woman who moved to Sweden as a teenager. She illustrated a lot of Astrid Lindgren's most popular books and having grown up with these illustrations, for me, the stories aren't complete without them. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 34: "The Witches of Vardø" by Anya Bergman

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 2 stars

In 1662, a former mistress of the king of Denmark-Norway (Norway was a Danish colony for about 400 years, for those not big into their history trivia), Anna Rhodius is sent into exile to a fortress in Vardø in the very north of Norway. She convinces herself that she has been sent there to help root out witchcraft, and if she does a good job, she will be welcomed back by the king with open arms.

Zigri is the young widow of a fisherman, who lost both her husband and only son to the sea. For a time, her grief seems to make her insensible to everything, even her two daughters, but after she catches the eye of the son of the wealthy local merchant, not only does her family have enough to eat, but she seems a lot more cheerful. A beautiful woman having an affair with a much richer, married man rarely has a happy ending, however, and once his wife discovers the affair, Zigri finds herself accused of witchcraft and is sent to the fortress in Vardø.

Zigri's teenage daughter Ingeborg and her cousin Maren (whose own mother was tried and killed for witchcraft) band together to go to Vardø to attempt to rescue Zigri, aided by a local Sami tribe.

This was my fantasy/sci-fi bookclub's book selection for May, and I had read about a third of the book when we had our monthly meeting. In recent years, it feels like about half the time, I go to my book club meetings to see if I actually want to bother putting in the effort to finish the book. That was certainly the case here.

We get multiple points of view in this story. The sections with Anna Rhodius are first-person perspective, with her writing journal-like letters to the King of Denmark. The sections about Zigri, Ingeborg, and Maren are all in third person. There was a lot of potential here because the actual history of the witch trials in the North of Norway is fascinating, but this book did not deliver. There is a lot of tell, not show, and a lot of the plot is slow and plodding until it suddenly goes too fast. It reads like a debut novel, but some research shows that while Anya Bergman hasn't published anything else, she also writes under the name Noëlle Harrison, who has written at least ten other novels and four plays, according to her website. She's also the co-founder of a writers' retreat. In other words, she should be better than the author of this book is at crafting a story. 

In the end, I took the advice of several others in the book club and skipped more than half of what was left of the book, reading the final few chapters. The ending is over the top and several things happen that don't seem to make a lot of sense. There are some very baffling choices made, and one of the things that's frustrating about the book is whether magic is in fact real in this universe. The author seems to suggest that yes, some women actually have magical powers, while also suggesting that it's all superstition and all these women were arrested, tortured, persecuted, and executed for no good reason. 

It makes me sad that this book was so underwhelming since one of the things I studied a lot as part of my history degree was social history in the Middle Ages, the witch trials in the UK (and in other parts of Europe) as part of it. This book could have been so much better. I can't really recommend it. Slewfoot was a much better book about witch hunts. 

Judging a book by its cover: The orange flames and the blue lynx are both very striking, and the patterns remind me of woodcuts or old tapestry embroidery patterns. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 33: "Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets and Advice for Living Your Best Life" by Ali Wong

Page count: 240 pages

Audio book length: 6 hrs 20 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Books Bingo: About someone you want to learn more about

I don't think I'd heard of Ali Wong before her first Netflix special, Baby Cobra. I've now seen all her stand-up specials and also enjoyed Always Be My Maybe, a fun romantic comedy she wrote and starred in with Randall Park, and famously got Keanu Reeves to star as himself. I've heard very good things about Beef, but there's just too much TV out there at the moment, and too little time (especially if I also want to have time to read and have a life). 

I got the audiobook of this in an Audible sale a while ago, and figured that if her stand-up is funny, her book would also be entertaining. She narrates it herself (her then husband, now ex narrates the afterword) and does a good job. Structuring each chapter as a letter of advice to her daughters (for them to read as adults, there is quite a lot of swearing and very graphic details about her life), Wong talks about her career, her dating life, being a woman in a male-dominated industry and a number of other topics. Her now ex-husband obviously features a lot in the various stories, and from the section he reads he seems like a nice guy, (who still acts as Wong's tour manager, as far as I can tell). 

Judging a book by its cover: Ali Wong is a good-looking lady, so I'm not sure why she wanted to look more like a wax figure on a 70s TV set than a person on the cover of her book. The sparkly dress is pretty, there's just something about the whole image that I find off-putting. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 32: "You Were Made to Be Mine" by Julie Anne Long

Page count: 364 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Christian Hawkes was a British spymaster during the Napoleonic wars and ended up spending years in a French prison after someone sold him out. Now he's free, but left destitute and mostly friendless. The Earl of Brundage, tipped to become an ambassador, hires Hawkes to locate his missing fiancée and a very valuable necklace (who was only on loan to the Earl) the young woman had in her possession when she went missing.

Hawkes would like nothing better than to tell Brundage to go to hell, but he needs money, and he also needs time to find enough evidence that Brundage was a French spy during the war (which has helped him rise to the position he's now in) and the man who betrayed Hawkes to the French. He most likely stole Hawkes' money too. Pretending to look for Brunage's intended will give Hawkes more time to find the evidence he needs.

Lady Aurelie Capet (a distant cousin to French royalty), Brundage's betrothed, has indeed run away. After discovering that Brundage was not the man she believed him to be, she saved, plotted and schemed to get as far away from him as she can. Alone and scared, she has managed to cross the English Channel and has found refuge in the Grand Palace on the Thames under an assumed name.

Hawkes dramatically arrives a few days later, staggering over the doorstep, bleeding profusely from a stab wound (or maybe a gunshot wound, I forget and I can't bother to go back and double-check). Either way, it's a serious injury and the arrival causes quite the uproar amongst the owners and guests. As the inhabitants of the Palace for several days had anticipated the arrival of a clergyman, there is initially some confusion as to the identity of their new, unconscious houseguest. Aurelie feels sympathy for the injured man and offers to care for him and sit by his bedside until he wakes up. Once he does awaken, it doesn't take long for the couple to fall head over heels. 

Hawker never had any intention of reuniting a sheltered young woman with a villain like Brundage, but his revenge quest against the man becomes even more serious after he discovers what actually happened to Aurelie and why she felt she had no chance but to run away from him. Until Hawker can acquire the final pieces of evidence against the man, however, he is the one in danger. Brundage has accused Hawker of kidnapping Aurelie and stealing the valuable necklace.  

Throughout reading the story, I kept wondering if Hawker (both the name and character) were inspired by Joanna Bourne's spymaster Hawker in The Black Hawk (a book I absolutely adore). I couldn't find anything in the acknowledgements about it, but I'm still going to wonder. 

This was another enjoyable romance from Julie Anne Long, but readers should know that there is indirect mention of rape in the book, and there is a fair age gap between Aurelie and Hawker. I'm not a huge fan of insta-love stories, but this one is done well. There are some romances by Long that I re-read again and again, and while this was fine, I don't think this is one I'm going to revisit multiple times. 

Judging a book by its cover: I don't know what cover designers have against Julie Anne Long's romance novels. Most of the covers in this series are absolutely dreadful. There are so many things that just seem off with this cover. The weird pose while kissing, which seems like they'd both get neck and/or back pain. His hair. Her dress, with skirts that seem to take up a third of the cover. The kiss also looks awkward. Not great, Avon, you can do better. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 31: "Love, Lies and Cherry Pie" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 342 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

This was an ARC from the author. My opinions are my own. 

CBR16 Sweet Books: Cozy 

Emily Hung is happily single, but her mother won't let that stop her from trying to set her up with suitable men, often the sons of various family friends. Since Emily is now the only unmarried daughter, her mother's efforts are intensifying. At her sister's wedding, her mother makes sure Emily is paired with Mark Chan, who is an engineer and seems stuck-up and boring.

To make matters worse - even if they didn't seem to even like each other at Emily's sister's wedding, her mother lies to her to get her to go on a brunch date with Mark. It's at this point that Emily decides to persuade Mark Chen to be her fake boyfriend. If their parents think that they're already dating, they'll stop trying to throw them together.

Unfortunately, Emily's family and friends seem to be everywhere, and every time Emily comes up with a story about what she's been doing with Mark, someone seems to have been nearby and can't remember having seen them there. So what's a struggling writer with two jobs and a fake boyfriend going to have to do? Go on actual fake dates with him, of course, and document them on social media. As she spends more time with Mark, Emily is forced to realise that her first impressions may have been wrong. Could it be that her mother is actually right, and Mark Chen IS the perfect boyfriend for Emily? Surely not!

I've read a lot of Jackie Lau romances over the last few years, and this one is one of my absolute favourites. Fake dating isn't one of my favourite tropes, but it's done well here, and it's quite cute once Emily is forced to realise that perhaps her mother really isn't just desperate to get her coupled up, but has actually put thought and effort into finding a guy who might actually be a good and respectful partner to her child. 

Another thing I really liked in this novel is that it starts out in single POV, where we only get Emily's take on things, but in the second half of the book, once Emily has started considering Mark as an actual romantic prospect, we get chapters from his POV as well. I always prefer the more complete picture that a dual POV romance gives, and this narrative touch, where it's introduced later in the story, was really well done. 

As always, with Jackie Lau books, there's a lot of food being consumed and described. Do not read while hungry. 

Judging a book by its cover: I think this cover is incredibly cute, and looking at it actually helps me remember some of the story (which is certainly not always the case). Obviously, I read a digital copy of this, but if I saw this book in a store, the bright and cheery cover would easily catch my attention. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 30: "Cordelia's Honor" by Lois McMaster Bujold

Page count: 641 pages (it is two books in one volume, after all)

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Détente (Cordelia and Aral start out as enemies and end up married)

Official book summary (read this in early May):

In her first trial by fire, Cordelia Naismith captained a throwaway ship of the Betan Expeditionary Force on a mission to destroy an enemy armada. Discovering deception within deception, treachery within treachery, she was forced into a separate peace with her chief opponent, Lord Aral Vorkosigan - he who was called "The Butcher of Komarr" - and would consequently become an outcast on her own planet and the Lady Vorkosigan on his.

Sick of combat and betrayal, she was ready to settle down to a quiet life, interrupted only by the occasional ceremonial appearances required of the Lady Vorkosigan. But when the Emperor died, Aral suddenly became guardian of the infant heir to the imperial throne of Barrayar - and the target of high-tech assassins in a dynastic civil war that was reminiscent of earth's Middle Ages, but fought with up-to-the minute biowar technology. Neither Aral nor Cordelia guessed the part that their cell-damaged unborn son would play in Barrayar's bloody legacy. 

Cordelia's Honor is part of the rather long Vorkosigan saga, which mostly concerns itself with the dashing Miles Vorkosigan and his many adventures. Chronologically speaking, Shards of Honor (the first part of this book) is the very first book in the series, while Barrayar (the second part) is book 7. The reason these two books have been collected into one volume is because they tell the story of how Miles' parents first met, got married and how he was born. I keep hearing great things about these books, and after Sarah, a fellow Cannonballer, wrote an absolutely amazing review last year, I figured that it was really about time to see what all the fuss is about.

Cordelia Naismith is a scientist on what is supposed to be an exploratory mission, but most of her crew ends up murdered and she is left in the wilderness with a badly damaged crew mate and an enemy soldier, popularly nicknamed "the Butcher of Komarr". They spend several days forced to cooperate and navigate dangers on an alien planet, and Cordelia comes to understand that Aral Vorkosigan is a lot more complex and honourable than his reputation would have her believe. By the time they reach civilization and it's time for them to part, it's clear that warmer feelings have developed between them. 

Unfortunately, they are still on opposite sides of a war, and Cordelia's government aren't super enthusiastic about their connection. By the time Cordelia decides to choose love over her own home world, Vorkosigan has been used as a scapegoat for his side of the conflict and is drinking his sorrows away on his country estate. Cordelia's arrival snaps him out of his funk and they get married. 

Their idyllic life together is complicated when the emperor dies, leaving a toddler as the new ruler, and Lord Vorkosigan appointed as his regent. Unfortunately, Aral and a pregnant Cordelia soon find themselves fighting a civil war, against usurping forces who have the dowager princess as a hostage and who want control over the young emperor. Ruthless assassins are dispatched against them, and while they both survive, the poison used could have disastrous consequences for their unborn child (spoiler - the baby is Miles, and he survives thanks to fancy technology from Cordelia's homeworld.

Considering the plots of these two books follow each other pretty closely, I would think that reading the series entirely chronologically would be very strange. Now that I've finally read Cordelia's Honor, which is thankfully more fantasy in space than hard sci-fi (which I rarely enjoy), I can see why so many people rave about the awesomeness of Captain Cordelia Naismith, and Aral Vorkosigan is certainly a good match for her. Barrayar, his home planet, is very patriarchal. Cordelia is a strong-willed, independent woman who has piloted space crafts and fought in a war. She's not prepared to wear pretty dresses and be a passive ornament in her husband's home. Thankfully, while the nobility around him might be a bit old-fashioned, Aral adores his wife and understands how remarkable she is. They have a beautiful partnership which forms the core of especially the second book.

I'm not sure when I'm going to read the books about Miles, their son, but I'm absolutely curious to see how his adventures turn out. 

Judging a book by its cover: These books came out in the 1990s and as such, have covers that feel rather dated now. I'm also not entirely sure why a futuristic sci-fi society dresses as if they were all from early 19th-Century Earth. Also not sure why someone is holding that sword in a way that looks cure to cut palms open and presenting it to Cordelia. Does she want tribute in the form of slashed palms? 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read