CBR17 Book 68: "One of Us is Lying" by Karen M. McManus

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: School (The Breakfast Club with murder. So much high school drama)

On a Monday afternoon, five high schoolers find themselves in detention after someone planted phones in their bags. They all claim the phones are not theirs, but the teacher is not listening. There is Cooper, the star athlete, with a promising career in baseball ahead of him. There is Addy, always perfectly put together and the homecoming princess. There is Nate, the school's bad boy, who is on probation for dealing drugs. There is Bronwyn, most likely to become valedictorian and hoping for a spot at Yale, where several generations of her family have studied. And finally, there is Simon, who runs the school's extremely accurate, and frequently cruel, gossip app. Everyone follows it, and while he may ruin reputations in the process, Simon never lies.

Less than an hour later, only four remain, after Simon is taken to the hospital after suffering severe anaphylactic shock. Strangely, while everyone was scrambling to try to save him, he didn't appear to have an EPIPen in his bag, and every single EPIPen in the school nurse's office was also found to be missing. By Monday evening, Simon is dead. The cause of death appears to have been peanut oil at the bottom of the paper cup he drank from, just before he collapsed. It was well known at school that he was deathly allergic to peanuts. The police don't think his death is accidental, and as the four remaining students from detention are questioned by the police, it becomes clear that Simon had planned to reveal a deep, dark secret about each of them the next day, so they all have motives for wanting him dead. He just hadn't had time to post the entry yet, but it's there on his computer for them all to see. 

Four teens, who previously barely spoke to one another, are now cast into the spotlight, all suspects in a murder investigation. Is one of them a ruthless murderer, or did someone else manage to sneak inside the classroom while everyone in there was distracted by a collision in the parking lot?

Mostly, I only read historical mysteries, set in the Victorian era, with lady sleuths. However, this year, not only have I read a lot more mysteries in general (24 so far), but the majority of them have been contemporaries. Thanks are due to Richard Osman and Karen M. McManus. This book was entertaining and twisty enough that I immediately ignored my planned TBR list for October to read the two sequels (which I won't be reviewing, because I don't need to). Book 1 is still the best, book 2 was a bit weaker and book 3 was pretty good again. 

McManus alternates chapters for each of the protagonists, the Bayview Four, as they come to be known in all the news reports. It allows us to share in their fears and insecurities, and makes us as readers understand why Simon revealing their secrets would be so devastating to them. One of them is likely an unreliable narrator, because it wouldn't be much fun if we found out who the killer was too early in the story. Very shortly after Simon dies, someone starts writing anonymous Tumblr posts claiming to be Simon's killer, revealing things that it seems only someone in the detention room would know. It also becomes obvious that Simon must have shared his password with someone, because all those secrets Simon didn't have time to reveal before his death are published, showing the world exactly what may have motivated one (or several) of the Bayview Four to want to poison Simon.

I've read quite a few mysteries, so there were a couple of twists in the story that I had predicted before they were revealed, but part of why this book is so entertaining isn't even the central mystery, it's getting to know Bronwyn, Nate, Addy and Cooper, and seeing these four very different people form an unlikely friendship because they are now murder suspects. It was also why I wanted to keep going with the series, I really liked all of them, and wanted to find out what more was in store for them.

I saw on the internet that this book was also turned into a TV series. It looks like they made big narrative changes to the story, though, which did not appeal to me. There are far too many good things out there that I don't have the energy or will to watch right now, I'm not going to watch a disappointing adaptation of a book I really enjoyed. 

If you're not put off by YA books and want a fun, slightly twisty read, this is worth picking up. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have the UK paperback cover, and I much prefer it to the American cover with the four faces in a grid (where the faces are all cut out, creepy much?) This is sparse and elegant, and while the tag lines are a bit hokey, they fit with the contents of the book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 67: "Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow" by Jessica Townsend

Page count: 480 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Nowhere Bingo 25: A middle-grade book

CBR17 Bingo: N (a book starting with the letter N)

Morrigan Crow is a cursed child, born on Eventide (think New Year's Eve, but unlucky) and as such, is due to die at midnight on her 11th birthday. She keeps being blamed for everything bad that happens in her surroundings and spends a lot of time writing apology notes. 

However, before she can meet her doom, a mysterious stranger called Jupiter North appears and takes her away, chased by shadowy monsters hunting them, to a different world (or alternate dimension) and a city called Nevermoor. Now, Morrigan gets to live in the magical hotel that Jupiter runs, and starts making friends for the first time in her life. Jupiter intends for Morrigan to join the Wundrous Society, where he is also a prominent member. But to be accepted, she has to compete in four different and very challenging trials over the course of the year, and the final one consists of showing off one's extraordinary talent. Everyone keeps telling her that her talent will be revealed in due course, but Morrigan is pretty sure that being cursed is not what the leaders of the Society are looking for. 

To complicate matters further, it turns out that Jupiter has illegally smuggled Morrigan into Nevermoor, and if she doesn't pass the trials and get accepted into the Wundrous Society, she'll be returned to her own world, just in time for her previously scheduled midnight death. 

This is the sort of book that I'm pretty sure my son will really enjoy in a few years, when I either read it to him or he picks it up for himself (he currently loves reading comics, like the Dogman books or Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur). Morrigan, who is pale and constantly wears black, even when everyone else is in riotous colours around her, feels very inspired by Wednesday Addams, but she has a more cheerful disposition, and doesn't seem to actively resent making friends. 

Nevermoor is a very intriguing fantasy world, and there are lots of strange, magical things, including sentient talking animals and chandeliers that grow from the ceilings. For a child who has never really known any kind of warmth or affection, it's a big adjustment for Morrigan to live in a place where people seem to care about what her wants and wishes are and treat her with kindness and curiosity. Jupiter is very nice to her, but he is secretive, and also extremely busy, and has to be away a lot. He has a nephew, Jack, who stays at the hotel during the holidays, and he and Morrigan do not get along. There are hundreds of children taking part in the first trial for the Wundrous Society, but about half get eliminated with each new challenge. While Morrigan makes a very good friend, there are also some mean girls who would like nothing more than to see her fail and be forcibly evicted back to her own world. 

Since the series has been out for quite a few years now, I think I've acquired at least the first three in e-book sales, so they're just waiting for me on my TBR. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that by the end of the book, Morrigan discovers that there are good reasons why Jupiter decided to rescue her from certain death, and she has an interesting future ahead of her. I'm looking forward to seeing where the series goes next. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 66: "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen

Page count: 464 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 25 mins

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Black (a book with a black cover)

I had completely forgotten that I read and reviewed this book back in 2016. My original review can be found here. 

My plot summary of the more than 200-year-old novel can be found in my previous review. Nevertheless, my reading experience this time around was different enough from earlier times that I wanted to write about some of my thoughts and observations, not to mention some of the points of discussion that came up during my book club discussion about it recently.

There are some rather uneducated modern beliefs that there were no neurodivergent individuals in the past. Because there has been a sharp rise in the number of people (especially children) diagnosed with either ADHD or Autism, many believe that this is something new, and not something that has always been around, just unacknowledged by people, because they didn't have the diagnostic tools to identify it. Case in point, some now suspect Jane Austen may have been on the autism spectrum, and eagle-eyed readers claim that there is at least one autistic-coded character in each of her published novels. The reason I'm opening with this is because one of the members of my book club, who is on the autism spectrum, posited that Marianne Dashwood is clearly also neurodivergent and, over the course of the novel, forced to adapt and conform to societal pressures and learn to mask her true self. Based on my own experiences, with an autistic husband and a son with ADHD, I'm now more convinced than ever that Mr. Darcy is on the spectrum, so once this member explained her reasoning, it seems likely that she might be right about Marianne as well. 

According to her, Marianne's complete disdain for the thoughts and opinions of others, to the point where she is frequently brusque and rude at social gatherings, her inability to govern her emotions (or "sensibility") and her hyper-focused love of her own interests, at the expense of anything else, are all very autism-coded. She has difficulty with social cues, which is one of the reasons she causes a scene in public when she finally sees Willoughby again at the ball in town, after months of no contact. By the end of the book, heartbreak and prolonged illness have made her a mere shadow of her former self, and she seems to accept that she needs to be a quieter, more moderately behaved young woman.

Another thing that was strange and a bit uncomfortable when re-reading the book this time is realising that I'm now older than most of the characters. Colonel Brandon, who is frequently described as old, set in his ways and fussy, is only 35 years old! Also, it is mentioned more than once that he like wearing a flannel waistcoat, as if this is something negative, and not proof that the man dislikes the cold and likes to be comfortable. I totally defend his desire to be snug and warm. At 46, I am now older than Mrs Dashwood, the girls' widowed mother, and the character I am probably most like in social status and age is the meddling, yet ultimately kind-hearted Mrs Jennings, a matron with two grown daughters. So all I can look forward to now is trying to match-make and chaperone younger women. 

Another point of discussion was the fact that all the men in this, yes, EVEN Colonel Brandon, are kind of awful. He is the least worst, but his attraction to Marianne does seem to be based on her similarity to his doomed first love, rather than because of her own personality. And every single character, even Marianne's mother and beloved sister Elinor, seems to think that it's only right and proper that he get Marianne as his wife for being patient and pining, without really considering Marianne's agency in the slightest. Marianne seems so exhausted and dejected towards the end that she's clearly willing to go along with anything, especially if it means she will stop her family from worrying about her. He does get points for raising his dead love's illegitimate child, ignoring all the gossip that whispers that she is his child out of wedlock. 

I think it's only because of Hugh Grant's adorable puppy dog portrayal of Edward Ferrars, Elinor's love interest, that I didn't recall that he is one of the dullest people I have encountered in fiction. He is described as not particularly attractive physically, he makes absolutely no attempts to try and influence his life, and even though his mother treats him appallingly, he never stands up for himself. He's not brave enough to confess to Elinor about his secret betrothal when they first meet, and he falls in love with her; she has to find out in the worst possible way from conniving snake Lucy Steele. He doesn't even end his own unhappy engagement; he waits around until he is dumped by Lucy Steele, cast off for his own brother. If she hadn't eloped with someone else, he would just have dully suffered in silence in a dreadful marriage of unequal partners. 

Then there is Willoughby, who, one of the members in my book club feels, is actually even worse than Wickham, who is despicable and an absolute predator, but at least owns his own actions. Willoughby not only knocks up and callously abandons Brandon's ward, leaving her absolutely no way of contacting him (ghosting was WAY easier in the 1800s, you just had to move to a different part of the country and leave no forwarding address), and actually seems surprised and dismayed when his elderly aunt takes him to task for this. He never makes any concrete promises to Marianne, and when she is on her deathbed, he shows up and drunkenly rants at Elinor about how sad he is, because while he loves Marianne, he loves himself and his financial security more. He HAD to marry the extremely wealthy young heiress with 50,000 pounds a year, because true love doesn't pay for expensive horses and fancy carriages and the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. We were all in agreement that if he lived now, he would have a podcast and be a manosphere influencer. No taking responsibility for his own careless actions and owning up to his mistakes for Willoughby. 

We also agreed that while Lucy Steele is a conniving, mean girl, if the ultimate goal for Regency women was to marry someone who could secure them for the rest of their days, she is absolutely the winner. Her constant "worried" confessions to Elinor about her secret engagement to Edward are obviously meant to taunt and torture the other woman, and she is obviously a social-climbing opportunist. She even takes all of her poor sister's money when she runs off to marry Ferrars the younger. We all hoped her boring sister ended up happily married to her doctor eventually. 

Some of the members of my book club were rather surprised at this being categorised as romance, and those of us who are long-time fans of Austen had to explain that because SOME of her novels have a strong romantic plot, it would be more accurate to classify them as social satires. Because Pride and Prejudice is so very romantic, and her most popular one, all of her books have been labelled by publishers as romance, because that sells more. This book is more a family story, and a coming of age novel, and the plot would have worked just as well if all the suitors were taken out of the equation. Marianne would certainly have been better off because of it. 

Judging a book by its cover (and illustrations): The cover I have chosen to feature is that of my older paperback edition (because it is actually mostly black, except for the lady faces). These women seem much older than 17 and 19, though. The edition I actually read, this time, was my tiny pocket-sized hardback, the 250th Anniversary Edition, which has a red and green cover, and cover illustrations inside by Hugh Thompson. While they are lovely, the pedant in me got annoyed that they are not period-appropriate. Austen's novels are famously set in the Regency era, while all the clothes and hairstyles from the illustrations were clearly from the Georgian era, several decades earlier. It's a stupid niggle, to be sure, but it annoyed me throughout. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 65: "Carrie Soto is Back" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Page count: 375 pages

Audio book length: 10hrs 29mins

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Bingo 25: A book about sport

CBR17 Bingo: Play (tennis)

Official plot summary (finished the book in August):

Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.

But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.

At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked “the Battle-Axe” anyway. Even if her body doesn’t move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.

In spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season.

I'm not a big fan of sports, of any kind. I don't like doing any personally, and I don't really find them interesting to watch. There are exceptions, but my enjoyment usually comes from the excitement of the others watching with me, rather than from the actual athletic feats taking place on screen. I have vague memories of watching some televised tennis tournaments as a child, because my parents watched them, but I don't think I've ever, as an adult, thought: I should make sure to watch some tennis. Despite all this, I did really enjoy the movie Challengers, and that is part of what made me curious about this book.

That was a very long-winded way of saying that it shows what a talented and engaging writer Taylor Jenkins Reid is (or possibly how good the cast reading the audiobook is), because I ended up giving this book 4 stars. Just as I had very little personal knowledge of the music scene (and the personal drama of Fleetwood Mac) described in Daisy Jones and the Six, my own personal knowledge of the professional tennis scene is limited. I know who Serena Williams is (I'm pretty sure you'd have to have been living in a cave for the past few decades not to have at least heard of her), and she and her staggeringly impressive tennis career are clearly one of the inspirations for this book, and its protagonist. 

To be honest, the first part of the book, where we are given an overview of Carrie's early life and her single-minded determination to become the greatest tennis player in the world, was less interesting to me than the second part, where we follow her after she decides to make her unlikely comeback. Carrie is called "the battle axe" by a lot of people for a lot of her career. Once she decides to make her comeback, a lot of commentators nickname her the b-word, because obviously, misogyny is alive and well in the world, and women can never be allowed to be as successful (or better than) men, without being called any number of unflattering things, and being seen as arrogant, unattractive and unwomanly.

I don't agree that these are appropriate things to call any woman, but because of her extreme single-mindedness and refusal to let anything but her ruthless ambition become part of her life for so long, Carrie's not exactly a very likeable person, and I thought she was mean and unreasonable to her dad, who devotes his life to training her and helping her become the best, even as he worries that she has nothing else in her life to live for. She doesn't always make good choices, and she's so arrogant that it's hard to really sympathise with her for a lot of the book. In the second half, when she is older and has suffered injuries and disappointments in her career, as well as in her personal life, she actually has some genuine character development and begins to reevaluate her life choices and her dreams for the future. It was only then that I actually felt interested in whether or not she would succeed. 

I don't want to spoil the ending, but my ideal version of this would have been less focused on her early life and achievements, and instead continuing the book for a few years after the end of this one, to see where Carrie eventually ended up, both professionally and personally. I really liked her developing friendship with younger rival Nicki Chan, and was sad to not get more time to see where that friendship took both of them.

I think that by now, I'm just going to accept that I prefer Taylor Jenkins Reid books in audio, and continue to consume them that way.

Judging a book by its cover: As is often the case, this book comes with a lot of different covers, but this one, which also accompanies my audio version, is my favourite. The golden background and the cover model portraying Carrie raising her head in triumph (or exhaustion) really works for me, and embodies the vibe of the book really well. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 64: "The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman

Page count: 382 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: White (a book with a white cover)

In a charming retirement village somewhere in the south of England, four elderly individuals solve cold cases for fun. Retired nurse, Joyce, is the last to be inducted into "The Thursday Murder Club", as they are in need of some of her medical expertise in trying to solve their most recent case. Led by the formidable Elizabeth, who used to be a spy, aided and abetted by Ibrahim, a retired psychologist and Ron, a former trade union leader, the club used to have a fourth member, who co-founded the group with Elizabeth. Penny, a former Detective Inspector, is now in a coma, but is watched over daily by her husband and visited frequently by Elizabeth with updates about all their investigations. Joyce, who wasn't really sure she was going to settle in at Coopers Chase, happily shares her medical knowledge, and while she is clearly a very different woman from Penny, her cheerful demeanour, her excellent baking skills, and her wits make her a valuable new member of the group. 

Investigating cold cases takes a back seat to investigating an actual murder when Tony Curran, one of the developers who built Coopers Chase, is found bludgeoned to death in his home, with a photograph of some pretty shady characters left next to him. Now that he's dead, the other developer, Ian Ventham, has no one to oppose his plans to sell the retirement village and turn everything into luxury flats. He also wants to dig up the local graveyard and move all the bodies, to the horror of many of the long-time residents, whose family and friends are buried there. 

Having previously befriended Police Constable Donna de Freitas, recently transferred from London and is clearly rather bored with the routine tasks she's being given in the quiet country town. Thanks to some trickery from Elizabeth and Joyce, Donna is invited to join the murder investigation, shadowing the head investigator, DCI Chris Hudson. 

As the case progresses, it turns out that there is more than one individual with a motive to kill Tony Curran, and as often happens in these sorts of stories, his is not the only murder in need of solving by the end. 

By now, The Thursday Murder Club, published in 2020, has become a series of five novels and was recently turned into a Netflix movie with a very stacked cast. Because I didn't start reading the book until after the movie was announced, and I'd seen several trailers, my mental images of a lot of the characters matched up with their movie counterparts. For the most part, I think they cast the characters really well, with the notable exception of Pierce Brosnan, who is a very handsome man, but not even a little bit convincing as a former working-class labour rights champion. As my BFF Lydia says, Sean Bean was right there! 

Having now seen the film, I would strongly advise anyone who has read and likes (or loves) the book to skip it, because they had to cut so many corners, including several engaging subplots and change a bunch of stuff to cram it into a family-friendly Netflix film, and while it was well-acted, I was disappointed at the choices the filmmakers made. However, I suspect it's going to result in even bigger sales for Richard Osman, something I can't be disappointed about; he seems like a very clever and delightful man. 

I don't know exactly why it took me so long to read this, but I guess I should be grateful for the adaptation to finally make me pick the book up. I was pretty sure I was going to like it once I got around to it. I even gifted this and several of the sequels to my Dad some Christmases ago, based on other people's reviews, because he likes a good mystery novel. For the record, he was also disappointed by the second half of the movie. 

Despite featuring several rather grisly murders and a bunch of interconnecting mysteries, some of which go decades back, it's a very funny book, and I absolutely adore the characters. Not just our central four protagonists, either; there are so many minor supporting characters who give the story life and make it so very entertaining to read. Once I started reading, I could barely put the book down, and I also proceeded to read all the sequels over the course of a week in late August. I can't remember the last time I binge-read four books that fast. I just love hanging out with the characters and got genuinely emotional several times while reading the books. I'm very happy Osman has said he has many more adventures in store for Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron (not to forget Donna, Chris, Bogdan and importing supporting players). 

Judging a book by its cover: By now, it feels like every third mystery novel you see looks like this book, but this was the book that started the trend. So many other books with simple covers and similar fonts, just because Osman's book is so awesome. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 63: "Magically Generated" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 85 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Arts (Everett makes detailed sketches before making his amazing snow sculptures)

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

Nora Blackburn no longer believes in love and is super wary of anything that might be a fraud or scam. Her previous relationship was with a man who scammed her out of thousands of dollars, and she's determined not to be fooled again. Her state of constant hyperawareness and scepticism of everyone and everything also means she isolates herself, and she certainly doesn't want to go out to experience new things. Now it's coming up towards Christmas, which was never her favourite time of year, but which is extra hard after her mother passed away during the holidays last year. 

When pictures of a large, elaborate snow sculpture that has appeared in a Toronto park start circulating, Nora is convinced it's all just AI fakery. But then, more pictures from various angles, and even videos of people with the snow sculpture are shared, and her curiosity is piqued. When she visits the first one, to see it for herself, she runs into her neighbour across the hall, Everett Sun, a man so positive and full of Christmas spirit that she's been avoiding him in self-defence. As always, Nora is deeply wary of him at first, in case he is another scammer, but he seems so gentle and genuine that she is drawn to him. As more snow sculptures appear, they go to visit them together, and the park visits develop into more elaborate dates. 

What Nora doesn't know is that it's not some mysterious team of performance artists making all the sculptures; it's all Everett. He discovered his strange, magical ability to manipulate snow when he was younger, and has been going out to make the sculptures partly as a way of spreading holiday cheer, but mostly to actually impress and entertain Nora. She's been hurt before by dishonesty. What is going to happen if she discovers that Everett has been withholding the truth about the sculptures?

This holiday novella is a quick read of fewer than a hundred pages. Nora is the grumpy one, not quite having sunk into Grinch territory with her pessimism and impatience about Christmas, while Everett is the cheerful, sunny one, who's always smiling, positive, friendly and welcoming. He doesn't like having to keep the secret of his ability to create the sculptures from Nora, but since no one appears to be able to see him actually "do" the magic, just the results of it, it's not like it's an easy thing to demonstrate to her. Making the sculptures requires a lot of advance planning, and he expends tremendous amounts of energy while doing it. One night, Nora finds him collapsed in the hallway outside their apartments, and starts to worry that he has a health condition. Having to deceive her makes him uncomfortable, but he's also worried she'll think he's crazy if he confesses the truth to her. 

This might be the first Jackie Lau romance in a while, where food doesn't seem to focus heavily in the story, even though Everett has to eat a lot to keep his energy when creating snow art. It's also a very quick read, and as is often the case in novellas, the characters don't have as much space to develop. If it hadn't been an ARC, I think I would have saved this to read closer to Christmas. It felt a bit weird to read Christmas stories in mid-October, but it's very sweet and well worth picking up if you want a little touch of magical realism as the days get darker (both literally and figuratively).

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 62: "The Inheritance" by Ilona Andrews

Page count: 280 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Free (swapping out Migrant)

In a world pretty much like our own, people were just going about their ordinary lives when suddenly, everything changed. Gigantic portals to some other mystical dimension began opening all over the world. It soon became clear that if the portals were left unattended for a while, hordes of horrific monsters emerged and proceeded to wreak havoc. Once specialised teams started breaching the gates, they discovered each portal contained a lot of rare and valuable minerals and resources, as well as the scary monsters, and each gate had an anchor, which, when destroyed, would collapse the gates. Humans started developing specialised talents that allowed them to help explore the gates and fight the emerging threats.

One of the people whose world changed irrevocably with the appearance of the first gates was Adaline "Ada" Moore. She had a supportive husband and two kids, but after the chaos and terror of the first invasion of monsters, her husband decided he had other places to be, and abandoned her and her children entirely. Ada is now employed by the government, and her Talent allows her to survey the various breaches for whatever resources are there, to ascertain what needs to be extracted before the gate collapses. Her talent is rare and sought-after, so she has been in hundreds of breaches over the past decade, always carefully guarded and one of the first people to be evacuated if something goes wrong.

But not this time. Going into a breach, there is an unexpected attack of monsters that the advance team didn't find and neutralise, and the man who is supposed to guard Ada panics, lets off an explosion to hide his tracks and runs away, trapping Ada, the only human survivor, in a labyrinthine cave system with no obvious exit. Her only companion is a scared tracker dog, a German Shepherd named Bear. She is granted an unexpected gift by a dying alien warrior woman, who was fighting the ruthless monsters that attacked the team. The woman basically dies in Ada's arms, but gifts Ada a mystical gemstone which sinks into Ada's forehead before the woman dies. She is told this is her "inheritance", and as she is forced to traverse the creepy and dangerous passages in the dark, Ada discovers that the gemstone has given her increased endurance, the ability to see in the near dark, as well as a wealth of knowledge about alien worlds and civilisations Ada never dreamed existed.

Ada believes herself to be abandoned, assuming everyone outside believes she died in the attack. However, she promised her children she would be home, and refuses to leave them orphaned if she has anything to say about it. Ada has no previous experience with fighting and self-defence, and Bear is only barely an adult dog. Nevertheless, they are forced to fight for their lives and level up quickly to survive. As an unexpected side effect, it turns out that eating alien monster mystery meat as your only source of protein comes with a number of new and exciting mutations that enhance Ada and her trusty dog considerably.

Of writers still alive today, Ilona Andrews are among my absolute favourites. The husband and wife writing team have written some of my favourite paranormal fantasies over the past decade and a half, and I love that some of their most creative works have begun as free episodic fiction on their website, to give their fans something diverting to read when times get tough. The Inheritance, now part one of The Breach Wars was supposed to be a novella length story, published in installments about once a week, but as is so often the case, the authors discover that they need to write more and longer to make the story complete, and we lucky readers therefore ended up with a short novel instead, and the promise of more excitement to come.

One of their strengths when writing is the characterisation, not only of their protagonists (in this case, Ada Moore, forty-something mother-of-two, and developing badass), but also the supporting cast. When people began developing Talents, some got enhanced speed, endurance and fighting abilities and are counted as combat classes. Ada's talent is that of Assessor, very much a non-combat class, but since she is one of the people who help determine what all the various goodies can be found inside the gates, she makes the companies that she is hired out to, and the government she works for, huge amounts of money, and is therefore treasured and protected. She knows the work is dangerous, but it pays extremely well, and the benefits allow her to feed and house her kids well, send them to the best schools (and the death benefits are enough to support them until adulthood, should the worst happen). While she's seen some scary things in the past, she's never been in a situation as bad as the one she finds herself in here, abandoned by people who were supposed to protect her and left for dead.

If she were alone in the world, Ada might have given up and let herself die in the breach, but she knows that her deadbeat husband won't be there for the kids, and she can't stand the thought of them being left orphaned and scared. So she ovaries up and determines to find an alternate way out of the gate, nearly dying more than once, but emerging stronger and fiercer with each near-death experience.

In the decade since the Gates started appearing and threatening the world, large organisations or guilds have been formed with both combat and non-combat Talents, specialising in killing any hostile threats inside, extracting valuable resources and collapsing anchors to neutralise the gates. Elias McFeron works for the guild that employed the team supposed to protect Ada. He's not exactly happy when he discovers the cluster f**k of incompetence that led to most of a team being left for dead inside a Gate they were responsible for, including a very experienced Assessor. The stories of the few survivors who made it out, including the guy who was supposed to sacrifice himself to protect Ada, if it came to that, are a little bit too similar and rehearsed to be believable, and they know something untoward went down. Elias and his team are so far secondary characters, and this part of the story is more of a minor subplot (somewhat fleshed out in the extended scenes added once the book was made ready for publication), but for the reader, it's nice to know that someone trustworthy and honourable out there is working to get Ada out, even if she doesn't know it herself.

I know that the audio version of this hasn't been finalised yet and will hopefully become available at some point in November. This is primarily a digital release, but print-on-demand copies can be purchased as well. While the story was being serialised on their website, the authors commissioned accompanying art, which is all included in the e-book (in colour if you have a colour screen), as well as additional art released only in the full version. So you get some really gorgeous illustrations accompanying the story. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover art and internal illustrations in The Inheritance are all done by Candice Slater, and once again, prove that Ilona Andrews can have decent covers, as long as they are the ones commissioning it. What I especially like about this cover is that it seems to reveal new details every time I look at it. There are so many tiny details. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 61: "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo 25: A Bookish Memoir/biography

CBR17 Pie Chart: Education

CBR17 Bingo: Citizen (Nafisi lived and taught in Iran during increasingly more dictatorial strictures against its citizens)

Official summary:

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

I got this in an e-book sale during the summer of 2018, because it sounded interesting and like something I should own. It fit in a number of my reading challenges this year, so I decided to read it this summer. Unfortunately, while some of the stories Nafisi told about the increasing totalitarianism that was introduced in her country were really interesting, the actual literary analysis was rather boring, and even the historical events got a bit dry after a while.

This book is a mix between a biography, writing about Nafisi’s life in Iran as it became subject to an increasingly more authoritarian government. One of the reasons I had trouble sticking with it was that, sadly, the news cycle was so depressing and so much in the real world America was mirroring things I was reading about that it was distressing to read. With the world being the way it is at the moment, escapist reading is becoming more and more essential for my mental health. 

So I have to confess that while I didn't DNF this book, I also didn't manage to read all of it. I ended up skipping probably about half, reading the first few sections, then skipping to the last one, to see how everything ended. I also think it’s important to mention that while this book wasn’t really for me, it may be a better fit for someone else. It does feature a lot of literary analysis, though, mostly of books I have neither read nor have any interest in ever reading, so I should possibly have researched it more closely before I started it. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 60: "Can't Escape Love" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 192 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR17 Pie Challenge: Inclusion

CBR17 Bingo: Borrow (read through Libby, since I don't actually own the book)

Regina "Reggie" Hobbs is working hard to make her nerdy website, Girls with Glasses, a success, and prove to her over-protective parents that she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself, even if she's in a wheelchair. She loves the work, she loves her very capable team, but lately, she's been struggling with insomnia, and the only thing that seems to soothe her to sleep is the voice of a puzzle podcaster, Gustave Nguyen, she used to follow, but he no longer podcasts, and the archive of his episodes has been deleted. So Reggie goes to the unusual step of contacting him, asking if he could make some recordings for her, to help her sleep.

Gustave "Gus" Nguyen is autistic and often has trouble with social interactions, especially with women. He remembers Reggie from chats they used to have on his live streams, but doesn't want to give a virtual stranger voice recordings that he would no longer have any control over. He sympathises with her plight, however, and offers to call her if she has trouble sleeping, to talk to her until she falls asleep. Thus begins their friendship, and soon it becomes clear that while Gus can help Reggie with her insomnia, Reggie can help Gus succeed in completing an escape room he's working on. He's been contracted to design an escape room based on a very popular romance anime for Anime Con, and he knows absolutely nothing about the anime, nor does he see what is so fascinating to others about it. 

Reggie, on the other hand, is a superfan and offers to help him understand the show and the characters in return for his nighttime phone calls. Once they discover that they both live fairly close to each other in Queens, they can meet up in person, and it doesn't take long for their friendship to develop into something more. 

Both Reggie and Gus have some personal issues to resolve before they can fully commit to a relationship, but since both feel more comfortable with each other than apart, and help complement each other's skills beautifully, there is never any doubt that they will find a HEA, without too much conflict.

While I've read all the full novels in the Reluctant Royals series, I have yet to complete all the novellas, and with this fitting into a number of my reading challenges this summer, it felt like a good quick read to choose. There are several mentions of Reggie's twin sister Portia in this, the heroine of A Duke by Default, a book that still makes me annoyed every time I think of it. Naledi, the heroine of A Princess in Theory also has a cameo. Even though it's part of an ongoing series, this novella would mostly work fine on its own. There are some issues with Reggie's parents and her sister that are not entirely resolved (that happens in Portia's book). But it's not anything that would ruin anyone's reading experience if this was the first book of Cole's they picked up.

The inclusion of neurodiverse characters has become quite common in romance now, but back in 2019, when this book came out, I think it was more unusual. Considering this also has a heroine who is mostly wheelchair-bound (she can stand for short periods of time, but lost the use of her legs after viral meningitis when she was younger), this book crosses off a lot of squares on a diversity bingo board. It therefore felt like a good choice for the "Inclusion" pie slice of the CBR Pie Challenge. It also works as "borrowed" as I got it through my library app Libby, and don't actually own the book. 

Judging a book by its cover: Cole usually has really good covers for her books, with cover models that actually look close to how they're described in the story. It's not often you see people in wheelchairs on romance covers. 

Crossposted by Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 59: "Oona Out of Order" by Margarita Montimore

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Alliteration

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Eyes

CBR17 Bingo: O (A book title that starts with O)

Official plot summary (because I read this back in July):

Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight, she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year, she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order…

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever-changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveller? Wife to a man she’s never met?

Oona Out of Order is a remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of sequence. 

This is one of those books I bought in an e-book sale many years ago and then pretty much forgot about, until it fit into a bunch of my reading challenges this year. Based on the blurb, I wasn't entirely sure if this was going to work for me, but I was pleasantly surprised, and the author was able to sustain the high concept throughout the book.

So mentally and emotionally, Oona ages chronologically, but because of a strange wish she makes on New Year's Eve in 1982, she keeps being sent backwards and forwards in her own life time, and never knows if she's going to be younger or older, which people from her life will be around, how her relationships are going to play out and so on. Oona from the year before tends to write letters to give present day Oona advice on how to navigate her confusing existence from year to year. She has large ledgers locked up in a safe with stock market advice, to make sure that she always has enough money to live a carefree life. 

Some years, she doesn't get the letter, or note, or advice until it's too late, and she may already have committed mistakes past her warned her about. In some years, she recieves bad news about people she cared about, and she quickly learns to avoid "spoilers", to keep her peace of mind. It can be a confusing, and occasionally depressing, way to go through her life, and some New Year's Eves, she is a lot more depressed than others. Other years, she can't wait to jump to a new experience.

This was only the second novel Ms. Montimore published, and based on this, I would absolutely consider reading more from her. She is a creative and entertaining writer.

Judging a book by its cover: The cut out segments of the woman's face would give me a headache if I looked at it too long. It's a striking cover, and the prominently staring eye is the reason I could use this for my Buzzword Cover Challenge. Looking at alternative covers on Goodreads, I also discovered that in the UK, this book has a different title, The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart. I wonder why they renamed it?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 58: "The Listeners" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Culture (A lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds, countries and cultures are forced together for a time during World War II)

Official plot summary:

January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile, FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats’ secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.

I've been a fan of Maggie Stiefvater's since 2010, when I read her debut novel, Lament. So I was obviously very excited when I heard this year's release was going to be for adults. That it was going to be a historical fiction novel with elements of magical realism just made me more eager to read it. So much so that I pre-ordered the UK edition in hardback (normally, I wait until the books are in paperback before I pick them up). As an exciting bonus, I realised my book was signed when I opened the book from Blackwell's. Did the book live up to my expectations? Very much so.

In Europe, unsurprisingly, we learn a lot about the Second World War in school (especially in Norway, where we were occupied by the Germans for nearly five years). I developed an interest in history from a fairly young age, and as such, I feel like I know quite a bit about the conflict from the European side of things. For other parts of the world, I am a lot more ignorant. This novel is in part based on true events, they did in fact house diplomats from the axis countries (Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) in luxury hotels in various places in the USA, to be able to use these esteemed guests (read: hostages) to negotiate the safe return of diplomats and American citizens of their own from the opposing countries. And the owners of said hotels had very little say in whether or not they wanted the guests there in the first place. 

One of Stiefvater's strengths as a writer, in my opinion, is her way of crafting interesting stories in worlds similar to, but not quite like, our own. In this book, the paranormal aspects (such as characters being able to manifest stuff from out of their dreams) are toned down, but there is a touch of magical realism in the strange, seemingly sentient sweetwater at the Avallon spa. Water that has an affinity for certain individuals, the Avallon manager, June, being one of them. This clearly has both its benefits and disadvantages for her. 

One might think that a woman being the general manager of a large luxury resort in the 1940s is one of the more fantastical elements of this story, but June Porter Hudson is based on real women in history who held the same position as her. A lot of people assume that because of her title and responsibilities, June is related to the Gilfoyles, who own the hotel. They are wrong, although June has been close, in different ways, to many of the family members. 

As well as June, the readers follow (among others) the secretive FBI Agent Tucker Minick, who knows that this posting may be his last, yet still struggles to toe the line of the bureau. While he refuses to talk about it, he has more knowledge of the secrets of the West Virginian sweetwater than he lets on, and his experiences are clearly not of the positive kind. 

We also meet the curious Hannelore, daughter of German diplomats, who appears to be mute, but astutely observes everything around her, with near-perfect recall. While children in novels can often end up feeling like nothing more than plot moppets, that is not the case with Hannelore, who is clearly neurodivergent (which makes it a rather risky proposition for her parents to take her with them to Nazi Germany, where diversity of any kind wasn't exactly encouraged or rewarded). 

I'm once again reviewing books I read months ago (thanks to my inability to keep up with any other reviews than for my ARCs, and only barely those), so I don't remember all the details as much as I'd like. Suffice it to say, this was a really good book, with an interesting story, engaging characters, some tricksy mysteries and, as the story progresses, a hint of romance. 

Judging a book by its cover: I much prefer the UK cover to the American one (a black and white photo looking down a long, winding staircase). In this, the reader gets a lot more elements from the story: the imposing Appalachian mountains in the background, the majestic hotel, the local apples, obviously the water, and if you look very closely at the entrance to the hotel, June's three loyal dachshunds. 

Crossposted by Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 57: "Ladies in Hating" by Alexandra Vasti

Page count: 345 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. 

Lady Georgiana Cleeve was disowned by her father when she announced that she was the author of several popular novels, and has lived alone with her mother ever since, cut off from all contact with her brothers, convinced that the scandal she brought on herself and her family would irrevocably tarnish the reputations of anyone connected to her. She is selling well and her books are popular, but for the last few years, she has noticed a number of worrying similarities between her own books and those of another lady novelist, who also writes Gothic romances. Could the preposterously named Lady Darling be plagiarising Georgina? And if so, how is she getting her information?

Georgina becomes obsessed with unmasking this mysterious rival, and eventually resorts to hiding in the bushes outside Belvoir Library, which distributes for both of them. She is shocked to discover that not only is Lady Darling someone she recognises, but someone she shares a past with. Catriona Rose Lacey is the daughter of a butler who worked for Georgina's family, but was suddenly fired and banished from the estate by Georgina's imperious father. She hasn't seen Catriona for over a decade, but seeing her again reawakens feelings that Georgina had almost forgotten existed. 

When confronted by the furious Georgina, Catriona fervently denies all her claims of plagiarism. While she read some of Georgina's early novels, she's been so busy writing and building her own career for the past few years that she's not had time to read anything at all. Cat writes to support herself, her cousin and her teenage brother, who now has a position as a clerk. For many years, after her father died, it was only the money Cat could bring in, from her writing and working in a pie shop, that kept the family from starving. Unlike what Georgina fears, Cat doesn't really hold a grudge against Georgina's father for firing her father and sending them packing, but that obviously takes some time to be revealed.

Since this is a romance, obviously, the two women can't stop thinking of each other, even when they are annoyed and consider the other a rival. Despite their attempts to avoid each other, they keep being thrown together, and once they end up literally trapped together in a crumbling Gothic mansion, which may or may not be actually haunted, their forced proximity leads to them eventually going from mutual pining to actually snogging (and eventually more). 

Cat and her family are worried that she's going to get her heart broken, mostly because of the big class difference between the two women. They aren't aware that Lady Georgina was cut off entirely by her father, and even after his death, has refused to contact her brothers for fear that they will reject her. Because of her father's treatment of her, she's convinced that she will lead anyone close to her to be tarnished by her scandal and ostracised by society, so she keeps herself entirely isolated, which, of course, is very destructive in the long run. 

This is a fairly slow-burn romance, and there is a fair amount of angst from Georgina, which keeps her from being able to fully open up to Cat or accept affection from anyone. There's a lot of fun shenanigans in the dilapidated mansion they spend a bunch of time in, and it's never entirely clear whether the place is actually haunted, or whether this is more the vivid imagination of the two women. 

This is the third and final novel in the Belvoir's Library series, but it works fine as a stand-alone novel. You don't need to have read any of the previous two, but for the curious, it's fun to see Lady Georgina as a supporting character in Ne'er Duke Well (where she avoids marriage proposals by pretending to be the most vacuous of airheads) and in Earl Crush, where she is a very supportive and entertaining friend to the heroine. She was a great supporting character in both of these previous novels, which is why I'm glad she got a romance of her own. It seems that Iris, another supporting character in these novels, is going to be denied her happy ending, since Ms. Vasti didn't get to continue the series to a fourth book. I am nevertheless very excited to see what she writes next. 

Judging a book by its cover: While I'm not exactly super fond of the various shades of pink of the cover, the cover image shows a fun and rather dramatic scene in the novel (where our two heroines are trying to escape the Gothic ruins they find themselves trapped in). I especially like the inclusion of Georgina's fluffy dog, (Francis) Bacon, in all his derpy glory.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 56: " Monstrous Regiment" by Terry Pratchett

Page count: 496 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo 2025: A book with LGBTQIA-rep

CBR17 Bingo: Border (this book is all about a very drawn-out war with borders between the opposing countries constantly changing, depending on who's currently winning)

Spoiler warnings for a 22 year old book. I don't think I can review it well without revealing some of the more essential plot points. 

Official plot summary:

It began as a sudden strange fancy...

Polly Perks had to become a boy in a hurry. Cutting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time...

And now she's enlisted in the army, and searching for her lost brother.

But there's a war on. There's always a war on. And Polly and her fellow recruits are suddenly in the thick of it, without any training, and the enemy is hunting them.

All they have on their side is the most artful sergeant in the army and a vampire with a lust for coffee. Well... They have the Secret. And as they take the war to the heart of the enemy, they have to use all the resources of... the Monstrous Regiment.

Polly is a barmaid who pretends to be a boy to join the army. Not that the army has that many people fighting to join up anymore, since the war has been going on for as long as most people can remember. She discovers that you can go a long way with a pair of rolled-up socks down your trousers, spitting, and pretending to shave a lot. As she comes to discover, she is by no means the only woman who has pretended to be male to join up; in fact, as the book progresses, it turns out it may be harder to find actual men left in the armed forces.

My RL book club, the Dark Corner, picked this as our June book, vaguely recalling that it's got at least some queer themes, and would therefore be suitable reading material for Pride month. It's one of the Pratchett Discworld books that I had only read once, because I remember being a bit underwhelmed by it the first time around. Upon rereading it, it is a lot more queer than I previously remembered. We have lesbians (with a deeply tragic backstory) and there's Sergeant Jackrum, who is clearly a trans man (also obviously not the only one we encounter in the story). There is also a lot of exploration of gender in general and identity in particular throughout the book, as well as a very nuanced exploration of the futility of war and the rather surprising way in which people might find themselves lauded as war heroes.

The incomparable Sam Vimes (by now very unwillingly the Duke of Ankh) makes a brief appearance along with some familiar faces from the City Watch novels. He has been tasked with trying to negotiate a peace treaty between these two nations, who have warred over who knows what for far too long. He doesn't want to spend a minute longer being a diplomat than he absolutely has to, but it is amusing to see what his reputation is, based on rumours and hearsay. 

It was also an interesting part of our discussion to hear Trine, the woman who founded our book club, share just how much she, as a former female soldier, recognised herself in the story and how many of the storylines and characters felt extremely true to army life. As she said, Pratchett knew his stuff, and a lot of the things that might appear seemingly made up for comic effect are in fact very real, if rather ridiculous. 

I'm really glad to have been given an excuse to revisit this book, and was able to give it a higher rating than before, because while I pretty much remembered it as more or less a one-note book (see, the joke is that they are ALL women!), it turns out that I was clearly just in a bad mood when first reading it, so I didn't take the time to appreciate all the other clever stuff Pratchett explores. Being two decades older probably doesn't hurt either.

Judging a book by its cover: The colourful cover shows the positively rotund Sgt. Jackrum and a selection of "his little lads", including the troll and the vampire recruits. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 55: "Paladin's Grace" by T. Kingfisher

Page count: 360 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Purple (most of the cover, barring the cover image, is a lovely lavender purple)

Stephen is one of the paladins of the Saint of Steel (who was a god, despite the name), who died very suddenly and unexpectedly a few years back. No one thought gods could die, and a lot of his paladins killed themselves and caused massive amounts of damage when it happened. Now, Stephen and the six other paladins who remain are housed at the Temple of the White Rat and volunteer as bodyguards whenever that's required. Stephen and the other paladins are berserkers; they used to descend into battle madness when fighting for their god. Without their god to call them back, the paladins worry about new berserker rages, as they may not be able to stop without any force to call them back. So Stephen knits socks and does his best to see to the well-being of his brother and sister paladins.

 One day, when patrolling the city, he runs into a woman being harassed, and to foil her attackers, they pretend to have a steamy tryst in an alleyway. Grace is a skilled perfumer, with nothing but negative baggage in the romantic department. She shares her lodgings with a charming spy, who acts as her agent and tries to make sure Grace makes the sort of money she deserves. Grace wasn't really expecting to ever see her rescuer again, but they meet at a court function, and are soon witnesses to an assassination attempt. Soon, both Grace and Stephen are involved in a complicated power struggle, and to make matters worse, there's a mysterious killer out there on the streets who chops the heads off its victims. 

I've liked all of the Kingfisher books I have read, especially her fairy tale retellings. I even mostly liked What Moves the Dead, despite being very creeped out by it throughout. I've owned many of her Saint of Steel books as e-books for a while, but when it was announced that T. Kingfisher (or Ursula Vernon, as she is really called) would be one of the guests of honour at Norcon (a very small and intimate fantasy/sci-fi convention at the University of Oslo) this year, it seemed like the perfect time to acquire the books in paperback, so I could get them signed. I also had grand plans to read all four stories before the festival started, but since this happened just before the end of term, I was pretty exhausted from work, and had only read a book and a half of the series.

Meeting authors is always such a strange and wonderful experience to me, but T. Kingfisher was funny, gracious and very interested in chatting with her fans in between the panels she took part in. There were also several opportunities during the two days to get books signed. She also had a big signing in the fantasy/sci-fi/all things nerd shop in the centre of town, where I saw a picture of the queue. It went for more than a block and a half. At the actual festival, I don't think there were ever more than six people having to wait in line - it was great.

It's not that I've gone completely off YA as I get older, but romantic fantasy with YA characters is getting less appealing to me. A romance with slightly more mature characters is therefore feels so much more satisfying. None of the protagonists in any of the Saint of Steel books are teenagers (or the age where they could play teenagers on TV). They have lived eventful lives, with all the advantages and disadvantages this involves, and they have to negotiate their awakening romantic feelings while considering the position they're in and the people they feel beholden to. 

Grace used to be married, and her ex is clearly a real piece of work. Stephen struggles to find a place where he truly belongs, and is a protector through and through. He wants to protect and be with Grace, but the thought of abandoning his fellow paladins at the Temple of the White Rat, the only family he now has, may be impossible for him. Trying to sort out the political machinations and trying to find a creepy decapitating killer are challenges enough, but Grace and Stephen also need to figure out how to hopefully manage a happy ending together. 

As well as the romantic relationship, which develops gradually between Grace and Stephen, Kingfisher also includes other important people in her protagonsist's lives. Having lost pretty much everything, even his sense of identity, when his god/Saint died, the remaining surviving paladins are all Stephen have left, and they are all as family. The bishop in the Temple of the White Rat may be his benefactress and de facto employer, but she clearly cares a lot for the broken knights. Grace may have had a troubled past, but she's found herself with a formidable best friend. Because of her husband, Grace doesn't really have any way to prove her previous accomplishments, which might have made it difficult for her to support herself, but thanks to her friend and landlady Marguerite, her perfumes are sought after and exclusive. In fantasy, the heroines are often independent and move about in male dominated societies, not all of them have any female friends. Women supporting other women is one of my favourite things, so I'm glad Kingfisher showed how loyal the women are towards one another. 

Of the four books in this series, I think the third, Paladin's Hope, is my favourite. I really enjoyed all of them, though, and hope that Kingfisher will write books about the remaining paladins who haven't found their happy endings yet, as well. 

Judging a book by its cover: When I first got the new paperback editions of the Saint of Steel series, I was a bit taken aback by how very pastel they all were (this one is lavender, the second is a delicate pale green, the third is baby blue and the fourth book is very pink). The cover illustrations are really nice, though, and really give a good impression of how the characters are described in the story (sadly, not always the case). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 54: "The Wedding Con" by Janine Amesta

Page count: 251 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to Janine Amesta and Tule Publishing for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

This is the second book in the Love is in the Air series, but this book can be read as a standalone as well. If you prefer to start at the beginning, the first one is Love at First Flight (which I literally, just NOW, as I was writing this, realised is a pun on "love at first sight". Now I feel stupid.)

Naomi Moreno wants to help her stubborn and independent older sister contribute to the family business, High Desert Tours, but struggles to get her sister to listen and take her seriously. She feels guilty for the tight financial situation the family is in, since she saw her father get persuaded to poor decisions and investments via YouTube influencers, ending with the business deeply in debt when he suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. She's sure that their hot air balloon company could be the perfect fit for certain couples looking for an unusual wedding venue, and her sister Selah reluctantly agrees to give her a chance, if she can work out a pricing proposal and find some interested customers. 

Boone Reyes has lived an itinerant life and had to do some shady things in the past to stay alive, thanks to his unscrupulous con man father. He's rarely stayed in one place for very long. The last few years, working for the Moreno family, is the exception, and he's hoping he might be able to find additional work as a rock climbing instructor. He spends his days trying to charm and impress Naomi, the only woman in the Moreno family who refuses to warm up to him.

To have a chance to land a job as a rock climbing instructor, Boone needs to prove that he can actually properly instruct someone, not just solo climb. He makes a deal with Naomi that if she will let him teach her rock climbing, he'll help her find clients who want to get married in a hot air balloon. With a con artist father, Boone knows when to turn on the charm and be persuasive (one of the reasons Naomi distrusts him and thinks he has a hidden agenda) and he would much rather use his powers of persuasion for good, than for tricking people.

It turns out that the way to Naomi's heart is honesty and vulnerability. By sharing information about himself and his life, even when some of the details are less than rosy, Boone gradually wins Naomi's trust. There's been an attraction between them pretty much since Boone was hired, but Naomi has refused to acknowledge how much she likes him, because she's worried about falling into the same traps that her father did. When she discovers that Boone can be truthful, even when the stories he tells are sometimes rather embarrassing, she quickly warms up to him.

Complicating matters massively for our hero, Boone's father is recently out of jail, and insists on coming to crash with his son. Despite his years in prison, Boone's dad is showing absolutely no signs of wanting to become a better person and turn over a new leaf, no, he's already looking for his next score, and the Moreno women look like the perfect marks in his next scheme. Thankfully, while Naomi's mother may be too friendly and trusting, especially to anyone related to Boone, she and her sisters have learned the hard way that they need to be vigilant and do their best to drive him off. Unfortunately, for a while at least, Boone's father manages to persuade Naomi that his son has been working a long con on them, and tries to sabotage everything Boone has managed to build with Naomi and the other Morenos. Can Boone convince the prickly Naomi that he's not a fraud and a scammer, like his deadbeat dad, or will their romance die before it's even had a chance to properly begin?

15th of September to 15th of October is Hispanic Heritage month in the USA, and reading and promoting a book by a Latina author seems like a good way to start this month. I hadn't really heard of Janine Amesta before I was lucky enough to get an ARC for her previous book, but now that I have, I was actively on the look-out for a chance to read this book before it was officially released, and I am so happy I was granted another ARC. While this book works fine as a standalone, some of the underlying tensions and issues were established in the first book, and the family dynamics of the Moreno women, who are all processing their grief in different ways feel richer and more established if you've read eldest sister Selah's book first. 

A lot of romance heroes nowadays are likened to golden retrievers, but as my friend Rochelle pointed out in her review, Boone is clearly a stray cat who shows up on your doorstep, begging for some food and affection, and then just refuses to leave again, once he's been fed that first time. Naomi's reasons for distrusting and being sceptical of Boone and his motives are well established and perfectly understandable. She reads a lot of romance, and is worried that Boone is a George Wickham, all handsomeness, charm and glib words on the surface hiding a scheming, self-serving and unscrupulous personality. As the reader discovers, had Boone fallen in with his father's plans and become as big a con artist as him, Naomi would be absolutely right about him. But Boone doesn't want to decieve and trick people, he wants to be a good person with a place to belong, even though he doesn't really believe he's deserving of anything positive because of his past misdeeds, helping his father (the only stable adult in his life).

Boone works hard for the Morenos, lives in a trailer and tries to get extra work as a rock climbing instructor. He's been pining for Naomi for years, and while it takes him a while to realise just how irredeemable his father actually is, and unfortunately for Boone, he doesn't really care about anything but himself, it takes him quite a while to get over his father's gaslighting and have a proper confrontation with him. He believes himself to be unworthy of the love of Naomi, her mother and sisters, and doesn't realise that while Naomi is initially fooled by Boone's dad, because of her many insecurities, the rest of the Moreno family are firmly in his corner, and feel that his actions while working for them has proven that he's a good man. It takes Naomi a bit longer to accept the truth, but once she does, and realises she's been unfairly judging him and hurt him in the process, she works her hardest to prove to him that he really does have a home with her.

Both of Amesta's books that I've read so far are about ordinary, hard-working people just wanting to make the best of their world. There are no movie stars, no celebrities, no billionaires here. They have everyday problems and everyday lives, and are just nice to spend time with on the page. I'm very much looking forward to reading about the youngest Moreno sister's romance in the third book of this trilogy.

Judging a book by its cover:

It's a very sweet cover and I like the wedding decorated hot air balloon in the background, but Naomi dyes her hair pink early on in this book, and is still described with pink hair when she actually gets married. So I would have been happier if she had pink hair in the cover image. It's a minor niggle, but I have it nevertheless.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 53: "The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold" by Ally Carter

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Thank you to Avon and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

Official plot summary: 

Ten years ago, they joined the CIA.

Six years ago, he left the game.

Five years ago, they fell in love.

One year ago, she ran out into the cold with absolutely no intention of ever coming back.

And two minutes ago, they woke up, bloody and bruised and handcuffed together in the dark.

They don’t know where they are. They don’t know how they got there. And they have absolutely no idea who is after them or what this nameless, faceless villain wants.

The only thing that’s clear is that, after ten years of covers and chemistry, secrets and lies, these two rival spies have been sucked into their greatest mission yet, and now they’re going to have to team up to stay alive. (If they don’t kill each other first.)

Ten years ago, Alex and King enroll in "spy school" together and become instant rivals. King is basically a legacy recruit, with his grandparents and father absolutely legendary in spy circles. Alex wants adventure and a challenge and getting away from her constant guilt of being the healthy twin, while her sister had multiple heart surgeries and ended up very frail because Alex took up too much space in the womb. She's got a lot ofissues, and she'd rather cut herself off from her entire family to live a life of constant subterfuge rather than properly deal with them.

While Alex and King are bitter rivals, they also clearly do excellent work together, with the result that they keep being paired up on missions, where both of them staunchy ignore their amazing chemistry and mutual attraction to continue their weird feud. As the summary reveals, they eventually admit their feelings for one another. However, after Alex' twin sister is kidnapped by sinister forces who believe her to be Alex (not knowing that Alex had an identical twin in the first place), she is prepared to drop everything to go rescue her twin. King, being the more cautious of the two wants her to take some time and make a plan, resulting in an argument where foolish things like "If you leave now, never come back" are uttered, and actually believed. 

So for a whole year, King has been desperately searching for Alex to apologise and win her back, while Alex has hidden herself away so well that no one knows where she's been. They wake up handcuffed together, with no memory of the previous 48 hours, and need to use all of their wits and skills to figure out why they've been tricked into a trap of some sort, who is behind it and how they are going to get the best of their mysterious enemies.

The story is told mostly in alternating chapters set in the present, where Alex and King are in a strange and very dangerous situation, and trying to figure out what the heck is going on, while also trying to process all their hurt feelings about the last time they saw each other, and the past, starting with the evening before Alex goes to "spy school" and first meets King, who tries to warn her off a career in espionage. As the book progresses, we skip between the present and get glimpses into the past ten years, in especially significant points of Alex and King's relationship, seeing their relationship develop slowly from rivals to reluctant allies to friends to lovers.

As someone who loves a good spy story (in book, TV or movie form), this book was exactly my wheelhouse. It's action packed and features all sorts of exciting spy scenarios, but if Alex and King weren't such engaging protagonists, I don't think it would have mattered what the plot turned out to be. By alternating between the present and the past, Ms. Carter keeps gradually showing the readers how the couple's relationship came to be, and why it was such a dramatic thing for Alex to cut off all contact with King for a whole year. The couple are clearly much better together than apart, but have both had complicated lives and steamer trunks full of emotional and psychological baggage that make it hard for them to actually believe anyone could love them or want a life with them.

This is the second book in the series, but works perfectly well as a standalone. In fact, I hadn't read the first one when I got this ARC, and rather went back and read the first book, The Blonde Identity, once I was done with this one. That book gives us the POV of Alex's twin sister who is on a breakneck adventure through Europe, while suffering memory loss, and the handsome spy who is trying to keep her from being captured by rival spy factions or killed. 

If you like action and suspense and prickly rivals becoming each other's perfect partners, this is a fast and entertaining read. I highly recommend it. 

Judging a book by its cover: I am frequently very critical of the cartoony covers, but there are exceptions to the rule, and this is one of them. This image is really nicely stylized and it would not be as charming or effective if there were real people on the cover. Then it would just look sort of naff. The colour choices, the cat's eye sunglasses, the reflection in the glasses, our heroine looking so very cool - it all works for me. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.