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.