Reading challenge wrapup 2013 - Bingo Card Reading Challenge

In the middle of May this year, I discovered the 2013 Book Bingo Challenge hosted by Anne and Kristilyn over on Reading in Winter.

As with many of the challenges I've taken part in this year, it was thanks to Jen K, who takes part in so many different challenges, I'm amazed she can keep track of them all.

The goals these ladies set for themselves are goals I set for myself as well (although I would never have done as much re-reading this year if it weren't for this challenge).

• Reading the books on my TBR pile
• Re-reading some books
• Reading some new books
• Reading the books that EVERYONE but I have read
• Reading books from series I have started but neglected

There was also a "free square" in the middle of the board, but the intention here was that you could only cross it off by reading a book or genre suggested by another participant of the challenge (hi Jen!)

I completed the challenge on the 29th of December. It was generally a lot of fun, even though it made me do a lot more re-reading than I was initially planning on. 

All these squares are legitimately crossed off:

Read one book from your TBR pile:
Anna Karenina
Read two books from your TBR pile:
Fly by Night
First Grave on the Right
Read three books from your TBR pile:
Farmer Boy
On the Banks of Plum Creek
By the Shores of Silver Lake
Read four books from your TBR pile:
Beauty and the Spy
Summer Knight
Breadcrumbs
The Broken Kingdoms
Read five books from your TBR pile:
Raw Blue
Scoundrel's Kiss
Anna and the French Kiss
Three Parts Dead
Blood Rites

Read one book that is part of a series:
Shadow's Claim
Read two books that are part of a series:
Second Grave on the Left
Third Grave Straight Ahead
Read three books that are part of a series:
Blade Song
Messy
Assassins in Love
Read four books that are part of a series:
Chimes at Midnight
Death Masks
If I Stay
Where She Went
Read five books that are part of a series:
Ultraviolet
Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet
Lick
Magic Rises
The Chocolate Touch

Read one book released in 2013:
Quicksilver
Read two books released in 2013:
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
It Happened One Midnight

Free Square (i.e. Jen K's challenge square):
The Sparrow

Read four books released in 2013:
Rose Under Fire
The Heiress Effect
The Chocolate Rose
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Read five books released in 2013:
Any Duchess Will Do
Once Upon a Tower
Dare You To
Gameboard of the Gods
True

Read one book everyone but you has read:
The Light Between Oceans
Read two books everyone but you has read:
About Last Night
Jellicoe Road
Read three books everyone but you has read:
Ella Enchanted
Flowers From the Storm
North and South
Read four books everyone but you has read:
Little House on the Prairie
The Long Winter
Little Town on the Prairie
These Happy Golden Years
Read five books everyone but you has read:
The First Four Years
Proven Guilty
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Me Before You

Re-read one book:
Mr. Impossible
Re-read two books:
Little House in the Big Woods
Rosemary and Rue
Re-read three books:
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses
Re-read four books:
Ashes of Honor
Attachments
Drums of Autumn
Private Arrangements
Re-read five books:
Not Quite a Husband
His at Night
The Lies of Locke Lamora
One Good Earl Deserves a Lover
The Duchess War

#CBR5 Book 155. "Me Before You" by Jojo Moyes

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Louise "Lou" Clark works in a cafe, and likes it, helping her parents out with whatever money she can. Her mother spends most of her days taking care of Lou's grandfather, who's recovering from a stroke, so can't work, and due to the recession, there's threats of downsizing at the factory where her father works. Her younger sister, the "smart one", had to drop out of university when she was accidentally knocked up, and now works as a florist, while her five-year-old is minded by her and Lou's mother after school. Lou has also dated the same man for the last seven years, and they have a comfortable sort of a relationship. But since Patrick got into his triathlons, he's more and more focused on exercise than anything else.

So when Lou is told by her boss that he's closing the cafe and moving back to Australia, leaving her with three months' pay and nothing to do, the entire family panics a bit. There's not a lot to do for a twenty-six-year-old with few qualifications, and after a few disastrous short term engagements at a chicken processing plant and in some fast food joint, the options open to Lou are pretty much pole dancer, adult phone line operator or care assistant. So when an high paying opening to be the care assistant for a young man, with assurances that Lou will not be expected to do anything involving personal hygiene or medical care, she doesn't really have a choice but to show up for an interview.

Despite not having any sort of formal qualifications suitable for the job, Mrs Traynor, the patient's mother agrees to give her a chance. It turns out that Lou will spend her days as a companion to Will Traynor, a thirty-year-old former businessman turned paraplegic after a random accident. Having been extremely physically active, travelling all over world before the accident, Will is deeply miserable in his new situation, and while Lou doesn't discover it right away, he's tried to kill himself once and has pressured his parents to agree to let him travel to Switzerland to be allowed assisted suicide. They're desperately hoping he will reconsider, and employing Lou, who despite her family troubles is cheerful, optimistic and very unorthodox, is one of the ways in which they're trying to improve is mood. Will, however, is surly and hostile for much of Lou's first months as his assistant, making her parents' financial worries and the limited six month contract the only reason she puts up with him.

As she starts demanding he treat her with more kindness and respect, their relationship starts to change into something closer to friendship. Will challenges her to try new things, like classical music, subtitled movies and acclaimed novels, which she tends to initially label as "not her thing". Hence, when Lou discovers the true reason why she's only employed for six months, she is sorely tempted to quit, refusing to accept that the Traynors are letting Will commit suicide. She wants to show Will all the things he will be missing out on, and plans a series of elaborate experiences to make him change his mind.

While the book deftly handles difficult issues like severe disability and the moral grey areas around assisted suicide, it doesn't in any way judge one way or the other, and the most important story isn't the romantic feelings that start developing between Louisa and Will as the novel progresses, but the blossoming that Lou does once she overcomes the initial months of her contract, and starts finding some common ground with him.

Having always seen her younger sister as the prettier, smarter one, and putting up with good-natured teasing from her family and boyfriend about her looks, and colourful dress sense, Lou has never really challenged herself to be anything else or reach for more. She got the job in the cafe on a bet, and stayed there until it closed down, quite happy for nothing to change. While Patrick is no longer the man she actually fell in love with, it's easier not to confront the fact that he's far more caught up in his own fitness regime, with no plans to ever propose to her or even ask her to move in with him, and so they stay in a fairly depressing holding pattern. She stopped using the library when she graduated high school, she's never really travelled outside the confines of the little town, and she's never really even dared to dream about anything different or bigger. Will, who is now trapped in his own body and unable to go anywhere without assistance, challenges and questions her choices, refusing to let her just maintain the status quo because it's easier or more comfortable.

Will is hostile, surly and miserable for a reason. Reading about the life he had before his accident, and the way he's viewed by almost everyone when he leaves the house, Moyes makes a very good case for why he may want to choose to end his own life. In making her grand list of adventures, Lou goes online to a variety of message boards and forums, and it's clear that there are people with severe disabilities who find that they have things left to live for, and are able to readjust their expectations in life, but it's also clear that this may not be enough for everyone. It's a moving book, and very sad in places, dealing with serious issues in a very non-preachy way. I also appreciated that the book ends on a very hopeful note. Thank you, Jen K for giving me the book in the Cannonball Book Swap this year!

#CBR5 Book 154. "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" by Robin Sloan

Page count: 305 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Having lost his job as a web developer due to the recession, Clay Jannon finds a new job as the night clerk in the titular bookstore, belonging to the mysterious Mr. Penumbra. Not that he sells all that many books. As well as the normal shelves, with its somewhat eclectic selection of novels and non fiction, there is what Clay calls the "wayback" section of the store, huge shelves of unique volumes, not to be found in any search engine, a sort of strange lending library for the odd individuals who show up with a laminated cards, returning a volume and fetching another at random intervals. Clay is asked to keep a log, describing the appearance of each of the customers and the state of mind each new customer was in when they come to swap a book.

Clay starts using his web developer skills to make a 3D-model of the store and the "wayback" section on his computer, trying to see if there's any pattern, rhyme or reason to the strange regulars and their lending patterns. He also works on trying to lure new customers to the store, using all the tools available to him in social media to advertise its location. Once he meets Kat, a young lady working at Google, his plans to map the mysterious patterns of Mr. Penumbra's store really take off, and soon he and his friends are involved in a mysterious quest involving a global conspiracy, a secret organisation, code breaking, data visualisation on a massive scale and possibly the secret to eternal life.

As someone who loves books, a book about a mysterious book store and a mystery surrounding reading sounded pretty enticing, but like so many other books, this ended up on my TBR shelf and languished there for a long time. It ended up being a very different book from what I was expecting, and I can see why it's not everyone's cup of tea, as it's very clever in slightly knowing and self referential way, combining the story of an ancient secret society trying to decode books with digitalisation, e-readers and Twitter. There are so many geeky references here, to role playing and gaming and various types of programming and web developing. Some might describe is as a "Hipster quest narrative", and they wouldn't be too far off the mark.

I think the book may have gotten a bit too clever for its own good in places, and the conclusion of the story doesn't come together as well as it began. I'm not sure I believe certain of the developments the story took, and that some of the characters got a bit lost in the main thrust of the excitement of the denouement. Still, it's a fun book, with a rather unusual premise, and I enjoyed reading it.

#CBR5 Book 153. "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards" by Kristopher Jansma

Page count: 272 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is such a very difficult book to review, as to give away too much of the plot, or say too much about the characters would ruin the reading experience of those yet to read it.

Each chapter starts with a quote from a famous author about the art of writing, the art of creating fiction or just lying. "The truth is beautiful. Without doubt; and so are lies." is the first one. In the first section of the book: "What was lost", our unnamed narrator starts telling us about his childhood, waiting in Terminal B of an unnamed airport for his flight attendant mother to come back from wherever she'd gone to next. We're told how the twenty-two page adventure story he wrote (with illustrations) was lost when the man who ran the watch repair suddenly collapsed, and the book was thrown away. He tells us about going to a debutante ball because the brother of the girl he fancied was injured on a golf course shortly before, about going to college and starting to write in earnest, striking up a friendship and life long rivalry with the mysterious and charismatic Julian. At college he also meets the glamorous Evelyn, a promising actress, who may or may not be the love of his life.

In "What was found", we may finally have discovered the name of our narrator, or have we? He's had a disastrous falling out with his two closest friends, and is now travelling the globe, making a living from spinning clever and believable lies in one way or another. This section really spans the globe, set in parts in America, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Iceland and a wealth of other locations and continues to explore the nature of truth, lies and the art of storytelling. Can we trust our narrator, or is he always going to be unreliable? Is he still "telling us the truth but slant" as he learned in college? Does it actually matter?

This book first came to my attention when Joanna Robinson, one of the staff writers on Pajiba raved about it, saying it was one of the best books she'd read all year. That made me notice it in a number of other places, and other Cannonballers and online reviewers have rated it very highly as well. It made it a natural choice for "a book everyone but you has read" in my Book Bingo challenge, and it also worked nicely in my A to Z challenge. I read it pretty much in one sitting, while on the plane back from Marrakesh after Christmas. It was one of the only things that took my mind off the churning nausea raging in my belly, and for that I am very grateful. I may not have loved it as much as Joanna, but I can highly recommend this clever book to anyone who likes a more unusual read exploring the joys of fiction.

#CBR5 Book 151. "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell

Page count: 408 pages
Rating: 4 stars

In 2060, disgraced Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz is the only survivor left after an expedition to the planet of Rakhat. He's grievously injured, both physically and mentally, and refuses to speak to the investigators who are desperate to find out what went wrong, far away on the alien planet. Sandoz stands accused of some pretty terrible crimes, and slowly the story of what took place several light years away is revealed.

Proof of extra terrestrial life is discovered in 2019 in a small and fairly insignificant listening post in Puerto Rico. While the United Nations and other global powers are still trying to figure out what to do about the discovery, the Jesuits organise a scientific mission in secret, sending eight people to the newly discovered planet, Rakhat, hoping to establish communication and peaceful relations with the aliens whose heartbreaking songs proved their existence on Earth. Emilio is one of the eight, and at least six of the other members of the exploration crew are close personal friends of his. "They meant no harm" is the final line in the prologue, and it's such an ominous hint of what's to come in the rest of the novel.

The Sparrow is not an easy read. It was one of three books suggested to me by Jen K to complete a square on my Book Bingo card, and I must admit, I ended up reading it both because it was the shortest of the three, because I've seen it so highly rated elsewhere for years and because I keep trying to make myself like science fiction, something that only rarely seems to work out. The book reveals pretty much in the opening section that all the characters we keep reading about in 2019 are no longer alive in the sections that take place in 2060. That made me depressed throughout the book, and bracing myself for the worst, long before it's actually revealed what actually happened, and what "harm" the well-meaning Earthlings actually caused.

Once the truth of what had happened to Emilio and all his friends was finally explained, it was also more tragic and even worse than I had imagined, and really very unpleasant indeed. It's a very well written book, and it deals with a a number of philosophical, metaphysical, moral and religious questions without providing any easy answers. I can totally understand why so many people rate it very highly. Unfortunately, I didn't actually enjoy reading large parts of the book. While it was great to see how the various members of the Stella Maris expedition came to meet and befriend each other, and their wonderful discoveries on the alien planet, I knew from the start that all of them except Emilio were doomed, and it was very clear from early on that he wished he'd died, as well. So I don't think I'll be reading the sequel, and I really wish that the book hadn't scarred me, because that's the only word I can think of to describe it, as much as it did.

#CBR5 Book 141. "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch

Page count: 544 pages
Rating: 5 stars

In the city state of Camorr, a small group known as the Gentlemen Bastards work and plot and scheme to lure the valuables from gullible nobles. Their cons are always elaborate and intricate, and done in such a way that their victims are too embarrassed to tell anyone about it. Yet most of their peers in the criminal underworld of Camorr believe the Bastards to be petty thieves and pickpockets, nothing remarkable, but loyal and dependable in a fight.

Unfortunately for Locke Lamora, the leader of the little band, and his friends, their current victims start being suspicious of some of the stories they are told, and soon, the head of the secret police is preparing to finally catch the legendary bandit. As if that wasn't bad enough, someone else has discovered that Locke and his Gentlemen are much more successful criminals than they let on, and use this information to force Locke to help with an attempted power play against the current crime lord of Camorr, Capa Barsavi.

I first read The Lies of Locke Lamora over Easter in 2007, and was absolutely blown away by it. It was such a different take on what I believed epic fantasy must be like. Locke and his compatriots were such unashamed scoundrels, and had so much fun with their schemes. I've seen a lot of comparisons being made to Ocean's Eleven, and it's not difficult to see why. This is a heist book, and the gang believe themselves to be so much more clever than everyone around them. It makes it even more thrilling when it turns out that they are wrong, and someone may have outsmarted them. They may be in a whole heap of trouble, in fact. I read fast, with bated breath, to see how the story would be resolved.

Because it's been more than six years since I read the book, I'd forgotten a LOT of the intricate plotting. I'd forgotten the way Scott Lynch has with words and his wonderful world building. The descriptions of the city of Camorr, both its underworld and the wealthy areas. I remembered the camaraderie between Locke and his friends, and that their plans went a bit pear-shaped, but I hadn't remembered much of the details, and that made this re-read extra enjoyable. It's such a fun book, with twists and turns and genuine shocking moments. Some of it made me cry, some of it made me cheer, and bits made me almost queasy (Lynch doesn't shy away from his graphic description on occasion). The story of how Locke became a Gentleman Bastard and met his gang of thieves is told in flash back, in between the chapters with the main narrative. Yet Lynch has a way of showing how the early experiences made by our hero and his friends became useful learning for their present troubles, which means that both narratives are connected, and you never feel too annoyed at being taken away from something tense and dramatic in the present to read about things that happened long ago. I'm not doing a very good job of selling why this is an awesome book. If you like epic fantasy, just read it.

#CBR5 Book 139. "Not Quite a Husband" by Sherry Thomas

Page count: 341 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Briony Asquith and Leo Marsden grew up on neighbouring estates. Leo loved Briony long before she was even aware of him as anything but the baby Marsden, youngest of four brothers. So when the brilliant, yet socially awkward lady physician proposed to outgoing, talented renaissance man Leo, he was elated, but no one else in society thought it would last. And it didn't. Growing increasingly more distant and cold from their wedding day, Briony starts to actually recoil from Leo's touch, and no matter how he tries to get her to open up, physically and emotionally, their marriage seems doomed. When Briony wakes up one morning with a stark white stripe through her dark hair, she files for an annulment.

Three years later, Leo shows up at Briony's medical clinic in a remote corner of India. Briony's sister has been writing both of them for years with melodramatic stories trying to push the two back together, but this time he's fairly certain she's not lying about Briony's father's health being in danger. Much of India is at the the brink of rebellion, and he feels it's his duty to get Briony back to England safely. Leo doesn't know exactly why their marriage failed, but he's convinced it must have been his fault, that he failed or mistreated her in some way.

Briony is not convinced her sister isn't lying once again, but she also knows that she would never forgive herself if her father dies and she did not try to return to his bedside. She reluctantly goes with Leo, uncomfortable in his presence, but with no other choice of escort. As the couple make their way through the rough Indian countryside, dealing with first Leo's malaria, then a violent and bloody native rebellion as they seek refuge in a nearby fort, they find that the three years apart may have allowed both of them to heal some of their hurts, and open up lines of communication to the other. Can they finally talk about all the things that made their all too brief marriage so miserable, and maybe begin to forgive each other and themselves?

Romances are mostly all about escapism, and the process of falling in love, and we rarely see past the HEA, or Happy For Now. Because of a shocking discovery, Briony was completely unable to trust Leo and started drawing away from him, beginning on the day of their marriage. They never got to Happily Ever After, their marriage just went from bad to worse to impossible to continue. Clearly always an intensely private and introverted person, Briony has difficulties forming attachments, even within her own family. Leo accepted her marriage proposal happily, but didn't really know the woman he married, just the idealised idea he'd made of her. As is the case in a lot of romances, there is a marked lack of clear communication between the heroine and hero, but in Not Quite a Husband it would never have been possible for Briony and Leo to have the honest conversations they needed to have to resolve their marital difficulties at the point where their marriage fell apart. Unlike in some books, where you just want to shake the protagonists and make them have a single conversation that would resolve everything, here there is no such easy fix.

Three years have given both of them time, to change and grow as people and while they may not have wanted to, to consider and gain some perspective of why they never managed to make their brief marriage successful. Both have travelled the world, hearing fanciful stories about what the other was up to from Briony's younger sister. Leo just wants to atone for whatever he must have done wrong to make Briony hate him so much in the past. Spending days in his presence, some of it nursing him back to health, Briony realises that the discovery she made shortly before she married him, no longer hurts her, and she no longer recoils from his touch. In fact, she craves it. The danger they find themselves in force them to finally be honest with one another, and they find a new and unaccustomed closeness, that should have been their when they wed.

This book is so good because it takes so many of the romance conventions and twists them. As in many of Thomas' other books, there is so much bitterness and pain between the couple. They have such enormous power to hurt the one they love, and frequently do. It's not an easy book to read, but as Leo and Briony start to actually open up to each other, instead of lashing out, and work to heal the damage they've previously done to one another, it feels more emotionally powerful than that of a lot of frothy romances with meet-cutes and humorous banter and a shiny fantasy version of what life really is. Most romance couples don't actually have to struggle with marital difficulties and really work to save their relationships. Yet when Briony and Leo finally do solve their troubles, they've truly earned their happiness, and it's probably more real because of their hardships.

#CBR5 Book 138. "Private Arrangements" by Sherry Thomas

Page count: 351 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Lord and Lady Tremaine have the ideal marriage, according to society. Having lived apart, on separate continents, for the the last decade since their wedding, they are nonetheless all that is elegant and courteous in relation to each other. Until Lady Tremaine shocks everyone, not least her own husband, by asking for a divorce, so she can marry someone else.

Philippa "Gigi" Rowland was the wealthy only child of an industrialist, with a deeply ambitious mother determined that her only daughter end up a duchess. When Gigi's noble, yet penniless fiancee (a duke) dies two weeks before the wedding, all their dreams seem crushed, as the duke's handsome cousin, now a marquess (his father inherits the dukedom) is promised to another. Gigi still refuses give up on Camden Saybrook, manipulating and scheming to get him to marry her. Her plots are revealed the day after their wedding, and Cameron, who'd been a very happy bridegroom, leaves her in disgust.

Mostly the couple live entirely separate lives, their paths crossing only very occasionally. Mrs. Rowland, Gigi's mother, has never been happy about the couple's estrangement and has been sending letters to Camden in America with frequent updates about his wife's whereabouts and goings on. Both have clearly had lovers in the last decade, so it's extra shocking that Gigi petitions for divorce on the grounds of Cameron's infidelity. Cameron returns to London to confront his wife, and realises that he's not ready to let her go. He declares that he will only agree to the divorce once Gigi provides him with an heir. Gigi, while initially appalled, agrees, but keeps the truth of their arrangement from her fiancee, the young Lord Frederick.

Private Arrangements is Thomas' first novel and it was a huge success. I'm not surprised, as she does a lot of things that are unusual for romances, not least tell the story in a non-linear fashion, with half the book taking place in the present, where Gigi and Camden can barely stand to be in the same room as each other, and the other showing us the way they met and fell in love, as well as the complicated plot Gigi set in motion to snag herself a noble husband. It's quite obvious that while they may not like each other all that much, they are still attracted to each other. It also wouldn't be a romance if Gigi actually got granted her divorce and ended up with the oh so nice, but not very exciting Lord Frederick.

Gigi and Camden are also not instantly likable characters. You understand Camden's fury with her, but it also becomes clear that before he left her for good, he gave as good as he got to make Gigi suffer for her scheming. They make each other suffer horribly, and should probably both have been more forgiving and open to communication. Still, because they're so wounded and stubborn and clearly loved each other once, it becomes all the more compelling to see how they'll work through their differences and end up happy together. I'd forgotten just how painful some of the book is, though, and how vicious the couple are to each other. If you're looking for a fun and light read, this is not the romance for you. It's a stunning debut, though.

#CBR5 Book 135. "North and South" by Elizabeth Gaskell

Page count: 544 pages
Audio book length: 18hrs 18 mins
Rating: 5 stars

Young Margaret Hale's life is turned on its head when her father, a parson from the South of England, renounces his position because he experiences a crisis of faith. He moves his anxious wife and dutiful daughter to the factory town of Milton Northern, where he's going to work as a tutor. The town, a bustling result of the Industrial Revolution, is full of cotton mills, soot and smoke, a stark contrast to the pastoral idyll of the Southern English countryside. With the loss of Mr. Hale's living, the family is in severely reduced financial circumstances, (not helped by the fact that they keep sending money to Margaret's brother who is wanted for mutiny in England, and as a result living in exile in Spain) and can't really afford more than a modest lifestyle. Margaret bravely adapts fairly quickly, but her mother never feels happy or comfortable in Milton and her health gradually deteriorates.

In Milton, the main social interaction the Hales have is with Mr. John Thornton, a mill owner who leases from Mr. Hale's best friend, Mr. Bell (Margaret's godfather). Thornton's father drove his family into debt and further caused scandal when he committed suicide. Thornton had to quit school, and take a position as a shop clerk to support his sister and widowed mother. Putting aside most of what he earned, he slowly and quietly worked to repay all his father's debts and became a respected and formidable man in Milton. His mother is a proud and arrogant woman who loves her son fiercely, constantly worried some fortune-hunting young miss will get her claws into him.

Mr. Hale tutors Mr. Thornton, and they develop a close friendship. Margaret initially has difficulties relating to him, however. Thornton thinks Margaret is very beautiful, but aloof, distant and too caught up in her sheltered and genteel way of thinking, while she thinks Thornton is cold, arrogant, coarse and too hard on his workers. Before Margaret moved with her parents to Milton, she lived with her wealthy aunt in London for ten years, until her cousin Edith married an army captain and moved to Corfu. In the north, she has very few friends. Mrs. Thornton is dismissive of the Hales, and Miss Hale is spoiled, self-centred, vain and not in any way interested in the prim and serious Miss Hale. The only friends Margaret makes are of a lower class than her, Mr. Higgins and his consumptive daughter Bessie, and they become more of a charity project for her than confidantes and support to her.

I was surprised at how useless both of Margaret's parents are. Her father upends his family's entire life because of a point of principle, but once they arrive in Milton and it turns out that their new life is going to be difficult and not at all what he'd planned, he withdraws into his studies and teaching, leaving poor Margaret to deal with the complicated practicalities of managing the household with their meagre finances, the inability to secure extra help in the house, her mother's depression and deteriorating health and the worry about Frederick. She sees the deep love between her parents, and because of that, she won't accept a marriage proposal from a man she doesn't love. Shortly after leaving her aunt's house in London, she rejects the proposal of Mr. Lennox, her cousin Edith's brother-in-law, as she cannot see him as anything but a friend. So when Mr. Thornton is persuaded by his mother and sister that Margaret must be infatuated with him, he proposes, and is vehemently rejected. By the time Margaret is ready to reconsider his advances, a number of coincidences and complications has made Thornton believe that she loves another and is lost to him.

I discovered the BBC adaptation of North and South, with the darkly handsome Richard Armitage (currently most famous as the broodingest exiled dwarf king evah in The Hobbit) and the lovely Daniela Denby-Ashe a few years ago, but it's taken me until now to actually read the novel. I got the audio book narrated by the excellent Juliet Stevenson, who varies between crisp arch tones for the southern characters and wonderful northern accents. I was surprised at how nuanced the book is, for a Victorian novel, both Margaret and Thornton's feelings are very clearly depicted. I really hadn't expected so much insight into the emotions of both main characters. Gaskell's novel is typical of the time, showing a lot of social responsibility, with the social developments after the Industrial Revolution, the clashes between the factory owners and the workers, the hardship of a strike and so forth, but it doesn't feel like it's sermonising and lecturing the reader. I will absolutely be reading more Gaskell in future.

#CBR5 Book 122. "Scoundrel's Kiss" by Carrie Lofty

Page count: 342 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Gavriel de Marqueda is trying to put his old life as enforcer, thug and hired killer for his ungrateful family. He's sought refuge with a monastic order, swearing vows of chastity, obedience and non-violence. He only needs to succeed in one last task to be accepted as a full member of the order. However, the test he is set might prove to make him break every one of his new vows.

Ada of Keyworth is far away from her English home. She's risking her position as translator to an influential Spanish noblewoman because of her all-consuming craving for opium. When Ada is about to be sold into slavery because of her debts, her young friend begs Gavriel and the other monastic brothers to save her. Gavriel's final task will be to wean Ada off her addiction. Ada resents him immensely, and is determined to escape his care. She also determines to ruin any chance he has of becoming a monk.

Set in 13th Century Spain during the Reconquista (the re-conquering of Spain from the Muslims), Scoundrel's Kiss has a vastly different setting from most romances out there on the market. Instead of Regency ballrooms during the Season, this book takes place mostly in the countryside and small towns of  Medieaval Spain. The heroine has a genuine and debilitating addiction which she's willing to do almost anything to feed, not caring whether it affects her work, her reputation or what it does to her friends. Any time she goes without for any period of time, she has horrible nightmares and suffers dreadful withdrawal. It's a weakness and a character flaw, but Lofty makes you see that there was little she could do to avoid the addiction, having started to take the opium for pain after being held captive and tortured. It also makes her determination never to be held against her will more understandable.

Unfortunately, while the above things were good and different, I didn't really emotionally engage with the book all that much. While Ada's character was somewhat unusual, and fairly well drawn, most of the supporting characters, to a certain extent Gavriel as well, remained more like ciphers. The villains, especially, were rather cartoonish, and both their motivations and their plotting towards the end of the book caused more confusion than tension. I also thought the romance developed in a rather haphazard way. Obviously, in the beginning Gavriel fights very hard to resist Ada, who in return is determined to tempt him into sin, first out of spite and later out of genuine attraction. His decision to abandon his sworn vows comes very suddenly, and seems a bit arbitrary, frankly. So despite the interesting premise and attempts at doing something different in the genre, this book really didn't work for me, and will probably be quickly forgotten.

#CBR5 Book 121. "Drums of Autumn" by Diana Gabaldon

Page count: 1070 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is the fourth book in the epic Outlander series, and I really wouldn't recommend it as a starting point (as things won't make a whole load of sense if you begin reading there). Obviously, this review may also contain spoilers both for earlier books in the series, as well as this one, so skip it if you want to avoid such things.

James Fraser and his time traveller wife Claire, have rescued their nephew Ian Murray from the kidnappers who took him to the Caribbean and are now in America, ready to start a new life away from the Scottish highlands. After a period accepting the hospitality of Jamie's aunt Jocasta, Jamie accepts a land grant from the governor of North Carolina, which he agrees to settle and find tenants for. Having had most of their fortune (a cache of precious gems), being robbed by river pirates, they're unable to ship Ian back to his family, but Ian's quite happy living in the woods of America, befriending the natives and settling the land with his uncle. Jamie finally gets to meet his daughter, when Brianna, having discovered in an old historical document that the Frasers are going to die in a fire in 1776, goes back in time to Scotland and takes a ship to America to find them and warn them. She is followed by historian Roger MacKenzie Wakefield, who wants to marry her.

Of course there is all manner of intrigue and complication - river pirates who rob and rape, murders, hernias, bear attacks, a surprise visit from Lord John Grey (one of my favourite supporting characters in the series) and his stepson, an epidemic of measles, inconvenient pregnancies, a paternity mystery, people being beaten to a pulp and sold to Indians, quests to get said individuals back from the Indians, and so forth.

As I mentioned in my review for Outlander, the first book in the series, these books have been a part of my life for a long time. The first time I read this book was fifteen years ago, and I still regard most of the characters very fondly. Re-reading this time, I discovered that I have a whole load less patience with Roger and Brianna than I used to, and especially the sections that involved them before they travel back to 1760s America bored me a lot more than they once did. These are big books, and the everyday Frontiers life stuff is balanced with some pretty crazy sauce melodrama. Unfortunately, the later books in the series contains a lot more less than thrilling filler, and I'm psyching myself up to read the really rambling ones that follow. Need to finish my re-read before the release of the new one in March next year.

#CBR5 Book 120. "Raw Blue" by Kirsty Eagar

Page count: 274 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Carly works the evening shift as a cook at a small cafe, so she can spend her days surfing. She's estranged from her family, and dropped out of university, and keeps herself mostly to herself. The thing she can't tell her family is that surfing is the only thing that makes sense to her anymore, and that helps her not to dwell on the incident after her high school graduation two years ago, when she got drunk, separated from her friends, and woke up in a strange apartment having been raped by three strangers. Carly doesn't want to be a victim, and telling people about rape, always makes them pity and see you in a different light - so she doesn't talk about it, and she allows no one to get close.

While Carly may want to stay isolated, there are people around her who want to get closer. Hannah, a Dutch woman estranged from her husband,lives upstairs from her (but has to keep using her shower because her plumbing is bad) and tries to take Carly salsa dancing and makes her breakfast. Danny, a persistent kid she meets while surfing has synesthesia and won't leave her alone, even when the colour he sees her as is occasionally unpleasant. He keeps wanting to hang out and discuss surfing movies, and persuades Carly to get him a part time job at the cafe. Lastly, there is Ryan, who stands out from some of the crowd of macho surfer dudes. He doesn't hide the fact that he's just out of jail, and that he'd like a chance to get to know Carly better. He wants to turn his life around into something better, and if Carly will let him, he wants her to be a part of that life. The question is if Carly is ready to let him in?

My friend Erica read this some time ago and rated it very highly indeed. She gave me a copy, but it's been lingering on my TBR shelf until blue was one of the monthly keywords for this month. Must admit, I didn't love it as much as she, or quite a few book reviewers out there on the internet did, possibly because I had such a hard time engaging properly with the book. I felt really bad for Carly, and really hoped that she'd get over her assault, but I didn't really like her all that much, and her very narrow goals in life (work in cafe, surf) were not something that resonated with me. While I felt bad about it, I occasionally found myself thinking that maybe Hannah, Danny and Ryan should just let her sulk in peace, she was clearly not going to reciprocate the kindnesses and patience they kept showing her. I also have absolutely no idea if the surfing terms used in the books are accurate, but am going to assume so, as it's such a central part of the narrative.

I've seen the book classified as young adult and new adult. As Carly is nineteen and Ryan is twenty-six, and there is some description of sex (while nothing particularly graphic or explicit), I think it would fit better in the new adult category. I'm not particularly bothered by such labels, myself, but figured it might be worth noting that the romance in this book is not of the "fade to black" variety, even though it's aimed at younger readers.

#CBR5 Book 119. "Death Masks" by Jim Butcher

Page count: 374 pages
Audio book length: 11 hrs 21 mins
Rating: 3.5 stars

This is the fifth book in The Dresden Files, the books about professional wizard Harry Dresden. This review may therefore contain some spoilers for books that came earlier in the series and also for this one, and you may want to skip it until you've read the books up to this point.

Harry has a number of difficulties facing him - his ex-girlfriend Susan (who Harry's been moping over since she left him a few books ago) is back in town, getting ready to pack up her stuff to move to South America, and Harry is worried she may have found a new guy. A powerful Red Court vampire is also in town, challenging Harry to a duel, to settle once and for all the bad blood (pun intended) and warfare between the wizards and the Red Court once and for all. If Harry refuses to duel, the vampire will hunt down and kill anyone Harry cares for or has worked with, so he's not really got much choice in the matter. Thirdly, a priest wants to hire Harry to look for the stolen Shroud of Turin, and it seems like there are demonic entities who'd like nothing better than to find the artifact first, so they can unleash a devastating plague on humanity.

I keep trying to get into the Harry Dresden books, because so many people out there on the internet rave about them, and I feel that I should read something with a male protagonist, just to balance things out a bit. My fellow Goodreader and Cannonballer Ashley/Narfna has made it a lot further through the series than I have, and mentioned in one of her reviews that she listens to and really enjoys the audio books, which happen to be read by James Marsters, an actor I know and love from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and his recurring guest spot on Torchwood. Since I have a whole ton of extra Audible credits, I figured I'd see if I liked the books better in audio, and downloaded this one. Marsters really does an excellent job with the narration, and maybe it's just that Susan is actually back, so Harry isn't constantly moping about her, and she's less annoying than I remember her from the earlier book she was in (don't ask me which one, I honestly don't remember), but I liked Death Masks more than previous Dresden File books.

Marsden manages to make Dresden seem more charming than annoying, and as I said, while I was initially worried about Susan's reappearance, she kicks quite a lot of ass in this book, and promptly goes off to do her own thing at the end of the book, so she gets a pass for now. I have certain misgivings about a particular scene between her and Harry in this book, which is one of the reasons this book gets 3.5 stars instead of a full 4, but if that's because I'm used to reading relationships written by female urban fantasy writers, or whether this is a a bit of a misogynist, I'm honestly not sure. Don't want to go into spoilery details, but you'll know the scene when you get to it, it involves enchanted rope.

I'm also not sure if Harry's constant underestimating women, who pretty much immediately turn on him and double cross him, is supposed to be endearing or annoying. Suffice to say, it happens more than once in this book. There's also a lot of cool stuff, like a pretty creepy demon cult who I'm sure we've not seen the last of, some really bad vampires, Harry's friend Michael Carpenter and his fellow Knights of the Cross, Susan kicking ass, the return of Thomas Raith (one of the White Court vampires who feed off psychic energy, and who's always fun) and the introduction of the Archive, an adorable little girl who's had the sum of all human knowledge passed down to her through her maternal line (Harry nicknames her "Ivy").

I'm warming to Harry as a character, and as I don't have enough Audible credits to get the rest of the books in the series as audio books, I may alternate between reading and listening to the rest of them. I'm slowly getting hooked, and since I'm now no longer actively hating the series, I suspect I'll get through the rest slowly but surely.

#CBR5 Book 118. "Where She Went" by Gayle Forman

Page count: 274 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is the sequel to If I Stay, and both this book and this review unavoidably contain spoilers about the ending. So if you want to avoid spoilers, or haven't read the first book in the series yet, skip this review.

Three years ago Adam Wilde's girlfriend Mia was in a car accident and lost her entire family. She nearly died as well. While she was in a coma, Adam pleaded with her to wake up, and said he'd even live with her leaving him, if she would just stay alive. Mia woke up from the coma, left Oregon for New York and is now a lauded prodigy having graduated Julliard early.

After dropping out of college and caring about nothing for quite some time after their breakup, Adam then poured all his emotions about the loss of Mia (and her family) into song lyrics, and his band went from being Indie darlings played at college radio stations to a platinum selling sensation touring stadiums world wide. Now dating a talented actress/producer, Adam lives in LA and is constant tabloid fodder. He barely speaks to the other members of the band, copes with the stress of fame with pills and alcohol and has a reputation as a real bad boy. When he's spending one night alone in New York, before heading off to London for another tour, Adam meets Mia again for the first time since they broke up. She's about to go on tour as well, starting in Japan. She invites him to come along as she says goodbye to all her favourite New York haunts.

So to get the big SPOILER for the end of If I Stay out of the way. Mia lives, but despite Adam's obvious love for her, she doesn't stay with him. She goes off to New York, without even giving him proper closure - she just stops talking to him, and doesn't return home for Christmas. If I Stay was entirely from Mia's POV, Where She Went is entirely from Adam's. Most of the chapters start with excerpts from the lyrics Adam wrote after he dug himself out of the worst depression after the breakup (as I - to the husband's great sorrow - am not all that into music as anything but background noise, I can't speak for the quality or lack thereof of said song lyrics). With "Collateral Damage", Adam's lamely named band "Shooting Star" became mega rock stars, and it's quite clear that Adam hasn't really enjoyed the rise to fame and stardom.

He's clearly unhappy in his relationship with his movie star girlfriend, who despite all that he tries to tell himself has 'rebound girl' written all over her perfect face. Because the press decided that "Shooting Star" really only were a backup band for Adam, who as song writer, lead singer and lead guitarist might be seen as doing all the heavy lifting, his band barely speak to him anymore. They usually stay at separate hotels during their tours. Adam has trouble sleeping, and goes through life on a cocktail of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. He's never gotten over Mia, and seeing her again makes him a big ol' mess.

While Adam occasionally comes across as a giant emo whiner, who should thank his lucky stars for the awesome friends he has and the insane success he's been lucky enough to experience, the story never fails to make the reader sympathetic to him as well. While they weren't his actual biological family, Mia's parents and brother dying in that car accident affected him greatly as well. Staying by her side as she recovered, trying to be supportive, and then having her just dump him without any explanation - it's no wonder the boy is gutted. It's also not surprising that like so many other young people suddenly thrust into super stardom, Adam doesn't always handle it as well as he should.

Mia and Adam exploring New York together at night reminded me of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and for all that the book deals with heart break, it's also very romantic. It's clear that Adam and Mia, despite their various unfortunate decisions, are meant to be together. This is another YA book that in the hands of a lesser writer could have been trite and cliched, but instead was engaging and sweet.

#CBR5 Book 117. "If I Stay" by Gayle Forman

Page count: 262 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Mia has everything a girl could want. Loving, supportive parents, a little brother who's more funny and clever than annoying, a likely admission to Julliard, and a romantic and talented boyfriend. Then her family are in a car accident, and her parents are killed instantly. Mia watches herself and her brother being transported to the hospital, and spends the next twenty four hours out of her own body, watching her relatives, friends of the family, her boyfriend Adam and her best friend Kim as they huddle in the hospital waiting room for news about her.

With her body being kept alive by machines while she's in a coma, Mia suddenly only has one thing left - she has to decide whether she's going to choose to live, and go on without her immediate family, or whether she should let go. Is there enough left for her to make staying worth it?

If I Stay is not a long book, and has fairly short chapters, alternating between Mia's present, where she observes her grieving friends and relatives waiting to see whether she wakes up from her coma or not, and her past, giving us a full picture of the life she had before, and what she lost when her family died in the car crash. Her father, the former rock band member turned high school teacher. Her mum, a former Punk chick. Her younger brother, that she helped deliver when he was born. We see how the daughter of rock enthusiasts started playing the cello and eventually excelled at it. How she and her best friend Kim started out as enemies and became inseparable. How Adam, who plays guitar in a promising Indie rock band, took her to a Yo Yo Ma concert for their first date, and how their relationship blossomed despite their seeming to come from different worlds.

Not feeling like she entirely fits is one of the things that makes Mia question whether she should stay alive. A classical musician surrounded by parents and family friends who preferred rock, with a boyfriend whose band is on the verge of launching their career. From her recollections about her life, it's clear she frequently felt a bit like a fish out of water. Insecurities are natural for teenage girls to have, even when most of their loved ones have completely different frames of reference to them.

A lot of themes are explored in the book, chiefly obviously loss and grief. I found it an engaging and moving read, and am not at all surprised to discover that it is being adapted into a movie, with Chloe Grace Moretz starring as Mia. Hopefully the film captures the sadness and emotion of the book, and doesn't just turn into a maudlin melodrama.

#CBR5 Book 116. "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" by Holly Black

Page count: 440 pages
Rating: 5 stars

Tana wakes up after a high school party to find that while she was passed out in the bathtub, the other party-goers in the house were brutally slaughtered by vampires. As she's dealing with the shock and trying to find her things (you don't want to escape a house of carnage in your bare feet if you don't have to), she discovers that there are survivors - her douchy ex-boyfriend Aidan, and a dark haired boy she's never seen before. Both are tied up in a back bedroom where the windows have been covered, most likely left as a snack for later. When trying to untie Aidan, he lunges for her, and Tana has to face the fact that Aidan is turning Cold.

In this world, there were always vampires, but they were few and kept themselves hidden. Until one day, a single individual decided to just feed a little off his victims instead of killing them, starting an epidemic that soon spread world wide. When bitten, but not killed, by a vampire, the victim turns Cold. They start to hunger for human blood, and once they drink it, they transform fully into vampires. If they manage to lock themselves away and avoid the temptation to drink the blood for 88 days, they're cured of the infection, but barely anyone ever has the strength to manage it. As a result, to stop the spread of vampirism, there are walled off cities around America, where vampires and the ones who are turning Cold are confined. In the Coldtowns there are celebrity vampires, and live streams of their glamorous parties and all over America there are people who worship and dream of becoming just like them.

Tana knows that vampires may be beautiful, but also that they are deadly and that those infected by them are overcome by an obsession for blood, to the point where they don't care who they have to hurt to get it. When she was ten, her mother was infected. Tana's father locked her in the basement, determined to keep her isolated until she was cured, but little Tana was unable to resist her mother's desperate pleas and reassurances that she wouldn't hurt anyone. She was tricked into opening the door, and as a result, has physical and deep emotional scars to show for it. She doesn't want to abandon Aidan or the mysterious other boy, and risks her own life to get them both to the nearest Coldtown. There is also the possibility that Tana herself is infected, and to keep her best friend, her sister and her father safe, she needs to leave them behind to an uncertain fate.

I love Holly Black's books about faeries. Now she's written an amazing book about vampires. It's the closest thing to an anti-Twilight I've read since Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In). Not that sparkly vampires, or the spoofing thereof is in any way done in this book. This book made me think of Robin McKinley's Sunshine (one of my favourite vampire books of all time), Anne Rice's early Vampire Chronicles and Lie to Me, that absolutely awesome episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 2 where a bunch of vampire groupies dress up in velvet and capes and want to join the "children of the night". Yet it also does its own thing completely.

The story of Tana, Aidan and Gavriel (the mysterious third survivor) is told in short, action-packed chapters that often end on a cliffhanger. Every other chapter fills in the back story, about Tana's past, before and after her mother was turned, about Pearl - her little sister, Pauline - her best friend (they have such a great friendship), her messed up relationship with Aidan, and how she came to be the person we meet in the first chapter. There are also the occasional chapter where the POV changes to Pearl, who has to deal with Tana disappearing, and some that give the back story on Gavriel. These chapters are the reason I'm deducting half a star, as Tana is such a great character that I didn't want any other focus to the book but her, and everything that took away from my time with her, be it in the very tense, dangerous and scary present, or her mostly grim and character building past, made me annoyed.

There is no love triangle in this book, although as is almost always the case in a good vampire story, there is a minor romantic subplot. Vampires have always been sexy and erotic, and while the vampires in this story are all decidedly scary and blood sucking monsters, it's not surprising that Tana, with her dark past and complex survivors' guilt would be attracted to someone openly monstrous. She clearly has a history of bad boys, Aidan really has very few redeeming features, and the fact that Tana risks her own life more than once to get him to a Coldtown is one of the reasons why she's such a great heroine.

I always find it so much harder to write about books I love than ones I feel perfectly indifferent about. The world building in the story, with the Coldtowns, and the vampire reality shows, and the groupie cultures that have sprung forth due to social media are all fascinating, as is the idea that by great strength of will, and basically going "cold turkey", you can cure yourself of the infection. While I adored Tana and want to be her best friend (even though she already has one), the other characters in the story are also great, and multi-faceted, and even though some of them are clearly TSTL when it comes to their romanticised delusions about vampires, you still feel bad for them when they have their eyes opened brutally.

There is a creeping tension throughout the book, from the first chapter and all the way through the story. This is a proper horror story, with a lot of grisly details, and quite a lot of death along the way. At least one of the characters is a merciless and quite mad vampire, but you can't help but like him anyway, and I was completely swept up in the romance between him and Tana. I've read a lot of vampire books before now, and it was great to catch the subtle references that Black has clearly put in. While this is a YA book about a teenage girl and some vampires, don't let the publishing trends of the last few years put you off. This has a very capable, smart, brave and resourceful heroine, who doesn't wait around for anyone to save her. Tana rescues others, as well as herself. For anyone who enjoyed McKinley's Sunshine, this should be a MUST READ book. I think I might even like this better, as Sunshine has always cried out for a sequel, whilst this works beautifully as a stand alone novel with a very promising end. If you ever enjoyed a vampire story, give this book a chance.

#CBR5 Book 115. "Flowers from the Storm" by Laura Kinsale

Page count: 560 pages
Rating: 5 stars

This is considered one of the great examples of romance literature, and it's been in the top 10 of the top 100 romance novels polls on All About Romance since 2000 (in 1998, it was rated 15th). When romance reviewers are asked to name their favourite books, it keeps being mentioned, and raved about, and I just never seemed to find the time to read it. Written in 1992, it's considered one of the works that really changed the genre (away from the frequently No means Yes rapey/forced consent romances into closer to what it is today). It's also a wonderful book to give to someone who claims romance is just trashy escapism for frustrated, sex-starved housewives. This is about as far from 50 Shades of Grey as you can get.

So what is it about then, you ask? Christian Langland, the Duke of Jervaulx is a dissolute rake if ever there was one, but he's also a mathematical genius, which is why Quaker spinster Archemedea Timms comes into contact with him. Her father, another mathematician, is blind, and Maddy (a necessary nickname if ever I heard one) writes out all his notes and takes them to the duke, and in turn reads all the duke's notes to her father. Then they hear that the duke's been killed in a duel, after an aggrieved husband called Jervaulx out. Maddy discovers this isn't true when she arrives at her cousin's posh mental asylum in the countryside, and finds Jervaulx locked up, senseless and in chains. She quickly realises what no one else has been willing to consider, that he's not mad but maddened, and that he's clearly in his right mind, just furious at being unable to communicate with those around him. A modern reader can see that Jervaulx has suffered a stroke, but it's not at all surprising that the duke's relatives would want him locked up and declared insane, so they could take over the running of his estates.

Maddy, despite being deeply uncomfortable with the Jervaulx's position and his dissolute lifestyle, believes herself to have received a calling from God, to help him. She stubbornly convinces her cousin (who for all the horrors of the asylum really is quite progressive, for the time) to let her tend him, and surprisingly rapidly, the duke is calm and compliant and even able to leave his cell on occasion. They grow increasingly closer the more time they spend together, with Jervaulx coming to depend on Maddy entirely. He has no way of communicating the amount of abuse he suffers from the other minders at the asylum, and realises that he can't risk them feeling threatened. He finally recovers enough that they deem him ready for his competency hearing, and take him to London, where most of his family still believe him completely addled. Only his battleaxe of an aunt believes him to be on the way to recovery, but she's worried about the reputation of the family, and wants Jervaulx to marry to secure the title. If he won't agree to matrimony, she'll have him shipped back to the asylum. Jervaulx has no intention of marrying anyone save Maddy, his rescuing angel, but her religious beliefs make such a union completely impossible.

Kinsale is considered a master of her craft, and I can see why in this book. At nearly 600 pages, it's quite a bit longer than a standard romance nowadays, and the relationship between Jervaulx and Maddy is slowly established, as their romance seems impossible. Jervaulx is all that is dissolute, sinful and decadent, and Maddy is a devout Quaker, who spurns creaturely comforts and worldly titles, calling everyone 'Friend' and even refusing to curtsy to the King of England himself. She fights her attraction to Jervaulx from the start, yet deeply respects his intelligence and kindness to her father, and is the only one who fights for him in the asylum. Yet this isn't the story of a selfless woman who through love and self sacrifice heals a broken man. While Jervaulx is initially terrified when Maddy is away from him, and seems incapable of managing without her, he gradually, with the additional help of loyal friends and servants, manages to rehabilitate himself. It doesn't hurt that most people regard him with so much awe and deference because of his title that they don't notice that he leaves out a few words here and there.

I love that Kinsale shows us both protagonists' POVs, and even the broken snippets of dialogue that are the only thing Jervaulx is capable of understanding as he recovers from his stroke. His rate of recovery is clearly shown in the amount of conversation he's able to follow. We also see firsthand Maddy's inner turmoil, and at no point are her devout religious beliefs judged by the author. There are no quick fixes in this book, there are no easy solutions. The harrowing conditions in even a very progressive and forward thinking asylum for the wealthy are terrifying, and I shared Jervaux's terror that he be sent back there, understanding why he might resort to less than honourable methods to win Maddy's hand in order to get his normal life back. While there is a lot of angst and anguish over the course of this book, it was also a deeply satisfying read, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who thinks romance can't be real literature. I now understand why it's prized so highly among romance readers, and will absolutely be seeking out more Kinsale to read.

#CBR5 Book 114. "Chimes at Midnight" by Seanan McGuire

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is the seventh book about October Daye and as such, not the best place to start the series. If you like a paranormal series focused more on mysteries and adventure than on romance (not that there isn't romance too, once you get a few books in), then this is a good one. Go check out Rosemary and Rue if you haven't already. Also, as this is the seventh book, spoilers for previous books may occur.

As the only changeling (half human, half fey) knight in existence, October "Toby" Daye concerns herself with a lot of quests and issues that others don't bother with. Changelings are dying all over San Francisco from their addiction to goblin fruit. A fruit that's only pleasant and harmless to full-blood faeries, the goblin fruit is extremely addictive to changelings and humans, and the addiction gets so strong that they die from eating nothing else. Toby wants it off the streets and goes to the Queen of the Mists to have the problem dealt with, only to discover that the Queen is the one peddling the fruit, as she sees nothing wrong with changelings and humans dying. She also banishes Toby for her insubordination, giving her three days to remove herself from the kingdom.

Having started out a loner, with no recourse but to dive into danger by herself, Toby now has a squire and a boyfriend and a growing band of allies who can help her in situations such as these. When they discover that the Queen's claim to the throne isn't in fact valid, and that the children to the last King are still alive, but in hiding, Toby and her friends realise that they're going to have to stage a full scale rebellion. They just need to keep Toby alive long enough to succeed.

One of the features of these books is that Toby is normally in near to almost certain mortal danger at least twice over the course of each book. When I'd read nearly half of this book and nothing more serious than a banishment was causing her difficulties, I was starting to wonder what was going on. I needn't have worried, Toby is hit with a doozy of a challenge, which in many ways is made more complicated because of her unusual and unpredictable magic.

While a lot of the previous books focus on a mystery that Toby (who works as a private investigator when she's not a fairy knight) has to solve, or a quest she has to complete (usually involving missing children), this one is all about the removal of one false Queen to restore the rightful heir to the throne. As someone who tends to love a good gallery of supporting characters, I'm so glad that Toby now no longer has to solve her problems by herself. She's got a devoted and just achingly romantic boyfriend, she's got Quentin, her squire (who's parentage is finally revealed in this book, and I'm so happy that I called it at least three books ago!) and Raj, the Prince of Cats - her two teenage sidekicks. There's Luidaeg, the Sea Witch, and May, Toby's indestructible fetch (a death omen who now lives with her). Her liege lord, Duke Sylvester, only really makes a brief appearance in the book, but we get to explore exciting new locations, such as the Library of Stars (I want one!)

I now look back with envy to the days when I hadn't caught up with this series, and didn't have to wait impatiently for a whole year to read what comes next. The October Daye books, like Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels books and Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books are now books that I not only pre-order, but clear my entire schedule to have time to read. I don't want anything taking my attention away from the books. Now, having devoured the book in one day, I just have to settle in for the long wait for book 8. Sigh.

#CBR5 Book 113. "The Broken Kingdoms" by N.K. Jemisin

Page count: 417 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is the second book in the Inheritance trilogy, and while the book can be read independently (I read the first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms nearly a year and a half before I read this one, which was fine, once I'd re-familiarised myself with the plot on Wikipedia), you'll probably get a more cohesive and generally better reading experience if you read them in sequence (without waiting 18 months between them).

In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree that sprang into existence ten years ago, blind Oree Shoth makes her living as an artist. She does appear to be able to see magic of all kinds, though, and her strange second sight helps her paint. Oree lives with a mysterious, taciturn stranger who she rescued from a waste bin some months back. She doesn't think he's a godling (one of the many minor gods that have started appearing in the city since the World Tree grew), because he only glows at dawn. He's clearly not all human, either, as he keeps killing himself and coming back to life.

When godlings start turning up dead, Oree and her strange house guest, along with Oree's former lover, a godling called Madden, find themselves abducted and held prisoner by a secret religious organisation. They want to keep her friends hostage, to get Oree to cooperate with them. They need her help to kill one of the major gods, the Shadow Lord himself.

This book is set ten years after the end of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and the major characters in that book only turn up briefly in this book, mainly as cameos. So it's absolutely possibly to read the second book without knowing what happened in the first, but I found it added another dimension to know the reasons for the major changes this fantasy world has gone through in the last decade. As in the first book, the narrative is told in first person, this time from Oree's POV. Because it's a personal narrative, it jumps a bit back and forth, as personally recounted stories often do. This, of course, enables Jemisin to put in all sorts of foreshadowing and teases for the readers.

Those who have read the first book in the series, will not be that surprised at the identity of Oree's strange lodger, and I really like what Jemisin's done with this character and that she's built a fantasy universe where it's possible to explore the sorts of things she does. Jemisin is very highly acclaimed out there on the internet, and while I liked the book, I'm still waiting to be blown away by her writing, the way so many others out there seem to have been. Last year, as part of my now annual support of Worldbuilders, Patrick Rothfuss' charity fundraiser, I got the Literary Pinup Calendar, drawn by Lee Moyer. Very fittingly, September's image is of Oree. It's one of my favourite images in the calendar. I really wish I could love the book as much as I love this picture, but so far, after two books, for all that I see that her writing is great, there's just this little part of me that stays detached when I read Jemisin's books. That's not to say this isn't very good fantasy, quite unlike anything else I've found out there. Maybe the next book of hers is the one where I finally get properly hooked?

#CBR5 Book 112. "Breadcrumbs" by Anne Ursu

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Hazel and Jack are best friends and live just down the street from one another. Until recently, they didn't go to the same school, but after Hazel's dad moved away, she had to change schools and now she's in the classroom across the hall from Jack. Hazel doesn't really fit in at school. None of the other kids were adopted from India and look completely different from their mum and dad. She only really feels like she completely belongs when she's with Jack, and when he's off playing with the other boys, she feels desperately alone.

Of course, there are worse things than your dad leaving your mum and you to manage by yourselves or your friend occasionally playing with others. Your mum could still be there, listless and uncaring, empty-seeming and no longer noticing much of anything, like Jack's mum. Maybe that's why he changes completely one day - becoming mean and distant the day after he had an accident in the school yard, when something seemed to pierce him in the eye? Suddenly he just wants to play with the boys, and ignores Hazel completely. Then he disappears. His parents say he's off taking care of his elderly aunt Bernice, but Hazel's known Jack her entire life - he doesn't have an aunt Bernice. One of the other boys mentions having seen Jack going into the woods, with a tall, icily beautiful, fur-clad woman, like the White Witch of Narnia. But witches aren't real, are they? Hazel knows that she needs to rescue her best friend, even if it means going off into terrible danger.

Breadcrumbs is a wonderful book, which retells the fairy tale The Snow Queen in a wholly original way. While it's meant for middle grade readers, it doesn't underestimate its target audience and deals with bullying, alienation, depression, divorce, the need to belong, the perilous fragility of adolescent friendships and the myriad challenges of growing up. Hazel loves to read, and constantly thinks of things in reference to other children's and YA books (to the point where it almost got a bit tedious, unfortunately). There are nods to fairy tales, J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine L'Engle and Neil Gaiman to name but a few.

Having gone to a non-standard school before her parents' divorce, Hazel finds it nearly impossible to adapt to the rigid structures and rules of her new school, where she also struggles to interpret the social codes of her peers, and keeps failing. Something as simple as having a backpack when everyone else has a shoulder bag can make you the odd one out, which can be devastating when you're already a different ethnic makeup to everyone around you.

Hazel has a caring, if struggling mother, and does her best to be a well-behaved and obedient child. She doesn't understand why all the grown ups want her to make friends who aren't Jack, at least until he changes overnight and abandons her. She's a brave and resourceful girl, who knows that going after your best friend when he's possibly been spirited away by an evil witch isn't going to be easy. She faces a number of challenges and dangers on her quest, and despite being told repeatedly that the White Witch never takes anyone who doesn't want to go with her, she refuses to give up on her friend. She doesn't want to stop being his friend, no matter what others, or even he himself, tell her. Through all her reading, she's learnt that sometimes the Knight is the one who needs rescuing, even though he may not realise it himself.

This is a little gem of a book, beautifully illustrated. Well worth a read, I'm very glad I found it.