#CBR10 Book 13: "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

Page count: 247 pages
Audio book length: 6 hrs 26 mins
Rating: 3.5 stars

I read this book for the first time back in October 2012. My review from back then can be found here. Back then, I rated the book 4 stars and from my write-up, I really appeared to enjoy it.

The first Cannonball Read Book Club of the year was a discussion of this book, since the star-studded movie version, directed by Ava DuVernay will be in cinemas any day now. From the trailers and promotional material, the movie looks like it's going to be visually stunning, and DuVernay has also chosen to make Meg bi-racial, played by newcomer Storm Reid, with the lovely Gugu Mbatha-Raw and best Chris (Pine) playing her father. This book has been a very important novel for a lot of generations of children growing up, by added diversity in the cast, it will now hopefully provide important role models for children of colour (especially girls), by allowing them to recognise themselves in Meg.

I don't know if it was the audio version I listened to this time (I didn't like the way Hope Davis, the narrator, did some of the voices) or whether it was because last time I read the book, I glommed it over just a few hours, while this time, it took me a few days to get though the book, but I liked it somewhat less than I appeared to have done last time. I know that quite a few of the Cannonballers had a hard time getting through, or with enjoying the book. Maybe that coloured my view this time?

When it comes to the "core cast", I think the introduction of Calvin and his obvious infatuation with Meg (despite the fact that they are in different years in school and seem to barely know each other socially) was a bit sudden. This could absolutely have been given more of a build-up, but the storytelling in the whole novel is rather sparse and lacking in detail. The book transitions from one scene/place to another very fast, and I generally feel that there could have been quite a bit more elaboration in the book.

Charles Wallace, Meg's little brother, is a little bit too "other" and while I don't seem to have had any objections to him on my first read, I found him a bit too precocious and quite a bit off-putting this time around. The scene at the end where Meg rescues him from the It is excellent, though.

Meg, our main protagonist, is a rather prickly young woman, and I can see why that would make her unlikable to some. I don't mind her crankiness and occasional rudeness, it frankly feels natural under the circumstances, with the situation she finds herself in. Feeling like an outsider in school, constantly worrying about her mother, questioning the disappearance and long absence of her father. If she'd been mild-mannered and meek and constantly pleasant, that would have felt a lot more wrong.

On revisiting the book, both the strong religious overtones and the very obvious anti-Communist propaganda bothered me. I was speaking to my best friend, who read the book as a girl and never connected with it very much. She grew up in a Christian family, going to Church every Sunday, and still found the “God” bits overly preachy. As someone living in a socialist country, having Communism portrayed as “the ultimate evil” felt really uncomfortable to me. It was a portrayal very much lacking in nuance, understandable due to the political climate when the book was written, but heavy-handed nevertheless.

I really do think the film looks very promising. Of course, now that I have a baby, I'm forced to hope that the Oslo Cinema's offer the movie as a early afternoon baby-friendly screening, otherwise I'll have to wait until it comes out on blu-ray.

Judging a book by its cover: This book really has had so many different covers over the years (some of them profoundly creepy). My favourite might be the 50th anniversary one - this is not it. My book has this cover, with the dark star-studded sky in the middle, and various details from the contents of the book around the edges. The Mrs W, the children's visits to several of the alien planets. It's certainly one of the more child-friendly of the many covers, I think.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 12: "Cream of the Crop" by Alice Clayton

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Natalie Grayson is tall, curvy and confident. She knows that while she may be a bit bigger than a lot of women out there, most men are incredibly attracted both by curves and self-assurance and she can usually walk into a room and hook up with anyone who strikes her fancy. She's got a loving family, an extravagant wardrobe, a bustling social life and a great career as a PR guru. The only thing that makes her even vaguely flustered is her weekly visit to the Union Square farmers market, where she gets her favourite cheese every week, and the owner of Bailey Falls Creamery makes her (and countless others) weak at the knees. Normally, Natalie can wrap any man around her little finger, but around the handsome cheese-maker, she is reduced to palm-sweat and monosyllabic answers.

So when her company is asked to help promote the little town of Bailey Falls to new visitors, Natalie jumps at the chance. One of her best friends, Roxie, is already settled there with her handsome farmer boyfriend and can't wait to formerly introduce her to Oscar Mendoza, the handsome dairy owner who Natalie is crushing so hard on. While their first encounter is a bit awkward, it becomes obvious that Natalie's attraction is entirely mutual, and Oscar wouldn't mind getting to know her better at all. It's not only Oscar's charms (and smoking hot body) that appeal to Natalie. She's thoroughly taken with the small town idyll of Bailey Falls and it's many friendly (and attractive) residents as well. Normally reluctant to leave Manhattan for more than a day, she now finds herself visiting the little Hudson Valley multiple weekends in a row, and not just to sample all the treats that Oscar has to offer. Natalie is very much a city person, however, and Oscar is most certainly a country lad. Can they find a lasting compromise which enables them both to be happy?

I didn't really think that this book had the same emotional depth to it as Nuts,the first book in the series, but it was a quick and enjoyable read. While Natalie is confident, body-positive and bubbly in the present, that wasn't always the case. Falling for a manipulative jerk when she was younger, who slowly but surely isolated her from her family and friends and made her feel awful about herself, she has determined never to let herself be that swayed by a guy again. She's financially independent, she flirts with guys but never really let's it get too serious and she goes to brunch at her parents' flat every Sunday, come rain or shine, because she never wants to fall out with them again. Hence, when her feelings for Oscar start getting serious, she's not sure how to handle it, as she's afraid to "lose herself" to a guy once more.

Another slight complication to Oscar and Natalie's relationship is Oscar's friendship with his ex-wife, who lives in the next town over from Bailey Falls. They knew each other growing up, got married after high school and while their marriage didn't work out, Oscar doesn't understand why he can't be on good terms with her. He helps her out around the house when something is broken, she bakes him delicious treats as a thank you. He doesn't see how this in any way should complicate or get in the way of his new, budding relationship with Natalie, but she's thrown by it more than once (and is met with sympathy and understanding by several of her new Bailey Falls friends - cause it is a bit weird, and they can see why she might feel threatened). Natalie works to get past her jealousy, but it takes a while.

My favourite thing about the Hudson Valley books is probably not even the central romances, but the supporting characters and the setting of Bailey Falls, which really does seem utterly charming. Oscar and Natalie are a fun couple, and it was nice to see Roxie and Leo (as well as his serious young daughter, who has gotten a swear jar in this book, and is well on her way to making a fortune) again as supporting characters. Roxie's high school crush, Chad, the former quarterback and his husband are probably my favourites, though, and I'm sort of sorry I never got to read their initial romance. There is one more book in the series, featuring Roxie and Natalie's third friend, Clara. I'm going to check that book out next.

Judging a book by its cover: It's quite clear that whoever was told to design the cover, hasn't had a chance to read any of the book, as while the dude pouring milk is nicely tan and sculpted, he looks nothing like the description of Oscar, who should have tattoos all over his arms and chest, and with his past as a football player seems like he's a lot more brawny than the dude they've chosen for this cover. According to the author's website, her metal image of him is Jason Momoa. This cover model is NO Jason Momoa. Also, it would have been cooler if they included some cheese on the cover, as Oscar makes his own, but that works less well with the title pun, I guess.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 11: "Unveiled" by Courtney Milan

Page count: 384 pages
Audio book length: 12 hrs 14 mins
Rating: 4.5 stars

A long time ago now, back in April 2011, I first discovered Courtney Milan as an author, having read favourable things about her on various romance review blogs. My original review of this book, can be found here.

Fondly as I remember Ash and Margaret's story, this is not the Turner series book I've revisited most often. According to my records, I've only re-read it once before, back in 2012, so I was very interested to see if it was as good as I remembered. I listened to the book in audio (because I'm still not advanced enough to wrangle my e-reader and feed my child at the same time, certainly not at night). Nicole Quinn has one of those nice, crisp British voices that seems so very suitable for historical romances.

Even after nearly eight years, and with many, many, many more historical romances read, this is a very good book. I read through my original review, and I very much still agree with myself. So many romance heroes are domineering alphas and unrepentant rakes, who seem to think that women should just fall into their beds and can overwhelm with the sheer force of their personality. In these post-#metoo-times, having a hero who's very open and honest about what he wants, but also determined about obtaining clear and enthusiastic consent before he makes a move is encouraging (especially since back in 2011, when this book first came out, that certainly wasn't the norm among romance heroes. To a modern reader, it's also more appealing to read about a man who's not afraid of hard work. In the Victorian age, when these books are set, most of the landed classes came to realise that they couldn't survive merely on the income from their properties alone and society was changing rapidly. Ash is next in line for a dukedom, but has lived through poverty and need and worked since h was fifteen to make his fortune. He's no idle and cosseted fop.

So many of Ms. Milan's books are about clever and capable women who achieve great things, even with the limitations placed on them by the society they live in. Margaret isn't one of these heroines, having lived a sheltered and privileged life as a duke's daughter until Ash's revelations suddenly shook the very foundations of her existence. Even posing as a servant in her childhood home, she's not actually lower class, and never has to suffer true hardship. Being the youngest child of the duke, and being a woman, she's frequently been ignored by the duke an her brothers. She's never been away to school, she's been raised to be a nobleman's wife and a pretty ornament. Now that her legitimacy has been taken away, it's as if she has no worth whatsoever. Ash sees her, all of her, and does his best to build her confidence. He doesn't know that he's speaking to Lady Anna Margaret, youngest daughter to the duke he despises. He believes her to be a low-born nurse, and yet he still wants her to know that she is important, she has value, she should believe in herself. It is thanks to Ash's bolstering of Margaret's confidence that they are able to sort out the complicated tangle and find a happy ending eventually.

At some point this year, Ms Milan will hopefully publish her next historical novel (it's been years since her last one). Until then, I'm going to try to revisit her earlier books in audio format to see what I think about her back catalogue now. This was a very good start to my re-read project.

Judging a book by its cover: This is one of the books that Ms Milan published through Harlequin books, before she decided to do her own thing and self-publish. As such, my book has a somewhat different cover to the "lady in a photo-shopped wedding dress" that she so often employs on her own books. Not that this is all that much more exciting, with your trysting couple both in a state of semi-undress. I like the shades of blue they've used though.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 10: "Making Up" by Lucy Parker

Page count: 330 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer! This was an ARC granted to me through NetGalley. It has in no way influenced my review. 

Beatrix "Trix" Lane may be tiny, but she also used to be fierce and confident and very ambitious. Until her former boyfriend pretty much broke her down entirely and left her a pale shadow of herself. Now that the star of the fancy acrobatic West End show she's in has been possibly permanently damaged after a fall, Trix has a chance at the lead role, but she's no longer sure she's acrobatic or talented enough. To add to her stress levels, the person who annoys her the most in the world, Leo Magasiva, has just been hired on to the show's makeup team.

While he's quite the special effects wizard, Leo Magasiva has career issues of his own, after a very famous film star neglected to disclose an allergy and Leo's makeup job caused a horrible allergic reaction. Leo was fired and blacklisted, and now needs to really prove himself, preferably by winning first prize in the UK SFX makeup artistry championship. He's secured his younger sister an internship with the theatre, but she appears to have had a complete personality transplant after a year in New York and is now behaving like a stuck-up brat and doing her very best to piss off not only Leo, but everyone around her. So having to work in close quarters, and as it turns out, sharing living quarters with Trix Lane, is not exactly his idea of fun.

Trix and Leo used to be friends growing up, until Trix got a scholarship to a fancy boarding school and left Leo behind forever. They nevertheless seemed to run into each other all over the place over the years, constantly sniping and trying to one-up one another. Now, working on the same show and living across the hall from one another, their snarky rivalry is brought to a head, and before long, they've moved from hate to something else entirely. They may have a long history, but is there any chance of a future together? If Leo wins his SFX championship, it means a lucrative contract in LA, while if Trix gets the starring role in The Festival of Masks, she's staying in London indefinitely.

Lucy Parker's Act Like It was one of my favourite romances (and books in general) of 2016, and the follow-up, Pretty Face, was one of the few really memorable romances of all of 2017, and an even better book than the first in the London Celebrities series. So when I saw a tweet from Ms. Parker saying that her new book, Making Up, was available upon request from NetGalley, I requested it immediately and crossed my fingers that I would be lucky enough to be granted a copy. While I read and review a LOT of romance, being granted an ARC was by no means a certainty, as I have a pretty bad track-record with reviewing my NetGalley books before the deadlines. However, the book gods smiled up on me, and even though the book isn't out until the end of May, I have been lucky enough to read it.

Of all of the three Lucy Parker books I've read so far, this is probably the weakest. It has a lot of good thing going for it, but was not as instantly likable to me as Act Like It and it lacked the emotional depth of Pretty Face. It has a lot of the things Ms. Parker does well - a likable cast of characters, great banter, competence porn (both Leo and Trix are very good at what they do, for all that Trix' confidence and self-esteem has been entirely eroded by her d*ck of an ex-boyfriend). I thought the initial conflict between Trix and Leo was solved a little bit too quickly and that the readers could have been given a bit more insight into the situation with Leo's bratty sister earlier in the story, but I liked the book and for those readers who have read and enjoyed Pretty Face, it might be nice to know that there are extended cameos from Trix' best friend Lily and her fiancee Luc, who actually get married in this book. Lucy Parker is a talented enough writer that while I would rank this third of her three books, it's still a very enjoyable read and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 9: "The Hating Game" by Sally Thorne

Page count: 387 pages
Audio book length: 11hrs 29mins
Rating: 5 stars

This is my fourth re-read of The Hating Game, and my original review for the book can be found here. Also this book will contain mild spoilers for the story, so if you haven't read it, drop everything and come back once you have (it's awesome, I promise), you may want to avoid this until then.

It's difficult for me to pinpoint exactly what I find so comforting about this book, but it really does work for me on every level. This was my favourite book of 2016, and I read it three times from early August when it came out until the end of that year. Now, having just had a baby, I spend quite a bit of the dark hours of the night breastfeeding. It's really rather time-consuming and both comforting and rather boring at the same time. As I'm as of yet not really proficient enough to feed my little boy and read on an e-reader (let alone hold a book), having audio books is a blessing, and as I occasionally doze off a bit, it's good to have something familiar and well-known to listen to, rather than something brand new.

As this book is one of my ultimate comfort reads now, it had the honour of being the first audio book I listened to as a mother. Katie Schorr's narration is really good and her voice has now become what I imagine Lucy's must be like. As this was my fourth time through the book, there was nothing really NEW that struck me, except perhaps that Josh really is spectacular and Lucy misses out on so much by not realising sooner 1) just how great he is and 2) that he's madly in love with her.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 8: "A Hope Divided" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Until she was thirteen, Marlie Lynch grew up with her mother, a freed slave and wise woman. After her white father's death, she was taken in by her half-sister and has been able to combine her knowledge of herbs and root magic with scientific principles. Three years into the American Civil War, Marlie and her half-sister are working surreptitiously to aid the cause of the Union, giving aid to runaway slaves and Freedmen, taking medicine and food to imprisoned Union soldiers, and with Marlie sending coded messages about troop movements and the Confederate Home Guard to the Resistance group the Loyal League.

Unfortunately for Marlie and her sister, their various anti-Confederate enterprises are endangered when Marlie's half-brother (and technically the heir) returns home with his unpleasant and racist wife, who is deeply loyal to the Confederate cause, to the point where she offers to let the Home Guard use their estate as their base of operations. While Marlie has always been a free woman, and has been treated more or less as a part of the family, she now sees how little protection she actually has, and how easily she can be ignored and mistreated because of the colour of her skin. Only a few trusted servants know that Marlie is hiding an escaping Union soldier, Ewan McCall in the laboratory in her private quarters. While McCall was imprisoned in the camp nearby, he and Marlie would exchange notes discussing ethics and philosophy. There was an attraction between them even before Marlie came to shelter him from danger in her rooms.

As Marlie's evil sister-in-law grows increasingly more controlling and jealous, and the cruel Captain of the Home Guard turns his eye more closely to Marlie, whose independence and spirit offends him, it becomes clear that Ewan can no longer stay on the Lynch farm and will have to escape. When Marlie's freedom is suddenly threatened as well, she has no choice but to go with him. While Marlie wants to believe that Ewan's feelings for her are true, she's very conflicted because of her own background, a product of the unequal union a slave-owner and her then enslaved mother. Can a relationship with a white man ever really last, no matter how sensitive and philosophical he seems?  Marlie has also dedicated her life to the healing and helping of others; how will she react when she discovers that Ewan was a torturer before he was taken prisoner?

This is the second book in Alyssa Cole's historical romance series The Loyal League, set during the American Civil War. As with the first book in the series, An Extraordinary Union, which I read back in July of last year, A Hope Divided was widely loved and gushed over on several romance review sites I follow. In the first book, we meet spies Malcolm McCall and Elle Burns, who work to bring down the Confederacy once and for all. Ewan McCall, the hero in this book, is Malcolm's younger brother, who clearly doesn't have the social graces of his brother (and frankly comes across as if he may be neuro-atypical). While he doesn't really want to fight, he believes in the Union cause enough that he joined the army, and was quickly discovered to have a knack for interrogation, due to his dispassionate and seemingly unfeeling manner. Ewan seems to have been very good at torture, but it's not something he enjoyed or is proud of, and he feels especially ashamed of having lost control of his temper and emotions when questioning the sadistic Captain of the Home Guard who later comes to plague Marlie's existence. 

Marlie also works for the Loyal League, but in a much less active role than Elle or Malcolm. With her white half-sister and some of their most loyal servants (all freed slaves), they do their best to help runaway slaves and Union soldiers get to the northern states, and Marlie sends coded letters, and feeds and treats wounded imprisoned Union soldiers, but otherwise has lived a very sheltered life on the family's farm. Her skin colour has always kept her from being a fully accepted part of the Lynch family, but she discovers how lucky and privileged her life has been when her half-brother's vicious and prejudiced wife takes control of the household and invites brutal and ruthless Home Guard soldiers to stay in their home. Her status as an intelligent and independent freedwoman and half white means nothing to these people and she grows increasingly more despairing due to their treatment of her.

Ms Cole has clearly done a huge amount of research for these books, and as I personally don't actually know the time period very well, it was very interesting to me to learn about all the various ways many of the people of the Southern states actually worked against the Confederate cause. While the romance between Marlie and Ewan is central to the book, both have a lot of emotional baggage before they are able to commit to anyone else, even before you add in the complications of an illegal bi-racial union. At one point in the story, I was honestly not sure how exactly they were going to find a satisfying HEA together, but I am very glad that they did.

While the first book in the series was good, I think I liked this one even more, and will be excited to see what Alyssa Cole has in store in her next novel (I'm wondering if the next book will be about the third McCall sibling, the sister). 

Judging a book by its cover: Now, this is a lovely cover for a romance novel and I really like it. The cover model portraying our heroine looks confidently out at the reader, surrounded by the herbs and tools of her trade. I cannot speak for the accuracy of her dress (Civil War era America not being one of the historical periods I know a lot about), but there's no unlaced back, nor implausible amounts of skirts (while still showing a remarkable amount of leg). Just a beautiful, confident woman at her work desk. I don't know if Ms. Cole has any say in the choices of these covers (most authors don't), but either way, she's lucked out.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 7: "The Soldier's Scoundrel" by Cat Sebastian

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Jack Turner and his siblings grew up in the slums of London and they have all worked hard to get out from under the criminal enterprises of their parents. Jack's sister is a dressmaker, while his brother seems to keep very posh and rarefied company these days. Jack uses some of the skills he's learned over the years to help women in trouble. He can locate stolen items, deal with blackmail claims, even make an unpleasant husband disappear to somewhere far away - his only rule is that the women who hire him not question his methods, and let him deal with the guilty party, without involving the authorities. His services are not available to gentlemen or nobles of any kind.

So when Oliver Rivington, formerly a captain in his Majesty's army, shows up in Jack's offices, convinced that Jack has to be some sort of con artist who has swindled Oliver's sister out of a large sum of money, Jack wants nothing to do with him. He lets Oliver sit in on an interview with a Mrs Wraxhall, who claims she's being blackmailed and needs Jack's help. Still convinced that Jack Turner is a no-good scoundrel, Oliver takes it upon himself to befriend Mr. Wraxhall, to make sure Turner isn't able to take advantage of the couple, but he soon discovers, like Jack, that there is a lot more to Mrs. Wraxhall's dilemma than first meets the eye and while Oliver doesn't initially approve of the man and his methods, he also can't seem to stay away from him. Jack has no intention of getting involved with some pampered nobleman's son, but as they start investigating the case together, neither of them can deny their attraction.

This is Cat Sebastian's debut, and in the last year, I've seen so many positive reviews of this and her follow-up books on a number of websites. While there are quite a few authors out there who write M/M romance now, many of them self-publish. That Ms. Sebastian's books are actually published by Avon intrigued me (even if the covers of the books are usually quite bad) and when I found this and the sequel on sale, I snapped it up immediately. I've only now found the time to read one, and based on this book, I'm glad to have more to look forward to.

Both Jack and Oliver are well-rounded and interesting characters. Oliver has fought all over Europe during the Napoleonic war, and is thoroughly heart-sick of all the violence and deplorable behaviour he's been witness to. He struggles with a painful leg injury, and until he confronts Jack and gets more and more interested in both the man and his investigation, he's not really had a lot to focus on or care about.

Jack shares his office space and private rooms in a building with his sister, whose dressmaker studio seems to be on the ground floor. They share a servant and eat most of their meals together. It's quite clear that his sister cares deeply for Jack, but worries about him, especially his homosexual proclivities. That's one thing Jack and Oliver have in common, despite being different in so many other ways, not just social status. They both have very caring and possibly surprisingly, for the time period, supportive younger sisters, who don't seem to care with whom they fall in love, even when homosexuality among men was still very much illegal (obviously women couldn't be gay - some women just lived their whole lives as spinsters with other spinster companions - nothing strange going on there).

The plot of the book is quite slow, and while there is a mystery to be solved, it unfolds slowly, with Jack and Oliver travelling around the countryside getting more besotted with one another. It almost felt a bit jarring when the danger gets ramped up rather suddenly towards the end of the book, and there are gunshots and wounds to be tended. This is also one of those stories where one party is so very convinced of their unworthiness of the other that they do everything they can to convince their lover that their union is impossible and it takes far longer than should be necessary for them to actually find their HEA at the end.

I still liked the book a lot, and will eagerly be reading more of Ms. Sebastian's novels in the future.

Judging a book by its cover: I agree with Narfna, my book twin on the internet, that Avon just doesn't seem to know what to do when they have to put two men on the cover instead of the standard pairing of a man and a woman. First of all, neither of the cover models look particularly like anyone inside the book (although that's pretty par the course for any romance). Secondly, they both just look so awkward. If I hadn't seen the book and author raved about on a number of romance review sites, it's unlikely I'd have picked it up on my own.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.