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

Page count: 400 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 15 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Bananas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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

Page count: 235 pages

Rating: 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 2 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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

Page count: 240 pages

Audio book length: 6 hrs 20 mins

Rating: 4 stars

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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

Page count: 364 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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

Page count: 342 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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

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

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

Official book summary (read this in early May):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 29: "Funny Story" by Emily Henry

Page count: 395 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 23 mins

Rating: 5 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Exciting

Daphne used to have the perfect life. Working as a children's librarian, living in a beautiful house with her fiancée Peter, Then, returning from his bachelor party, a shame-faced Peter confesses that he is in fact in love with his best friend Petra, and Daphne has one week to move all her things out of the house (which is owned entirely by Peter). Concluding that Petra's equally dumped boyfriend Miles probably has some free space in his flat, Daphne moves in with him and begins her mental countdown for when she can get out of town. She's not willing to leave until she's pulled up her big end-of-summer Read-a-thon at the library, but she also can't bear the thought of staying in Waning Bay any longer than necessary - forced to witness Peter's new happiness with Petra.

After having to be told off from smoking weed in their shared apartment to dull his heartbreak, Miles turns out to be a pretty great roommate. They barely see each other, and Miles clearly doesn't seem to understand Daphne's need to map out her entire life on a whiteboard wall calendar. He's also the only one who can truly understand how sucky this whole situation is for Daphne. When they receive wedding invitations to Petra and Peter's wedding, they decide that the only thing to do is to get blind drunk. Their night of drunkenness leads to Daphne accepting the wedding invite, and complicating the situation further by telling Peter that Miles is, in fact, her plus one to the wedding, what with them dating now (he calls to reassure her that she doesn't need to come to the wedding if it'll be too painful).

During their drunken night out, Miles also discovers that Daphne is mentally counting down to leave town. He decides to be her tour guide and show her all the awesome things the town and surrounding area have to offer since he doesn't think she should have to uproot herself entirely just because Peter and Petra turned out to be selfish homewreckers. They post some pictures on social media to make their lie about dating one another more believable, and since Waning Bay isn't a very big place, soon most of the residents think they're a couple. 

As their friendship develops and their exes' wedding comes closer, Miles' plan to make Daphne appreciate her new hometown appears to be working. As they spend more time together, they also appear to be falling for one another. But falling in love with her ex-fiancée's new fiancée's ex-boyfriend can't possibly end well?

This is Emily Henry's fifth romance for an adult audience (I've still only read one of her YA books) and while I suspect Book Lovers is still my favourite, this is certainly a close second. I loved it so much that only weeks after finishing it, I got the audio book (as always excellently narrated by Julia Whelan) to re-read it. There are so many things I love about it, but the protagonists are probably on the top of the list. 

Daphne is a wonderful heroine, especially because she's by no means perfect. Having never been able to rely on her father, she and her mother have always been all the more close-knit. Unfortunately, to be able to support them, Daphne's mother had to move around a lot as she got promoted into bigger and better positions. Daphne never really had time to make lasting friends and learned not to get too attached to any of the places they lived. When meeting Peter, she allows herself to start dreaming of a lasting home but also works very hard to be his perfect partner. They spend their spare time doing the things he enjoys, socialising with his friends, eating the food he prefers. Because of this, Daphne is even more adrift when she is dumped shortly before their wedding - she hasn't really thought about what she wants and enjoys. One of the things she also has to completely reassess is her impression of Miles. 

So much of Daphne's impressions come from Peter, who has clearly been both very vocal in his disapproval of Miles, and very restrictive about what parts of the town he has chosen to share with Daphne. She would not be so amazed at all the new places in the town and surrounding area if she'd been encouraged to explore more while she was with Peter, and she wouldn't feel so alone and alienated, desperate to get out of there either. 

While Book Lovers is probably still my most favourite, Miles is absolutely my favourite Emily Henry romance hero. He reminds me a lot of Levi from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, and that is NOT a bad thing. Levi is one of the swooniest characters ever. Miles' cheerful and outgoing nature, his friendliness and positive attitude (almost toxic positivity as we discover later), and the way everyone can't help but fall a little bit in love with him - very Levi. Miles has a lot more self-doubt and angst, though, and Petra choosing Peter over him certainly doesn't help. 

One of the many things I love about him is the way he's there for his sister Julia and I'm glad they finally talk through their issues in the end, so he can forgive himself for his believed abandonment of her in her childhood and allow her to care for him as much as he cares for her. Julia is one of the very enjoyable supporting characters, even though she also appears to be chaos in human form. The other really great supporting character that really adds to the excellence of the book is Ashley, Daphne's fellow librarian, a seemingly grouchy single mother who unlike Daphne (who seems to want to avoid anything uncomfortable and confrontational) is unafraid to tell people exactly what she thinks. Having moved around so much growing up, it's quite clear that Daphne has barely managed to make any lasting friends, so the new connections she makes with Miles, Julia and Ashley are all significant.

It's not like we get to know Peter much before he shows up and crushes our Daphne's heart. He really is a self-centred, stuck-up idiot. He eventually explains why he acted the way he did by replacing Daphne with Petra, and the whole thing is just laughable. The fact that he assumes that there is a chance he could be forgiven and that Daphne would take him back - the audacity! Even if Daphne hadn't found someone much better and more deserving of her in Miles, she would be absolutely insane to take him back after the things he put her through. Petra seems pretty bad as well, but she also seems to have fallen victim to Peter's desperate attempts to have his cake and eat it too. Both of them and their well-meaning, but clearly secretly judgemental families can go to the devil. 

This is absolutely delightful and exceeded my already high expectations. By now, Henry is not only an auto-buy author for me, I pre-order her books months in advance. I own all of her romances in paperback and have acquired most of them in audio as well (I love re-reading books through audio). Now I just have to see what she comes up with next.

Judging a book by its cover: The cover shows Daphne and Miles drowning their sorrows at a local bar, and the postures of both of them are so well-done. While cartoony, they really capture the essences of the characters. Cover Miles is even wearing crocs. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Book 28: "What is Love?" by Jen Comfort

Page count: 345 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Games

Straight-laced university professor Teddy Ferguson has had a record-long stint of victories on the popular trivia game show Answers! when his confidence and entire existence are rocked by the appearance of the beautiful and confident Maxine Hart. She ruins his pre-show ritual by eating a specific doughnut by stealing it directly in front of him, taking one bite and then throwing it in the trash. One very memorable kiss and the fact that Maxine completely obliterates him on the game show means Teddy can never forget her. He can't believe that he was beaten by a self-taught, smart-mouthed high school dropout with ADHD. 

They don't see each other again until it's been over a year, when Maxine and Teddy have both been invited to compete in a special high-stakes tournament, featuring the only undefeated champion of the show, Hercules McKnight. Teddy persuades Maxine to take part, but both need to improve their weak areas (Teddy is far too cautious when gambling on categories, and Maxine has a lot of gaps in her knowledge base) and Maxine declares that they will train together. She unceremoniously shows up at his house in New Jersey with most of her worldly possessions, including her pet snake.

Maxine's entire way of living is chaotic and impulsive, while Teddy thrives on order and routine. Nevertheless, in the weeks before the tournament, they manage to find methods to assist and train the other. Among other things, Maxine takes Teddy sky-diving, to make him face some of his fears, and Teddy devises some very creative ways of making Maxine learn in a way that ensures that potentially boring facts will be burned in her memory. The sizzling chemistry they experienced during their first encounter means they can't live and work together in close quarters without eventually acting on their mutual attraction - but can their romance survive when both are determined to be the all-time winner of the Answers! tournament?

Because I finished this book towards the end of April and have been dreadfully negligent with getting my reviews written, I no longer remember in detail all the reasons why this is a five-star read to me. Chaotic and seemingly disorganised meets ordered and buttoned up (until it reaches a certain point and they always turn out to be incredibly passionate) is a trope that tends to work for me, and Maxine and Teddy were both so much fun to spend time with. I loved them individually and as a couple and wanted only great things for them.

I liked the preparation for the trivia contest and learned a whole bunch of cool stuff over the course of the book. That's never a bad thing. I had fairly high expectations for the book since my friend Rochelle/Emmalita gave it a rave review back in March. If she loves a book, I'm unlikely not to love it too. This was my first Jen Comfort novel, but it certainly won't be my last. 

Judging a book by its cover: A fairly simple, but quite cute cover, with bright, cheerful colours. The two people standing by gaming podiums are both wearing things the protagonists are described as wearing at various points in the novel, so that works too. While headless cover models is sometimes off-putting, I kind of like it here. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Book 27: "In Memoriam" by Alice Winn

Page count: 379 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Liberate (our protagonists are fighting in World War I to keep the world safe from the Germans)

Official plot summary, because I finished this book in early April:

It's 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, Gaunt signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.

The front is horrific, of course, and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him, spurred on by his love of Greek heroes and romantic poetry. Before long, their classmates have followed suit. Once in the trenches, Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, but their friends are all dying, right in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.

I read about this in a book review in a Norwegian newspaper months and months ago and thought it sounded interesting. I put myself on the waiting list for it and completely forgot about it until my hold came in, and I had to actually look up why I'd wanted to read this book in the first place. Two public school boys who secretly love one another and can't realise their feelings for each other until they're also soldiers in the First World War? Well, that sounds like a laugh fest, doesn't it? 

Obviously, this book is utterly harrowing and made me cry a bunch of times. Throughout the book, there are fictional snippets of the school newspaper from the boarding school Gaunt and Ellwood attended, which include lists of the fallen and injured, and looking at the ages of most of them (very few over the age of 25) is just heartbreaking. Because the world is a depressing and terrible place, I tend to read a lot of light-hearted escapism. This certainly wasn't that. It is a beautiful novel, though, showing so much of the banality of war and how utterly awful trench warfare was. Ellwood and Gaunt were wonderful protagonists, and it was very difficult not to get attached to them, and a number of their friends and acquaintances, most of whom die horribly over the course of the novel. I'm not going to lie, I actually had to peek at the final pages of the book to see if both protagonists survived, just so I wouldn't be too emotionally compromised if one of them didn't make it. I'm not going to spoil here what the outcome is - you'll have to read the book for yourself. 

It's remarkable to me that this is a debut novel. Maybe it's deeply unoriginal and derivative if you've read a ton of novels set during World War I, but I haven't, so to me, this was beautiful, and difficult to put down (even when I wanted to, because if I wasn't reading, then characters couldn't keep dying) and very sad. I highly recommend it. The young men in this are clearly fictional, but they are also obviously modelled on actual men who sacrificed so much. Now I'm going back to closing my eyes tight and holding my hands over my ears going la-la-la-la-la with regard to all the horrifying conflicts currently happening right now in various parts of the world, because my sanity can only take so much. 

Judging a book by its cover: This is the cover of the book I got from the library, and I just don't think it in any way captures anything about what this book is about. This looks like it's a book about young men who work in the stock exchange or something, not a harrowing tale of bravery, camaraderie, trauma, and love during the First World War. There is another cover of the book in black and white, with the bombs flying over the battlefield looking almost like fireworks which is very striking and evokes the feel and content of the book so much more.  

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 26: "A Grave Robbery" by Deanna Raybourn

Page count: 336 pages

Rating: 4 stars

This is book 9 in an ongoing series, and as such, not the best place to start. Start with A Curious Beginning. 

Official plot summary (because it's been too long since I read the book):

Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why?

Sleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. From the underground laboratories of scientists experimenting with electricity to resurrect the dead in the vein of Frankenstein to the traveling show where Stoker once toured as an attraction, the gaslit atmosphere of London in October is the perfect setting for this investigation into the unknown. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain—a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved. Will they unmask him in time to save his next victim? Or will they become the latest figures to be immortalized in his collection of horrors?

As the summary says, in this book, Veronica and Stoker try to track down the identity of the unfortunate young woman who has died (most likely been murdered), after they discover that the wax figure that their employer Lord Rosemorran recently purchased is, in fact, an embalmed corpse. Their investigation also makes use of intrepid lady reporter J.J. Butterworth, and Inspector Mornaday of the Scotland Yard, who are always entertaining supporting characters. There are also some entertaining appearances of Lord Rosemorran's autocratic daughter, who is a lot of fun, and for the most part, avoids being a tiresome plot moppet. 

In my review of A Sinister Revenge, the previous book and my least favourite so far in the series, I found Veronica mostly really annoying and I didn't like that she and Stoker spent most of the book separated. Happily, they have now reconciled and are doing much better as a couple, and actually investigate the murder, and eventually murders, of this novel together. They bumble about rather a lot, and there are plans of theirs that don't exactly go according to plan, but their teamwork and chemistry are back to where it was in earlier books in the series, and I was entertained enough that I will absolutely be sticking with the series for another book or two. 

Judging a book by its cover: Nice spooky red as the major colour on this cover. The little silhouette of Veronica keeps holding a butterfly net, even in locations where she clearly isn't doing any lepidoptery, like a graveyard. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 25: "Delilah Green Doesn't Care" by Ashley Herring Blake

Page count: 375 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: Book with a LGBTQIA+ author and main character

CBR16 Sweet Books: New (author and series)

CBR16 Book Bingo: Pride

Delilah Green grew up in Bright Falls, in the care of her wealthy, but emotionally cold stepmother (after her father died), and never managed to forge a connection to her always perfect stepsister Astrid either. Astrid had her two best friends, Claire and Iris, and more than once Delilah overheard them saying mean things about her. When she got the chance, she left Bright Falls for New York and has rarely been back since. She lives for her photography, and after many years, her career finally seems to be taking off. 

But now Astrid is getting married and insists on having Delilah be the wedding photographer. The promise of a very large paycheck and heaping on a fair amount of emotional blackmail means Delilah can't really say no. Imagine her surprise, when on her first night back, she's propositioned at the local bar by none other than Astrid's BFF Claire, who doesn't even recognise Delilah at first. Suddenly the next few weeks before the wedding are looking more entertaining, and if she manages to piss off Astrid by seducing her friend, so much the better. 

Claire Sutherland has been a single mother for most of her eleven-year-old daughter's life. The girl's father has proven unreliable and is more often than not away. So Claire runs the Bright Falls bookstore and tries to provide stability and order to both her daughter's and her own life. She doesn't like the man her best friend is engaged to, and really needs to get laid. So she takes a challenge from her friend Iris to approach an interesting-looking woman at the bar, and is rather shocked when she realises it's Delilah that she's hit on. 

While Claire tries to resist Delilah, spending more time with her as an adult shows Claire that while they grew up in the same town, and Claire and Iris spent a lot of time in the same house as Delilah and Astrid, they never really knew Delilah, and certainly not who she has made herself into after she left town. Since the guy Astrid is marrying is absolutely awful, Claire, Iris and Delilah agree to team up to make Astrid come to her senses and call off the wedding, which obviously means spending more time together during the wedding preparations. What's the harm in spending some alone time with Delilah at night as well? 

I'm not sure why it took me so long to read this book. I'd heard great things about it on so many corners of the internet. As so often happens, I bought it in an e-book sale and then got distracted by something else tempting and shining on my insurmountable TBR-list. The Nowhere Book Bingo gave me an excuse to read the book, and thanks to my complete inability to keep up with my review backlog, I'm now also able to use it to fulfil the "Pride" square for the Cannonball Read 16 Bingo card as well. Being slow sometimes pays off. 

I really liked most things about this book, and probably Claire most of all. She's a hard-working single mother, who had a kid before she was really ready for it, with a man who certainly wasn't ready for fatherhood or commitment. She runs a bookstore and doesn't want to start anything that might ruin the stability of her daughter's life. She's kind and loyal, and once Delilah actually lets her in a bit, she understands how much she, Astrid and Iris misunderstood Delilah when they were growing up. 

Delilah has not had an easy life and is definitely prickly and slow to trust because of it. Having lost both her biological parents at an early age, with the only parental figure left to her being Astrid's cold and callous mother, she has developed a "leave them before they can leave you" attitude, and all her sexual conquests are purely of a temporary nature (usually only one-night-stands). Having worked hard to become a recognised photographer, she is presented with an excellent career opportunity at the start of this book, which is complicated by her promise to Astrid to photograph the upcoming wedding.

Astrid initially seems like a perfectionist ice queen, but as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the rejection Delilah felt growing up wasn't necessarily one-way. Delilah was just too caught up in her own feelings to notice Astrid's attempts at reaching out to her stepsister, and if she'd been a bit more willing to speak to her sister as an adult, a lot of the negative feelings between them could have been resolved with a conversation or two.

The secondary plot of this novel is all about how Delilah, Claire and Iris decide to team up to show Astrid what an absolute douché-canoe her fiancé is, through a series of elaborate plots. As the second book in the series seems to have Astrid finding love with someone NOT her horrible boyfriend in this one, I was pretty sure their scheme would probably meet with success eventually. 

I really liked this, but didn't feel I could give it a full five stars, mainly because of how much of the plot could have been resolved by some frank conversations between some of the characters, be it Delilah and Claire or Delilah and Astrid. Situations like that always frustrate me. Nevertheless, this was a really enjoyable book, and I'm looking forward to reading Astrid and Iris' stories at a future date. 

Judging a book by its cover: In a world with so many dreadful book covers, Leni Kaufman keeps knocking it out of the park, and she always draws really good representations of the actual characters in the book. Delilah and Claire both look absolutely phenomenal here and the hand-holding is so cute. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR16 Book 24: "The Late Mrs Willougby" by Claudia Gray

Page count: 390 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Miss Juliet Tilney goes to visit her friend Marianne Brandon in her charming home in Devonshire. They haven't seen one another since the rather unfortunate house party where Mr Wickham was murdered, and Miss Tilney and young Jonathan Darcy managed to discover who killed him. 

Jonathan Darcy finds himself the rather reluctant houseguest of a former school bully, Mr. Willoughby. He goes to see him so as to not make his parents constantly worry about his lack of friends, but is rather miserable until he discovers that Miss Juliet Tilney is also in the village, visiting the Brandons. 

During the dinner party meant to welcome her to the neighbourhood, Mrs. Willoughby drops dead, clearly poisoned. Malicious gossips seem convinced that Marianne Brandon, did the deed out of jealousy and some sort of misguided attempt to get back together with him. She was, after all, openly and passionately in love with Willoughby and nearly died from the heartbreak when he jilted her to marry his now-dead wife. Juliet and Jonathan, however, are convinced of her innocence and decide to once again investigate a murder, to ensure Mrs. Brandon isn't sent to the gallows because of malicious rumours. As their investigation progresses, there are other strange occurrences, that suggest the murderer may not be done yet - are Jonathan and Juliet also in danger?

The Austen fan fic continues, but this time Ms. Gray hasn't included characters from literally every single published Austen novel. This second Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney mystery focuses more on various characters faithful readers will remember from Sense and Sensibility. Elinor Ferrars is happily married to her Edward, and very close to giving birth to their first child. They are still estranged from his snobbish mother but hope that the arrival of the child might make the old matriarch soften her feelings towards him, even though she disapproves of his chosen wife. Colonel Brandon's ward (Jonathan Darcy's cousin, as she's the illegitimate child of Mr. Wickham) now also lives in the village, and may have her own reasons for wanting Willougby to be widowed. 

The book obviously invents a backstory where Jonathan Darcy and Willoughby went to school together, and it's not really a surprise to anyone that Willoughby would have been a merciless bully. Also invited are another couple of school friends, one of whom seems to have had a history with the now-deceased Mrs. Willoughby, and a charming young man with a solid grasp of chemistry who offers to aid Darcy and Miss Tilney in their investigation, once he discovers what they are about. Jonathan may be socially inept, but even he notices that his friend seems interested in Miss Tilney. Spending more time with her has made it pretty obvious to Jonathan that he likes Juliet as more than a friend, but as he is unsure whether she returns his feelings, he's far too reserved to confess his infatuation. 

Gray is an imaginative and engaging writer, and her cast of characters actually feel like they have stepped out of the pages of an Austen novel. Both Jonathan and Juliet are engaging protagonists, and I understand that both for storyline reasons, and the conventions of the time, Gray needs to create obstacles to stand in the way of their eventual happy ending. But I'm not going to lie, I was ready to figuratively lock them in a room and scream "Just kiss already!" at the end of this. So if they don't get together at the end of the next one (which apparently involves them trying to figure out who wants to murder Lady Catherine de Bourgh), I will be extremely vexed. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not really sure what is going on with the perspective on this cover. The silhouettes are all well and good, but poor Mrs. Willoughby hasn't just been murdered, she looks as if she has been squashed flat by a steamroller. Such indignity in death. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 23: "The Murder of Mr. Wickham" by Claudia Gray

Page count: 320 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 3 mins

Mr. Knightley and his wife, Emma (formerly Miss Woodhouse), have been happily married for several years. They are inviting a number of friends to a houseparty; Mr. and Mrs Darcy of Pemberley with their son Jonathan, Colonel and Mrs. Brandon (no children yet, as they are very newly married), Captain and Mrs. Wentworth,  Edmund and Fanny Bertram and Miss Juliet Tilney, daughter of  Henry and Catherine Tilney. Unfortunately, they also receive an unexpected and unwanted addition to the party, Mr Wickham, who has unfinished business with several of the members there. The Knightleys would love nothing more than to send him away, but stormy weather forces them to give him accommodation.

As well as a complicated family history with some of the guests, other members of the houseparty or their close family are now in debt to Mr Wickham, and there are tensions and a lot of awkwardness. Then the loathsome Mr Wickham turns up dead, clearly murdered. The officers investigating seem convinced the guilty party is one of the servants, but Jonathan Darcy and Miss Juliet Tilney, are convinced the real killer is one of the other guests. Miss Tinley is the only one who didn't have any prior connection to the murder victim and Jonathan Darcy is Mr. Wickham's nephew. They conclude that since they are likely the only ones who couldn't have killed him, they should investigate and try to figure out who actually murdered the avaricious and unpleasant Mr Wickham before some innocent servant is hanged for the crime. 

As their investigation progresses, it turns out that Mr. Wickham was possibly even more despicable than previously suspected, and would happily engage in blackmail as well as dodgy business practices that made others lose their savings. Pretty much everyone at the house party seems to have had a motive to kill the man. Jonathan Darcy is also pleased to discover that Miss Juliet doesn't seem worried about or affected by his rather unusual behaviour - he is somewhat lacking in traditional social graces.

This is high-level Jane Austen fan fiction, published as a historical murder mystery. Gray speculates what the lives of various popular Austen characters might be like after the romantic stories in each of their novels ended. To someone like me, who has read and greatly enjoyed, most of Austen's books (Not you, Mansfield Park, never you), it was fun to revisit these characters and see where Gray has imagined them ending up. Edmund Bertram is still rather boring and his wife Fanny is about as interesting as plain bread, but even their subplot ended up being interesting to me. 

Jonathan Darcy is clearly written as neurodivergent and struggles with social interactions. His family know him and make allowances for his sometimes odd behaviour, but in a new place with new people, especially one as tense and occasionally awkward as the aftermath of a murder, he struggles to conform. He manages to be open about his challenges to his new friend Juliet, who doesn't seem to be scared or put off by it and they become close friends over the course of the investigation, even when the case starts looking more complicated. 

I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by Billie Fulford-Brown. She has a pleasant voice and manages to differentiate the various characters well. The only other book by Claudia Gray I've read was A Thousand Pieces of You, back in 2017. It was fine, but not very memorable, and I never got around to reading the second and third book in the trilogy. This book, on the other hand, was a fun and entertaining read, and I pretty much instantly wanted the sequel (see my next review) I am also very excited about the third book, where we are graced with the presence of the formidable Lady Catherine DeBourgh).

Judging a book by its cover: I like the simple, but evocative cover art style. The manor house, the various silhouettes in the window, and the lightning bolts. I question how there can be a fierce lightning storm and a visible crescent moon at the same time, though. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 22: "Chilling Effect" by Valerie Valdes

Page count: 464 pages

Rating: 3 stars

From the official plot summary:

Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. 

The tagline for this book is "Kidnappers. Alien Emperors. Psychic cats. And she's out of coffee." Two of these things apply to the plot of this book, but only one of them is really central to the story. Like my book club's choice for January, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this is a book that falsely promises cats and doesn't deliver. Eva also never seems to run out of coffee, so why this was even added is a mystery to me. 

This book was pretty much a hot mess. It's the author's debut novel, which I guess might explain the uneven story structure and the exhaustive amount of plot twists a bit. One of the main plotlines is indeed that Captain Innocente's sister has been kidnapped, which means she has to go on a variety of mini-quests in the first third of the book. Several of my book club members mentioned that this book may have started as Mass Effect fan fiction because so many of the elements are similar. The many many early side quests certainly feel like something out of a game. Unlike in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, there were at least cats in this book. A load of them, although only one seems to feature prominently. Sadly, however, these cats barely appear after the first chapter. There is also an intergalactic alien emperor who inexplicably gets obsessed with Captain Innocente, and stalks her across much of the universe, determined to capture her and add her to her harem (they literally meet for a brief moment in a bar - it's genuinely baffling what his obsession is based on). 

The many side quests do allow the author to show a lot of different alien locations, and it feels very realistic that not everything is uniform and samey in space. There are also many different kinds of aliens, not everyone is humanoid. Although it did make it harder to picture certain individuals (what the heck are palps?)

While I don't regret the time I spent reading the book, there are a lot of things that annoyed me. The story is very slow to start and the story structure is very uneven. Every time you think you know what's going on, the story suddenly takes a drastic turn, and it seems like the author has tried to cram three different books' worth of plot into one book. There's the kidnapping and attempted rescue plot, the subplot of the obsessive emperor stalking her and wreaking destruction wherever he shows up. Then things massively change and she has to find her missing ship and scattered crew, and when it feels like the main story has come to a natural end, they suddenly have to go off and recover alien artefacts. 

There also isn't really any characterisation for any character except Eva and Vakar (and even his came late enough in the book that I'm not sure it counts). It's fun with a crew of varied individuals, but since we found out very little about them, I didn't care all that much about what happened to them. Additionally, I'm all for flawed characters, but Eva was a trainwreck (and not in a fun way) and should have confided in her crew way before she did. I genuinely didn't see why anyone liked her, and she was so reluctant to trust anyone that I have no idea why her crew felt any friendship or loyalty towards her. , I didn't really care what happened to her either, and that's pretty bad when she's the main character.

On the other hand, it certainly wasn't predictable - jumping around and switching directions so many times. Since I've never played Mass Effect, I didn't get annoyed by all the blatant video game references. The general consensus in my book club is that the book was ok, but nothing great. No one really seemed very inclined to read the sequels, and the one member who had read them said that the writing style didn't get all that much better and the structure of the sequels continued to be a bit all over the place. 

Judging a book by its cover: OK, I'll give the cover designer points for the portal, which does in fact play an important part in the final part of the novel. Cute cats are also a plus, even though they sadly don't feature all that much in the plot. I like the blue and violet shades, it's an attractive cover, but having now finished the book, it doesn't really fit with the story we get inside. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Book 21: "Role Playing" by Cathy Yardley

Page count: 331 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Cozy

48-year-old Maggie's son has recently moved away to college and now she's stuck in the big house she got in the divorce some years earlier, in a town where she barely knows anyone. She's unapologetically grumpy and doesn't actually want to expand her social circle. She worries about her son in college, however, and keeps trying to challenge him to socialise and make friends. He turns the table on her and demands that she do the same. She has absolutely nothing in common with the women her own age, but reluctantly goes to a couple of parties to be able to send her son pictures as "proof."

50-year-old Aiden moved back to his home town to take care of his ailing father, and now that his father has passed, he is trying to care for his demanding mother, without much help from his brother (who also happened to marry Aiden's ex-fiancee after dumping Aiden rather spectacularly once she discovered some things about him that she didn't like). Aiden blows off steam by running a guild in an online roleplaying game, and when Maggie joins, they strike up a friendship. Due to a series of misunderstandings, Aiden thinks Maggie is a senior citizen (it doesn't help that she keeps saying she's old enough to be his mother). Maggie does think she's old enough to be Aiden's mother, since she believes him to be a twenty-something community college student. 

Because of this misunderstanding about their respective ages, even when their online chats take a more flirty direction, neither are seriously considering actually doing anything about it. When they eventually do meet, and realise that they're age-appropriate for one another, there is still complicated emotional baggage in both of their pasts that make taking a new chance at love and a relationship a very tricky thing. 

This book came highly recommended by two people whose opinions about books I always trust, narfna and Emmalita, because they rarely, if ever, steer me wrong. Both were very complimentary about this book, and they were not wrong. Both Maggie and Aiden are great characters, and now that I'm a lot closer to 50 than to 30, it's not the norm to find romance novel progagonists my age. It's nice to read about people who have actually lived a little before finding their HEAs.

I almost wholeheartedly loved this, but the whole complication surrounding Aiden's ex-fiancee, now sister-in-law just got a bit too melodramatic. The whole thing felt too over the top, and hence I am withholding half a start. That's not to say that I might not upgrade the book upon a re-read (that frequently happens). This is my first Cathy Yardley novel, but it clearly won't be my last (for one thing, I own several of her earlier books, and do need to keep chipping away on that TBR list). 

Judging a book by its cover: I'm sure Leni Kaufman might make bad romance covers, but I have yet to see one. This cover is so pretty, and she's captured the characters so well. Everything about it screams cozy. I also really like using the full moon as the O in the title. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR Book 20: "The Prisoner's Throne" by Holly Black

Page count: 496 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Excited (this is one of my most anticipated releases in the first half of the year)

This book really doesn't stand alone. It is the second half of a duology that started with The Stolen Heir, which came out last year. If you haven't read that one, it's probably best to skip this review and return once you've caught up. 

Prince Oak, heir to the throne of Elfhame, finds himself a prisoner in the dungeons of Queen Suren (or Wren, as he prefers to call her), and knows that if he doesn't get himself out quickly, his temperamental sister Jude and her husband Cardan, the High Queen and King of Elfhame will react very badly indeed, and probably obliterate anyone standing in the way of their army on the way to retrieve Oak. 

There's also the pesky complication that Oak truly loves Suren/Wren and understands entirely why she feels betrayed by him, and like she can't trust him. Nevertheless, he wants to prove himself to her, and make sure she's not being taken advantage of by the wicked hag who has appointed herself Suren's chief advisor and clearly has some sort of very devious revenge plot against the royal family of Elfhame brewing. 

Can Oak escape Suren/Wren's dungeons, prevent a war, convince his beloved that he truly would like to spend the rest of his days with her (but he'd rather not have to be king of anything, please, how are they going to square that with her now being Queen of her own realm?) and prevent wicked forces from using Suren/Wren for their own ends, possibly destroying her in the process?

I love Holly Black. She has yet to write a book that I didn't at least enjoy. Are Suren/Wren and Oak's courtship and journey towards their eventual happy ending as twisted and at times exhausting as Jude and Cardan's in The Folk of the Air trilogy. Thankfully no, those two psychos are their own special brand of crazy (and I love them so), but that doesn't mean that their relationship doesn't face formidable challenges. 

The storytelling in this book was a bit messy, it's a rather convoluted plot, and I'm not sure it was a great idea to have this be single POV. I get that it's all about secrets and deceptions, and plot twists throughout, but I think both this and The Stolen Heir might have been better with dual POVs, this one in particular. 

Black's world-building is excellent and it's always a joy to see how her fertile imagination depicts the intricacies of the various Faerie kingdoms. Suren/Wren's wintery northern kingdom is a very different place to where Oak has grown up, and as someone from a Nordic country, it's fun to see references to more of the Norse fae. 

While we got a small cameo from Madoc in the previous book, but only mentions of Jude and Cardan, so it was great to get more of Oak's family this time around, to see Jude, Cardan, Taryn and even Oriana and Madoc in a different setting and situation than in the previous books. They deeply care for one another, but have such trouble expressing those feelings. There's rich potention for some really juicy group therapy sessions in the Greenbriar line, and among Madoc's three daughters. 

This book seems to end on a fairly closed note, but if Black wants to revisit her characters further, a novella from Jude and Cardan's possibly expedition to the Undersea realm could be a lot of fun. 

Judging a book by its cover: Like the cover for the previous book in the duology, this cover is dominated by white. There's a lot of icicles, considering Wren's wintery home, and the ring plays a prominent role in the story. I'm generally not as big a fan of these as the ones for the Folk of the Air trilogy about Cardan and Jude. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 19: "En enda hemlighet" (Falling) by Simona Arhnstedt

Page count: 509 pages

Rating: 4 stars

The readers met both the protagonists in this novel briefly in the first book in the series, En enda natt, which is also where they first ran into each other. 

At the beginning of this book, idealistic doctor Isobel Sørensen is angry and stressed because the organisation she works for most of the year, Medpax, is struggling for funds, and she's becoming convinced that it's her fault. On the previous occasions when she has run into Alexander de la Grip and he's tried to flirt with her (he seems to attempt to charm and flirt with every woman he meets), she has been very rudely dismissive of him. Now she's worried that the pampered playboy has decided to withdraw the annual contribution he used to give Medpax. Her boss doesn't really care what reasons Isobel might have for disliking Alexander, or frankly whether he's the devil himself. She orders Isobel to arrange a meeting with him, and be polite, pleasant and make sure he starts donating money again. 

As it turns out, Alexander de la Grip has not stopped the money because he feels insulted or snubbed by Isobel, he's just been dealing with his personal demons by trying to drown them in alcohol and casual sex, and he hasn't been monitoring his many business ventures very well for the past six months to a year. He's rather amused at Isobel's sudden change in behaviour towards him. He promises to make sure his money people start paying the organization again, and tempts Isobel to go on a date with him by promising an additional (ridiculously large) donation. 

Once Alexander decides to clean up his life and make something of himself to be worthy of Isobel, he does so very quickly indeed. Once Isobel actually gives him the time of day and starts talking to him, she discovers that her snap judgements of him have been unfair, and that there is a lot more to Alexander than his looks, wealth and seeming carelessness. Once she starts uncovering the real man, she can't help but be drawn to him. But Alexander isn't the only one with emotional baggage, and strong mutual physical attraction isn't going to be enough for them to build a lasting relationship. 

As I'm sure you can tell from my rather uninspired plot summary, there is a lot of 'come here, go away' (thanks, Mrs. J) in this book, and both protagonists have a lot of emotional baggage that makes it difficult for them to trust, commit, or believe themselves worthy of love. 

Alexander deals with his terrible parents' coldness by being an international playboy/manwhore and being seen publicly drunk in the press as often as possible, preferably with one or two socialite bimbos surrounding him. Nevertheless, he is also revealed to be extremely intelligent, able to read up and learn about pretty much any subject very quickly when he sets his mind to it. He's also apparently a gazillionaire, having invested early in tech and app development, not to mention his best friend's restaurant ventures, and now he can just keep raking in cash (and spending it . Due to his many trust issues, and his self-esteem issues, he doesn't want anyone to know about this side of him, not even his sister whom he loves and respects, and certainly not the clever doctor he's falling for. Just like no one suspects charming and slightly indifferent to anything serious billionaire Bruce Wayne of being dour vigilante Batman, absolutely no one would suspect international playboy Alexander de la Grip of being extremely clever and a secret philantropist. 

Isobel has severe mommy issues, having been raised by her grandmother while her narcissistic mother and withholding father were off doing their own things. Since both her grandfather and her mother were skilled doctors who devoted their lives to foreign aid work and rescue operations in far-flung places, Isobel was never going to be able to choose another career, but nevertheless defied her mother by joining MSF and working for a pittance most of the time, doing a lot less of the schmoozing with rich people to collect funds and a lot more of traveling to dangerous places to provide medical assistance to those who have nothing. She also secretly dreams of kinky things like BDSM, but feels like a freak for wanting what seems to be fairly low-level kink stuff. Being tied up and spanked isn't that far off the vanilla path, but from her reluctance to share her fantasies, you'd think she wanted something much more unusual. 

This book is long and meandering and also deals with Alexander's depressed older brother's atonement for the bad shit he did as a teenager and his possible redemption. He is falling in love with his family's former cleaning lady, who also happens to be much younger than him and a very hard-working immigrant, so there's an age gap and a massive class difference to consider. Åsa and Michel, who spent most of the last novel avoiding one another before suddenly realising their feelings for one another towards the end, are now getting married in a massive society wedding in Stockholm (Alexander brings Isobel as his date). We also get to see more of Natalia and David, and what seems to be their ridiculously happy home life. This book is over 500 pages long, and could have benefitted from an editor to trim some storylines. 

Spoiler! Skip this paragraph if you want to remain unspoiled

What this text certainly did not need was a last-minute (like last 40 pages or so) kidnapping drama with Isobel in danger and Alexander throwing tons of money at mercenaries to get her rescued (and getting himself shot in the process). Not sure that was the best way to resolve their final act breakup.

End spoiler

This is my second Arhnstedt novel, and I'm enjoying it. There's only one book left in this series, and it seems to focus on the security expert who helps Alexander towards the end of the book (and who's believed to be dead by everyone), so it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out.

Judging a book by its cover: While the green colour of the dress is lovely and the model has a wealth of red hair that makes it obvious that this is supposed to be Isobel, I hate the partially-cropped head view, and there's something about the torso on the woman that just looks awkward to me. Not sure why. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read