CBR18 Book 58: "How to Kill Your Rival" by Effie Campbell

Page count: 272 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Thank you to Boldwood Books and NetGalley for this ARC. This has not influenced my review in any way. This book is on sale now.

Eliza Hamilton (yup, that is her name; not sure if the author is a fan of the musical or if the name is a coincidence) is the heir apparent to the Death Council, a secret organisation full of hired killers. While her father is battling cancer, she is to lead in his place, but most of the other members of the Council are sexist old men (or their equally sexist sons), so she's fighting an uphill battle.

In addition to having to fight with the bullheaded Council Members, someone is sabotaging her missions and stealing her kills. She briefly suspects her stepbrother James (her father is married to his mother), but he so vehemently denies it and is so determined to kill whoever's doing it on her behalf that she quickly rules him out. 

James has clearly been madly in love with Eliza for years. Since there are a bunch of references to things that happened in the first book in the series, and I don't know how much of their backstory was established there, the opening of the book was rather abrupt and confusing to me. Trying to impress her and make her notice him has made James compete professionally with Eliza for about as long, and it seems like Eliza's feelings towards him are finally changing. 

As part of an underworld crime syndicate, it's not like Eliza has a lot of people she can trust. It becomes clear that Eliza isn't going to figure out who is targeting her by herself, and James is fiercely protective of her and insists on using all of his computer skills to help her track down whoever is plotting against her. 

The plot summary for this book makes it seem like a rather different story from what we actually get. It makes it seem like there isn't already a very potent attraction between Eliza and James, and that the rivalry between them is a lot more hostile than the playful one-upmanship they have clearly been engaged in for several years. It makes it seem as if they are forced to work together, which is also not the case. Eliza doesn't want to confide in her father, who is ill. Her elder sister isn't in the family business (nevertheless, they have a lovely and very supportive relationship), and she feels too protective of her younger brother to want to involve him. So James is pretty much the only person she can turn to for help, and he would cut his own throat before he in any way betrayed her. 

For the first 15% or so, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep reading. I genuinely don't know if the weird opening chapters would have made more sense if I'd read the first book, but in a series like this, the stories need to be able to be read in any order and make sense to the reader, even if they've not started at the beginning. It probably doesn't help that I was expecting a slightly different story, based on the plot description. 

The book is in dual POVs, with some chapters from Eliza's POV and some from James. At first, I didn't like Eliza at all; she seemed abrasive and too arrogant for me, but thankfully the chapters from James were easier to read, and before I knew it, I wanted to keep reading just to see how the story played out.

Just in case it wasn't obvious from the review so far, this book is a dark romance, with protagonists who are extremely skilled at doing very bad things to people, and seem to get off on it too. It is explained that the Hamiltons (and James, who is married into the family) only take contracts on really despicable people; they don't just off anyone for money, but they still literally murder people for a living, and both James and Eliza torture several people over the course of the book to get answers when they are trying to figure out who is trying to sabotage Eliza. So if you don't like graphic violence mixed in with your romance, this is probably not the book for you.

Not sure if I want to read more from this author or not. Once I got past the clunky beginning, it was a quick read. I just don't know if I'm interested in reading about the other two Hamilton siblings. 

CBR18 Book 57: "Love in the Time of Wildfires" by Janine Amesta

Page count: 284 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to Janine Amesta for the ARC of this book. It is on sale now.

Firefighter Logan "Sonny" Sonelli is a Sierra Hotshot, working hard both to prevent and fight disastrous forest fires. During "fire season", he knows that he can't really make any plans; he and his team could be called away at any moment. It's an unreliable life, and difficult to combine with family life. His marriage dissolved because of it, and he is neither looking for nor expecting to find another relationship. He wants to save as much money as possible to build himself a remote cabin in the woods, where he can live in isolation.

River Alfaro has dreams and ambitions, and none of those involves children or being a housewife, which her former fiancée seemed to expect from her. So, shocking both him and her entire family, she broke up with him and moved to South Lake Tahoe to start a new job and a new life. 

River moves in next door to Logan and uses her positivity and cheery disposition to disarm his pessimism and grumpiness until he comes to accept her friendship. One of River's dreams is to spot an endangered red fox species in the wild, and Logan insists on accompanying her on hikes so she doesn't get lost in the woods. Neither of them is looking for a relationship, but they fall in love despite themselves.

This is my fourth ARC from Janine Amesta, and I have come to really appreciate her writing. She writes realistic, multi-faceted adult characters with believable flaws, who do the best they can in this world. I liked a lot of the supporting characters, especially several of the other Sierra Hotshots who work with Logan (and some will hopefully have their own books later in the series). 

Not wanting children is a major factor in why both River and Logan's previous relationships ended. Logan's ex-wife now has a new man and the baby she always wanted, and it was nice that she could appear in the story without being the heartless shrew who did him wrong. They just wanted different things from life, and Logan's job took him away from home for too much of the time - so they got a divorce. While a lot of River's family members are upset that River dumped her ex and moved away, she also has family who support and understand her, like her sister. 

I know next to nothing about wildlife conservation or firefighting, especially massive forest fires, so it was interesting to learn new things while reading this book. I'm already looking forward to more stories about the Sierra Hotshots. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 56: "Life Out of Order" by Audrey Niffenegger

Page count: 544 pages

Rating: DNF @ 18%. 3 stars for the bits I read

This was an ARC. Thank you to NetGalley and Hanover Square Press. My opinions are entirely my own. This book is on sale now.

In recent years, legacy sequels, coming out several decades after the previous movie, have become popular. Some are surprisingly great, like Creed and Blade Runner 2049, while others make you wonder why they exist in the first place (The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Practical Magic 2: Family Legacy, to name two that I watched over the summer). Life Out of Order comes out 23 years after the mega-successful The Time Traveller's Wife and, as such, I think it's fair to compare it to a legacy sequel. Unfortunately, I can't really tell you whether it's a legacy sequel like the first examples I mentioned, or the second, since I didn't even make it a quarter of the way through the book. 

This time, we follow Alba DeTamble, Clare and Henry's daughter. Like her father, she has chrono-displacement syndrome, which means she is involuntarily thrown back (or sometimes forward) in time to any point in her own lifetime. It makes life very difficult for her, and those close to her. 

According to Goodreads, I haven’t actually read The Time Traveller's Wife since 2011, although I remember really liking it. I rated it five stars. Unfortunately, I don’t remember that much about it anymore, and I no longer remember how I reacted to the fact that the characters are often so jumbled in each other’s timelines. 2011 was long before smartphones and social media, the scourge of reading stamina and deep concentration. All I know is that when I tried to read Life Out of Order now, the fact that every chapter starts with information about the various character’s ages and what year the plot is currently taking place in, got very confusing very fast. It doesn’t help that the book is clearly set in a depressing alternate reality, where society is a lot more fascist than it currently is, and there seems to be something rather cataclysmic coming later in Alba’s life. I kept putting it down and then reluctantly picking it back up again. Sadly, I DNF-d it at 18%. It may be a perfectly good book. It just wasn’t the right one for me at this point in time. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.