CBR16 Book 1: "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Page count: 224 pages

Rating: 1.5 stars 

Warning! This review will contain spoilers, because after my book club discussion yesterday, I'm actually quite cranky about this book, and it's impossible for me to rant properly if I can't spoil the heck out of these stories. Don't worry, you don't actually want to read this book anyway.

In a small, dark basement café in Japan, visitors can travel briefly back in time, if they observe a series of very careful rules.

1. They can only go back to meet and interact with someone who has also been to the café. 
2. Nothing that happens in the past will change the present. No matter what they go back to do or say, the present will remain unchanged
3. They have to sit in one specific seat in the café. This seat is usually occupied by a silent lady reading a book. The lady is in fact a ghost, and if you try to forcefully move her, she will place a curse on you. She leaves her seat about once a day, to visit the toilet (and yes, you can keep giving her coffee to speed the process along), that's when a person has their chance.
4. You cannot leave the seat when you are in the past, then you will immediately be returned to the present.
5. You travel back to the past when you are poured a cup of a special coffee. You have only until the coffee gets cold before you have to return. You also have to drink the entire cup of coffee, or you become a ghost and replace the current ghost lady.
6. You only get to do the time travel thing ONCE - no do-overs.

Suffice it to say, most people can't actually be bothered, considering all the rules and how short a time they get to visit a past moment in their lives. Nevertheless, this book is split into four stories, with four different people who choose to use the magical option. 

The first story is called The Lovers. At the start of it, a couple go to the café and the man dumps the woman. Quite a lot is made of how beautiful and accomplished the woman is (she could apparently be a model on the cover of magazines). Nevertheless, she is dumped by her programmer boyfriend who is going to America for a job. A week later, she's back at the café, desperate for a chance to go back in time, because she froze when confronted by the bad news, and she never got a chance to tell her man "Don't go!". You'd think a beautiful, successful woman (who it is described always has guys trying to get her attention) would look at what a big sea there was out there for her to explore, and how many figurative fish there were in said sea for her to potentially date. But no, even knowing that going back in time will NOT CHANGE the present, so her man will still be off in America pursuing his career rather than being with her, she chooses to go. 

By the end of her time travel meeting, he tells her to wait, and he'll be back in three years. The point of a lot of the first story is obviously info-dumping for the readers how the time travel thing actually works. We also get flashbacks to the couple's early days of their relationship. It seems it took something like ten coffee dates for the guy to even realise they were dating, so he wasn't the most perceptive of dudes. Our beautiful, kind, and successful career lady, who could clearly find a more deserving man at the drop of a hat is perfectly happy to be kept on the hook for THREE years, waiting for a guy who didn't have the guts to tell her he was going to America until the SAME DAY he was leaving. 

The second story is about a husband and wife, who have both appeared as supporting characters in the first story. The husband is a landscape gardener who suffers from Alzheimer's. He frequently spends his days in the café, reading gardening magazines and taking notes. His wife, a nurse, comes in to pick him up, but a lot of the time recently, he no longer remembers who she is. Someone overhears him saying he wants to use the time travel chair to give his wife a letter. So she decides to go back in time instead, and while you can't change anything about the present by visiting the past, you can apparently take back objects without any difficulties. She meets her husband of several years ago, and he gives her a letter. The letter is significant because, in their relationship, she was always the one who wrote long intricate letters. He is apparently barely literate and would normally respond to her with just a sentence or two. But now he's written her a letter, and it's all about how he knows that he's sick and his greatest fear is that she because she is a nurse, will stop being his wife once he stops remembering her, and just act in the role of his carer and nurse. He doesn't want that, and pretty much gives her his blessing to move on with her life, if need be. Wifey is very touched and insists that everyone go back to calling her by her married name. She proceeds to basically go on dates with her husband, whether he remembers her or not

The third story is about two sisters. Another of the recurring characters in the stories is a woman who frequently sits at the counter with her hair in curlers. She runs a hostess bar nearby and is clearly an exuberant person. It's mentioned that she makes people feel comfortable and welcome, and that's one of the reasons the little hostess bar she runs is so successful. Hostess lady has a younger sister, who comes around every few months, trying to see her older sister. During her most recent visit, Hostess lady hid behind the counter for several hours, just to avoid seeing her. This is because Hostess lady is convinced her younger sister must hate her. Their parents owned a successful inn somewhere in the countryside and always expected older sister to take over and run it one day. But she wanted no such thing and left the family about a decade ago, so now her parents have pretty much disowned her, and it became the younger sister's duty to run the inn. Hostess lady is convinced her younger sister hates her because she is stuck fulfilling the wishes of their parents, while Hostess lady is off in the big city, enjoying a life of independence. 

The reason Hostess lady suddenly wants to travel back in time is that younger sister dies. She's killed in a car accident on her way back from the city, and now Hostess lady's parents hate her even more, because they blame her for their youngest daughter's death. Hostess lady feels bad that she kept trying to avoid awkward conversations, so she wants to go back to her sister's last meeting and tell her she loves her. This time, when the sister arrives, Hostess lady is sitting in the magic time travel chair and they have a heartfelt conversation. Turns out little sister doesn't hate Hostess lady, she just misses her and had always dreamed of the two of them running the inn together. Which is sweet, I guess. Now comes the bit that's less sweet. After returning to the present, Hostess lady (who has spent the last decade or so happily living an independent life in the city, desperately avoiding having to run an inn in the countryside just to please her parents) decides that she must return and beg her parents' forgiveness and take over running the inn in the countryside, because it was her sister's dying wish. Which it wasn't even! Her sister (now dead) dreamed of them running the inn TOGETHER. Little sister is dead, it's sad and tragic and a horrible waste. Hostess lady pretty much ran away from home so she wouldn't have to ever succeed her parents and become an inn manager. They already hate her - so what if they hate her a bit more and blame her wrongfully for her sister's death? Instead of staying in the city, enjoying her single lifestyle, and doing her dream job, she goes back home and becomes an inn manager. But it's ok, she sends the people at the café a picture where she looks happy - so everything ended up OK in the end? Really... that's the moral here?

The fourth story is about the wife of the café owner, who is portrayed as this friendly, cheerful woman, who has always been sickly and in and out of hospital because of a weak heart. Now she's pregnant, but it's obvious that the pregnancy is taking a massive toll on her. Her husband doesn't want to make a choice between his wife or the baby (i.e. tell her to get an abortion), and the wife wants this baby, even if she is most likely going to die giving birth to it. Wifey wants to use the very unusual option of going FORWARD in time, a much more tricky situation, as when you go back in time, you can think about a specific event, where you know the person you want to meet will be there. Going forward in time - who knows what will happen? 

The waitress who works at the café, and who is always the one to pour the special coffee for the time travelers, promises Wifey that she will make sure her daughter is in the café at the agreed-upon time and place in the future. Even so, there is a mix-up, with the date and time, and neither the waitress nor Wifey's husband is present when she pops into the future. The café even seems to be run by someone else. However, in a stroke of luck for Wifey (it's her only chance to travel in time, remember?), her daughter appears to be working in the café part-time and enters with enough time for her mother to see her and talk to her. Instead of jumping forward to when her daughter would be about ten, Wifey has jumped to when her daughter is a teenager. A teenager who has actually appeared in the café as a time traveler to the past, showing up to take a selfie with herself and Wifey (no one understood the significance at the time). Wifey is reassured that her daughter is doing well and that neither she nor her father seems to resent Wifey for the choice of having a baby, and then leaving her husband as a widower and single father, and her daughter mother-less. In fact, it seems like the woman from story nr one, The Lovers, now works in the café and has been something of a foster mother for the daughter. So maybe she doesn't get back with her dead-beat boyfriend? Who knows? 

One of the members of my book club ended up listening to the entire series of these books (there are four translated into English so far) and while he agreed that on the surface, some of these stories might seem quite nice, the core values expressed by the author throughout the stories are deeply conservative and pretty much all amount to women conforming to the traditional values of good wives and daughters. If a sacrifice has to be made, it's always the woman who makes it. I didn't think too hard about the various stories as I read the book (during the two days before our book club meeting), but during our one-hour discussion, we discussed each of the stories in more depth and agreed that most of them ended up being quite unsettling. This was supposed to be a nice, cozy winter read, and instead turned out to be a rallying call for the patriarchy, apparently. So I'm not going to apologise for spoiling all the stories. I don't plan to read any more from the author, and I don't think anyone else should either. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover image doesn't capture the fact that on the hardback copies at least, the teal green is all shimmery, and the wallpaper looks like actual brocade. This is still a cozy cover, but the hardback book is so pretty. The cat on the cover is a total lie, however. There is no cat at any point in any of the stories. They'd probably be better if there had been. Most books are better with cats.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR10 Book 85: "A Duke by Default" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 1.5 stars

#CBR10Bingo: Cover Art

Spoiler warning! This review will discuss plot points from the book in detail, because it is impossible for me to list the many ways in which this book did not work for me without mentioning them. If you are unfamiliar with Scotland, Edinburgh and couldn't care less about the British peerage, then maybe these things will not bother you. Nevertheless, be warned that you may get spoilers if you continue with my review after the bold text further down.

New York socialite Portia Hobbs arrives in Edinburgh to complete an apprenticeship with a sword maker. Unfortunately, her new boss seems to be trying his very best to avoid her and while he's very hot, he also seems to be severely lacking in social skills. One of the reasons Portia has decided to go to a different continent for a while is that she was pretty much a hot mess in her old life - drinking too much, sleeping around and hurting friends and family members. She's determined to be a new and better Portia, and that person doesn't sleep with her boss. So she does her best to help out his flagging business while waiting for him to teach her what she's actually there to learn.

Tavish "Tav" McKenzie loves making swords and daggers, and as well as running Bodotria Armoury, he gives free fighting lessons to underprivileged kids and tries to make a difference in the rapidly gentrifying community. He doesn't entirely see why his brother hired him an apprentice, and he certainly wasn't expecting a posh and sexy American to show up, with tons of ideas of how he can improve his business through an improved social media presence. While he finds Portia very attractive, Tav is aware both of the difference in their ages and the fact that he's her boss. He's not intending to act on his attraction to her, and so instead tries to keep her at a distance by being as gruff as possible.

When Portia accidentally reveals on social media that Tav may in fact be the son of a duke, his life is suddenly changed completely and Portia feels responsible. Used to high society, she's determined to coach him in etiquette, so he can assume his rightful position, if that's what he wants to do.

I really wanted to like this. I did. I'd heard such good things about it on several romance review sites. The cover is beautiful. I think diversity in romance writing is incredibly important and Alyssa Cole cares about geeky stuff and complex and interesting female characters. Sadly, however, this book was not the book to win me over. I find it baffling that Ms Cole, who clearly writes very well researched historical romances set during the American Civil War shows such appalling lack of research skills when she writes in a contemporary setting.

Things that made it impossible for me to like this book:
- The book is set in Edinburgh. I have lived there for two years. Several of my dear friends still live there. The husband and I visit it often. The area most of the story takes part in is a fictional area called Bodotria, when it is clearly meant to be Leith, which is an actual, rapidly gentrifying section of Edinburgh. I cannot for the life of me understand why Ms Cole had to make up a new part to set her story in.

- The "Scottish" accents. Don't get me started on the fun interpretation of colloquial Scottish vernacular that many of the characters, including Tav speak.

- Turns out, Tav's biological dad (who his mother decided to leave because she was a poor, Chilean refugee and their union would never have worked out) is a duke. Not just any duke, however, a Royal Duke. The Duke of Edinburgh, in point of fact. This is where any suspension of disbelief I had went up in a fiery inferno of fury, because 1) The only royal dukes in Great Britain are directly related to the current monarch - in this case, Queen Elizabeth II. None of them are Scottish.This can be easily discovered with a quick Google search. 2) The Duke of Edinburgh is a title that has only existed three times in the history of the UK. The current, contemporary one is Prince Phillip, consort to aforementioned Queen Elizabeth II. 3)

There are in fact several Scottish dukedoms that Ms Cole could have used instead, but I can only surmise that since the title of this series of books is Reluctant Royals, a normal duke (still the highest order of peerage after the actual royals in the UK) wasn't good enough and had to make up a fictional royal dukedom to give to Tav's bio dad. Why in the world she couldn't just invent a new dukedom, rather than the one belonging to the man MARRIED to the current Queen is anyone's guess. How no one in Ms Cole's editing team didn't think to take her aside and say: "You know the Duke of Edinburgh is the Queen's husband, right?" seems like dereliction of duty of the highest order.

But Malin, I hear you say, it's only a romance novel. Why does this bother you so much? The answer, dear reader, is that if Alyssa Cole wanted her hero to have a Scottish duke as a father, she could have made up a title instead - like she made up a fictional part of Edinburgh. If this is in fact set in some alternate reality, where there is no Queen Elizabeth II (although the Queen featured later in the book sure seemed a LOT like her) and her husband is not the Duke of Edinburgh, then she should have made this a hell of a lot more clear.

- Tav is utterly undeserving of Portia (even as much of a mess as she seems to think she is). He treats her appallingly for much of the book and thoroughly deserved to be pepper sprayed by her. I don't care that he's nice to down on their luck local children if he can't treat a woman in his employ with basic respect and decency.

- Portia is supposed to be in Edinburgh to apprentice to a sword smith. She makes ONE sword in her three months there! Apart from that, she's Tav's secretary/PR-person/social media rep.

- It would have been nice if the villain of the story was slightly less of a racist stereotype, but this is so far down my list of grievances to be negligible.

- For all that Portia claims to be a hot mess and discovers through online tests that she most likely suffers from ADHD, she sure is beautiful, fit, personable and extremely competent at everything she sets her mind to.

Things I actually liked:
- Tav's sister in law, Cheryl, is adorable and runs a Chinese takeaway out of a little kiosk painted to look like a TARDIS. It's called Doctor Hu's.

- Portia, for all that she is almost too perfect (no matter what she tells herself), was very likable and I wanted better for her than Tav. Her family (minus the sister, who could be WAY better at communicating) is clearly awful and she should cut her toxic parents out of her life for good.

- Portia's friends all seemed pretty great. Not enough that I want to go back and read the first book in the series, but both Nya and Naledi were fun supporting characters.

- Prince Johan (of made up European principality - see, if you can make up new parts of Edinburgh and Europe, you can make up alternate peerage as well, Ms. Cole), who seems to be the hero of the next book in the series.

Sadly, based on this book and the rage it produced in me, I'm not sure I'm going to check out any more of the Reluctant Royals series. I'm frankly slightly reluctant to read any more Alyssa Cole at all, despite having enjoyed (but not loved) two of her historicals. I may give her a new chance in time, though.

Judging a book by its cover: Long before this book came out, I was interested in it because of the pretty cover. Having now read the book, I think the cover may in fact be one of the best things about it. The cover models look pretty much like the characters they're supposed to portray and I absolutely love both the hair and the warm shades of the dress on the female cover model.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 131: "A Kiss in the Dark" by Kimberly Logan

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 1.5 stars

Warning! There will be spoilers for the plot in this review - because I have to pick apart the mediocre plot to fully get my scathe on. 

Lord Tristan Knight has come into the Earl of Ellington after his estranged father died unexpectedly in a carriage accident. As the late Earl blamed his son for the death of Lady Ellington, stabbed to death by an East End bandit, Tristan has been absent for a long time. His younger sister Emily was left alone with a grieving, neglectful father and after the return of her brother has tried to act out and scare away a series of governesses in an attempt to make her brother notice her. When she finally runs away, Tristan realises he's been very dumb.

After traces of Lady Emily's belongings are found in Tothill Fields, the same area where their mother was murdered years ago, Tristan becomes desperate. His butler recommends he seek out the aid of Lady Deidre Wilks, the notorious Viscountess Rotherby, who is known for her charitable acts in the area. When Tristan turns up on her doorstep, Deidre recognises him instantly. She was the pickpocket who lured Lady Ellington down the alley where she was murdered, and she's convinced Tristan has come to bring her to justice. Instead he convinces her to aid him in the search for his sister. Together they comb the slums for the runaway, fighting their instant attraction to one another as they grow ever closer.

Dear readers, this really wasn't a very good book. It sadly wasn't a bad enough book to really be entertaining either, and as it fit into nearly all my reading challenges in one go, there was no way I wasn't going to finish it. Apparently it's Kimberly Logan's debut novel, and as I doubt I could write a whole book, I don't want to be too dismissive here, but people, it's a very sad example of a historical romance.

First of all, Ms. Logan is extremely keen to let the reader know that Tristan and his sister Emily, like their mother before them, have violet eyes. Not blue, but a purply violet. This is mentioned twenty-one times over the course of the book (I went back and searched, because, really). Also, Deidre has strawberry-scented hair (this is only mentioned four times, however).

There is a whole lot of tell, don't show in this book and mostly very clumsy exposition. Luckily, when Lady Emily runs away, shortly after she is eye-witness to the criminal gang boss who unbeknownst to her also murdered her mother stabbing a dude to death, she is rescued one of a gang of kind-hearted pickpockets, the same ones Deidre reads stories to and tries to save from a life of crime by donating food and blankets to. All of them seem uncharacteristically rosy-cheeked, perky and optimistic for orphaned children who mostly have to steal to survive, with the notable exception of Jack, the bad seed, who is sullen, mean, untrustworthy, but allowed to stay with them until he resorts to attempted rape. Then he's driven off, without any of the boys cottoning on to the fact that he'll clearly sell their location and that of their foundling Earl's daughter out to the dastardly villain who's combing the area for her.

Lady Emily, despite being raised in a perfectly nice townhouse and while neglected by her father, not really used to a life of any sort of hardship, has no trouble settling into the drafty, dilapidated hovel the pickpockets stay in, helping with the cleaning, flirting with their young leader and learning pickpocketing right along side the others. Even when Deidre and Tristan show up looking for her, the boys lie about having seen her, because clearly a young noblewoman is much better off living with a bunch of orphan thieves than with her worried brother.

Deidre, once an orphaned pickpocket herself, picked the pocket of Viscount Rotherby and was pretty much adopted by him. Taught to speak, walk, dress and behave like a lady, she eventually married her patron because he was worried how she'd survive once he died. His servants have stayed on in her house and been nothing but supportive of this pickpocket street urchin who is now her mistress. There are all manner of unsavoury rumours about her, but Lady Rotherby is in fact, that wonderful creature amongst romance heroines, the virginal widow.

For all that Tristan darkly imagines the woman he lusted after from pretty much the moment he met her in the arms of a man old enough to be her father, Deidre is of course untouched and inexperienced. Sure, one of her best friend's is a prostitute, but she's never seen a naked man before she does the deed with Tristan. Naturally, despite her inexperience, they both climax simultaneously - and Deidre is hard pressed to imagine how sex could possibly have been better, had Tristan known in advance that she was a virgin. He claims he wanted more time to prepare her, but apart from some time spent giving attention to her boobs, there is no sign of anything like oral sex or fingering, to you know, give her pleasure without his penis being involved. During their first passionate encounter, there was also this description, that stood out to me as I honestly can't even: "It was as if they had been made for each other, two halves of a whole that had been made one."

Neither Tristan nor Deidre really have a lot of interesting character traits. Tristan is very tall, has violet eyes and feels haunted by seeing his mother stabbed to death in front of him (sadly, he doesn't become the Regency version of Batman, that would have been the best plot development!). Deidre, despite her lowly origins, has become the perfect lady, who spends most of her days doing charity works in the East End slum she grew up in, all the while ignoring what society gossips say about her. They both spend an unseemly amount of time thinking about boning each other when they should be worried about the safety of a young girl lost in a very rough part of London. Of course, she's the luckiest little girl that ever was, taken in by friendly Disney pickpockets rather than kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery or something similarly seedy.

Apparently Ms. Logan also wrote a sequel, where a grown Lady Emily is reunited with Peter, the head of the cheerful band of pickpockets who rescue her, now a Bow Street Runner. I have absolutely no wish to read this book, or anything ales that Ms. Logan has written. Her writing may have improved after her debut, but based on this, I'm not giving her another try any time soon.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.