CBR17 Book 28: "The Love Haters" by Katherine Center

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 2 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

Katie Vaughn is worried about being fired, so she lies about being able to swim, and is persuaded to go to Key West to film a recruitment video about the coast guard. There she meets Tom "Hutch" Hucheson, the seemingly perfect older brother of her co-worker Cole, who has not been informed that his brother has weaselled out of filming the video. Katie is also pretty much adopted by Hutch's "Aunt" Rue and her vibrant and colourful gang of pensioners who hang out in the apartment complex that Rue owns and manages. 

Katie is a "love hater" because her boyfriend cheated on her and broke up with her right as his career as a musician took off, so she's pretty much done with men. Now her ex's songs are playing on the radio constantly, and his most recent hit is literally called "Katie" and seems to be all about how he messed up and wants her back. Katie also has self esteem, a very complicated relationship with food and because of fat shaming by her stepmother early in life, she pretty much hates her body. She literally has a near-panic attack when she has to put on a swimsuit. 

Hutch isn't really a love hater, it's just that his brother Cole doesn't really know his brother at all, he just seems to be jealous that his brother is easy-going, kind, very handsome, has a very impressive job (and became virally famous briefly for saving Jenifer Aniston's dog). So anything he says is likely to be untrue. Hutch agreed to have his work featured, because the coast guard really does need new recruits, but he wanted his brother to do it, so they could spend more time together, and more importantly, with Rue. Nevertheless, he adapts without too much complaint and also agrees to give Katie swim lessons.

Obviously they catch feelings over the course of the book, but now, about a month after I finished the book, I can't actually remember what it is that complicates matters and makes it so that they can't be together. I'm guessing it's probably that Hutch lives and works in Florida and Katie is from somewhere else (again, no memory of where)? The first half of the book is slow, and while I can sympatise with a heroine with some quirks, some of Katie's issues are clearly serious enough that she should have been (and probably still be) in intensive therapy, rather than just have her supportive bestie try to talk her down whenever she has a wobbly. When they dominate the story quite that much, it would be nice if there was some sort of resolution over the course of the story. But there isn't. Although she learns to appreciate colourful clothing and doesn't freak out when she has to wear a bathing suit, so that's good enough, right?

The second half of the book, especially the last third, is when I seriously considered just giving up. If I had a physical copy of the book, I would have been tempted to throw it at a wall. Cole suddenly shows up out of nowhere and pretends that he and Katie are dating. Their boss, who is bitter after an acrimonious divorce, also shows up, and the fake relationship has to happen or Katie and/or Cole might get fired? I think Cole is meant to be charming, I found him to be human garbage. There's also a whole thing about a hurricane and needing to evacuate and Katie making incredibly stupid choices.However, I persevered, hoping that maybe the story could be saved - alas, it was not to be. 

I've only read one book by Katherine Center previously, The Rom-Commers, which I liked enough to rate it 4.5 stars, despite a rather shaky final act there too. This, I can only give 2.5 to, and that's mainly for aunt Rue and her Golden Girls-esque group of friends, and the fact that being a coast guard is a more unsusual profession to give your hero. If this had been my first attempt at Ms. Center's writing, I would not read any more of her books, despite owning several of them as e-books. I did really like The Rom-Commers, though, so I will give her at least one more chance. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have no idea what's going on with this cover, but it doesn't in any way fit with the contents of this book. This makes it seem like it's about people lazing about and enjoying themselves on vacation, which isn't the case at all. Katie gets an anxiety attack just having to put on a bathing suit, there is no way she'd ever display herself so openly on a pool floatie. Hutch is a professional rescue swimmer who doesn't seem to have time for this sort of leisurely relaxation. 

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

CBR15 Post 27: "De kaller meg ulven" (They Call Me the Wolf) by Zeshan Shakar

Page count: 240 pages

Rating: 2 stars

#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books from different countries (Norway)

CBR15 Bingo: You are Here (It's set in Norway, where I am)

15-word-review: A son constantly yearning for more social mobility tries to understand his elderly father, unsuccessfully.

Official book description (translated from Norwegian by me):

"Why didn't they have more? I remember thinking after my grandmother died. They were from here, Norwegian, shouldn't they have had more things? Those things other Norwegian parents and grandparents have, at least a simple cabin, the kind without power or water, somewhere no one else wanted a cabin, in the middle of the woods? But no, nothing. I asked my mother once why it was like that. - It was just the way things turned out, she replied."

They Call Me the Wolf is a story about growing up with the knowledge that not everyone is dealt as fair a hand as others. The parents of the protagonists have worked their entire lives, so hard that their health has suffered. Nevertheless, they don't have a lot to show for it. There is nothing to inherit except memories and some family stories, from his father's early life in Pakistan, his mother's life in Finnmark in the north of Norway, and from their life together in Oslo.

Now that home has been dissolved, the father wants to leave Norway to grow old in Pakistan, leaving behind the protagonist, with his unquenchable hunger to own and acquire that which everyone else has more of. 

Back in 2017, Zeshan Shakar became a publishing phenomenon in Norway with his debut novel, Tante Ulrikkes vei. It has gone on to sell over a million copies, which is impressive when you consider that Norway only has a population of about 5.7 million people. This is Shakar's third novel and I think that each new book he writes is less interesting than the last. His previous novel, Gul bok (yellow book) was underwhelming and I didn't really think there was any real character development or progression in it. This book basically just has a protagonist who is always dissatisfied with his life, constantly wishing for a bigger and better house, all the while bemoaning any real closeness to either of his parents, despite the fact that they have had no meaningful contact since the protagonist grew up and left the home he seems mostly ashamed of.

While our protagonist clearly has a big house, a successful job, and a picture-perfect family, he keeps striving for more. He's also unhappy about the fact that his father, elderly and rather alone, having been evicted from his council estate flat because the city council is planning to upgrade his building, would rather move back home to Pakistan than let his son buy him somewhere to live in Norway. The son is frustrated because his father doesn't really seem interested in packing his remaining belongings to have them shipped to Pakistan, and keeps reminiscing about events in his childhood and adolescence that shows his disconnect both with his two very different parents, and his sense of alienation with the people he grew up with. 

As seems to be the case with me a bit too often when I read contemporary Norwegian literature, I kept reading in the hopes of finding out what the book reviewers had found so impressive, because like Shakar's other novels, this book was fairly universally well-reviewed. I suspect this may be because there are so few authors with a multicultural and immigrant background writing in our country today, so anything written about the multicultural experience must therefore be encouraged and lauded, so it doesn't become obvious just how narrow-minded and secretly prejudiced a lot of middle-class Norwegians really are. I really don't this that if this book was about a white, middle-class Norwegian dude with divorced parents who just couldn't seem to talk properly to his dad, written by a white, middle-class Norwegian dude - so many people would be raving about it. Then again, maybe it's just me who's a bit racist? I'm willing to live with that if it allows me to say that this book felt like a waste of my time. 

Judging a book by its cover: With this cover, the publisher has moved away from the design choices of the past two books, where they had a single-coloured background with some simple line drawings, choosing instead to just use the same ugly living-room decor from the early 80s twice on the cover instead. Not a fan. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 40: "Monstress, vol 1: Awakening" by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Page count: 202 pages

Rating: 2 stars

CBR14 Bingo: Monster (there are several monsters in this story, both humanoid and not)

Official book description:

Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900's Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steampunk, MONSTRESS tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both and make them the target of both human and otherworldly powers.

So total honesty here. This was my local fantasy/sci-fi book club pick for March. Yup, nearly eight months ago. I read the first three issues, then got incredibly distracted by something or other, I don't even remember what anymore, and just left the trade paperback lying unattended until I finally got round to finishing the book in the middle of October, because it seemed like the easiest way to complete the "Monster" bingo square. Also, I was annoyed at myself for not finishing what is basically six issues of a comic book, something I can normally get through in about an hour. 

Splitting my reading of the story this way means that I barely have any memory of what happened in the earliest issues, and my comprehension of the later issues was somewhat hampered by me just spending some time re-reading. As the blurb says, the story is set in an alternate history, in turn of the 20th Century Asia, where instead of the majority of society being ruled and controlled by men, women are in power. So far, so cool. There's clearly been some sort of horrific war, and there are humans and talking cats and strange animal/people hybrids. There seems to be an organisation of powerful women who take the shall-we-say non-standard people captive and perform horrific experiments on them. Our heroine is a young woman called Maika Halfwolf, who is now an orphan and has suffered a bunch of trauma due to the wars. She only has one arm and is the Monstress of the title because some sort of scary life-sucking monster has taken up residence inside her, and they are now battling for control. 

For those with a weak constitution or sensitivity issues, there are probably a whole host of trigger warnings in this story. I recall there being horrific violence all over the place and generally a lot of unpleasantness, which is why I put the comic down in the first place. At the same time, this series has a lot of critical acclaim and has won a bunch of very prestigious awards over the years, so I should probably go back and give the book a new chance at a later date when I'm in a better headspace. The art by Sana Takeda is next-level and so beautiful that some of the unpleasantness just gets even more visceral. However, at this juncture, the book gets only 2 stars from me, because I pretty much finished the first volume out of stubbornness and remember very few details about the story at all. 

Judging a book by its cover: Sana Takeda's art really is breathtaking. While I probably should have given this book more dedicated attention, there is no denying that the art is amazing, and this cover image is very eye-catching. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 10: "Beyond the Hallowed Sky" by Ken MacLeod

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 2 stars

Official book description:

When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.

 

This book was the March selection in my fantasy/sci-fi bookclub, and the book description makes it sound like time travel is a MUCH bigger part of the plot than it really is. In fact, it's only really mentioned in the prologue and then never again. I'm sure it's going to be expanded upon in future volumes of this series, but since this is the first and only book so far, and no sequels have yet to be given release dates, it's a bit difficult not to feel a bit cheated. 

 

There were a whole load of interesting concepts visited in this book, but none of them really came together properly, and the whole novel ended up feeling like the setup for the next story, which doesn't exist yet. Set in the near-future, when the borders of the world have changed somewhat, one of our story's plotlines is set in Scotland, where a ship's engineer sees something that shouldn't really exist and starts to ponder space travel because of it. The second of the storylines is set on a space station orbiting Venus, where an andoid reporter is investigating and possibly spying. The third of the storylines is set far away on an alien colony, where there is mysterious happenings afoot and possibly hostile alien lifeforms in sentient rock threatening the Earth colonists. It's only in the very end of the book all these storylines meet up, and by that point, I wasn't really sure I'm too bothered about reading what comes next.

 

This seemed to be the general consensus of the member in my book club too. A lot of people were disappointed that the book seemed to promise time travel, then there was only a brief mention of it. Some thought that the storyline with the Scottish engineers dragged too much (me included) although there is some interesting stuff about artificial intelligence that pretty much anticipates your needs. By the time you've remembered that you should buy your wife a present, your social media AI has already placed and paid for an order of the thing your wife would most like. Pretty neat, but again not really explored in enough detail.

 

The clearly modelled on James Bond journalist/spy andoid on the space station had a lot of promise too, but I didn't like where his arc ended up. The storyline that possibly dragged the most for me was the one on the alien colony. We never really find out which faction of humanity has discovered faster than light travel and managed to send people to the far reaches of space, they're too busy trying to figure out why possibly ancient aliens residing in the rocks are trying to attack them. By the end of the story, it seems as if more of humanity is being sent to the alien planet to colonise, including the son of the Scottish engineers we've also read about, so I'm guessing the next book will explore life in space a lot more. Whether I will be picking up book two if it ever gets written, is another story.

Giving this book two stars might seem harsh, but I really did only find it OK. I kept putting it down and forcing myself to pick it back up, and I don't see myself ever wanting to reread it, or keep on reading the series. It seems like Ken MacLeod has written a bunch a books, but based on this novel, he's not an author I'll be reading anything more from anytime soon.

Judging a book by its cover: Fairly generic sci-fi cover, really. A wormhole or black hole or some sort of space portal. A teeny tiny little space craft. The hint of what is probably an alien planet. Nothing too exciting, nothing too objectionable.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR13 Book 6: "Dancing at Midnight" by Julia Quinn

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 2 stars

Lady Arabella Blydon is staying with her newly married cousin in the country when she runs into the brooding and mysterious Lord John Blackwood, a former war hero who turns out to be friends with her cousin's husband. She quickly ascertains that he is just as attracted to her as she is to him, and cannot understand why he refuses to give in and admit his feelings. Frustrated that he seems utterly besotted by her one second and determined to stay away from her the next, she devises a plan to make him declare his intentions once and for all.

John Blackwood is tormented by the events of his past and has nightmares about some of the dreadful situations he was helpless to prevent as a soldier. As a younger son, he's not entirely sure he feels like he deserves the title and estate he's been granted by the crown as thanks for his service. When he meets Lady Arabella, he is instantly smitten, both by her beauty and her intelligence, but he knows he could never be deserving of her and does his best to try to convince her of this fact. When he hears that she has returned to London and likely close to a betrothal with another man, he doesn't waste much time in getting to the capital to win his lady.

Since Netflix adapted Julia Quinn's The Duke and I into the first season of the very popular Bridgerton, she's been mentioned in a lot of articles recently. She's been writing Regency romances since 1995, publishing more than 30 different stories (if you count books and novellas), yet this novel is only her second one ever. While I have greatly enjoyed a lot of Quinn's novels since I rediscovered my love of romance novels in 2007-2008, it really shows that this is an early effort of hers, and neither the plotting, characterisation, or wit from many of her later novels is really present here. 

Arabella is just a little bit too perfect, she's well-read, opinionated, charming, beautiful, has had scores of suitors and quite a few proposals, yet just hasn't found that one right guy yet. She appears to have no flaws and as such, she's not all that interesting. Blackwood, on the other hand, is a complete mess and while I get that war is hell and all that, his constant shifts from basically seeming madly in love with Arabella to pushing her away the very next second got pretty exhausting. While she wasn't all that interesting to read about, I genuinely don't see why she would ever fall for a broody curmudgeon like Blackwood, and that's coming from someone who normally tends to like broody, tormented heroes.

There's also a subplot where someone from Blackwood's past has been sending him threatening notes and is out for revenge. This felt wholly unnecessary and the villain might as well have been a mustache-twirling caricature. It made an already rather lack-lustre plot even more preposterous and I did not care for it.

Since this is a book I've owned since 2016 and it fits into more than one of my many reading challenges this year, I made myself finish the book, even as I was rolling my eyes a lot. It is not a book that anyone save rabid Julia Quinn-completists need to read. The fact that it took me 12 days to finish should speak for itself. I have in the past read more than one Quinn novel a day - this was a slog. 

Judging a book by its cover: Julia Quinn's UK publishers have used these adorable cartoony covers long before this became the trend in pretty much all things romance. I like the indigo background colour and the pattern on the lady's dress is rather lovely. In fact, I think I like the cover of the book a lot more than its general contents. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR12 Book 46: "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" by Jesse Andrews

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 2 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Adaptation (was turned into a movie in 2015 - the film is way better than the book)

Official book description:

Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies, their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics.

Until Greg’s mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel.

Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia—-cue extreme adolescent awkwardness—-but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed. When Rachel stops treatment, Greg and Earl decide the thing to do is to make a film for her, which turns into the Worst Film Ever Made and becomes a turning point in each of their lives.

And all at once Greg must abandon invisibility and stand in the spotlight.

Fair warning and a slight spoiler, just in case the title and book summary hadn't already tipped you off - Rachel suffers from leukemia, and she does NOT miraculously make it and beat the cancer at the end of this book. In many ways, a book with one of the three protagonists suffering from cancer seems like a very suitable reading choice for a Cannonball Reader. The book certainly shows what a sucky disease it is, and what an impact it can have both on patients and those around them.

Sadly, unlike The Fault in Our Stars, another YA book about teens with cancer, which was also released in 2012, this book isn't all that good. I watched the film adaptation on a plane a few years ago and found it diverting and quite funny and very sad in places (I really need to learn not to watch movie or read books that will make me ugly cry while flying). Having now read the source material, this is yet another example where the film is, in fact, better than the book, which doesn't happen all that often. 

The main problem is that our narrator and main protagonist, Greg, isn't a very likable person. All the way throughout the narrative he keeps telling the reader what a bad story this is, calling the reader stupid and generally putting you right off the story. I get that it's supposed to be a quirky narrative choice, showing what low self-esteem Greg has and so forth, but after the second or third time it happens (seriously, it's every few chapters, it gets old real fast), it did, truthfully, make me want to give up and stop reading the book. However, I needed to read it for a number of reading challenges, I had liked the movie, and so I persevered, hoping that perhaps Greg and the book would improve if I continued.

Sadly, not so much. Greg remained a whiny, fairly emotionally stunted, really not aware of his privilege twerp throughout. I would much rather have wanted to read the story through his friend Earl's eyes, or even Rachel's. I don't know what else Jesse Andrews has written (this is his debut novel), but based on this, I'm not very keen to find out. As I said, the movie adaptation of this is perfectly sweet and has managed to make all the three teen characters likable. Watch that instead of reading this book. 

Judging a book by its cover: Since this has now been filmed, there are editions with the inevitable movie tie-in cover, and there's also a fairly dull yellowy-green one with little white figures. I much prefer the one on my e-book which is colourful and fun and the three main characters are all shown as little paper dolls in what looks like some sort of puppet theatre. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR12 Book 22: "Dark Lover" by J.R. Ward

Page count: 432 pages
Rating: 2 stars

Official description:
In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there's a deadly turf war going on between vampires and their slayers. There exists a secret band of brothers like no other-six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Yet none of them relishes killing more than Wrath, the leader of The Black Dagger Brotherhood.

The only purebred vampire left on earth, Wrath has a score to settle with the slayers who murdered his parents centuries ago. But, when one of his most trusted fighters is killed-leaving his half-breed daughter unaware of his existence or her fate-Wrath must usher her into the world of the undead-a world of sensuality beyond her wildest dreams.

Where do I even begin with this book? J.R. Ward is a big name in the paranormal romance circles. This book came out in 2005. There are now 18 books in the series, which does not seem to be wrapping up any time soon. Am I going to be reading any of the rest of the series, two more of which I own (but thankfully only paid e-book sale prices for)? Unlikely. I knew about Dark Lover long before I bought it, on sale, back in 2014. I enjoy a lot of paranormal fantasy, although the romance sub-genre frequently tends to feature the "fated mate" trope a lot more often than I like. It's not a genre trope I am fond of. I like to believe that the characters I read about have some kind of choice about who they end up with.

I didn't know too many details about the series, except that it's been running for a long time, has a huge amount of devoted fans, and the vampire protagonists all tend to have implausible names, often featuring an unnecessary letter or two (seriously: Rhage, Zsadist, Vishous, Phury, Tohrment, the list goes on). In contrast, Wrath has a perfectly normal spelling to his name, but he does get to be the super-tormented king of the vampires. Wrath is a trademark alphahole hero. He is in fact even referenced in the very entertaining little essay that Ilona Andrews wrote and published on their blog. He's nearly seven feet tall, and built like a tank and is all tortured because his parents were killed while he was hidden away and unable to stop the killers. The only feelings he allows himself are those of brotherhood and fraternity, anything softer is clearly far beyond him.

Elizabeth "Beth" Randall is a journalist who grew up in a series of foster homes. She never knew her parents. She's also half-vampire and her father is blown up in a car bomb by vampire hunters at the start of this book. Vampires and half vampires don't come into their full powers until they're in their early twenties. Beth is clearly going to go through her transition soon, and a letter to Wrath, her father begs him to find her and help her through the change (which could be deadly for her). Initially, Wrath has no interest in this, but loyalty and honour to his dead friend compels him to seek Beth out, and once he sees her, it's pretty much inevitable where things will be going.

Beth, who starts the book narrowly escaping sexual assault, has never really been interested in any guy, even though they seem to be throwing themselves at her, left and right. One of her potential suitors is a cop named Butch, who beats up the arrested suspect in her assault case. However, once Beth meets Wrath, it becomes clear that she has a thing for tall, muscular, brooding dudes with rage and commitment issues.

Vampires in this world only really survive by feeding on other vampires. In a very heteronormative twist, men seem to have to feed on women, and vice versa. Hence, Wrath has a mournful lady vampire who he feeds from but refuses to in any way treat with respect. Since he's the king of the vampires, she's bound to him and can't go elsewhere and is generally pretty miserable. She's initially a bit upset, then very relieved, once Wrath sets his sights on Beth and she goes through her transition. Sad lady vampire never did anything to stir Wrath's desires, but between him and Beth things are very different.

There's a lot of world-building here, much of which is really annoyingly old-fashioned. This world does not seem to be very progressive or feminist. Vampires are a separate race from humans, but can clearly mate and create offspring with them. As I mentioned before, the vampires come into their full powers in their early twenties. Not everyone survives the transition. There's a secret society of vampire hunters, who all seem to be incels, trying to kill all the vampires. They are controlled by a being called the Omega, and have to sacrifice their hearts and humanity (literally) to their cause. Based on the representatives we see in this book, the vampire hunters are really not much of a threat, unless they're deploying car bombs.

This is a fun enough, but really rather dumb book. Other people have reviewed it WAY better than I have. See, for instance Navessa's review on Goodreads or romance author Alexis Hall's review over on Dear Author. While 18 books and counting might at one point have been appealing to me, now it's a strong deterrent, and the official book descriptions of most of the sequels had me rolling my eyes so hard it hurt. I really don't see myself spending more time reading about Ward's alphahole heroes and the women and/or men that fall for them.

Judging a book by its cover: This cover couldn't belong to any genre but paranormal romance, really and one featuring vampires at that. Bladed weaponry - check. Neck biting pose - check. Tattoos - check. And just in case you hadn't already figured out that it was about vampires, the cover is nice and bright red. At least you're unlikely to think this is a chick-lit book about a twenty-something single woman in the big city (although our heroine fits all those descriptors as well).

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 4: "Pipe Dreams" by Sarina Bowen

Page count: 336 pages
Audio book length: 9 hrs 34 mins
Rating: 2 stars

Lauren Williams used to love hockey, but after Brooklyn Bruisers goalie Mike Beacon suddenly dumped her without warning, she stays far away from the game, and is very grateful that her boss, Nate Kattenberger, has her running his office in Manhattan, so she can focus on moving on and building a life for herself on her own. She's about to graduate from college, with a lot of bright career prospects in her future and she's planning on having a baby, by herself. She's none too happy when Nate's former assistant, Becca, who now helps manage the team gets a concussion, so Lauren has to help cover for her and brings her up close to the hockey team on a daily basis again.

Mike Beacon got married to his high school sweetheart after he knocked her up, and while he never regretted the daughter he got, his wife never really wanted to be married to a top athlete, and their marriage suffered. When they finally separated, he made his move on Lauren, who he'd dreamed about for years, but kept things professional with until it was clear his marriage was a thing of the past. Mike and Lauren spent a deliriously happy year together, but just as Mike's divorce was about to come through, he discovered that his soon to be ex-wife had terminal cancer, and the situation was unbearable for his little girl. Making the difficult choice to move back in with his wife and daughter, he didn't really tell Lauren the severity of the situation (he kept claiming to have a good reason for this - I never really got what the heck he was thinking).

Now, two years later, Mike is raising a thirteen-year-old and regretting screwing things up with Lauren. Since she appears to still be single, he decides to try to win her back, but he has his work cut out for him, both with Lauren, and his daughter, who because of malicious gossip from other players' wives believes Lauren to be some evil home wrecker.

I hadn't read any Sarina Bowen for a long time when I picked up Brooklynaire, which turned out to be a fun, if a bit flawed, read. Since I still had about a week left on my Audible romance deal, I decided to check out the previous book in the series, with a plot that clearly runs at least partially concurrently with the sequel. I was surprised at how much overlap there actually was, and if I'd read these in order, I probably would have rated Brooklynaire lower, since there were whole scenes that were more or less repeated entirely. I read them in the right order, though, as there is no way I would have wanted to pick up the sequel if I'd read this one first.

This was, to be honest, quite a slog. While I liked Lauren as a supporting character in Brooklynaire and she was a perfectly agreeable romance heroine in her own right, I didn't really care for Mike at all, nor his plot moppet adolescent with her temper tantrums and jealousy fits, even though her male nanny/live in violin teacher was pretty cool. His reasons for going back to his wife were noble enough, but the way he handled things with Lauren was abysmal, and he certainly didn't deserve to have her back in any way. I didn't care for the way he pretty much nagged his way back into her good graces, and her heart. If you see nothing romantic or attractive about the book's hero, the romance isn't really going to work. That was the case here.

MINOR SPOILER! Also, I never thought that I'd find something worse than the still frequently occurring "pregnancy epilogue". This book, however, ends with an actual, extended description of childbirth, which is no one's idea of a good time. That was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for me, and I think Sarina Bowen is on extended hiatus for me again.

Judging a book by its cover: You can tell that it's a book about hockey because the burly, muscular dude on the cover is holding a hockey stick. Of course, the hero of this book is a goalie, so should really be wearing a lot more padding. In general, this guy is wearing way too little for a hockey player, even in a friendly team practise, I would think going on the ice wearing nothing but some dark trousers would be inviting all sorts of injuries. But how could we tell it was a romance if there wasn't man titty on the cover?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 97: "Between the Bridge and the River" by Craig Ferguson

Page count: 348 pages
Rating: 2 stars

#CBR10Bingo: #CannonBookclub

I voted for this book in the most recent Book Club poll because Craig Ferguson's autobiography is hugely enjoyable and one of the best ones I've read/listened to (I have the audiobook, narrated by Ferguson himself), and as a result, I was curious and excited at the chance to read a work of fiction by him. Unlike some who have already reviewed this book (by now quite a few, I'm yet again behind on my reviews), I didn't really watch a lot of Ferguson's stuff as a late night host (although I've seen quite a few fun interviews he's done on YouTube and the song he did about Doctor Who). I'm not sure exactly what I was expected from the book (the blurb is not very informative), but it certainly wasn't what I actually got.

This book was a completely different reading experience from most things I've read (and as long time followers of my blog know, I read quite a lot). It's a whole bunch of things, all of them weird and strange, none of them particularly enjoyable. There's a road trip element, there's magical realism, surrealism, there's various literary allusions (to Dante's Divine Comedy, among other things). It's a satire covering celebrity culture, organised religion and cults, the media and there's a whole load of swearing, other coarse language and violence. Sadly, the only characters Ferguson sees fit to develop in any way are all male, women are all given short shrift, but if they're lucky they escape being sexually violated and/or murdered. There is so much misogyny, sexism, homophobia (there may have been transphobia too, I'm not going back to check) and racism in this book. Ferguson seems obsessed with sex and/or violence and while I'm sure he intended it as edgy and provocative, wanting to shock the reader - it all just comes across as needlessly vulgar and quite sad.

I struggled to get into the book, not really caring for any of the various male protagonists, but once I got a ways into the book, I kept going mainly out of morbid curiosity as to how Ferguson was going to tie everything together (and in the vain hopes that the book would eventually get better). While taking part in the book club discussion, I discovered that this book was initially intended to be the first part in a series. While I stubbornly read this book to the end (and don't blame any of the readers who had to put it down partway through), I most certainly would not have read a sequel.

I said in my review of The Dud Avocado that the late AlabamaPink and I certainly appear to have a vastly different taste in books. This book just confirmed it, and I must admit, if we're doing Book Bingo again next year (which I REALLY hope we do), I hope that we aren't forced to read any more of the books she got through during her painfully cut-short year of reviewing. At least, since I am lucky enough to have access to my American BFF's New York library login, I was able to get this as a loan, and didn't have to pay money for it. I suspect my review would be a lot angrier if I'd have to part with money to read this.

Judging a book by its cover: The book was in parts disgusting, boring or just very, very odd - the cover is simply boring. I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be showing - someone falling over and looking up at their hand and foot while doing so? It's not great, but then, neither is this book, so if it keeps people away from it - bonus?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 87: "The Dud Avocado" by Elaine Dundy

Page count: 260 pages
Rating: 2 stars

#CBR10Bingo: AlabamaPink

Sally Jay Gorce is a young woman of independent means, thanks to the benevolence of a rich uncle. He's given her enough money to live comfortably abroad for two whole years, no strings attached, as long as she comes back and tells him about her adventures at the end of the two years. Not needing to hold down a job or really do anything at all for the money, means Sally Jay spends her time flitting about Paris, taking a lover, drinking and partying. When her older diplomat lover starts getting a bit too demanding, she convinces herself that she's in love with an acquaintance from back home, who directs plays.

The Cannonball Read is founded in memory of AlabamaPink, who back in 2008 was going to compete with her friend Prisco to be the first to read and review 100 books in a year. Sadly, struck down by cancer, AlabamaPink only managed to review eleven books before she died. One of the books is the upcoming November book club selection for the CBR book club, giving participants in the CBR10Bingo a selection of ten other books to read and review for this square. I have purposefully not looked at her review of the book, but picked this as it didn't seem too long and seemed fairly critically acclaimed.

If I'm to believe Goodreads, this book is a cult hit, and described as charming, sexy and hilarious. Groucho Marx wrote Ms Dundy an enthusiastic fan letter. All I can say is that book reviewers in the late 1950s and I have very different opinions about what those adjectives mean. I suppose a young, unmarried woman in the late 50s being frank and open about her sexuality, not hiding the fact that she enjoys it and having casual flings like a male protagonist would was unusual and refreshing.

Nothing much of anything actually happens in the book. In many ways it reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye, although Sally Jay, while frustrating on occasion, is approximately a million times more engaging and enjoyable to read about than stupid, self-important Holden Caulfield. Still, both books are about a young protagonist just going about their life, not really much of anything happening. To get through both books, I had to resort to skimming passages after a while. Despite being relatively short, the book took me nearly two weeks to get through.

Having now looked over AlabamaPink's review, it is clear she liked it A LOT more than I, and we have extremely different tastes in books. It certainly makes me more wary about the next book of "hers", I'll have to read - Craig Ferguson's novel.

Judging a book by its cover: Didn't like the book all that much and I think the cover is dull. A naked, young woman looking up at the camera - all her naughty bits tastefully covered by either her or the avocado green (I see what they did there) square with the title and author's name. I suppose the woman's open gaze is supposed to connect with the reader or some such? It's just not very interesting, much like the book it belongs to.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 123: "For Your Arms Only" by Caroline Linden

Page count: 388 pages
Rating: 2 stars

Alexander Hayes fought bravely during the Napoleonic war and achieved the rank of Major. During the battle of Waterloo, he was gravely injured and nearly died. When he, some weeks later, managed to get back to rejoin his fellow soldiers, he discovered that not only had one of his childhood friends died during the battle, but that he was being accused of treason. In absolute disgrace, he lets his family continue to believe that he died, and goes to work as a spy for England, in the hopes of eventually being able to clear his name.

Now, five years later, he is sent to locate a soldier whose gone missing from his former home town. He needs to come clean to his family about having been alive all these years, without being able to tell them the truth about where he's been or why he never contacted them. He also discovers that the soldier's youngest daughter, Miss Cressida Turner, is deeply distrustful of strangers, and just as likely to shoot him as aid him in his search. Once Cressida realises just in what dire straits her missing father left her, her widowed sister and aged grandmother in, she has no choice but to join forces with the mysterious possible traitor, as her family will be destitute and homeless if her father is not located soon.

A View to a Kiss, the first book in this trilogy, was a fairly slow and rather uneventful book, despite having a spy as a main character and several others as part of the supporting cast. As it had the rather unusual premise of a noblewoman falling for a commoner, I gave it the benefit of the doubt and rated it higher than I possibly should have. It does, however, mean that I'm not so generous with my rating of this second book, starring Alex Hayes/Alec Brandon, one of the supporting spies of book one, as this one is if possible even less exciting than the first one, and here there is no creative turning on its head of common tropes.

Our hero is worried about returning to his home town, and the only one who seems truly happy to see him is his mother, who doesn't seem to care why her youngest son is alive but hasn't been in contact for five long years. One of the reasons Alex is told by his superiors that he should return home (in addition to the mission) is that his older brother passed away a while back, so he is now the heir to the estate. His younger sister Julia is deeply hurt (very understandably so) and his cousin, who believed himself to be the heir and who has dutifully taken care of everything since his brother's death, must be some kind of saint, as he doesn't protest even a little bit to have his believed inheritance suddenly snatched away. For a while, I believed he may turn out to be part of whatever villainous plot had made Papa Turner disappear (because there was going to be some sort of plot, right?), but SPOILER - he turns out to be totally legit and just goes back to being a nice person somewhere else.

So the plot of this novel, such as it is, involves Alex trying to locate Turner the elder (I do not remember what military rank he was, and I don't care enough to look it up). The first time he runs into Cressida is when he's snooping in the Turner family's stables, and Cressida shows up and pulls a gun on him. She thinks he's handsome and is impressed that he doesn't seem even vaguely intimidated by her (he's a trained soldier, lady, he fought in the war. A slip of a girl with a gun isn't actually much of a threat to him). Her father has been missing for almost two months, and what little money the womenfolk he left behind had, is rapidly running out. While it seems to be pretty common practise for Papa Turner to go off for weeks or the occasional month, he always returns, flush with cash and expects his mother and two daughters to be pleased. He's never been gone two months without word before, and Cressida is getting worried.

After some joint snooping, Cressida and Alex manage to find Papa Turner's journal, which is written in code. Cressida, it seems, has always had a knack for decrypting things and sets about trying to decode the journal, in the hopes that they will find her father that way. I wish I can say they go on lots of exciting search missions, but nope, that is not the case. There's mainly a whole lot of nothing happening for much of the book.

There's a secondary romance subplot involving Cressida's widowed sister and one of their loyal family retainers, who has apparently loved her faithfully since before she got married to the scumbag she is now widowed from. There's their grandmother, who is clearly going senile, and only sees the good in her clearly disreputable son (who does NOT seem like he was a very good father), convinced he will show up any second now. Alex' sister Julia keeps being surly because he won't tell her anything of importance, and she's worried he did in fact commit treason all those years ago.

After three quarters of a book of really nothing much happening at all, there is suddenly a big, over the top action-packed finale, when they discover the truth behind Papa Turner's disappearance (which coincidentally, and very conveniently) turns out to be related to Alex' being accused of treason after Waterloo. Suddenly there's nefarious villains, and people being manhandled and threatened and there's danger and destruction and in a book which has pretty much been people pottering about the country side asking questions, or trying to figure out a code in a book, it seems very sudden and badly out of place.

I still have the final volume in this series left to read (curse those e-book sales), but considering how dull this book turned out to be, I'm not exactly going to be rushing to finish it.

Judging a book by its cover: If I recall correctly, the hero of this novel has short blond hair, not some dark and flowy mullet. The heroine is described as much younger than the lady on this cover, with nearly black, straight hair and she seems to dress fairly primly. So I'm assuming the publishing department just found a generic historical romance cover and called it a day, not really bothering with any kind of accuracy.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 106: "The Rebel Heir" by Elizabeth Michels

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 2 stars

Spoiler warning! This review will contain plot spoilers, because for me to be able to work through my various thoughts and feeling about the plot (which was quite dumb), I will need to spoil bits of it. You don't actually want to read this book anyway, I promise, so view the spoilers as more of a favour than a problem.

Ashley Claughbane is the fourth son in a noble family from the Isle of Man (or Wight - I don't entirely remember, and I can't be bothered to look it up - it's one of those wind-blown islands off the coast of Britain somewhere). He is in no way the heir to anything at all - so the book's title is wildly misleading. While some of his actions might be seen as rebellious, he appears to have two healthy brothers between himself and the eldest, who is in fact a duke. Ash (he hates being called Ashley) has sworn revenge on Lord Rightworth, the man who apparently ruined the family fortune a decade or so back. He promised his mother on her deathbed (or something to that effect) that he would not rest until he had made the man pay. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, he's been preparing for this revenge by travelling around much of Southern England, selling worthless potions and conning stupid nobles out of money. During one of these encounters, he met Evangeline Green, shared a kiss with her and then disappeared without a trace.

Now a year later, Evangeline recognises Ash at a ball, currently posing as Lord Crosby. He now has the backing of a group of gentleman known as "The Spare Heirs Club", although what exactly these dudes do is a mystery to me, even after finishing the book. He wants to con Lord Rightworth and a bunch of other people out of a large amount of money by having them invest in a "portable steam engine", but keeps being distracted by the lovely Evie. Who of course is Lord Rightworth's youngest daughter. There's a whole thing where Evie's mother has grand plans for her daughter's match (after becoming estranged with her eldest daughter after having tried to get Evie matched with the guy said daughter married - I'm hazy on the details) and spends much of her time torturing her daughter to make her be the perfect debutante. She coaches her in what to wear, how to walk, what to say and if she feels her daughter isn't slim enough, she keeps her from eating and forces the maids to tighten her corsets even more.

Anyways, Evie and Ash obviously fall for one another, and as they get to know each other better, Ash discovers that the Evie is in fact the reason that her father, Lord Rightworth claimed all his outstanding debts with Ash' father in one fell swoop, causing the Claughbane family to be temporarily ruined. That his brother is now a duke and has made a successful go of recovering the fortune their father squandered, and doesn't in any way wish for Ash to go through with his idiotic revenge scenario doesn't seem to matter. I never understood why, if Ash really wanted to strike a blow at Lord Rightworth, why eloping with his youngest daughter (whom Ash is in love with, and who seems to love him back even knowing 1) that he's a con man who's swindled people all over England and 2) wants some kind of revenge on her dad) wouldn't in fact be the perfect way to enact said vengeance? It would cause a scandal for the Rigthworths, Evie would be free of her horrible mother and Ash would have both his long-sought revenge and the woman he loved.

Of course that's not what happens. No, there's a whole big scene during Evie's engagement ball (to a nobleman of her mother's choosing) where a bunch of nobles from Bath and other Southern towns come to confront Ash, just as one of the Spare Heir guys produces his pet inventor, who has, based partially on the ideas laid forth by Ash earlier, miraculously managed to invent the very steam engine that Ash has been claiming they can invest in. He's not a fraud after all, but a successful entrepreneur who will be making tons of money. Yay? Also, Evie has (in ways that are never explained) managed to contact every single servant that her mother has fired over the years, and convinced them to show up at the ball carrying trays of daisies (because those are Evie's favourite flower) and after Evie causes a massive scene where she publicly explains to everyone how her mother has been treating her, she tears off her jewelry and throws it and a number of choice words at her mother, and proceeds to empty a whole vase of flowers over her mother's head. This deeply anachronistic display, that would be likely to get Evie committed to an asylum in the Regency era, is instead applauded by everyone there.

Evie's mother is packed off to the countryside, Lord Rigthworth had apparently never bothered to find out how his wife treated their daughters and Ash, who is now no longer a con man, but has the promise of a huge fortune and is, if you remember, the brother of a duke, can marry Evie to his heart's content.

Yeah, there was far too much in this book that didn't make sense to me, and that conclusion was a total mess. While Evie seemed sweet enough, the way her sister refused to have anything to do with her, even though it's clear the sister must have known their evil mother's machinations was the reason Evie had ever shown an interest in her suitor was sort of baffling. There was also a confusing subplot with twin sisters who were friends of Evie's, where one was in love with another of the spare heirs, but due to a confusing series of events involving a fire, the other twin was compromised by him and they were forced to get engaged. Evie spends a whole lot of the novel being either very upset with Ash, only to turn around and forgive him for everything - rinse, repeat.

This is one of those times when Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, whose reviews I can normally trust, especially if they're by Redheadedgirl, let me down. To be fair, I got this book for free at some point, but wouldn't actually have gotten it or read it if it hadn't been given a B rating on a site I trust. It has an average rating of 3.49 on Goodreads, which is frankly higher than it deserves.

This is the first novel by Elizabeth Michels I have read, and based on several of the anachronisms, the confused and rather silly plot, not to mention the fact that it took me about a week and a half to finish it (which should NOT be the case for a romance novel), I will be avoiding her output in the future. Even if the books are in fact being given away. 

Judging a book by its cover: Where do I even begin with this cover? The guy's hair looks like it belongs on a Lego figurine, that helmet-like solid mass that you can just snap into place. There's copious amounts of man-titty, which would totally make sense if you're just standing around in what looks to be an empty ballroom? Of course your shirt would be unbuttoned to the waist (yet still tucked into your oh-so-tight breeches). Then there's the fact that his chest and abs (very impressive-looking) appear to have been both waxed and oiled, not exactly historically correct either. The guy looks like a total sleaze-ball and while I wasn't overly enthused about the story, this cover may be my least favourite thing about the book. It's no White Hot (NOTHING is that bad), but it's not good either.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 115: "4:50 from Paddington" by Agatha Christie

Page count: 351 pages
Audio book length: 7 hrs 8 mins
Rating: 2 stars

On her way by train to visit her old friend Jane Marple for Christmas, Mrs Elspeth McGillicuddy is shocked to realise that she's witnessing a murder in the train running parallel. A tall, dark man in a dark coat is strangling a blond woman in a fur coat and there is nothing Mrs McGillicuddy can do. As soon as the train stops, she notifies the ticket inspector and the station master of what she saw, and when she arrives at Miss Marple's, the two talk to the police and report the crime.

No one else appears to have witnessed anything amiss, however. No dead bodies have been found on the train, and no women have been reported missing. There are suggestions that perhaps Mrs. McGillicuddy imagined what she saw, but she is adamant she witnessed a crime, and her friend Miss Marple, far too experienced with the dark deeds that people commit, believes her. Once her friend leaves to visit her children after Christmas, Miss Marple starts her own investigation. She discovers that the train the murderer would have been on comes to a sharp turn shortly before it enters the station in the town of Brackhampton. There is a sloping hill where a body could easily have been dumped.

As Miss Marple is old and incapable of going around to snoop for a dead body herself, she engages the assistance of a young friend, Miss Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a highly intelligent and competent woman whose made a name for herself as the perfect domestic servant. She can perform the duties of housekeeper, cook, nursemaid or nanny for the people she works for, always leaving the household much better off than it was when she left. Because of her dedication and skill, she's in high demand, but has some free time because of the holidays and Miss Marple's problem intrigues her. She manages to secure a post with the Brackenthorpe family, who live in the manor where Miss Marple suspects the body has been hidden. When Lucy finds the dead woman in an antique sarcophagus in one of the manor's outbuilding, there are several mysteries that need to be unravelled. Who is the dead woman, who none in the Brackenthorpe family claim to recognise? How did she end up hidden in their barn? And last, but not least, who murdered the young woman?

Lucy Eyelesbarrow acts as Miss Marple's eyes, ears and legs in the case, while the godson of Miss Marple's good friend, Inspector Craddock, is in charge of the investigation on behalf of the Scotland Yard. As in most good Agatha Christie mysteries, there's a fairly large cast of characters who could all be guilty of the murder, and the blond woman on the train is not the only one who ends up dead.

This audiobook was bundled with The Man in the Brown Suit, a kind gift from my BFF Lydia. As a young teenager, I voraciously devoured all the Agatha Christie novels in Norwegian translation in my local library, and I was pretty sure I'd read most of the books in her bibliography. I know I much preferred the stand-alones and the Poirot books to those with Miss Marple, and at no point when listening to this book, did I remember anything that made it likely I'd read it before. They do all blend together a bit, but I really think this was the first time I came across this particular story. While Agatha Christie didn't really write any bad books, this one very much suffered from being listened to right after one of my all-time favourites. While Lucy was an engaging enough character and Miss Marple obviously is a very clever old lady, a sedate manor mystery set in the English countryside set shortly after Christmas just cannot compete with Anne Beddingfeld's adventures in South Africa with diamond theft, cruise ships, civil unrest in South African and dashing young men in brown suits.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 61: "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" by John Boyne

Page count: 218 pages
Rating: 2 stars

Nine-year-old Bruno lives in a big house in Berlin and is not at all happy when the household is packed up and he, his mother, his older sister and the servants are forced to travel by train to a new house, far away in the desolate countryside. He misses the bustling city, the house with such a great banister for sliding down, his grandparents, his friends, even his school. At the new house, there is no one to play with, just a small garden and a tall fence in the distance, reaching as far as the eye can see. He tries to convince his parents that they need to move back, but is hopeful that his new exile will only last for maybe a month.

Of course, Bruno is wrong, and he is forced to settle into his new home. His busy father has uniformed soldiers coming in and out of his office all the time, and doesn't really have time for his wife or children any more. Going off on his own to explore the countryside, Bruno walks along the tall barbed wire fence and one day meets a skinny boy, dressed in what appears to be striped pyjamas. The boy's name is Shmuel and Bruno discovers that he too is nine years old. Not only that, they share the same birthday. Bruno doesn't tell his family about his new friend and keeps sneaking back to the fence to talk to his new friend, who seems strangely reluctant to tell Bruno too much of the details of his life. As the boys' friendship develops, Bruno becomes more and more curious about Shmuel's life behind the fence. When he decides to crawl under a loose section of the fence, it has unexpected consequences.

I'm unsure of who the intended target audience for the book is. Because it's written from the POV of a naive and sheltered child, it may seem like a children's book. But because of the subtle ways in which the story is told, you need knowledge of World War II and the Holocaust to really understand what is going on. A child wouldn't understand that "The Fury" is Hitler and "Out With is in fact, Auschwitz-Birkenau, probably the most infamous and well-known of all of the Nazi's death camps. Apparently, the author wrote the first draft of the book in about two and a half days, and intends it as a "fable" about the war. Which may describe why the story seems a bit too simplistic.

I was also expecting that a book at least tangentially about the Holocaust would affect me more emotionally, but this book really didn't make me feel much of anything, except perhaps bafflement that at nine, Bruno can be so sheltered and naive, and unwilling to question his surroundings. In one review I saw of the book, the reviewer suggested that a lot of Bruno's character traits would be more believable in a younger boy, perhaps around 6. That a nine-year-old whose father is a Commandant in the Nazi army is unable to pronounce "Der Führer" correctly, seems unlikely. Since the family aren't moved to Poland until 1943, I find it very doubtful that Bruno, in his school in Berlin, hasn't been taught about the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of the Jewish race. That he doesn't know about death camps is fair, but I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't know anything about the Jews as a people and a deeply hated race.

It's not a very long book, but neither Bruno (despite the fact that we see the story through his eyes) nor any of the other characters are particularly well defined. Bruno seems rather spoiled and very oblivious. His sister is only 12, but spends much of her time attempting to flirt with some of the officers working for her father. This made me deeply uncomfortable. Bruno's parents are pretty much non-entities, although it's suggested that Bruno's mother has a drinking problem and possibly has an affair with one of the same young officers that her pre-teen daughter is trying to flirt with. Shmuel is the person who interacts the most with Bruno, but he doesn't make much of an impression either. I also question how he's able to sneak away from his work duties all the time to sit by a fence (which should surely be much more heavily guarded than it is in this book) to chat with Bruno.

The ending seems inevitable from fairly early on, and was probably supposed to affect me. I would feel like a bad person for not being moved, but the characters were too simply drawn and the whole scenario just seemed implausible to me. I know the book was made into a film in 2008, and from the plot summary, it seems that the plot has possibly been made more complex and plausible - Bruno certainly doesn't seem completely unaware of what a Jew is. Based on the book, I doubt I'd be all that interested in seeing the film either, though.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 116: "X Marks the Scot" by Victoria Roberts

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 2 stars

It will come as no surprise to anyone who actually bothers to read my blog, or check out my Cannonball progress, that I read a LOT. So much so that, fingers crossed, while I severely doubt I will be able to complete the triple Cannonball this year (it nearly killed all my joy of reading last year), if I actually manage to complete my current backlog of reviews and keep going, I will at least have completed more than two and a half the requirement, which isn't shabby, by any means.

Because just competitively reading and blogging and collecting money for cancer charities as a nice bonus somehow wasn't enough, last year, inspired by one of my chief CBR competitors, Jen K (who sadly has not updated her blog since July), I started finding reading challenges. All sorts of reading challenges, to force myself to vary my reading material a bit and occasionally force me out of my comfort zone. One of the challenges I'm doing this year is Alphabet Soup, where you try to read one book starting with each letter of the alphabet (you're allowed to remove articles like a, an and the from the start of the book) and for Q, X and Z the word with the challenge letter can actually be anywhere in the title. But where's the fun in that? So this year, I decided to try to see if I could find books that ACTUALLY started with all the letters of the alphabet. No convenient shortcuts (we'll see what happens with Q and Z, the only two letters I now have left this year).

This long preamble is all to justify why I would ever have voluntarily read X Marks the Scot. The title is dumb enough that I might have been tempted, but the cover, with a bronzed, oiled Highlander * didn't exactly fill me with confidence. I read a lot of romance, though, and so when the universe saw fit to provide me with one starting with X (there are not a whole lot of books out there in ANY genre with titles starting with X), I pretty much had to give it a go.

* Seriously, have ANY of the cover designers for these things ever been to Scotland? Especially the Scottish Highlands - it is not a place to run around shirtless, and you would have to work pretty hard to get a tan. I used to live in Scotland, and I rarely in my six years there had to worry about getting sun burned.

So what is this glorious piece of fortuitous fiction about, you ask? Apparently the second book in the series awesomely titled Bad Boys of the Highlands, because OF COURSE it is, this book concerns the romance of Declan MacGregor and Lady Liadain Campbell. They clearly originally met in the first book, where there appears to have been some sort of kidnapping plot orchestrated by Liadain's evil half-brother (now executed for his crimes), where Liadain selflessly risked her life to save women and children from the MacGregor clan and at some point there was a rescue operation where Declan's dagger ended up against Liadain's throat. Don't you just love those 17th Century meet cutes? Now Liadain is a ward of King James (VI of Scotland, I of England) and the Campbell lands are her very tempting dowry. Declan keeps hanging around the court, allegedly to keep an eye on Liadain, and it's clear that they find each other very attractive even though they're clans were mortal enemies. Not that this stops Declan from sowing his wild oats all over the place and showing off his wicked archery skills. This bad boy of the Highlands has no plans of settling down.

Liadain was the healer of her family (because of course she was) and as she plies her healing trades, malicious tongues start whispering about witchcraft. Declan is worried about this and asks her to be more circumspect. Conveniently to the plot, Liadain's ex, one of the king's trusted advisers show up, and because he's also worried that Liadain may be accused of witchcraft, he cunningly orchestrates an archery competition where the Campbell lands are the prize. Of course Declan wins it. But oh noes! There's a catch. The only way to get the lands is by marrying the lady whose dowry it is. You don't really refuse to marry one of the king's wards, especially when it's extremely beneficial to you and your family and so Declan and Liadain are stuck with each other until death do them part.

Which may be sooner than they may have thought, as this book also happens to take place right around the time of the Gunpowder Plot, yup that one, with Guy Fawkes and "Remember, remember, the fifth of November". Oh yes. A number of noblemen plotting to assassinate King James, and for reasons that never became clear to me, although I think they may have involved gaining control of the Campbell lands, Declan is implicated as one of the chief conspirators (despite the fact that being very publicly back on route to his new estate in the Scottish Highlands should have been ample alibi for anyone). It's very dumb.

Suffice to say, this is not a great book. If it hadn't been such a perfect fit for my reading challenge, combined with the fact that I'm really rather stubborn and a book has to be either exceptionally awful or very long for me to abandon it, I probably wouldn't have finished it. I am quite certain that I'm not going to go out of my way to seek out any other books by Victoria Roberts. I am certainly not going to bother reading the other two books in the series. If you're curious, it's not an awful book, by any means, and I did get a kick of the way the Gunpowder plot was shoe-horned to add drama to the story. There is, however, so much GOOD romance out there. Why would you read sub-par stuff. Unless you too are doing an A to Z challenge. In that case, you're welcome - here is the book you need for X.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 78: "Spider's Bite" by Jennifer Estep

Page count: 432 pages
Rating: 2 stars

Gin Blanco is an assassin. She goes under the name The Spider. Her weapon of choice is knives and she's very good at her job, something she will rarely shut up about, even in times when people are trying to kill her. Gin lives in a world where there are a number of elementals, controlling fire, ice, earth, air, water, stone, even electricity and the like. Gin is a stone elemental and can also control ice. If you forget, she'll remind you every third chapter or so.

Gin is hired to take out a business man at the opera, but is double-crossed. Someone tries to kill her, and they succeed in killing her handler, Fletcher Lane, who raised her and trained her to be an assassin after her family was killed. She manages to rescue his son, Finn, before they manage to torture him to death too. Together with Donovan Caine, the only honest cop in the city, Gin and Finn (see, it rhymes) try to get to the bottom of who hired Gin and killed Fletcher.

I'd heard a lot of good things about the Elemental Assassin series by Jennifer Estep. Most of the books have a higher than 4.0 rating on Goodreads. I like paranormal fantasy, I like assassins, I like unusual female protagonists. This book started out intriguingly, with Gin having had herself committed to an asylum to take out a dodgy psychiatrist, but went downhill so fast. When the book is narrated in first person, and you find said narrator hella annoying, it's going to be difficult to get into the book.

There's some promising world building, but because I was so annoyed with the "tell, don't show" narration, and the frequent repetition (really, most pertinent points are mentioned again and again - Gin's tragic backstory, her choice of weapons, her "no kids or pets" policy, her attraction to Donovan Caine and all the smexy things she'd like to do to him if she got the chance, but oh, he hates her because she murdered his corrupt partner). None of the characters appeared to have much depth or were all that interesting to me, again probably because Estep keeps telling me about them instead of showing through their actions why I should care about them.

I bought this on sale a while back, and am glad I didn't pay full price. Unless people can convince me that the other books get a LOT better (I know a lot of paranormal fantasy series have rough starts, and take a while to get going), this is not going to be a series I continue with.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 53: "Teori og praksis" (Theory and Practice) by Nikolaj Frobenius

Page count: 295 pages
Rating: 2 stars

Nikolaj moves to a newly constructed house in a suburb in one of the counties surrounding Oslo in the early 1970s. His father is one of the architects who planned the area, and is full of dreams about the social opportunities the new affordable housing will mean for families in the area. As it turns out, most of the families who move in stick to a rigid routine of conformity and normality - their children wear the same thing, cut their hair the same way, they mow their lawns on the same day and wash their cars once a week. As the only boy in the neighbourhood with shoulder-length hair, a father who's a hippie and a mother who's Danish, Nikolaj finds it difficult to fit in. All his attempts at youthful rebellion are thwarted because his parents are fully supportive of youthful protest, defiance and voicing one's own opinion. They cheer him on rather than disapprove.

When Nikolaj's mother is killed by a hit and run driver, his life irrevocably changes. Magnus, his formerly jovial and cheerful father withdraws completely into grief and depression, forcing Nikolaj to take on the role as caretaker. His aunt and uncle take his younger brother away, leaving Nikolaj alone with the grieving widower. He barely ever goes to school and desperately seeks a way out. He finds some outlet of his own grief and frustration in punk, forming a punk band with some of his friends and starts experimenting with drugs. Initially, Magnus seems baffled by his son's love of the Sex Pistols and other punk idols, but eventually ends up almost co-opting this attempt at teenage rebellion too, even stepping in to help out on drums at one of the band's concerts. Things are bound to come to a head, and they do.

The blurb for this novel describes it as a "lying autobiography". The protagonist shares the author's name, and grew up in the same place as him in the 70s, but his father was not an architect and most of the events, while somewhat loosely based on the author's adolescence are heavily fictionalised. The book was also turned into a successful movie here in Norway in 2011 (with a cameo appearance by Johnny Rotten), the screenplay adapted by the author himself. I wrote about the adaptation from novel to movie in exam term paper, comparing and contrasting the two.

Out of the two, I absolutely preferred the movie, possibly because the film compresses most of the action to a year of Nikolaj's life, and skips most of his early childhood, where not that much actually happens, except small things that add up to set the scene for his later rift with his father. The book is also a lot more focused on how the "theory" of the social-democratic ideals of the 1970s failed spectacularly in the area where Frobenius grew up, the "practice" being that the almost forced expectation of conformity and sameness, without any proper outlets for leisure activities, except the local mall, resulting in a huge amount of disenfranchised youths turning to drugs and alcohol when trying to rebel against their middle class parents. The movie is more a portrayal of the father-son relationship with its ups and downs before and after the mother's death.

As of yet, I haven't received the resulting grade for my exam paper, so I don't know yet whether I did a good or a disappointing job on my analysis. I doubt I would have chosen to read the book if it wasn't part of my coursework, even though it's set about 20 minutes away from where I grew up in the mid-80s to 90s. Where I grew up, Rykkin (the area Frobenius grew up) had a bad reputation, and it was well known that you didn't want to go to that mall after dark, as that was where all the druggies were. Can't say that the book dispelled my youthful preconceptions.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.