CBR17 Book 59: "Oona Out of Order" by Margarita Montimore

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Alliteration

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Eyes

CBR17 Bingo: O (A book title that starts with O)

Official plot summary (because I read this back in July):

Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight, she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year, she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order…

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever-changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveller? Wife to a man she’s never met?

Oona Out of Order is a remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of sequence. 

This is one of those books I bought in an e-book sale many years ago and then pretty much forgot about, until it fit into a bunch of my reading challenges this year. Based on the blurb, I wasn't entirely sure if this was going to work for me, but I was pleasantly surprised, and the author was able to sustain the high concept throughout the book.

So mentally and emotionally, Oona ages chronologically, but because of a strange wish she makes on New Year's Eve in 1982, she keeps being sent backwards and forwards in her own life time, and never knows if she's going to be younger or older, which people from her life will be around, how her relationships are going to play out and so on. Oona from the year before tends to write letters to give present day Oona advice on how to navigate her confusing existence from year to year. She has large ledgers locked up in a safe with stock market advice, to make sure that she always has enough money to live a carefree life. 

Some years, she doesn't get the letter, or note, or advice until it's too late, and she may already have committed mistakes past her warned her about. In some years, she recieves bad news about people she cared about, and she quickly learns to avoid "spoilers", to keep her peace of mind. It can be a confusing, and occasionally depressing, way to go through her life, and some New Year's Eves, she is a lot more depressed than others. Other years, she can't wait to jump to a new experience.

This was only the second novel Ms. Montimore published, and based on this, I would absolutely consider reading more from her. She is a creative and entertaining writer.

Judging a book by its cover: The cut out segments of the woman's face would give me a headache if I looked at it too long. It's a striking cover, and the prominently staring eye is the reason I could use this for my Buzzword Cover Challenge. Looking at alternative covers on Goodreads, I also discovered that in the UK, this book has a different title, The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart. I wonder why they renamed it?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 49: "The Change" by Kirsten Miller

Page count: 480 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Buzzwords Cover Challenge 25: Pattern

CBR17 Bingo: Red (A book with a red cover)

Official plot summary:

In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment...

After Nessa James's husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, she's left all alone in a trim white house not far from the ocean. In the quiet of her late forties, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn't take long for Nessa to realise that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead--a gift she's inherited from her grandmother, which comes with special responsibilities.

On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. She hasn't left her house in months, and from the outside, it appears as if she and her garden have both gone to seed. But Harriett's life is far from over--in fact, she's undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis.

Ambitious former executive Jo Levison has spent thirty long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw--until she realizes she has the ability to channel them, and finally comes into her power.

Guided by voices only Nessa can hear, the trio of women discover a teenage girl whose body was abandoned beside a remote beach. The police have written the victim off as a drug-addicted sex worker, but the women refuse to buy into the official narrative. Their investigation into the girl's murder leads to more bodies, and to the town's most exclusive and isolated enclave, a world of stupendous wealth where the rules don't apply. With their newfound powers, Jo, Nessa, and Harriett will take matters into their own hands...

This was my IRL book club's selection for April (because a murder mystery starring three witchy women seemed really appropriate in the same month as Easter (see my description of traditional Norwegian Easter pastimes here). We had a very interesting discussion about it at the end of the month, and it turned out to be a bit of a divisive book. I absolutely loved it, but I suspect that if I'd been younger when I read it (as many members of my book club are) or a man, this book might not have worked for me on as many levels as it did.

One of the things that turned out to be an issue with a lot of the readers was the difficulty in pinpointing the genre of the book. This book isn't an urban fantasy novel, even though there are seemingly supernatural elements in it. It's not a straight-up mystery/crime novel. It's not literary fiction. It's very feminist, and some of the women in the story are described by others as witches, but it doesn't fit neatly into any one category, and for some of the members, that was apparently really frustrating. I've classified it as a contemporary fiction novel with magical realism elements, and there is a mystery to be solved, but it doesn't follow the traditional genre beats of a mystery novel.

Fully in my perimenopausal era now, there were many things in this novel that I recognised almost too well. Jo's overwhelming sense of rage at everyone and everything all the time. Harriet getting to a point where she just wants to do her own thing and doesn't give a single f*ck about what anyone says about it. Nessa is probably the nicest of the three protagonists, but also the one I identified the least with. Her supernatural gift, which it's established as something that women of her family have shared for generations, seems rather horrible. Being able to see the ghosts of dead women, who need the culprits brought to justice, and just not getting peace until the issue is dealt with - it seems like a heavy burden. Thankfully, she has the two other women to assist her in avenging these helpless victims (because while it starts with one dead body, it becomes clear that she is just one in a very long line of women who have met a horrible end in the area).

The POVs of the story mostly shift between Harriet (who was pretty much a middle-aged Poison Ivy), Jo and Nessa. We also get chapters from other women's POVs, including several of the dead girls whom they are determined to get justice for. It helps the reader see these young women as actual people, not just disposable victims. There's a subplot involving a True Crime podcaster, there to delve into the case, who previously did a season on a serial killer decapitating his victims and leaving the heads as grisly trophies. When asked about it, it turns out that he can easily remember every single location a head was found, but he struggles to remember the name of a single one of the victims. Getting to see the world through the victim's eyes, even for just one chapter each, made their tragic fates so much more impactful. 

This book could be summed up as 'F*ck the Patriarchy' or 'Not all men, but almost all of them, and quite a few women who facilitate their awfulness'. Not to say that there aren't some actually good men in the story. Nessa reconnects with the former partner of her dead husband, who is a genuinely decent man and a policeman determined to help with the cases, even when it becomes clear that many of his co-workers feel differently. Jo's husband, who is out of work and working on a screenplay, may not be perfect, but he clearly loves and supports his wife, and as someone who has been with a man for 25 years now, who, because of a whole host of mental issues, depression, and the like has struggled to hold down jobs for a lot of our time together, but who is still a caring husband and father, I got rather heated in my defense of a guy a lot of other readers thought was a bit of a useless sadsack.

To me, this book about righteously angry women, who set out to right the wrongs done by privileged, spoiled and callous men, was an almost perfect read. The latter half had some pacing issues that kept me from giving it a full five stars, but I really enjoyed it when reading, and had trouble putting it down. Strongly recommended, but it may work better for you if you are a woman of a certain age, who has experienced some of the varied awfulnesses that menopause brings. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have the UK paperback edition of this book, where the cover is the black patterns on the blood red background. On some versions, I've seen more of a black border around the edges, and there's red and even a bit of violet in the colour scheme. The American cover seems to be dark blue with sinister-looking thistles on the front. Here, there's just the woman's partially obscured face, and a bee very prominently on the lower half. Both are relevant to the contents. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 47: "Partners in Crime" by Alisha Rai

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Skyline

CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity 

Yet again resorting to the official plot summary, because I finished this in mid-April and I just cannot remember all the of details of the plot anymore:

At thirty-five, with a stable job as an accountant, Mira Chaudhary wants nothing more than to find a boring man to spend the rest of her life with. Having had enough excitement in her younger days and desperately trying to escape her dysfunctional past, she turns to a matching app specializing in Indian American singles to help her find someone to settle down with.

Enter Naveen Desai. An English professor with an uneventful, normal, and—dare she say it, boring—life, Naveen is perfect.

But just when things are going well, Mira receives news that her aunt has died. Suddenly, a trip to Las Vegas to settle her aunt’s affairs turns into a mad dash to escape kidnappers, evade art thieves, and consorting with hackers who can decipher just what it was Mira’s aunt was involved with. Mira just hopes that Naveen isn’t chased away by the very same life of “excitement” that she’s been trying to get away from. But maybe, over the course of one wild night, Mira and Naveen will find the love connection that neither expected.

Mira is trying to be traditional and respectable, to distance herself from her family's less than savoury past. Naveen is trying to help his grandfather keep his lawyer's practice. The two of them have a past, and Mira broke up with Naveen via text message. Not exactly classy. He's right to be pissed off at her.

However, when they end up drugged and abducted together to Las Vegas, they try to figure out what the bad guys want from Mira's dad and aunt's pasts, before bad things happen to them (or people they care about, like Naveen's grandfather). They are forced to work together to stay ahead of their pursuers, and over the course of a whirlwind adventure in Vegas, they also get a chance to reconnect, reevaluate their past relationship and see each other honestly as the people they really are now.

Unfortunately, I don't remember a lot of details particularly clearly, but at the same time, I also don't remember anything that annoyed me while reading it, either. It was a fun read, and I finished it in less than 48 hours. 

Judging a book by its cover: Standard grumble about cartoon cover trend - but I do appreciate that both the characters on the cover look approximately as described in the story, and the scene in question, complete with fancy car and evening wear, does actually take place in the story. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 45: "The Geographer's Map to Romance" by India Holton

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Monochrome

CBR17 Bingo: Green (A book with a green cover)

Official plot summary, because I finished the book in early April, and perimenopause is doing my powers of recall no favours:

Professor Elodie Tarrant is an expert in magic disasters. Nothing fazes her—except her own personal disaster, that Professor Gabriel Tarrant, the grumpy, unfriendly man she married for convenience a year ago, whom she secretly loves.

Gabriel is also an expert in magic disasters. And nothing fazes him either—except the walking, talking tornado that is his wife. They’ve been estranged since shortly after their wedding day, but that hasn’t stopped him from stoically pining for her.

When magic erupts in a small Welsh village, threatening catastrophe for the rest of England, Elodie and Gabriel are accidentally both assigned to the case. With the fate of the country in their hands, they must come together as a team in the face of perilous conditions like explosions, domesticated goats, and only one bed. But this is easier said than done. After all, there's no navigational guide for the geography of the heart.

True story. Geography was probably my third least favourite subject in high school (after PE - always my most loathed subject, and math, which became increasingly harder in high school until I had the option to drop it). So it's interesting, that while India Holton chose to make the first book in this series about birds (which I have a massive phobia about), and the second one about geography (although if we'd gotten to study the sort of magical geography this book involves, I probably would have liked the subject a lot more in school), I was still so delighted while reading it. The third book in the series is a Gothic romantic fantasy involving historians - now you're speaking my language, Ms. Holton!

India Holton writes unusual and funny fantasy stories set in alternate timelines, featuring at least one neurodivergent protagonist. On social media, she describes The Geographer's Map to Romance as "Anne of Green Gables meets Twister in a light academia fantasy romcom perfect for those who love storms, bespectacled science professors, and shouting 'just kiss already!' while reading." 

Elodie is very intelligent, extremely absent-minded and tries to see the world in a positive light. Gabriel is very intelligent, constantly grumpy and pines for his wife as if it were an Olympic event. Anyone who feels that a lot of romance nowadays doesn't have enough mutual pining and sincere yearning should check out this book. 

Gabriel Tarrant was introduced in book 1 of the series, but these books work perfectly well as stand-alones. Towards the end of this book, we meet Amelia Tarrant, his historian sister, who will be the heroine of The Antiquarian's Object of Desire (already one of my most anticipated books of 2026). 

These books can accurately be described as romps, so if you want deeply serious fantasy, they may not be for you. But if you'd like a light-hearted read with creative twists and turns, an amusing supporting cast, a destructive goat and protagonists who are both frightfully competent at their jobs, and dreadful when it comes to dealing with their own romantic entanglements, this might be a good fit. 

Judging a book by its cover: Ms. Holton has been blessed by the gods of beautiful cover design, because the covers for this series just keep getting better and better (she just this week did a cover reveal for book 3, and it's gorgeous). The green and the gold work so well together. I don't own these books in physical copies (yet), but I will, as soon as my finances allow it.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 18: "Tress of the Emerald Sea" by Brandon Sanderson

Page count: 479 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 27 mins

Rating: 4.5 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Celestial (there is a big moon and several stars on the cover)

What if in The Princess Bride, Buttercup didn't sit at home and mourn for Westley when he was captured by pirates, but instead went off to try to rescue him? Of course, that would mean Buttercup had any agency at all in either the novel or the film, and she really doesn't. But if Buttercup was a young woman named Tress, from a barren and fairly desolate island, who washes windows at the duke's mansion and collects cups, with the only thing making her life worthwhile being her friendship with the duke's son (who pretends to be a gardener), and one day, Charlie, her best friend (who she's only recently discovered that she's also in love with) is taken away by his father to be married off (a poor window washer girl is not a suitable match for him)? Charlie promises to be so dreadfully boring to every suitable bride he meets that no one will want to marry him, and every time is rejected by another bride, he will write to her and send her another cup from his travels. 

However, after some months, the letters stop coming. Then the duke returns, but Charlie isn't with him. Charlie has been kidnapped by the Sorceress, and it doesn't seem like anyone cares except Tress. First, she needs to figure out how to get off the island (no one but the duke's family is ever allowed to leave). On the first ship she travels on, she meets a talking rat, who she takes with her when the ship is attacked by pirates. It's important to note that in this world, while there are ships and long voyages, the oceans are made up of spores that react very violently to the presence of any liquids. Very occasionally, the spore currents still for a time, and it's possible for brave, or exceedingly foolish, individuals to walk along on top of the spores. This is how Tress gets from the attacked ship onto the pirate vessel, where she gradually befriends more of the crew and works her way up in rank, despite the misgivings of the blood-thirsty pirate captain. 

Tress isn't entirely sure how she's going to help the motley crew of pirates from becoming exploited by their captain, and persuade them that they really want to assist her in travelling across the Crimson Sea to the Midnight Sea (the two most dangerous areas on the planet), and face the terrifying Socreress to rescue the boy she loves. But she knows that if she gives up, Charlie has no one coming for him, and that is unacceptable to her.

This is an adventure story with a plucky heroine, who keeps succeeding against all odds, sometimes because she just won't quit.While Tress has had a sheltered and rather uneventful life until she decides to leave the safety of her home to go off and rescue Charlie, she's not stupid, and her determination to get to him makes her face challenges that would make others quake. Occasionally, her lack of experience also makes her less afraid of dangers than she probably should be, since she just doesn't realise what the consequences of the potential threats. She's also kind-hearted and determined to help those who show her kindness along the way, even if it might delay her ultimate goal of getting to the Sorceress.

This is the first of the four secret projects that Brandon Sanderson announced that he wrote when he suddenly had a lot of extra downtime during the Pandemic. While most of us binged TV shows and perfected our sourdough loaves, Sanderson apparently wrote four entire novels, in addition to all the work he was already contracted for. The man is a machine! This led to probably the biggest Kickstarter campaign in history. Sanderson started writing this story for his wife, after wondering what The Princess Bride could have been like if the heroine wasn't just a passive player, having the plot happen to her. 

I didn't have the finances to get all four secret projects in hardback (not only did the books themselves cost quite a lot, but the shipping to Norway was incredibly expensive), so I only got Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, because these two books were the ones that looked the prettiest and most interesting to me. I did get digital and audio copies of all the other books, though, which allowed me to listen to parts of this in audiobook as well. 

Most of Sanderson's many many novels fit into a larger fictional universe called the Cosmere. That means that a lot of his books are vaguely interconnected. Since this book fits into the Cosmere, but there are more than twenty other works that come before it, I had this grand plan last year, to do a re-read of the Sanderson novels I had read (most of them a very long time ago now) and catch up on all the ones I hadn't read, so I'd be able to properly enjoy the various secret projects, and not be confused by the references. Sadly, this failed almost at the first hurdle, when I had finished the brilliant Mistborn, and then just couldn't get past the opening chapters of The Well of Ascencion, the next book in the series. Then this got selected as the February read in The Dark Corner, my real life book club, and it became clear that I was just going to have to ignore references to events or characters from other Cosmere books. 

One such character is Hoid, who narrates the story of Tress and Charlie to us readers. He has apparently appeared in a bunch of Sanderson's novels (some of which I have read, if the wiki article I read is correct - and I don't see why it wouldn't be) in various different guises. In this book, he's a cabin boy who has been cursed by The Sorceress (who is also a character from the wider Cosmere universe) becaue of a bet. He speaks and behaves nonsensically for much of the story because of this curse. Some of the members in my bookclub found the way the story was told (Hoid frequently breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader) incredibly annoying. The 2-3 people who didn't like the book cited Hoid's storytelling style and all three felt it wanted to be Pratchett, but didn't succeed. 

Most people, however, really liked the book, and since this was our February choice, we had a very interesting discussion about whether this could be classed as a romance, or whether it was more accurately a love story. The general consensus was that Tress' love for Charlie is completely central to the plot, it's the force that drives her to change her life and leave the island, it's what keeps her going even when things seem almost impossible, and that the book wouldn't work without the love story at its centre. We also agreed that if the book had been sold to us as a great romance, we would probably have been disappointed. 

Personally, I didn't find Hoid all that annoying, and very much like when I was reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, I decided to just enjoy the story on its own terms, and ignore any references that went over my head. Knowing that this was at least in part inspired by The Princess Bride (one of my favourite films, and books, I had fun seeing the many ways in which the story resembled, or subverted the plot of that story. 

As always, Sanderson's world building and approach to magic systems is fantastic, and even the ones who didn't like the book that much had to admit that the oceans of spores idea was great. If anything, there was quite a bit of grumbling because the book claimed there were twelve different kinds of spores, and we only got to learn about five of them in-story. The characters were interesting, and even the Pirate Captain, who by some could be seen as villainous, had very clear motivations and it was made obvious why she might have chosen to act as she did. Some of the bookclub members highlighted her as one of their favourite characters,

Reading Sanderson again did remind me that his writing has always worked for me, and gave me further motivation to actually continue my "Reading the Cosmere" project this year. I'm not going to try to give myself a set time limit this time, that clearly did NOT work, and he has such a big back catalogue of mostly very long books, but I do want to revisit some of the ones I read in the past, and continue the various series. The people who love Sanderson, love him SO much. I'm trying to focus on quality over quantity in my reading now, and not get freaked out if I don't get to read a set number of books per year, but rather focus on the things I read being enjoyable.

Finally, I wanted to end this review by mentioning how utterly gorgeous my Kickstarter-funded hardback is. It is illustrated throughout, with some beatiful drawings, and, as I discovered as I got further through the book, colour coded to which of the seas Tress finds herself at the time. When she travels the Emerald sea, the chapter headings and page numbers are in a beautiful green, when she travels into the Crimson sea, the colours change to red, and then to inky black when she crosses into the dreaded Midnight sea. Having such a pretty edition of the book makes the exorbitant cost of shipping sting slightly less. 

Judging a book by its cover: My hardback is a lovely, clothbound book with different textures for the patterns of the various elements of the cover. As far as I can tell, most of the editions of this book feature Tress and some varation on a giant moon on the cover, but I think this is one of the prettiest versions. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 17: "The Wedding Party" by Jasmine Guillory

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Event

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Food or drink

Maddie and Theo are both best friends with Alexa (from The Wedding Date). Despite what the blurb tries to tell you, they are not enemies, they just dislike each other because of some unfortunate first impressions. Maddie thinks Theo is a pompous nerd who looks down on her for her career choice, while Theo thinks Maddie is shallow, fashion-obsessed and mean. After a night out, they drunkenly kiss each other and end up having sex, and very soon they are hooking up every chance they get (including making really bad excuses to see each other). They don't want anyone to find out about it, however, because they don't want Alexa to start match-making while she's busy planning her own wedding. Both agree that it's a temporary thing that will come to a natural end once Alexa's wedding is over, and they stop having to spend so much time together (they are both in the wedding party).

Both characters are absolute idiots when it comes to being honest with themselves about their feelings, and neither of them wants to confess their growing affection for the other, scared that because of their initial antipathy, the other one will reject them. So they keep spending their evenings together, eating SO MUCH takeaway pizza (seriously, it's ridiculous) and ending up in bed together. They are sure they are being very sneaky and that no one suspects a thing, when in fact, every single person who spends time with them (including Alexa) is fully aware of what is going on, and just waiting for them to mutually realise that they are perfect for one another. 

This was a fun read and reminded me that there are a bunch of books in this series that I own, but haven't ever got around to reading. This is why reading challenges are good - they force me to look through my TBR and my many, many owned, but unread books to rediscover stuff I bought years and years ago and completely forgot because there are always so many other shiny books out there to distract me. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really wish they'd used black for the whole title, instead of yellow for part of it, since the yellow against the bright purple background is much harder to read this way. Otherwise, it's a fairly unobjectionable cover. It features the protagonists drinking champagne, so I could use it for my reading challenge. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 16: "Scythe & Sparrow" by Brynne Weaver

Page count: 416 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 36 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Transportation

Doctor Fionn Kane is doing just fine in the little Nebraska town he retreated to after leaving his promising surgical career and ex-fiancee behind. He doesn't really want anything to do with the past-times of either of his brothers and is keeping his head down, running and working out when he's not working in his small medical clinic or the hospital. He also crochets. Then a beautiful woman with a severe leg injury ends up nearly unconscious on the floor of his clinic, asking him for help before she passes out. Fionn doesn't realise that despite his attempts to live a calm and uneventful life, chaos has just found him.

Rose Evans has worked at Silveria Circus for over a decade. She has a fortune telling booth, reading tarot cards for paying customers, and also rides her motorcycle every evening in death-defying stunts. She's also has a very particular interest in botany, and as the Sparrow, she has provided many a woman with the means to incapacitate or kill an abusive partner. Normally, she doesn't do any of the killing herself, but when an obviously terrified woman comes to her for a reading, and Rose is able to figure out where the family lives, she decides to take matters (and a baseball bat) into her own hands, to rid the family of their abusive husband/father. Except Rose seriously underestimates the rage and strength of the man she attacks, and ends up with a badly broken leg before she manages to jam some cocktail sticks in the guy's eye, giving her enough time to escape on her motorcycle. She locates the local clinic, desperate to find something for the pain, and passes out shortly after the handsome doctor finds her.

A circus performer with a broken leg can't do her job, so the travelling circus leaves Rose and her RV in Nebraska, planning to pick her up once she's had time to heal. On crutches, after the complicated break, Rose isn't able to mount the stairs to her RV. Fionn has a spare room in his house and surprises himself by inviting the intriguing woman to stay with him until she's had time to recover. Fionn is used to depriving himself of the things he truly desires, so staying away from Rose, his patient, should be fine, right?

Readers of the rest of Brynne Weaver's Ruinous Love trilogy, will have already met Fionn and Rose in Butcher & Blackbird (when Ronan and Sloane show up unexpectedly requiring medical help they can't really get from a hospital) and in Leather & Lark, where the final events left things looking pretty critical for Rose (spoiler: she doesn't die). Plot-wise, the events of this book start a while before Ronan and Sloane show up, and continues as a sequel to both previous books, so the readers can discover how Rose is pulled back from death's door. 

Having read the previous two books, I felt like I already had an idea of who Fionn and Rose were as characters, but it was nevertheless fun to see them more deeply developed. The reveal that Fionn crochets in his spare time, along with a bunch of small-town grannies was a very fun one. Unlike his brothers, Fionn has chosen to heal people rather than to unalive them, but he still feels immense guilt for the role he played in the demise of their abusive father, and has never felt able to confide in his brothers about this. Rose, on the other hand, seems to have quite a death toll that she facilitated by giving other women the means to be free of their abusers. It's only in this book that she decides to try to take a more active hand in murdering violent and unpleasant men, and because she is very impulsive, it rarely goes the way she plans. Poor Fionn has to get her out of trouble more than once. 

Rating the books of the trilogy, Leather & Lark is my least favourite, while Butcher & Blackbird remains my absolute favourite (none of the other books have made me that obsessed), putting Scythe & Sparrow firmly in the middle. Of the three, this is probably the book with the most mutual pining (while Ronan pines for years for Sloane, she's pretty oblivious to all of it), and our protagonists are very attracted to one another from the start, but not willing, or in some cases able, to act on it. In the last third of this book, Fionn and Rose are separated for much of it, and as a result, correspond in letters. As a result, I would probably say it's the most romantic of the three. 

This book has the same narrators as Leather & Lark and is once more a dual narration. I really like this kind of storytelling, and since the narrators also voiced Lark and Lachlan in the previous book, there is some nice continuity. 

In one of the two epilogues to this story, Ms. Weaver gives some hints towards what she's likely to be writing about next. It seems to be a spin-off of sorts from these books, and by now, I am enjoying her storytelling enough that I'll probably get the next one too.

Judging a book by its cover: I genuinely don't know why there is a scythe featured on the cover, as far as I recall, one is never used by any of the characters, protagonists or antagonists, and therefor it seems a bit unnecessary. All the other elements that we see in yellow and orange on the cover at least feature in the book at some point. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.