Bonus post: #CBR8 Book 135: "Midnights" by Rainbow Rowell

Page count: 15 pages
Rating: 4 stars

I know I said yesterday that number 134 was going to be my last review of the year, but that was before I remembered that there was a Rainbow Rowell short story out there in the world that I hadn't read. Also, it has it's own entry on Goodreads, so even though it's part of a bigger anthology, My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories (eleven of which I have yet to read), I don't feel reviewing it is cheating. 135 is a nicer, rounder number to end the year on.

Margaret "Mags" and Noel meet at a New Year's Eve party at Mags' friend Alicia's in 2011. Margaret doesn't really know anyone else there and is feeling a bit left out when a tall boy comes over and chats with her. He explains how he's allergic to any number of things, including tree nuts, and therefore feels that Mags may in fact have saved his life by alerting him to the fact that the dip had pine nuts in it. We meet the couple again the next New Year. Noel is still the socially outgoing one and well-liked by everyone. Mags observes everything and everyone from the sidelines. Noel considers Mags one of his best friends, but as she points out, he has lots of best friends.

We see a number of parties at Alicia's, where Noel is charming and tries to get Mags to dance with him. He gives her so much attention, but always ends up kissing someone else at midnight. Come 2014, Mags is seeing most of her friends for the first time since they went away to college, Noel included. Mags got a scholarship to a school in Omaha, so she's the only one who hasn't gone anywhere and experienced new things. She can't take the idea of seeing Noel kiss another girl when midnight comes, so she hides outside.

Rainbow Rowell is one of my favourite writers. I cannot think of a book or story she has written that I haven't absolutely loved (seriously, the lowest rating I've given to any of her books is 4.5 stars). The only reason this is now my lowest-rated of all of her works is that one thing has to be, and this is so very short. It has that wonderful Rowell wit, great characters who you make a connection with instantly, even if you've barely had any time to read about them. She paints a very vivid picture of the setting in very few words, and even this 15-page story has a recurring cast of characters that she develops the lives of cleverly, off-page. We only see them in little glimpses every New Year's Eve, in the same location, but we are given hints of how their lives have changed since the last time. As with Kindred Spirits, the little novella she wrote for World Book Day earlier this year, there just isn't enough here. I get all the things I associate with a great Rowell story, but with only 15 pages to spend time with these characters, I'm left unsatisfied and wanting MORE!

There is also no longer anything out there in the world published by Rowell that I haven't now read. I really hope she's working on something new,  and I can't wait until I get my hands on whatever it is.

Judging a book by its cover: This story doesn't have any cover of its own, I've used the cover for the short story collection where it's included. As far as I can tell, the cover has all the various protagonists from the stories ice skating on a pond. I couldn't begin to tell you which little cartoon people are supposed to be Mags and Joel. It's a pretty cute cover for a short story collection, though.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 133: "My Lady Jane" by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows and Brodi Ashton

Page count: 512 pages
Rating: 4 stars

According to history, when King Edward VI, Henry VIII's son died young and childless, certain noblemen who wanted to make sure a ruler of the Protestant faith ruled the country put his young cousin Lady Jane Gray on the throne. She ruled for nine days, before Mary Tudor arrived with her armies, removed the poor girl and had her beheaded. This book bears a vague resemblance to that story.

In the England of this story, the conflict in England isn't between Catholics and Protestants, it's between non-shapeshifters, also known as Verities, and shapeshifters, better known as eðians (pronounced eethians). King Henry VIII himself turned into a great big lion, on occasion, but even so, the eðians are generally hunted and distrusted by the populace in general. Princess Mary is staunchly against them and want them all killed, while young King Edward and his best friend and cousin, Lady Jane Grey read everything they can about them and would like nothing more than to discover eðian abilities of their own.

Sadly, Edward appears to be dying. He has been told by Lord Dudley, his chief adviser and his physicians that he's suffering from "the affliction" and that he is unlikely to have long, certainly not long enough to marry and produce a male heir. Luckily Dudley has a plan to secure a succession that will make sure an eðian-friendly ruler ends up on the English trone. He suggests that Edward change the line of succession to ensure that his cousin Lady Jane's heirs inherit. Of course, Jane needs to be married to produce heirs, but Dudley has just the candidate. His younger son, Gifford. There is the minor difficulty that Gifford Dudley is an eðian and spends every day from sunup to sunset as a magnificent stallion, but any heirs would be conceived at night anyways, so Dudley is sure Jane wouldn't mind too much.

When the extremely intellectual Jane finds out that she's to be married off within a few days, she travels to the Dudley estate (carrying with her a suitable supply of books to entertain her) to meet her intended. Unfortunately, because of some rather shameful nightly pursuits, Gifford (just call him G) has let it be known that he's a rampant womaniser. It's more socially acceptable than what he gets up to. Hence his older brother mistakes Jane for one of his younger brother's many suspected floozies and Jane believes her impending husband is a lecherous libertine (he's not, he's actually a poet). Nor does anyone deem it appropriate to tell her about her husband's eðian status, so she has quite the surprise the morning after her wedding, when the groom turns into a big horse in the middle of her bedroom.

As Edward takes a rapid turn for the worse shortly after the wedding, his sister Elizabeth warns him that he mustn't trust his physicians and he realises that Dudley is up to no good, and that Jane may be in terrible danger as well.

This is a delightful farce of a book, where we follow the points of view of Edward, Jane and G (he never liked the name Gifford) as the story progresses. Since there are three authors, I suspect each of them took one character and wrote their sections. Having loosely based the first half on actual historical events (if you ignore the shapeshifters), the second half is pure fantasy and a lot of fun. The book is clearly inspired by The Princess Bride, with the narrators occasionally interrupting the narrative to address the reader directly. Readers will recognise that most of Gifford's poetry is strikingly similar to that of one William Shakespeare. There is humour reminiscent of Monty Python and Blackadder, while at least one plot development brings to mind the lovely Ladyhawke, one of my favourite eighties movies (I'd love to get a version with a non-synthy soundtrack).

I've seen this book included on several best of 2016 lists, and while I'm not sure I enjoyed it enough to include it in my top ten of the year, it's a very enjoyable romp from start to finish. My one complaint is that the book is a bit long and I think some of the parts in the second half could have been edited a bit more. As a huge fan of Tudor history in general, and having always been sympathetic to poor Lady Jane, the nine days queen, who really didn't have much choice in the matter and was a political pawn her entire life, it was nice to see a story that reimagines a much happier ending for her. Possibly not the book for you if you take your history very seriously, but highly recommended for anyone who wants a fun, creative and irreverent reimagining of history.

Judging a book by its cover: While on first look, this may seem like any old historical novel, with your red-headed girl in Tudor era clothing and a big red font bringing your attention to the title, you need only take a closer look to see that there's more here. In little "hand-written notes" and arrows pointing to the girl on the cover, the writers explain that "Sometimes history gets it all wrong". The other notes say "It's not easy being queen" and "Off with her head".

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.  

#CBR8 Book 131: "The Queen of the Tearling" by Erika Johansen

Page count: 643 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Kelsea knows that when she turns nineteen, it is time for her to take her rightful place as Queen, like her mother (who died when she was a baby) and grandmother before her. She has been raised far from civilisation, by two loyal servants, who did their best to prepare her in every way they could for the duty she would be facing. What they have not done is socialise her in any way, she's barely seen another living soul since she was little, and they've refused to tell her anything about her mother or her mother's reign. So while she has a lot of theoretical knowledge about her realm, the Tearling, and its surrounding neighbours, she has little to no practical experience and is in for a sharp learning curve once some of the remaining members of the queen's guard come to pick her up to take her back to the capital.

The road back to her palace is fraught with danger, as her uncle, the regent, has sent assassins to dispatch Kelsea. He doesn't want to surrender his power, and there is more than one attack on the princess and her guards on their way to the capital. Along the way, Kelsea is rescued from an attack by hired killers by the Tearling's most wanted, a legendary outlaw calling himself the Fetch. This man and all his compatriots wear masks while they dispatch Kelsea's attackers, but later, when she spends some time in their camp, she gets to see him unmasked. He clearly has sinister plans for her uncle and is very curious about what sort of ruler Kelsea is going to be. She refuses to show fear and promises to rule the country to the best of her abilities. This seems to satisfy the bandit leader.

Once she returns to her palace, Kelsea discovers how her mother made peace with the neighbouring country, ruled by a powerful and seemingly ageless sorceress after an invasion several decades ago. Suffice to say, Kelsea is appalled and by her first actions, she sets in motion events that may very well trigger a new invasion. Shortly after, there is another assassination attempt on her while they are trying to get her crowned. It becomes obvious to Kelsea that her long-dead mother was a vain, weak and fairly useless queen who quite happily sold out the freedoms and rights of her people to keep herself safe. Her brother, Kelsea's uncle, has continued the mismanagement of the realm and most of the people are suffering badly. If she can survive, she has a hell of a job ahead of her, righting the wrongs of her predecessors. Luckily, she appears to have some sort of magical abilities too, bestowed on her by the royal sapphires that all heirs to the Tearling wear.

I've seen a lot of people give this book incredibly low ratings, probably because it seems that when the book was first released it was marketed as "Game of Thrones meets the Hunger Games". Clearly this was invented by someone who threw darts on a large board full of things that sold well in the publishing industry. "What if Hermione Granger was the heir to a really down-trodden, pseudo-medieval but somehow also set in our future kingdom, where the biggest danger was the evil sorceress in the next country over" would be a better description. Note that I didn't pick Hermione completely out of the blue. Emma Watson has apparently bought the adaptation rights and wants to star as Kelsea. I'm assuming that if that is the case, they're going to have to uglify her but good, as just in case you forget it, every third chapter or so, the author reminds you how plain, unassuming and dumpy Kelsea is. You are never really allowed to go long without being told how the new queen is rather ugly. So I can't really say that my mental image of her was Emma Watson, and also, I really felt that the girl had more important things to worry about than her appearance, but what do I know? I've never had to rule a fantasy kingdom that's pretty much been colonised and run into the ground by another.

The world-building is strange. There are references to America and England, and some generations ago, a man called William Tear apparently gathered all the scientists, doctors and learned people on ships to sail away to a new continent (no hints as to where this is), but a lot of their technology and medical expertise was shipwrecked on the way. So while there are knights and sorcery and people riding horses or using carts, and mostly very downtrodden serfs rooting around in the mud (it all got a bit Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the descriptions of the countryside and the populace, as far as I could tell), this is somehow set in the future. Also, the Red Queen who rules the neighbouring kingdom (I could look it up, but I can't be bothered to dig out my e-reader) seems to have lived for at least a century, clearly through nefarious magical means.

Kelsea has a sapphire around her neck that apparently cannot be removed until she is dead, as well as a second one that will belong to her heir. This one the Fetch could take from her though, and he gives it back to her later in the book when he feels that she has proven herself worthy to rule. Said necklace seems to be trying to communicate with Kelsea and can bestow her with magical powers. She also has a servant who appears to be a psychic of some sort, but only in the sense that she gets premonitions about bad things about to happen, she can't give specifics (that would be far too useful). Oh, and Kelsea has grown up reading and loving books because her guardian had lots of shelves worth, but in the rest of the kingdom, books are super rare and no one knows how to print them anymore or seems to care about relearning this skill (this is my nightmare).

For the first third or so, the book didn't interest me much and I actually put it down and read a bunch of other books in between. Then she finally arrived at her palace and discovered just how messed up a situation she was faced with as queen (I don't want to go into specifics, but trust me, it's pretty bad) and I started getting interested. This book is clearly just establishing the beginning of Kelsea's reign. Since each new chapter seems to contain excerpts from books written much later in Queen Kelsea's lifetime, possibly even after her death, I was never overly worried that she wasn't going to make it though to the end of the book (also, this is book one - I suspect she may survive until book three).

The tone of the book is also a bit strange. This is totally YA, and nowhere near George R.R. Martin territory (nor are there anything vaguely resembling Hunger Games - seriously publishers, did you read the wrong book before you sent out the press release?), but there are some scenes of pretty graphic violence and while there isn't a lot of sexual content, the Red Queen clearly isn't big on consent and doesn't care who she takes her pleasure with, and neither does Kelsea's weaselly uncle.

I've seen complaints that Kelsea is a special snowflake of a character, I didn't really think so. She is young, and has a lot of book smarts, but clearly needs to learn to rule properly, and has impulsively made decisions that are going to come back and bite her in her royal behind later. She seems to nurse an ill-advised crush on the Fetch, but there isn't really anything romantic hinted at with anyone. There are a lot of factions who want to oppose her, and she will clearly face a lot of challenges in the next two books before I'm sure she becomes triumphant and takes her people into a new golden age or something. As long as she makes sure there are books, I'll be happy.

It's a decent enough beginning to a fantasy trilogy. I'm really curious as to where exactly these books are set, as unless the ships mentioned were actually spaceships, I'm unsure where the Americans and English of old actually sailed to. As long as I'm entertained, and it doesn't play too important a part, I'm willing to turn my brain off in that particular respect. Since the trilogy is now completed, it seems likely I'll be reading the rest of it in the next year or so, but it's not like I'm impatient to pick up the next book either. I hope Kelsea stops moaning about how ugly she is in book two, though. Looks aren't everything, girl.

Judging a book by its cover: I've seen several covers for this book, the one that comes with my edition evokes a volume of fairy stories to me, with the red background and the black, swirly embellishments. In the centre "cutout", there is a palace on a hill, so you can probably guess from both the title and the image that this is a fantasy story. It's not the most exciting of images, but it's not bad either.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 127: "Nuts" by Alice Clayton

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Wanting to prove to herself that she can manage on her own, Roxie Callahan moved all the way across the country, away from her somewhat flakey, alternative diner-managing mother and her constant string of usually unhappy infatuations. Roxie has put herself through culinary school and is working hard to establish herself as a private chef to wealthy Hollywood wives. But when a moment of distraction means she screws up with a very important client, it seems as if most of her client base are happy to drop her like the proverbial hot potato. So when her mother calls her and begs her to run the family diner for the summer, while her mother and aunt go off around the world, competing in "The Amazing Race", Roxie doesn't really have a lot of alternatives and returns to the little town in upstate New York where she always felt like a bit of an outcast.

Roxie is determined that she's only staying around for the summer, but finds that there are many positive changes to the place she grew up. The quarterback she had a massive crush on is still handsome as ever, but has moved back to town with his equally attractive husband. The two happily take Roxie under their wing and do whatever they can to throw her in the path of local farmer Leo Maxwell, whose farming co-operative is supplying the town and surrounding areas with fresh fruits, berries, vegetables and produce. It's clear that Roxie's interest in the smoking hot Leo is very much reciprocated, and a scorching summer fling would absolutely make her days running the diner into less of a chore. Leo is clearly quite happily settled in town, though. What happens when the summer is over, and Roxie is going to return to LA?

I've only read one previous romance by Alice Clayton, the first book in her Cocktail series, Wallbanger. It was amusing enough, if a bit long overall and there was a drawn-out love scene involving way too many foodstuffs and dirtying of kitchen surfaces to my taste. This book is the first in her new contemporary romance series, entitled Hudson Valley, inspired by the sustainable food movement, organic farming, slow foods and the recent trend in local farming and wanting to know where your food comes from. The hero is a Manhattan playboy turned hipster farmer and the heroine is the local girl who returns to her hometown to discover that the things she's been running from for years might not be so bad after all.

Raised by a hippy dippy single mother who took over the local diner, and witness to her mother's many dramatic love affairs, Roxie has always had to be the practical, pragmatic one, who made sure the bills were paid and their little family could actually make ends meet, even when her mother was in one of her heartbroken periods. Always fascinated by gourmet cooking, she never really fit in among her peers and only found happiness when she went to culinary school far away, on the other side of the country. Making a living by herself in Los Angeles is incredibly hard, however, and when most of her revenue stream dries up because of one unfortunate cooking mishap, she's left with no options but to return home to run the family diner for a summer.

The local land surrounding the town has been owned by the wealthy Maxwell family for generations, but Roxie is surprised to discover that there is now a large and prosperous farming cooperative being run there, by none other than one of the sons of the Maxwell family. Maxwell Farms, apparently based on the Stone Barns Educational Centre in upstate New York is much more to Leo's taste than taking up the family legacy of big business banking. It's clear that every single woman in town has her eyes set on Leo, but according to Chad Bowman, Roxie's former quarterback classmate and new bestie in Bailey Falls, he's not shown any interest in anyone for years. Until Roxie shows up, that is.

Always careful to never get emotionally entangled in her hook-ups, having seen her mother crash and burn romantically too many times, Roxie makes it very clear to Leo that she's only there for a few months and that theirs will be a purely physical relationship. He seems more than happy to agree, and soon the two of them share more than one steamy evening together. As the summer progresses, Roxie discovers that keeping things completely casual with Leo may be harder than she thought, especially after she discovers some of the things the rest of the town apparently knew about his past, that she, the summer fling, has been unaware of.

After finishing The Count of Monte Cristo, I really wasn't up for reading anything long, complicated or demanding, meaning I pretty much settled for romances in December. This is the second one I read, and it was a lot more satisfying on all levels than Managed. By no means perfect, I liked the setting of Bailey Falls, two protagonists who are both very good at what they do and passionate about it, while bantering amusingly and sharing some believable chemistry on the page. Frequently in these stories, the element thrown in about two thirds of the way through, meant to cause complications for our lovers before everything is resolved to the reader's satisfaction can feel contrived and be quite annoying. I thought the elements of Leo's past that were introduced were well-done, and the complications came more from Roxie's insistence on emotional distance than from his having kept secrets.

The supporting cast, Chad Bowman and his husband, Roxie's mother, some of the colourful townsfolk, as well as Roxie's BFFs in New York, who are clearly being set up as the heroines of the next two books of the series, were also fun to read about. I don't mind sequel-bait if it's done well enough, and since the next hero is large, taciturn brooding dairy farmer neighbour (apparently Clayton's mental image of him is Jason Momoa - I can work with that!), I will probably be checking out the sequel early in the new year.

Judging a book by its cover: Ah, abs. ridiculously sculpted and toned muscles. and some walnuts, just so you understand that the title isn't just a rude pun, but sure, you're supposed to think that too. Since both Leo's ridiculously toned body and his food produce play important parts in the book, I suppose the cover is strangely fitting.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 124: "Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame" by Mara Wilson

Page count: 265 pages
Audio book length: 7 hrs 22 mins
Rating: 4 stars

I wasn't initially going to get this book. While I've seen Mrs. Doubtfire and Matilda, possibly the two films that Mara Wilson is most famous for, I haven't really watched any of the others she was a child star in, nor do I follow her Twitter or writing career as an adult. It just didn't seem like this would be all that interesting to me. Nonetheless, this book got a lot of positive write-ups from people with good taste, including Patrick Rothfuss and Wil Wheaton (himself a child star once upon a time) and several of my Goodreads friends. I do like an entertaining audio book, so I changed my mind and used a credit on it. Now I'm glad I did.

As with a lot of celebrity autobiographies, Ms. Wilson reads the book herself, and she has a very wry and self-deprecating way of telling the stories about herself. As she reveals later in the book that one of the things she does for a living now is storytelling, it should come as no surprise that this is a well-told book. The book is an anthology of observations, many dealing with Ms. Wilson's childhood, not just as a child actress, but also dealing with her anxiety and OCD, the death of her mother and how and why she made the choice to give up acting when she became a teenager. There's an open letter to Matilda, the character she is most famous for, and there are stories about her college years and her writing as an adult. The chapter dealing with her mother's death and how it feels growing up without a mother, even though she seems to have a lovely stepmother; the one where she talks about determining the fairly severe levels of her OCD, not to mention the one where she talks about Robin Williams and learning about his death were probably the ones that affected me the most.

The reason this book doesn't quite get one of my highest rating is that it really is quite short. I was surprised at how quickly it was finished, and some of the stories are just not all that interesting and felt a bit like filler. This book was written before Ms. Wilson came out openly as bisexual, and as others have already pointed out in their reviews, I suspect some of the chapters would may have been written a bit differently if this was public knowledge. It's a good book, and Wilson is a witty story teller. While not on the same level as Craig Ferguson's or Amy Poehler's books, it was stil a good read.

Judging a book by its cover: It's a fairly simple cover, and shows Mara Wilson as she is probably most well-known and recognised. As a little girl, from her role as Matilda. I suspect most people don't know what Wilson looks like as an adult (I had to do a Google image search), so putting one of her most iconic images on the cover of a book that deals with her life as a child star, and has several chapters dealing with Matilda, it seems like good marketing strategy. I know she says in the book that she hates being called cute, but she really was.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 121: "Storm's Heart" by Thea Harrison

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 2.5 stars

I read this TWO months ago, and need to get through this ever-increasing review backlog, hence resorting to the blurb once more:

During the rule of her murderous Dark Fae uncle, Thistle "Tricks" Periwinkle found sanctary among the Wyr in New York. Her ethereal beauty and sparkling personality won the hearts of the public, but after her uncle's death, there are those who don't want to see her ascend to the throne. 

Able to wield thunder and lightning, Wyr sentinel Thiago Black Eagle has ruled the skies for centuries. His massive build and thunderous power makes him one of the Wyr's best weapons. And he's sent to protect Tricks when she's almost assassinated in Chicago.

Soon, both Tiago and Tricks will fall prey to the stormy hunger that engulfs them - a passion that will shake the very foundation of all the worlds. 

Last year, I read and really enjoyed Dragon Bound, the first of Thea Harrison's Elder Races paranormal romance series. This book, which features some of the supporting characters of the first book, Tricks, the petite and outgoing fae PR representative for Dragos, the super-Alpha dragon shifter whose the hero in book one, and Thiago, one of his main security guys, who happens to be a Thunderbird shifter and immensely powerful and so on and so forth. In Dragon Bound, there is a conflict with the ruler of the Dark Fae that ends in his death. Once he's killed, it is revealed that Tricks is in fact his long lost niece, the only surviving member of the original royal family, who were murdered when her evil uncle usurped the throne. She's been hiding with Dragos and the other Wyr shapeshifters in New York under her assumed identity. Now a delegation of Dark Fae are asking her to return and take up her rightful place as queen.

Others are less enthusiastic, and video where Tricks cuts down her would-be attackers in an alley in Chicago goes viral, while Tricks is nowhere to be found. Dragos sends his best tracker, Thiago, to locate and protect her. While the two seem not to have spent all that much time together in the past two centuries while they've been working for the same dragon, apparently taking up bodyguard duty, shielding her from new dangers and spending a lot more time in close confines for the reluctant Tricks makes Thiago realise that she is his fated mate. The various Elder Races have their own territories, and are not supposed to intermarry. The Dark Fae will not accept a queen mated to a Wyr, and Thiago becoming Tricks' consort could be seen as a dangerous power bid. Of course, all of these complications will be irrelevant if they don't figure out who is trying to assassinate Tricks before she can even make it to her home territory to take up her title.

This book was moderately entertaining while I read it, but I can now barely remember any of the details and mainly the bits that annoyed me, at that. Harrison makes no great attempt at actually establishing why Tricks and Thiago may suddenly be falling for one another, she basically just tells us that it's so. Fated mate storylines rarely work for me, because they just seem a bit lazy. Why bother showing us the characters getting to know one another and falling for each other when you can just make them meant to be? They have no control over their choices or actions, they are just destined to be compatible because...reasons? Also, this being a romance, the whole "oh noes, my people will never accept our union" seemed a bit contrived, as they are obviously going to stay together. Finally, it was painfully obvious to me who the person scheming to kill Tricks was from the moment said character was introduced. There was very little tension there.

Add to that the fact that it seems like for at least a quarter of the book, Harrison was mostly busy establishing the two characters who currently have an antagonistic relationship but are clearly fated to be together, neither of whom I was particularly excited about, and this book was a big disappointment compared to the first one. I'm hoping later books are better, but based on their introductions in this book, I may skip the next one too. I don't know if I care about the inscrutable vampire queen and the next of Dragos' many security officers.

Judging a book by its cover: Well, your eyes are certainly drawn to the abs, aren't they? Unlike the cover model for the last book, this one doesn't actually get a face, to leave more to the reader's imagination? I don't exactly think this cover is very exciting, but then the contents were pretty underwhelming too, so at least it's not trying to oversell the story? I've got nothing.

Crossposting on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 119: "Rock Wedding" by Nalini Singh

Page count: 345 pages
Rating: 3 stars

OK, it's been nearly two months since I finished this, and it wasn't exactly the most memorable of romances to begin with. Let's see what I can still remember.

Sarah Smith, who never really had a very stable home life, hooks up with rock star Abe Bellamy and ends up pregnant. He wants to do right by her and marries her. She adores him, he seems to like their bedroom antics, but is closed off and withholding emotionally (although secretly, deep down, he clearly cares for her, he just can't express it - you know the drill). Also, he has an alcohol and substance abuse problem. When Sarah loses the baby, she is devastated, and worries that she'll lose Abe as well, but hopes that in time he will come to love her as much as she does him.

His addictions are a major problem, however, and when he becomes aggressive and verbally abusive one evening, basically saying that he's only keeping her around for the hot sex and the arm candy she provides at events, Sarah finally has enough. She packs her bags and leaves, only to discover that Abe doesn't seem interested in fighting to get her back. After a couple of months of wondering if he's going to come see her, she decides to go on a massive spending spree, maxing out all the credit cards he gave her, before filing for divorce.

Now, Sarah clearly knows how to pick them. She goes straight from her really rotten relationship with Abe into a rebound relationship with an older man who initially seems very caring and protective, but who gets increasingly more impatient and annoyed with her once she takes too long to grieve for their baby, who died shortly after birth and who eventually gets physically abusive when it's clear that she wants to try to make something of herself and get a business running, no longer needing to cling to him constantly for emotional support. He hits her publicly at a music festival where Abe's band is playing and the extended group of the Rock Kiss books take care of Sarah and make sure she's safe.

Abe is now sober and full of regret. He (rightfully) feels that he is partially responsible for driving Sarah into the arms of this nasty piece of work, and has always regretted the way he treated her when they were married. He not only wants to make amends, but starts a determined campaign to win her back. Can Sarah possibly risk her heart being broken once more, by letting him have a second chance?

The first third of the book or so covers Abe and Sarah's absolutely disastrous first marriage and Sarah's subsequent train wreck of a rebound relationship. By the time she meets Abe, his band mates (all of whom she never really connected with when she and Abe were first married) and their girlfriends again at the music festival where her current relationship comes to a dramatic end, she has worked hard and determinedly to process the grief of her dead son, and built a thriving independent business that she's very proud of. Because the complexes developed from her bad upbringing led her to make bad choices romantically, she has had to work to redefine who she is and what she wants, and is no longer the young, needy and impressionable woman who first fell for Abe.

She's learned the hard way that she can only ever count on herself, and while the chemistry between her and Abe is still sizzling, she cannot let herself forget just how much he hurt her, and what a rubbish husband he was first time around. Having gone trough rehab and stayed clean, Abe has also had to go several rounds with himself and knows that the way he treated Sarah before was abysmal. In his defence, he doesn't blame it all on the drink and the drugs, some of it was just emotional immaturity, as well. Having gotten the chance to reunite with her, and to really apologise and make up for his past misdeeds, and eventually maybe win her back becomes his one goal.

Sarah discovers, to her surprise, that all of Abe's band members are entirely on her side, even though she took Abe for all she could in the divorce. They were troubled by his addictions too, but didn't know how to intercede while they were having troubles. Their current girlfriends are all completely supportive of her and Sarah realises that she likes these very different women and is open to the idea of becoming friends with them. From having to manage entirely on her own (at least emotionally), she starts having a reliable network around her and while they all love Abe, they understand that Sarah forgiving him and re-considering a relationship with him is entirely her choice.

SPOILER! Of course, it turns out that while she's had trouble before, Sarah is clearly super fertile. She gets pregnant while ON THE PILL (I think there may have been a stomach bug involved that lessened the effect, but still) and wants to keep the baby. Abe obviously wants to be there for both her and the child, but they have negotiations to make before that can happen. Now, as someone who has tried unsuccessfully for years to get pregnant, and has so far gone through three unsuccessful IVF attempts (so broken not even modern science can help me conceive, I would make the worst romance heroine), this was pretty much just a slap in the face for me. For people without my fertility woes, this probably won't be as much of a big deal, but to me, it absolutely added to my general feelings of dissatisfaction with the book.

As well the story of Abe and Sarah's (spoiler) reconciliation, we get to see all the other couples (with the exception of Charlie and her T-Rex - who get hitched in New Zealand "off-screen") in the series get married over the course of this book. By the end of the story, all the couples are happily married.
This is, as far as I'm aware, the final book in Nalini Singh's Rock Kiss series. It certainly ties up all the ends neatly. A couple of the books are worthwhile entertainment, but on the whole, I would say that her paranormal books are way better and that there are so many better contemporary romance writers out there. I can see why she'd want to branch out and try new things, I just don't think this experiment has been that successful. 

Judging a book by its cover: Nalini Singh self-publishes these romances, and I would think that this (like the covers of the others in the series) are stock photos, in this case of an African American, clearly meant to be Abe, playing what looks like a grand piano. It's not exactly very exciting, but sometimes it's nice to get a change from the gleaming naked muscular chests that frequently adorn these covers. At least the image is appropriate to the action contained within.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 117: "The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You" by Lily Anderson

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Beatrice "Trixie" Watson has two goals for her senior year. She wants to save enough money to buy the collectible Doctor Who figurines at the local comics shop and she intends to knock her nemesis, Benedict "Ben" West down to fourth place in their fancy prep school ranking. The two have always had a tense and antagonistic relationship, going all the way back to when Ben caused Trixie to break her arm on the monkey bars during first grade. This year, she is determined to do everything it takes to crush him academically.

Ben and Trixie's friends, however, are less than thrilled about their decade-long rivalry, which only seems to be getting more mean-spirited with every year. When Trixie's best friend Harper starts dating Ben's best friend, Cornell, they are forced to spend more time in each other's company and their group of friends is adamant that they need to stop the constant sniping, as it's getting on everyone's nerves. Once they start actually talking civilly to one another, they discover that they share many geeky interests and possibly they don't need to savage each other verbally every chance they get.

As the school year proceeds, several students get accused of cheating, an unforgivable offence at a competitive school like Messina Academy for the Gifted. The group think little of it until one day, it seems these people may have been framed, by none other than Harper, who is immediately expelled. Cornell seems to abandon her and Trixie is furious. Will Ben pick Cornell's side or help Trixie investigate and clear Harper's name?

Back in July, Caitlin gave this book 5 stars over on the Cannonball group blog. A clever YA retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, where all the various characters are nerds of all varieties attending a prestigious prep school? They are deeply opinionated about Firefly and Doctor Who (more on that later) and flirt about Saga. How could I not love this? While Caitlin said that all the nerdy references didn't work for her, they were part of what made me really get into the story. It really is so well done, and the modernised take on how Harper/Hero is ruined is much better than ZOMG! She may not be pure as the driven snow! of the original play and they don't actually have to fake anyone's death to resolve things, I was amused and happy throughout the story, with one notable exception.

Lily Anderson is a school librarian and has clearly spent a huge amount of time around teenagers. That much is clear. She's probably done quite a lot of research into the various fandoms she has her characters geek out about. She cannot, however, have spoken to anyone sane about Doctor Who, because in a moment that pretty much felt like a nails down the chalkboard, abrupt record scratch sort of an incident, she has her two main characters discussing their favourite Doctor Who episodes. Trixie claims her favourite episode is the Neil Gaiman-scripted The Doctor's Wife. As this is also my favourite, so far, so identifiable. Then Ben proceeds to say that no, his favourite episode is Nightmare in Silver (also scripted by Gaiman).

And I almost had to throw my e-reader across the room. I interrupted my focused Read-a-thon reading to rant loudly at my husband (the biggest Doctor Who fan I know) about this for some time, and it made me so sad, because up until that point, this book was well on its way to becoming a five star read. But no one in the history of ever who has actually watched the show and knows anything about how the episodes are recieved would have a character claim Nightmare in Silver was their favourite episode. It may have been written by Neil Gaiman, but it's also acknowledged by Gaiman himself, and Steven Moffat, the current showrunner, as a failure of execution and it's frequently rated as one of the least popular in the show's fifty year history in fan polls. As well as ranting to the husband about it, I posted about my outrage on Goodreads, and got support from others that this wasn't just a plotline choice that bothered me, but seemed baffling to others, as well.

I did stick with the book, although more filled with scepticism and distrust than before. The various twists and turns of the original play really are very well modernised and while I'm not entirely sure about the motivation of the person who is eventually revealed to be behind framing Harper, as I said, no one had to fake their death and there was a lot less judgemental virtue-shaming. The book clearly takes inspiration from great movies like Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You. Even two months later, the complete failure on the author's part to properly research Doctor Who still upsets me, though. To someone less nerdy than me, this will probably not be such a big deal. If you like Shakespeare and/or cleverly written YA, give this book a try.

Judging a book by its cover: With two characters whose lives revolve around nerdy and geeky things and their weekly visits to the local comics shop, and who fall in love while discussing Saga, it seems very appropriate to have a cover evoking comic book panels. The leg up pose while kissing is possibly a bit cheesy, but I'll let it slide. Unlike that thing with Nightmare in Silver. Which is unforgivable!

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 116: "The Rest Falls Away" by Colleen Gleason

Page count: 347 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

It's been two months since I read this (why, yes, I am terribly behind on my reviews), so I'm resorting to Goodreads for the summary:

Beneath the glitter of nineteenth century London society lurks a bloodthirsty evil...

Vampires have always lived among them, quietly attacking unsuspecting debutantes and dandified lords as well as hackney drivers and Bond Street milliners. If not for the vampire slayers of the Gardella family, these immortal creatures would long ago have taken control of the world. 

In every generation, a Gardella is called to accept the family legacy, and this time, Victoria Gardella Grantworth is chosen, on the eve of her debut, to carry the stake. But as she moves between the crush of ballrooms and dangerous moonlit streets, Victoria's heart is torn between London's most eligible bachelor, the Marquess of Rockley, and her dark, dangerous duty.

And when she comes face to face with the most powerful vampire in history, Victoria must ultimately make a choice between duty and love. 

Earlier this year, I read The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman, which was being pitched a bit as Buffy in the Regency era (A teenage girl is the Chosen One and has to battle creatures of evil). The Gardella Vampire Chronicles, of which The Rest Falls Away is the first in a series of five books, was published back in 2007 (I read them in 2008-2009) and it also takes a young woman and pits her in the battle against vampires. Miss Victoria Gardella Grantworth has had her debut delayed due to a prolonged period of mourning and at the very same time as her mother and her two best friends, all highly placed in society, get ready to launch Victoria and find her a rich and influential husband, Victoria is told by her great-aunt Eustacia about the family legacy and has to make a choice about whether she wants to take up a clandestine career as a monster hunter. Because the Gardellas in the two generations separating Victoria and Eustacia chose not to accept their family duty (and was thus glamoured to forget there was ever such a choice), the powers have been building and Victoria will be unusually powerful for a Gardella.

She chooses to accept the family legacy, and is surprised to realise that her ladies' maid not only knows about vampires, but has all sorts of innovative ideas for how to conceal stakes and holy water receptacles about her person. She starts training martial arts with her great-aunt's manservant and tries in vain to convince fellow vampire slayer, the Italian Maximillian Pesaro that she really is very committed to slaying vampires, but she can manage it and enjoying herself at balls in the evenings, nonetheless. Their mutual animosity is not helped by the fact that Victoria mistakes him for a vampire and nearly stakes him the first time they meet. He's convinced she's a frivolous airhead who's taking their sacred duty lightly and grimly goes about trying to outdo her at every turn to prove his theories, to Eustacia's annoyance. She needs them working together, not sniping at each other.

While vampires have always existed in the world, the vampires of London are getting a lot more aggressive, due to the fact that the vampire queen, the ancient Lilith, is about to arrive, seeking an ancient book that can grant her unbelievable powers. Eustacia is too old to go out hunting anymore and needs Max and Victoria to do what they can to prevent Lilith's minions from getting the book. Meanwhile, Victoria is still going to society events, and has caught the eye of the Marquess of Rockley. Victoria's mother and her other two sponsors are beyond delighted, and do what they can to throw them together at every possible ball or gathering. Rockley is puzzled why Victoria keeps disappearing with flimsy pretexts, but seems determined to make her his bride. Can Victoria really combine married life and vampire slaying, though? How would Rockley react if she told him the truth about her family legacy?

As I remembered, the first book does a decent job of setting up the world-building and introducing most of the major players in the series, but it's not as exciting or engaging as the later books in the series, when the overarching plot really gets going. While I found Goodman's book a bit too long and meticulously researched to the point of slowing down the story for all the historical detail that was thrown in, this book is maybe a bit too short on detail and very action-orientated. Some of the characters seem almost like caricatures (they get more fleshed out as the series goes on), but I still enjoyed my re-read of the book.

Judging a book by its cover: Not a huge fan of the cover, mainly because I'm pretty sure no one would choose to wear a corset like that without some sort of undergarment, like a chemise, between the skin and the coarser fabric of the stays. I'm also pretty sure that's not an accurate corset for the time, when they wore mostly empire-waisted dresses and really didn't need the tiny, tiny waists. The red colour choice is quite dramatic, though (each book in the series has a different cover colour) and I guess it catches your eye. The book was given a cover design when the books were launched as e-books. On that, the cover model is holding a stake in one hand and a great big sword in the other, plus her clothing choices are even more anachronistic. So I guess if I have to choose one over the other, I'll pick this one.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 115: "The Invisible Library" by Genevieve Cogman

Page count: 352 pages
Audio book length: 10hrs 31 mins
Rating: 3.5 stars

Irene is an agent of the Library, a place that exists outside normal space and time. In fact, as long as the agents and librarians that work for the Library are there, they do not age in the slightest. Only when they are out in the different worlds of the multiverse, do they visibly age, and how much depends how time passes in the various worlds they find themselves. As an agent of the Library, Irene is sent to retrieve books that are deemed of value, because they are represent something different from what already exists in the archives. Sometimes she has to disguise herself and go undercover for months, sometimes she can just stroll into a shop and buy a book. Having just completed a several month stint as a scullery maid at a posh boarding school, Irene is looking forward to some down-time. Instead, she is told she is to mentor a trainee library agent and that they are to start their new mission immediately.

Irene's new assistant, Kai, is very handsome and very tight-lipped about his background. The Library never recruits anyone with living family, unless they are the children of other Library agents (like Irene) and therefore understand the need for secrecy and the strange customs and traditions that surround the work. He seems eager and helpful enough, but it becomes clear to Irene that he's not entirely truthful about where he came from, and she wonders if the senior librarians know of his falsehoods.

Irene and Kai are sent to a world resembling a Steampunk Victorian England. It is a world heavily influenced by chaos magic (some worlds are heavy in magic, some are almost devoid of it. Some worlds are highly technologically advanced, some very primitive) and there are vampires, werewolves, sinister dark fae and mechanically enhanced alligators waiting to attack. Irene and Kai discover that the owner of the book they're after was a vampire, recently murdered rather spectacularly. A cat burglar with a glamorous reputation appears to be involved and the fae ambassador for Lichtenstein is very keen to get his hands on the book, as well. To complicate matters further, Irene receives word that Alberich, a centuries old Librarian gone rogue and evil, is also in this reality, wanting the book for unspecified reasons. Their mission, which was supposed to be a fairly innocuous training exercise is turning out to be very dangerous, and they'll be lucky if they even survive, let alone succeed in getting the book back to the Library.

The world-building in this story is intriguing. There's the Library, where they clearly have fairly advanced technology, existing in a place where time apparently stays still. No one ages while within its walls. The agents of the Library can travel in both space and time, visiting hundreds of alternate worlds, some very like our own, some very different. The agents are trained in the use of magic, and there is a secret magical language that can be used to manipulate the world around you, but only if you speak it with the right vocabulary and inflection. Who exactly runs the Library and how one ascends through the ranks to become Librarians or even Senior Librarians was only hinted at, but I hope it's revealed in later books.

The main characters, Irene and Kai, were fun to spend time with. All agents take their names from literary characters and Irene loves all kinds of detective fiction, so named herself after the famous Ms. Adler. Being sent to a world that so closely resembles the setting of her beloved Conan Doyle novels is thrilling to her, especially when they befriend a gentleman detective who certainly fits right into the genre Irene so enjoys. Having always been aware of the Library, she doesn't really question its organisation, and how it goes about recruiting people. She starts having questions once she gets to know Kai more closely, though, and wonders if it's right that only people wholly unconnected in the world get to be recruited.

While there is a more contemporary, modern setting to some bits of the book, most of this is set in a Steampunk, late Victorian setting, with dirigibles and the occasional mechanically enhanced menace. There are quite a lot of action sequences, with our protagonists finding themselves in peril of various kinds. One of Irene's rival agents from the Library pops up with her own agenda, and there is the looming threat of the sinister Alberich. As a first book in a series, it was a good introduction. I certainly want to read more.

What I'm not going to do is continue with the audio books. The audio book (which I got in a big Audible sale last year) is narrated by Susan Duerden, whose inflection is just so annoying. Her voice had a tendency to go up and down at the strangest time, and she frequently ended sentences on a high point, making it seem as if everything was a question. It was incredibly distracting, and meant that I spent much longer getting through the audio book than usual, because I actively avoided it for a time, just because the narrator's voice was so grating to me. Searching the Audible catalogue, I notice that she's the narrator for the sequel of this, as well as for a lot of other books in fantasy and romance. I'm going to have to pay attention when getting new audio books, because I'm not interested in having this narrator worsening any more listening experiences for me.

Judging a book by its cover: I quite like the cover design, with the green, slightly marbled background and the almost golden font and decorations of a lady and a gentleman silhouetted in period costume. Not entirely sure what the snakes at the top have been included for (there are no snakes in the story as far as I can remember), but they add a sense of danger, I guess. The cover designer could possibly have made more of an effort to try to convey more of the adventure and action aspects of the book - if you remove the rather cheesy taglines, there's nothing to suggest to a reader that this isn't just some sort of run of the mill historical novel.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 113: "Siege and Storm" by Leigh Bardugo

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Spoiler warning! This is the second book in a trilogy. I will be unable to review the book without possibly giving away spoilers for the first book in the series, Shadow and Bone. Which is obviously the one you should start with if you're interested in this series.

After the rather dramatic show-down with the Darkling at the end of the last book, Alina and Mal are on the run, trying to get as far away from Ravka as possible. Having to hide her Grisha powers and suppressing her abilities is making Alina frail and she feels constantly jealous of the attention Mal is getting from the women in the villages where they're hiding. Unfortunately, the Darkling escaped their last show-down relatively unhurt, and when he catches up to them, he reveals that he has new and even more terrifying powers. He uses Alina and Mal's affection towards one another to control both, threatening to hurt Alina if Mal doesn't find the legendary sea serpent legends say is required for a second amplifier for Alina, while he promises to kill Mal instantly unless Alina agrees to cooperate with him.

Lucky for the continued welfare of both of them, Mal manages to track the sea serpent in the allotted week, and as Alina is both elated at the thought of how her powers will be further strengthened with a new amplifier and terrified at what the Darkling might make her do, she and Mal are rescued by unexpected and unlikely new allies, who want to take them back to Ravka. Now that they are aware of what new and horrible things the Darkling is able to unleash in his quest for world domination, their privateer saviour hopes to persuade Alina to take control of the what remains of the Second Army and the Grisha still loyal to the Crown. With her two amplifiers, she's more powerful than ever, but she's also not sure she's up for the task she's facing. She doubts her sanity, as the Darkling appears to her, though no one else appears to see him. She needs to prove her strength to the remaining Grisha, nobles and the royal family. Most of the populace revere her as a living saint and believe she can save them from anything. All the while, she seems to be losing Mal, just when she needs him the most.

My biggest complaint about Shadow and Bone was that I really didn't like Alina very much. I frankly didn't connect much with any of the three most central characters. I found the supposed love triangle between Alina, the Darkling and Mal completely preposterous, mainly because I couldn't see what was possibly worth loving in Alina, Mal was an oblivious dude-bro who barely gave Alina the time of day, and then there's basically the nefarious villain, who really does not have many redeeming features. As far as I can tell, he's just a scheming megalomaniac, no hidden pain in his back story to make him even vaguely sympathetic.

In this book, Alina gets a lot more likable. Mal is still mostly a broody, self-involved, douchy waste of space. He appoints himself the captain of Alina's guard, and then passive-aggressively avoids her and makes her feel guilty because she's trying her best at near insurmountable odds to counter the Darkling's schemes to take over the kingdom. Because he's being such an erratic d*ck, Alina doesn't really feel she can tell him that the Darkling keeps showing up to torment her when she's alone. Another suitor for Alina's hand enters the field (because this non-descript little waif is clearly irresistible to all men, not just because she's extra specially magical, with unique and impressive powers) and I must admit, I found Nikolai charming, fun and clearly much too good for Alina. 

The younger of the two princes of Ravka wants Alina to lead what is left of the Second Army, taking control of the magically gifted Grisha who are left (many died or defected to the Darkling's side). He also hopes to persuade his older brother to renounce his claim to the throne, and offers to make Alina his queen. The powerful Sun Summoner, the country's best hope against the ravages of the Darkling and the beloved and charming younger prince would make a formidable ruling couple. Alina, of course, hates the burdens of power thrust upon her and mainly just wants to hide away somewhere with Mal. Then there's the added complication of the Apparat (the King's former head priest) having declared Alina a living saint. So many people literally worship her and think she can do anything and Alina is painfully aware that she is likely to let them all down once the Darkling musters his forces and attacks again.

The world building and magic system are fascinating and all the things I liked about the first book are just expanded upon here. Since I now actually liked the protagonist a lot more, plus this book had some pretty exciting action set pieces, the second book in the trilogy was a marked improvement. I remain entirely unconvinced by any of the attempted romances that Bardugo suggests, with what is now a love quadrangle just presenting three differently bad options for Alina. The Darkling - ancient sociopathic madman, intent on ruling the world at terrible cost. Nikolai - a prince and possibly future king, charming and adventurous, but also very calculated, but far too grand for little ol' Alina. Mal - sullen, brooding, jealous and uncommunicative. He's deeply protective of Alina in the beginning, but then gets aloof and behaves erratically for most of the book. I see zero chemistry between them and am still baffled as to why the author is trying so hard to make Alina irresistible.

It may have taken me the best end of two years between reading the first and the second book, but I'm properly invested in the story now, and want to see how Alina is going to solve the pickle she lands herself in at the end of this book.

Judging a book by its cover: A lot of YA fiction has less than great cover art. Leigh Bardugo's Grisha trilogy, on the other hand, have absolutely amazing covers. You can so clearly see the Russian influences in the story from the onion-domed towers in red, with the ominous nuances of grey showing the tensions in the story. The sea serpent that plays such an important part in the first part of the book is cleverly intertwined with the intricate font that makes up the title of the book (as the stag horns of the mythical being in the first book were central in the design of that cover). I absolutely love this design.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 112: "How Not to Fall" by Emily Foster

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Annabelle "Annie" Coffey is writing her final thesis and with only a few weeks left of term, she propositions her adviser, the postdoctoral fellow at her lab, Dr. Charles Douglas, because she believes they have "A Thing". In a truly embarrassing and painfully awkward scene, handsome British guy Charles gently turns her down, because he is her boss and it would be massively inappropriate for him to sleep with her. Annie is convinced she's not wrong about the chemistry between them, and that she's not misreading the signals between them. She's hoping that were she no longer Charles' student, the situation would be different. So she refuses to give up hope entirely. She will have a month after she graduates, before she goes off to New York to go to medical school and she's determined to spend them with Charles.

Charles agrees, so long as Annie is well and truly no longer his student, they can explore their "Thing". He's initially a bit daunted by the prospect that Annie's a virgin, and a very inexperienced one (in practise, not in theory) at that. With the understanding that their affair is only to last a month and with the goal that when they go their separate ways, they will remain friends, Charles and Annie begin to explore their attraction to one another. Because Annie has never had any sort of sexual encounter with another person before, Charles insists on them spending a whole day on each of the four "bases", before they do the deed, so to speak. He takes his responsibilities as Annie's first lover very seriously, making sure to teach her everything she wants to know about sex, while still being careful to respect her boundaries, even when she's sometimes eager to push them further than before.

Their affair becomes more than a meeting of bodies, it also becomes a meeting of minds, with the two of them being entirely honest about their interests, hopes and fears. That is, Annie is completely truthful and open as a book. As the weeks pass, and Annie grows more attached with every hour spent in Charles' company, it becomes clear that he has not revealed everything about himself and that there is darkness in his past that looks likely to create major hurdles for their joint future.

Before you read any further, it is important that I mention that this book ends on a cliffhanger! There is NO Happily Ever After at the closing of this book. There is a second part, How Not to Let Go coming out in December, and on her blog as Emily Foster, the author suggests that if waiting is a problem, you wait to read the duology until both parts are out. Ms Foster, who also writes non-fiction scientific books under the name Emily Nagoski. She explains on her science blog that she wrote these novels as a response to reading (and being deeply disappointed) by 50 Shades of Grey. She loves romance because it's pro-woman, pro-sex, pro-pleasure and full of happy endings. Ms Foster/Nagoski felt that E.L. James' book failed at all of those things and really felt betrayed by it.

As a result, Ms. Nagoski set out to write a romance with a virgin college senior (she's 22) experiencing her sexual awakening with an older (he's 26), more experienced, powerful man who treats her with dignity, respect and affection. She calls it a feminist, sex-positive, science-driven erotic romance. Because she normally writes science non-fiction, she was unsure whether she needed a different agent to represent her, but she got the books sold under the name Emily Foster and How Not to Fall is the first part.

There is really a lot of sex in this book. This is very much on the erotica scale of romance, where there are a lot of smexy times, described in a LOT of detail. There are BDSM elements, but I think, as far as these things go, they are fairly light (I have not read a lot of that sub-genre of romance). I still felt that there was a good portion of the book with the characters getting to know each other, and where the reader got to know each of the protagonists, seeing how they could work as a couple.

Both Annie and Charles are huge nerds and there is a fair amount of the book devoted to science and the pursuit thereof. As opposed to a lot of romance, where the prose is very purple, all the body parts are referred to in very scientific names, which I thought made a nice change. I know very little about the field that Annie and Charles are working in, but didn't feel that the scientific parts detracted from the steamy smexy times. Annie is a wonderful narrator, and frequently says and does embarrassing things. To me, she seems extremely open-minded and adventurous in the bedroom, considering she's a virgin, Charles is always the one putting on the breaks. Of course, I have no idea what college era women get up to these days, based on a lot of New Adult, they are certainly getting a lot more action than I ever did.

About two thirds of the way through, the book changes in tone, and becomes a lot darker and more serious, as the secrets of Charles' past are uncovered and it becomes clear that the couple are in for a hard time before they (hopefully, I'll be cranky otherwise) reach their HEA at the end of the next book. Again, because the author seems to have a scientific basis behind the angsty reasons that Charles and Annie will not just have sunshine, puppies and rainbows in their lives, it felt a lot less bothersome to me than in a lot of these novels. There was a very believable theoretical explanation for his behaviour, and I'm looking forward to how the author is going to solve the problems she has thrown in the couple's way.

I liked this a lot, and as it's already October, I'm not too annoyed about the wait for the next book. If cliffhanger endings are a problem for you - wait another few months and read both books at the same time. I will be eagerly awaiting the second instalment.

Judging a book by its cover: A couple kissing passionately in the rain. A perfectly good cover for a romance - except for that pesky (but oh so common) fact that at no point does this scene feature in the novel. I know I'm picky and that it's a silly thing to get annoyed about, but I still am. Annoyed, that it. There are lots of delightful scenes to choose from. Quite a few that don't even involve smexy times. Why not pick one of those?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 111: "Six-Gun Snow White" by Catherynne M. Valente

Page count: 207 pages
Rating: 4 stars

From the blurb:
From New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente comes a brilliant reinvention of one of the best known fairy tales of all time. In the novella Six-Gun Snow White, Valente transports the title's heroine to a masterfully evoked Old West where Coyote is just as likely to be found as the seven dwarves. 

A plain-spoken, appealing narrator relates the story of her parents - a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. With her mother's death in childbirth, so begins a heroine's tale equal parts heartbreak and strength. This girl has been born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child. After being hidden for years, a very wicked stepmother finally gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, readers will be enchanted by this story at once familiar and entirely new.  

This novella is a clever retelling of the classic German fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Having moved the narrative to the Old West, the girl at the centre of the story, the half-blood daughter of a Crow Native American woman and a wealthy prospector, grows up alone and unloved on her father's ranch. She entertains herself with card tricks and sharp shooting, her only companions the impersonal servants and the wild animals in the ranch menagerie.

When her father eventually remarries, it is to a beautiful young woman who takes it upon herself to civilise "Snow White", as she names her stepdaughter. Mrs H's lessons of love involve Snow performing the duties of all the female servants (all of whom were let go after the wedding), nearly drowning in icy milk baths meant to make her skin paler and various kinds of physical and emotional abuse. Having never had anyone show her any attention at all, Snow takes it all, without complaining. Her stepmother has a dark and mystical mirror, where Snow sees visions both of herself, and Mrs H's past. Eventually her stepmother gives birth to a baby boy, but only in the mirror. The child seems to grow fast and he and Snow have a strange connection.

Snow leaves the only home she's ever known, riding off to find the Crow, hoping to reunite with her mother's people. She travels through frontier towns and mining villages, defending herself against all manner of aggressions. She spends some time prospecting in a ruby mine along with seven rugged men. A ruthless Pinkerton agent trails her tirelessly, hired by her stepmother to catch her, so he can cut out her heart and bring it back to Mrs. H. Snow can be bested by no man, however, and escapes the detective with her heart intact.

Eventually arriving at a town populated by women, cast out from other places, Snow begins to find some solace and peace. The reach of her stepmother's powers are long, though, and once Snow stops running, she'll be easier to catch.

The story is told in an oddly poetical manner, narrated in a special cadence, which even when you read it seems very oral. Transposing the classic fairytale to a new setting makes you see the story in a new light. Valente certainly makes the story more feminist and diverse, highlighting how lost Snow is, never fitting into her father's world, or that of her mother. Mrs. H, Snow's stepmother isn't merely a one-dimensional villain. It is made clear that the way she treats Snow is a somewhat harsher way than she herself was treated before she got married. Mrs. H turned to witchcraft to gain power, Snow runs away instead. Only towards the end does she see the caring and nurturing side of womanhood.

This novella incorporates a lot of mythology, both Native American and Western. It plays with the reader's expectations and the well-known story tropes, re-inventing the old tale for a new time. Because the narrator imposes a sort of distance in the way the story is told, I never emotionally connected with it as much as I wanted to, but I was entertained and impressed. It's also not a very long story, so I didn't have time to get bored - which was not the case when I read Valente's twist on Russian folk tales, Deathless. 

Judging a book by its cover: The Charles Vess cover for this novella is absolutely gorgeous. Snow triumphantly rearing on her loyal horse Charming. Her stepmother, Mrs H, kneeling holding up a bloody heart. The various animals and creatures of the wilderness coming in from the left, looking as if they're about to stampede over the stepmother. I pretty much love everything about this.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 110: "Do You Want to Start a Scandal?" by Tessa Dare

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Miss Charlotte Highwood, youngest sister of Minerva and Diana, is not really interested in marriage. She just wants to tour Europe with her best friend Delia Parkhurst, but after earning the moniker "The Desperate Debutante" after her mother literally flung her into the path of an eligible young nobleman (causing him to fall off his horse and three carriages to collide), convincing the ton that she's not a scheming fortune huntress is going to be more difficult. She knows full well that her extremely marriage-minded mama will do her utmost to force her together with Piers Brandon, Marquess of Granville, as much as possible, as he is the highest ranked peer at the house party they're at, hosted by the Parkhursts.

With the intention of assuring Lord Brandon that she has no designs on his title, Charlotte seeks out Piers in the library. She wants to make sure they arrange their schedules for the next two weeks to meet as little as possible, thereby saving Piers from having to deal with Mrs. Highwood's painful matchmaking. Being discovered alone with an eligible man would defeat the purpose of Charlotte's plan, however, so when another couple enters the library, Charlotte and Piers are forced to hide behind the heavy curtains, trying very hard to ignore the sounds of the unknown couple trysting on a desk nearby.

All their plans to protect Charlotte's reputation come to naught when the young son of the house (convinced that Piers was trying to murder Charlotte) starts recreating the sounds he overheard. Piers does the only honourable thing and promises to marry her, but Charlotte is having none of it. Both her sisters married for love (one to a viscount and the other to a blacksmith), and she wants the same thing. Even at the risk of her reputation, she's determined to refuse Piers' suit. Still, she needs to clear her name of scandal to convince the Parkhursts that she'll be a suitable travelling companion for her daughter, and sees no other solution but to track down the mystery lovers and make them confess to their amorous encounter, proving to everyone, leaving Piers and Charlotte in the clear.

Piers, a highly placed agent for the Crown, is at the house party to investigate Sir Vernon Parkhurst (Delia's father), who is up for a cushy diplomatic position and has some discrepancies in his finances. Piers has to prove whether Parkhurst is trustworthy, and was trying to snoop through paperwork when he was surprised by Charlotte in the library. He's certainly not looking for a wife and does not need distractions from his primary mission. Young, adventurous and impetuous Charlotte Highwood and her enquiring mind keeps muddling up his plans and he soon discovers that the initially unremarkable debutante is far more perceptive than most people suspect.

While Charlotte knew Piers Brandon was handsome from the moment they first met, she always believed him to be icily proper, a perfect gentleman. She's surprised to find that he has a lot of hidden depths. He can pick locks, has a wicked sense of humour and his kisses make her likely to forget her own name. The more time she spends in his company, the more convinced she becomes that he might actually make her a fine husband, if only love could enter the equation.

Charlotte is never going to settle for anything but a romantic match, no matter how lofty a title, how many stately homes, how influential a status and how much pin money she'd receive. She never came to the Parkhursts' house party to find a husband (no matter what her mother wanted), but to convince the parents of her dear friend Delia that she's a decent and proper companion for their daughter, enabling them to go off on adventures. While Diana is known as the really beautiful Highwood sister, and Minerva is the very clever one, Charlotte has more modest accomplishments, at least on a first look. Piers discovers that she's well-read, funny, loyal and inquisitive. She may be young (only 20), but she's not frivolous or silly.

Piers is older (I'm going to assume he's in his thirties, I don't think it's ever specified in the book) and has an excellent reputation as a diplomat. Only a very few know that he's in fact a spy and has been for most of his career. He's done some pretty dark things and therefore seems to believe himself unworthy of love and affection. His former fiancee got bored with waiting for him to actually marry her and ended up with his brother instead, and Piers knows that she's much better off that way.

While he had no plans of marrying before he arrived at the Parkhursts, Piers quickly determines that he would be mad to let Charlotte go. Despite her insistence on a love match (which true to about half of all broody romance heroes, he is convinced he can't offer her), he starts pursuing her in earnest and when charm, his wealth and seductive encounters don't seem to work, he is not afraid to play dirty to secure the match.

This book features references to Stephen King's The Gunslinger, Pride and Prejudice, the absolutely wonderful Hamilton, and quite understandably, James Bond. There is an absolutely hilarious scene involving Charlotte, her mother, a peach and an aubergine. It's witty and light-hearted, but while it was a perfectly entertaining read, it's not Tessa Dare at her very best. While Charlotte is delightful throughout, Piers' insistence that he's unworthy of her love because of his past is rather boring (as I pretty much always think it is). There is also Ms Dare's strange tendency to set love scenes outside, where anyone could chance upon the lovers at any point. Considering that they are at a house party, with a large amount of guests and probably scores of servants, Charlotte and Piers find themselves alone and unchaperoned a LOT.

This book fits into both Ms Dare's Spindle Cove AND Castles Ever After series, but you don't need to have read any of the previous books to enjoy it. It's not one of her best, nor is it one of her more forgettable ones either. I don't regret pre-ordering it, but hope Ms. Dare has something great up her sleeve for her next romance.

Judging a book by its cover: Based on the hair colour of the female cover model and the colour of her dress, I'm assuming this is supposed to be Charlotte and Piers, who clearly got a bit more undressed in the library than the scene in the book suggests. Considering how often the appearance of the cover models and the clothes they wear bear absolutely no resemblance to anything in the actual story, the fact that the lady is blond and wearing a colour described in the book is a plus. I could do without quite so much naked man-chest on my covers, but I've seen worse.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 108: "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Rachel, trying to drown the sorrows of her recent divorce in alcohol and denial travels to London on the train every morning and back to the suburb where she shares a flat with an old friend in the evenings. As she passes the area where she used to live, she observes a seemingly golden couple and makes up a fantasy narrative about their life to comfort herself in her loneliness. She's named them Jess and Jason and believes them to have a perfect relationship, in contrast to her miserable life, post failed-marriage.

One day, she sees "Jess" kissing a man who is most certainly not "Jason" in the garden, and this causes Rachel to have a minor breakdown. Waking up after a particularly epic drinking binge, she has a cut on her head, several bruises and absolutely no memory of what happened, but she believes it may have involved her old street, and possibly seeking out her ex-husband. She also discovers from the news that Megan Hipwell, as "Jess" is really called, has disappeared.

Rachel knows (as everyone else) that the husband is always one of the main suspects in disappearance cases. She believes very strongly that "Jason", in reality Scott Hipwell, couldn't have hurt his wife. She's determined to notify the police about the strange man that she saw Megan with from the train. Due to her habitual drunkenness, Rachel's not really treated as a reliable witness by the police, further hampered by the harassment complaints made about her by her ex-husband's new girlfriend. Because she knows the police aren't taking her seriously, Rachel feels compelled to contact Scott as well, pretending to be a friend of Megan's. She needs him to know about the man Megan was seeing.

As she keeps returning to the area where she used to live, where Megan disappeared from, Rachel struggles to remember what happened to her on the night she has completely blacked out. She knows she was in the area the same night that Megan left her home - could she have seen or heard something that could help the case?

The Girl on the Train came out in early 2015 and has been reviewed a lot of times on the Cannonball Read already. I've seen it compared to Gone Girl in the press (really not a fair comparison at all) and the movie version starring Emily Blunt as Rachel is about to be released in cinemas. I put it on my TBR list when it came out, and have kept putting it off for various reasons. Now that the movie is right around the corner, I figured I should read it, so movie reviews didn't spoil the book for me. I didn't know that much about the details of the book, and probably wouldn't have chosen to read about a fairly broken woman, struggling with alcoholism and reconciling herself to a divorce in part caused by her involuntary infertility struggles, when I myself am trying to get over my own very recent failure at yet another IVF attempt. I had figured a mystery suspense novel would be a good break from the romances I normally read, where quite a lot of the books end with pregnancy and the heroines always seem to be frustratingly fertile. So this book, not the best choice to read right now.

I can only assume that The Girl on the Train has been frequently compared to Gone Girl because they both feature quite unlikable female protagonists, there is a disappearance in both books, suspense/mystery novels written by women. There are also unreliable narrators in each of the books, but having read both novels, the similarities are superficial at most, and when you get down to it, they are very different books within a genre. I'm not going to go into other ways in which they are different, as that would spoil the reading experience.

Much of the book is told from Rachel's POV, but due to her drinking, we cannot entirely trust her memories or narration. There are also sections from Megan's POV, which start more than a year before she goes missing. It gives the reader insight into her actual life, which is a lot less idyllic than Rachel's fantasy narrative. There are also some chapters from the POV of Rachel's rival, Anna, the woman her husband had an affair with, who now lives in her former house, with Rachel's ex-husband, raising their baby girl.

Rachel used to work in marketing, but lost her job after turning up to work drunk. She still goes back and forth into the city, so as to not alert her flat mate to the fact that she's unemployed. She's suffered drunken blackouts more than once, and while her ex-husband's cheating contributed to the dissolution of the marriage, Rachel's depression and increased drunkenness after the failed fertility treatments caused her to act violently and erratically and their marriage had no hopes of surviving. Rachel is still a bit obsessed with her ex-husband and the reason Anna reported her to the police is because she once showed up at their home and snatched up their baby while Anna was napping. In fact, after this episode, that increased Anna's anxiety about Rachel (who keeps calling and occasionally shows up to talk to her ex, Tom), was the reason she hired Megan as a babysitter for a time, although Megan quit from boredom after only a few weeks.

While the book is a bit slow to start (and I really didn't enjoy spending so much time in Rachel's drunken, self-pitying head), it builds the suspense nicely and gets more exciting as the story unfolds. I figured out the identity of the killer (this is not a spoiler, it's obvious from the very first page that Megan ends up dead) some time before it was revealed, but that may very well have been intentional. It certainly adds more to the tension when the reader knows more than the characters in the book, and just waits for them to catch up. The book didn't entirely work for me (but again, that could have been because it further exacerbated the pain of my own recent failure to conceive a child), and I found it a bit confusing in places. Nonetheless, I can see why the book has become so popular and I'm sure the movie will be entertaining.

Judging a book by its cover: As far as I can tell, the version I read, has the movie tie-in cover, which means it just features the movie poster on the front. A train in the background with one lit-up window, speed lines illustrating the speed of the moving train. Slight blurring of the font and the movie tag line underneath. I don't really care for tie-in covers, but it was what I got. I don't think this poster is what's going to sell the movie.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.