CBR18 Book 27: "The Shippers" by Katherine Center

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 2.5 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book will be out on May 19th.

Josephine "JoJo" Burton runs away from her own wedding, after her childhood best friend, Cooper Watts, shows up unexpectedly from London just as she's about to walk down the aisle, and makes her realise that she really doesn't want to be with her fiancee. The next morning, he's on a plane back to London. JoJo has never been lucky in love. She always chooses the wrong guy, and she always ends up being the dumper. 

Six weeks later, JoJo's sister, Ashley, is getting married on a Caribbean cruise. Her sister's rather vague grasp of pop psychology has made both Ashley and JoJo believe JoJo's terrible relationship is because she's felt abandoned by their father (he works almost non-stop and never seems to be around for anything important) and due to a strange series of events, JoJo must never have found a lasting love because she fixated on her first kiss, and no man has lived up to her expectations since. It just so happens that the man who kissed JoJo when she was ten and he was thirteen is newly divorced and going to be on the cruise as well.

So Ashley orchestrates a truly mental plan where she is going to throw JoJo and her childhood crush together in a ton of matchmaking events, and once JoJo manages to make this man see that she is now a catch, he will fall for her, and all of JoJo's romantic failures will be solved. Along for the ride is poor Connor, who is roped into being JoJo's rather unwilling wingman. He doesn't seem all that enthused about helping JoJo fall in love with another man, but JoJo doesn't really see that her perfect mate might not be this elusive first crush, but rather the BFF she was inseparable from for most of her life. 

This is the second book by Katherine Center that I've read where I'm seriously wondering if all the people praising her are taking crazy pills. I'm starting to think that The Rom-Commers, which I read in 2024, was some sort of fever dream, and I just imagined it was really enjoyable. While this wasn't as bad as The Love Haters (one of my worst reads of last year, which I have now downgraded to 2 stars), it was also mostly a slog to read. I hate romances where I keep wanting one of the protagonists to just run away and escape the other one, and this was very much the case here. 

What I liked (it's not a terribly long list):

- Cooper is really an amazing guy, pretty much in every way. Except for his dreadful taste in love interests. He's not just in another league from JoJo (still hate that nickname), he's pretty much in his own universe from her. I can't even find the words to describe how much too good for her he is. He should have stayed in London, doing cool things and finding someone worth his time and efforts. 

- While being stuck on a cruise ship for a wedding sounds like an utter nightmare to me, it was an interesting way of doing forced proximity. 

- The fact that JoJo's daddy issues pretty much stemmed from a massive misunderstanding, and that she realised he was a really good guy and helped him get back together with her mum. Very nice twist to have the deadbeat dad actually be a secretly really good guy, who was just terrible at advocating for himself, or apparently communicating in ANY way with his family (getting annoyed at the author again now). As it turns out, the one who should have been having daddy issues is Cooper, but saying more would be spoiling. 

- JoJo's family mostly seemed really nice, even though Ashley seemed like a pretty awful friend for putting all her single friends through some sort of matchmaking Olympics on board the ship. 

What I did NOT like:

- Our female protagonist. She is extremely annoying and clueless to the point where I could no longer suspend my disbelief. I can totally see how someone with an advanced degree in mathematics and a supposed genius-level IQ could be clueless enough about personal matters to be utterly AWFUL at reading people. I can even be persuaded that she seemed to think it was a good idea to marry the dude she is about to marry at the start of the book. But once she is on the boat, going through with her utterly moronic plan of "conquering" her childhood crush, even when it becomes painfully obvious that he's dull, not really interested in her and utterly wrong for her, while a gorgeous, thoughtful, caring, funny, musically talented and all-around great guy is doing everything but literally spelling out his feelings. I wanted to throw my e-reader across the room at how self-centred and oblivious she was. 

- JoJo's belief that she was cursed. I repeat, she has an advanced degree in maths, and we are told she has a genius-level IQ, but she would rather believe that she is cursed than the fact that SHE is the common denominator in all of her failed relationships. None of them worked out because you are the WORST, JoJo. 

- JoJo's judgment is seriously bafflingly bad. In any given situation, she will pick the absolute worst option to try to solve things, and end up confused and sulky because yet again she's messed her life up more.

- JoJo appears to have no self-respect or free will whatsoever. She stays in a fairly unsatisfying relationship for three years before emotionally blackmailing her so-called perfect boyfriend into proposing. Then she sits around for another four years before finally getting to her wedding, where she has apparently let the groom's family decide absolutely everything, without any input from her, up to and including the ill-fitting wedding dress she has to wear. Then her sister makes some sort of insane plan for how she's going to become "uncursed". JoJo squeezes herself into too-tight outfits to look sexy and tortures herself with monstrously uncomfortable shoes, and never once does JoJo tell her sister to f*ck off with her idiotic suggestions. She appears to have no actual agency or personal wishes; she just lets other people tell her what to do. 

- While the page count is 320 pages, because of the pacing and the fact that I deeply disliked the heroine, this book felt interminably long. 

When I saw this ARC available for request, I had hoped that The Love Haters was a rare fluke in the bibliography of Ms. Centre. So I asked for this one to give her another chance. Next year, I think I need to tell myself that I have now let myself be fooled twice, and need to try to avoid disappointment by letting it happen a third time. I won't be requesting any more ARCs from this author. 

Judging a book by its cover: I don't know who designed this cover, but at least to my eyes, the red, orange and shock pink all clash with each other, and the sort of turquoise blue of the dude's shirt and the lifebuoy ring are not helping. I am not a fan of this; it's giving me a headache. Although it may warn people away from the book, which I'm starting to think might be a good thing. Having browsed Goodreads, I also see that on the UK cover, the woman (who is clearly supposed to be JoJo) is wearing a dark blue dress and flowy scarf, which while not great (there is still that background) would be SO much better. 

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. 

CBR16 Book 62: "A Sorceress Comes to Call" by T. Kingfisher

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Dun Dun (From pretty much the first chapter, where Cordelia is "made obedient" there is a creeping sense of dread all the way through this novel)

Cordelia knows her mother isn't like other mothers. Other mothers can't take over your limbs and puppet you, or force you to stay still and motionless for hours or days on end. Other mothers permit doors that can be closed in the house and let their daughters have friends. Other mothers don't have a magical horse who spies on the daughter when they are out on rides. Cordelia's mother wants her to marry a rich man, and to launch her daughter properly into society, Cordelia's mother needs a rich husband who can provide her with the lifestyle she requires, and then conveniently disappear. 

Cordelia's mother, Evangeline, has found a suitable candidate, a middle-aged country squire who she now just needs to charm sufficiently for him to propose marriage to her. She can't enchant him, because all magical spells are dissolved once the wedding takes place (it involves water, wine, salt and holy ground). Fortunately for her (certainly not anyone else), Evangeline is beautiful and enticing and more than manipulative even without using magic. What she had not taken account of when plotting, was suspicious relatives. 

The squire's spinster sister, Hester, recognises Doom (as she without fail refers to Evangeline) the second she arrives on their doorstep, and she has no intention of letting her brother fall into her clutches. Hester is initially unsure whether Cordelia is her mother's creature and will take Doom's side, but after observing some of their interactions and speaking to the servants (Cordelia sometimes goes to sleep hidden in a wardrobe), she concludes that the girl will also need to be rescued from her ambitious and merciless mother.

I see lots of people saying that this is a dark fantasy set in the Regency era, but I really didn't see a lot of traces of a specific time period in the story. It could just as easily be set in some generic historical fantasy past. I have only read two books by T. Kingfisher previously, but even What Moves the Dead, which had me uncomfortable throughout, really kept me turning pages just to see what would happen next. Nettle & Bone was one of my favourite books of 2023. It also features a sinister threat and a sense of dread throughout, but in A Sorceress Comes to Call, the feeling of discomfort and unease begins in the very first chapter and doesn't really let up until the very end, because Cordelia's mother really is that unpleasant and so clearly extremely dangerous, and you really don't want her to cause harm to anyone, let alone the protagonists, Cordelia and Hester.

It should also be mentioned that this has some elements reminiscent of the fairy tale of The Goose Girl, but not enough that it feels right to call this a fairy tale retelling. The horse Falada certainly plays a very different role in this book than in the original fairy story. 

Cordelia has never known kindness or affection, and having seen her mother do terrible things in the past, she knows the Squire and Hester are in danger, but she's afraid to talk to anyone. She knows that the tale of her mother's magical powers will most likely not be believed, and she fears she will be seen as her mother's accomplice. Luckily, Hester is an observant and clever woman, who takes Cordelia under her wing and listens to her, even when what she says appears preposterous. In an attempt to slow down Doom's seduction attempts somewhat, Hester invites a number of close family friends for a house party, to ensure that the Squire is never entirely alone with the scheming sorceress. 

Cordelia and Hester are both such likeable protagonists. By letting the readers share the POV of Cordelia, Doom's traumatised young daughter, Kingfisher is able to show first-hand just how terrifying her mother really is. Giving Hester, a wise middle-aged woman the other POV gives the readers hope that there may be some way to thwart Doom's plans and hopefully give Cordelia a safer future. 

Hester loves her brother but is by no means blind to his weaknesses. She knows that if she doesn't act quickly, Doom will have charmed herself into marriage with her brother, and after that, it's unlikely that either Hester or her brother will live for very long. Hester also regrets some of the choices of her past, which means she gave up on love and marriage of her own, and now she is older and has a bad knee and feels she would only be a burden to a potential husband. Thankfully, someone disagrees with this (there is a minor romantic subplot that I found very sweet). 

I don't think Kingfisher's full on horror books are for me, because her suspense books are frankly more than unnerving enough. Luckily, I have a large back catalogue to choose from, and likely many good reading experiences in my future.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 34: "The Witches of Vardø" by Anya Bergman

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 2 stars

In 1662, a former mistress of the king of Denmark-Norway (Norway was a Danish colony for about 400 years, for those not big into their history trivia), Anna Rhodius is sent into exile to a fortress in Vardø in the very north of Norway. She convinces herself that she has been sent there to help root out witchcraft, and if she does a good job, she will be welcomed back by the king with open arms.

Zigri is the young widow of a fisherman, who lost both her husband and only son to the sea. For a time, her grief seems to make her insensible to everything, even her two daughters, but after she catches the eye of the son of the wealthy local merchant, not only does her family have enough to eat, but she seems a lot more cheerful. A beautiful woman having an affair with a much richer, married man rarely has a happy ending, however, and once his wife discovers the affair, Zigri finds herself accused of witchcraft and is sent to the fortress in Vardø.

Zigri's teenage daughter Ingeborg and her cousin Maren (whose own mother was tried and killed for witchcraft) band together to go to Vardø to attempt to rescue Zigri, aided by a local Sami tribe.

This was my fantasy/sci-fi bookclub's book selection for May, and I had read about a third of the book when we had our monthly meeting. In recent years, it feels like about half the time, I go to my book club meetings to see if I actually want to bother putting in the effort to finish the book. That was certainly the case here.

We get multiple points of view in this story. The sections with Anna Rhodius are first-person perspective, with her writing journal-like letters to the King of Denmark. The sections about Zigri, Ingeborg, and Maren are all in third person. There was a lot of potential here because the actual history of the witch trials in the North of Norway is fascinating, but this book did not deliver. There is a lot of tell, not show, and a lot of the plot is slow and plodding until it suddenly goes too fast. It reads like a debut novel, but some research shows that while Anya Bergman hasn't published anything else, she also writes under the name Noëlle Harrison, who has written at least ten other novels and four plays, according to her website. She's also the co-founder of a writers' retreat. In other words, she should be better than the author of this book is at crafting a story. 

In the end, I took the advice of several others in the book club and skipped more than half of what was left of the book, reading the final few chapters. The ending is over the top and several things happen that don't seem to make a lot of sense. There are some very baffling choices made, and one of the things that's frustrating about the book is whether magic is in fact real in this universe. The author seems to suggest that yes, some women actually have magical powers, while also suggesting that it's all superstition and all these women were arrested, tortured, persecuted, and executed for no good reason. 

It makes me sad that this book was so underwhelming since one of the things I studied a lot as part of my history degree was social history in the Middle Ages, the witch trials in the UK (and in other parts of Europe) as part of it. This book could have been so much better. I can't really recommend it. Slewfoot was a much better book about witch hunts. 

Judging a book by its cover: The orange flames and the blue lynx are both very striking, and the patterns remind me of woodcuts or old tapestry embroidery patterns. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 9: "The Widow of Rose House" by Diana Biller

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: Came out more than 4 years ago

CBR16 Sweet Books: New (new author)

It's 1875 and Professor Samuel Moore is doing marvellously, thanks to the many inventions he and his family are coming up with. What he really wants to do, though, is investigate and possibly prove the existence of ghosts, and to do that, he requires an introduction to the infamous Mrs. Alva Webster, a widow with a scandalous reputation. Sam doesn't really care about Mrs. Webster's apparently lurid past, he just wants to set up his instruments and investigate the old house she has purchased in upstate New York. Liefdehuis is rumoured to be haunted, possibly by multiple ghosts and he'd love a chance to make new discoveries. He does notice that Alva Webster is very beautiful, but at least initially, the science angle is the most important to him.

Alva Webster does indeed have a terrible reputation and a dead husband. All the rumours and scandalous gossip were started by her abusive husband after she took the courage to leave him once they lived in Paris. She was even looking into getting a divorce when he was killed during a robbery in Monte Carlo. Now her dream is to restore the once grand mansion, Liefdehuis, and document her process while doing so, hopefully resulting in a book on decorating and interior design. However, her odious brother-in-law is blackmailing her and the contractors she hired to start the restoration work at the house refuse to work, claiming there are ghosts there who scared them all nearly out of their wits. Samuel Moore keeps sending her letters, wanting access to the house, and eventually, she relents and lets him have access to the house, provided he promises to exorcise any ghosts he may discover as part of the process. 

Sam Moore is clearly a scientific genius, and while he's largely oblivious to social cues and what is considered polite and proper, he's also very observant and good at reading people. Having grown up in a loving family who all share a love of science and exploration, his life has been a very different one from that of Alva. The daughter of rich, but cold and status-hungry parents, she was married off to her husband (who needed a rich wife) after he seduced her when she was only 17 and who certainly didn't want anything to do with her once all the scandalous rumours reached them from across the ocean. The few times she's tried to contact them, her mother sends a harried maid out to shoo her away. She went from an emotionally abusive home to a physically abusive husband and even when she's trying to move on with her life and pick up the pieces of her tattered reputation, she's unable to forget because of her blackmailing brother-in-law. So she's naturally rather bitter and skittish, and while it's obvious that Sam finds her very attractive (he's not a man to hide his intentions or feelings), she is reluctant to get involved with anyone new.

This is set in the Gilded Age, mostly in New York, but with some flashbacks to Alva's life in Paris. While not as wealthy as her parents, Alva still has some of the fortune she came into her marriage with, but if she keeps having to pay her unscrupulous brother-in-law every month, she will struggle unless she manages to get her book finished and published. She keeps the truth from Sam as long as she can, since she's not used to having anyone to rely on or to support her.

Sam Moore is basically a big golden retriever of a man. He's tall and blond and clearly neuro-divergent in some way (most of his family seem to be, as well). Most of the time, he is accompanied by his best friend, Henry Van de Berg, a lawyer who makes sure that his patents are registered and that he and his family are paid what they are supposed to for their brilliant engineering solutions. Henry isn't exactly sure that making Mrs Webster's acquaintance is a good idea, but once Sam gets an idea in his head, he will pursue it tirelessly. So despite the potential complications of Sam's involvement in Alva Webster's life, he supports his friend. 

A novel featuring ghosts and a haunted house might be more of a paranormal fantasy. This is more of a straight historical romance with some supernatural elements. Minor spoilers, Alva's house actually IS haunted, and she and others are not imagining the horrible experiences they have with the ghost. But it's not the main focus of the story, for all that it plays an important part.

I really enjoyed this book and loved pretty much all the characters in the story. As far as I can see, Biller has written a novel about Sam's brother, but I hope she decides to give Henry a novel in the future as well. Possibly Sam's younger sister, as well. Either way, this delightful book ensures that I will check out Biller's other novels sometime later this year. 

Judging a book by its cover: Based on the cover image, I would have believed this book to be a much more straightforward historical novel. I certainly didn't expect a romance with paranormal elements. I suspect some readers picking this up would be surprised at getting a romance, while a lot of romance fans may have missed out on this one since it looks rather very different from most historical romance covers.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 8: "The Secret Service of Tea and Treason" by India Holton

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Alice Dearlove works for the secret organisation the Agency of Undercover Note Takers, or A.U.N.T., staffed by spies and agents disguised as ladies' maids, butlers, footmen, and other household staff who mostly go unnoticed by the higher classes, but are usually in a position to see and hear everything. She's one of their top agents, known within A.U.N.T only as Agent A. Usually, Miss Dearlove works alone and gets excellent results while doing so.

Now she faces one of the biggest challenges of her career. Not only does she have to cooperate with someone on her next mission, but her partner is none other than her biggest rival within A.U.N.T., the elusive Agent B, Daniel Bixby. Now Agents A and B have to learn to work together, while also pretending to be married. There's a plot to assassinate the queen, and Alice and Daniel have to pretend to be pirates, happily married, and fool an entire houseparty full of eccentric, murder-happy ladies and their husbands while trying to locate the potential weapon and foil the plot. 

Since they're consummate professionals, both Alice and Daniel are determined to complete the job quickly and efficiently while remaining strictly platonic the whole time. When more public displays of affection aren't necessary to play their parts, of course. Obviously, wanting to be convincing in their assumed roles, they might have to practice the duties of husband and wife in the privacy of their own rooms, as well. It's not like they'd get carried away and fall for one another, just because they are forced to be fake married, sharing a bedroom (with just one bed). After all, A.U.N.T doesn't allow for any affection between agents, and once their mission is done, Alice and Daniel will be going their separate ways, possibly never seeing one another again.

This might not be a 5-star book for all readers, but as the culmination of the Dangerous Damsels trilogy that India Holton started with The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels works on pretty much every level for me. Alice Dearlove and Daniel Bixby, whose acquaintance the reader makes briefly in The League of Gentlewomen Witches get their own novel and a chance at their own HEA, since clearly from their first meeting in the previous novel, they are perfect for one another. 

Both found in orphanages by A.U.N.T and raised under the strict tutelage of the organisation's teachers and trainers to become secret agents for the crown, neither Alice nor Daniel have ever really felt like they fit in among their fellow spies or people in general. It's quite clear from the description of them,  and their reactions to and thoughts about certain things, that they are both neurodivergent, and while this is not something likely to have been acknowledged in Victorian times, be they the real ones or the alternate history one we meet here, it's nevertheless a fact and makes them both excellent at their jobs, but not very good at making personal connections. 

Daniel Bixby worked undercover for several years as the butler of charming pirate captain Alex O'Reilly, gathering intel for A.U.N.T and making sure the pirates never caused too much havoc and destruction. He has great difficulty admitting that he and Alex actually became friends and that he cares for both the now-reformed rogue and the witch the pirate fell in love with. 

Alice Dearlove is the perfect ladies' maid and can serve the most infuriating of spoiled aristocrats, devious pirate matrons, or meddling witches. She hasn't really ever had any friends since the organisation doesn't exactly encourage emotional attachment to anything or anyone. She also gets very defensive by light touches and has no understanding of idioms or metaphorical language. Once Daniel discovers this, he's very helpfully tells her "Idiom" every time someone uses figurative language that baffles her. It was a very cute recurring gag and endeared me further to the man.

In various flashbacks, the reader is given insight into the rather dark upbringing both agents have had, in an organisation that doesn't really care for its employees as people, only pawns to move about on a large political gameboard. It helps that they share a lot of the same experiences, albeit in slightly different ways, but it also makes them both very aware of how difficult a potential happy ending would be for them, as A.U.N.T certainly wouldn't let them marry and be together.

Of course, Alice and Daniel, helped in parts by Ned, Cecilia, Alex, and Charlotte, end up with a very lovely HEA in the end. Alice has actual friends who care about her and they're all part of a bigger found family they have dreamed of for their entire lives. This book was a very quick read and made me very happy. India Holton's writing has gotten sharper and wittier with each book, and I'm very excited to see what she will publish next. 

Judging a book by its cover: Once again, it is an adorable cover and I really love the lavender shade of the background. I especially like the traditional spy movie poses of Bixby and Dearlove, with them in period-appropriate servants' attire instead of evening wear. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 7: "The League of Gentlewomen Witches" by India Holton

Page count: 336 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Everyone knows there's no such thing as witches, but if there were, they probably wouldn't use magic in flashy and extravagant ways to fly houses around and try to rob and assassinate one another. If there were witches, they would probably use their magic in tidier ways, ensuring polite society was functioning properly. Possibly liberate those who have excessive financial resources of some of it to the betterment of those with less of it (like say, themselves). If there were witches, Charlotte Pettifer would be the next prospective leader of their League. There's even a prophecy that she's the natural successor to Black Beryl, the woman who first discovered the magic spell that the pirates use to make their houses fly. 

Charlotte makes the acquaintance of the dashing pirate captain Alex O'Riley when she is, in fact, trying to liberate him of his briefcase. After a very exciting pursuit, she manages to fly away on a bicycle, only to discover that the briefcase is empty. When the legendary amulet of Black Beryl is found and exhibited in a museum, Charlotte and Alex's paths cross once more, since any witch or pirate worth their salt is trying to be the first to get the amulet. When both are thwarted in their goal, Alex to his dismay, discovers that Charlotte has stowed away in his flying cottage, and refuses to leave until they retrieve the amulet together. 

Soon rumours are flying that Charlotte has been abducted by the roguish pirate, when all the witches know full well that Charlotte must have been the one doing the abducting. Neither group of opinionated, magic-wielding women is going to suggest that something untoward has taken place, as a marriage between a prominent witch and a pirate would possibly lead to peace between the two factions, a fate much worse than a young lady (or rakish gentleman) maybe being compromised. All the while, Charlotte and Alex are fighting and kissing and doing a fair bit of acrobatic compromising of each other, beginning to dread what will happen if they actually do manage to find the amulet and have to stop chasing it together. Because the future leader of the witches, and a prominent pirate, couldn't actually have a future together? Perish the thought.

While the first book in the Dangerous Damsels series was full of Brontë references, this one leans heavily into Jane Austen. Charlotte has lived a lonely life, strictly regimented to become the perfect leader of the League, and certainly hasn't been allowed to indulge in anything so frivolous as strong emotions or close friendships. So, like many other lonely people, she has sought solace in books and keeps wondering what Elizabeth Bennet, Eleanor Dashwood, Anne Elliot, or even Fanny Price would do, and early on, at least, she keeps comparing Alex to Austen's heroes (who surprisingly quickly come up short to an actual, living, breathing, fencing, flirting and bantering man). 

While there has long been an animosity between witches and pirates, Alex's reasons for disliking witches are more personal than most. Having lost his mother at an early age, and acquired a wicked stepmother of the witch persuasion instead, he has sworn never to get near any more witches but finds his promise difficult to keep once Charlotte invades his cottage and starts tidying up his abode and life. 

It took me a while to figure out what in the world was going on when I read the first book in the series. I don't know if it had a much more far-fetched storyline (probably not) or that I'm now just much more attuned to the sort of delightful quirkiness that features in India Holton's writing. Maybe I just liked "Lottie" and Alex more as a couple. Austen references are also always going to be more of a hit with me than Brontë ones. 

I already know that the third and final book in the series is about Alex's very efficient butler, Bixby, and the ladies' maid with unusual abilities, Miss Dearlove. I can't wait to see what silly shenanigans the two of them get up to. 

Judging a book by its cover: The covers for these books are adorable. I love the little details in the margins, such as Alex's cottage (which looks rather cozy, and not at all as run-down as a lot of people in the story would have you believe), the teacup, the broom, and so forth. And obviously Alex and Charlotte fencing at the bottom. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Books 84-85: "The Shepherd King duology" by Rachel Gillig

Total page count: 913 pages

One Dark Window - 3.5 stars

Two Twisted Crowns - 4 stars

Spoiler warning! Some minor spoilers for One Dark Window in this review. 

20-year-old Elspeth Spindle (all the noble families have surnames taken from trees) lives in the kingdom of Blunder, most of which is now enveloped in a thick, sinister fog. Most people who venture out into the fog without a talisman (bones, feathers, animal feet, braided horsehair, etc) go mad and run off into the forest, never to be seen again. The only ones who seem able to walk in the fog without nasty side effects are the survivors of a mysterious fever (which also grants the survivors some sort of magical ability), but such survivors are few and far between since the king has ordered all afflicted with the disease to be rounded up and taken to the palace (where they are experimented on and killed). Being found to have harboured a fever survivor is considered treason. 

However, Elspeth is one such survivor. Her father used to be the captain of the king’s Destriers (think a Royal Guard crossed with Secret Police). He couldn’t bring himself to have his eldest daughter killed, so sent her into the woods to live with her aunt and uncle. Remember how I said all survivors of the fever gained a magical power? Elspeth’s ability made it possible for her to absorb the essence of Providence cards, which is why she has an unwanted cohabitant in her head – known as the Nightmare.

A brief history lesson: Back in the olden times, Blunder was ruled by The Shepherd King (also the name of this fantasy duology). In the woods of Blunder there was an ancient power, The Spirit of the Forest, who people used to turn to for help and who could grant wishes and the like. All magic had a price, because balance is necessary and such trades with the Spirit should not be undertaken lightly. The Shepherd King, in an attempt to safeguard his kingdom, negotiated with the Spirit of the Forest and created a magical deck of cards, called Providence Cards. To create each of the cards, he had to sacrifice something, like years of his life, his memories, his ability to sleep, all his hair, and eventually his own soul. 

"Twelve different Providence Cards made up the Deck. Chronicled in our ancient text, The Old Book of Alders, Providence Cards were not only Blunder’s greatest treasures but the only legal way of performing magic. Anyone could use them – all it took was touch and intention. Clear your mind, hold a Card in your hand, tap it three times, and the Card is yours to wield. Pocket the Card or place it elsewhere, the magic would still hold. Three more taps, or the touch of another person, and the flow of magic would halt. But use a Card too long, and the consequences were dire. The cards were exceptionally rare, their numbers finite."

With some of the cards in the Providence Deck, there are multiple copies. There are only two Nightmare Cards, which grant the user the ability to speak telepathically to others. Eleven years ago, Elspeth touched a Nightmare card in her uncle’s library, and basically absorbed its essence, the werewolf-like creature depicted on its surface. The creature speaks to her, gives her warnings, and in cases of extreme danger, she can grant The Nightmare control over her body, so she gets stronger, faster and can defend herself. Of course, everything has a price, so each time she does this, The Nightmare gains a bit more control over her, and she starts having trouble controlling her own body. When Elspeth is in control, she has dark, nearly black eyes. When The Nightmare is in control, her eyes are yellow. 

Elspeth has stayed far away from the royal court for years, afraid that anyone will discover that she is a survivor of the fever. This Solstice, however, her uncle has finally decided to trade his very precious Nightmare card (the second one is believed to be lost – but is it?) to the King, in return for his daughter, Elspeth’s beloved cousin Ione, to be betrothed to the Crown Prince, a psychotic bully. Ione gets access to a Maiden card, which turns the user flawlessly beautiful but is rumoured to have the side effect that the user becomes cold and heartless. Obviously, with her uncle’s family suddenly guests of honour, Elspeth also has to join the festivities at the palace. She meets a number of new people, like Prince Elm, the younger prince, who doesn’t seem particularly fond of his father or brother. She also comes into contact with Elm’s cousin, Ravyn Yew, the current Captain of the King’s Destriers. He figures out that she’s a survivor of the fever, but doesn’t arrest her. Instead, he invites her to be part of a plot that can only be described as treasonous.

Raven Yew and most of his family are working with Prince Elm to locate one card of each of the ones that make up the Providence Deck. If all twelve cards of the deck can be united, the curse on Blunder will be lifted and the fog will no longer threaten the land. It is believed that those suffering aftereffects of the fever will also be cured.  Elspeth obviously can’t reveal to anyone that she has The Nightmare lurking around in the back of her brain, but reveals to Ravyn and Elm that she can «see» Providence Cards. Thanks to The Nightmare, Elspeth can see the colours of the various cards, even when a person has them hidden. This makes her incredibly useful to the conspirators, and they promise to keep her safe if she agrees to help them. 

It’s agreed that Elspeth come stay at the residence of the Yew family, under the pretext that Ravyn is courting her. Of course what starts out as pretense doesn’t take long before it becomes a reality, although Elspeth has to keep lying to her new friends, and the man she’s falling for about the extent of her magical abilities. 

Things got really complicated after Elspeth had her wrist broken when Ravyn, Elm, and their gang of fake highwaymen tried to stage an ambush to steal another Providence Card. Elspeth came into close contact with the Crown Prince, who broke her wrist. Elspeth only got away because she let the Nightmare take over, and he clawed the Prince savagely. While everyone claims Elspeth broke her wrist falling off a horse, this cover story isn’t really very convincing to anyone, least the cruel Crown Prince. He may be a psycho, but he’s sadly not stupid. He’s suspected his brother and cousins of being up to something treasonous, and he gets his claws into Elspeth both to question her and use her as bait to capture her co-conspirators.

As a result of that rather unpleasant encounter, Elspeth has to let The Nightmare take over permanently, and the Crown Prince is found nearly torn to pieces. Elspeth is taken prisoner, but the Nightmare, now in total control, reveals to the enraged King that he knows where the Twin Alders, the only unique card in the Providence Deck is hidden. It will be impossible for anyone to unite the Deck and break the curse on Blunder without this card. Ravyn pretends to still be loyal and offers to take The Nightmare/the husk that was once Elspeth to find the card. The blood of someone afflicted by the fever will also need to be spilled to break the curse, and the King plans for that to be Elspeth, once the card is found.

Prince Elm, who hates his family, now has to step up and act as heir, as his elder brother is horribly injured and may not survive. He’s unable to accompany Ravyn to find the final Providence Card, but to make his time back at the palace more bearable, he makes a deal with Ione, his brother’s unwilling betrothed, to help her find the missing Maiden card that still has her under an enchantment. Thanks to Ione, Elm also discovers a previously unknown benefit the Maiden card grants those under its spell.

Will Ravyn manage to locate the missing Providence Card required to unite the Deck and break the curse on Blunder? Will he be able to exorcise The Nightmare from Elspeth’s body and save his beloved from being sacrificed by the king? Will Elm and Ione find the missing Maiden card, and return Ione to her former self? Will our stalwart heroes triumph over corruption and evil and live happily ever after? 

While One Dark Window is told entirely from Elspeth’s POV (with little snippets from The Old Book of Alders at the start of each chapter, giving us helpful information about the magic system and the Providence Cards), Two Twisted Crowns is told through Elm, Ravyn and The Nightmare’s POVs. There are brief glimpses of Elspeth's consciousness, but she's pretty firmly stuck deep in what seems to be The Nightmare's subconscious.

One Dark Window was the November pick in my fantasy book club. For the first half of the book, it was really only the interesting magic system that kept me going. Elspeth is not the most dynamic of heroines and her romance with Ravyn really didn't grab me all that much. Her strange connection with The Nightmare helped keep me interested, and I really wouldn't have expected the first book to end the way it did. The second book is miles better, especially because all three POV characters are more interesting, especially Elm. He develops a romance with Ione, which is complicated because she's promised to his loathsome brother. Since I liked both Elm and Ione a lot more than drippy Elspeth, that storyline worked better for me than Elspeth and Ravyn's. 

I'm always happy when a fantasy series can be contained in two, rather than three books. In this case, I would highly recommend readers stick with it, even if One Dark Window isn't entirely grabbing them. The world-building and magic system is very interesting, and everything develops so well in Two Twisted Crowns, finishing off the story in a really satisfying way. 

Judging the books by the covers: I think the cover for One Dark Window is supposed to be a red-clad woman (most likely Elspeth) in the middle of a bridge. The black smoke is probably something to do with the Nightmare? It's not a great choice - it looks like a tiny volcano. The cover for Two Twisted Crowns is much better, with the twisty trees adding to the spooky atmosphere. If the woman on the cover is supposed to be Elspeth, her hair should really be cut short - but you can't have everything.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 51: "All Boys Aren't Blue" by George M. Johnson

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR15 Bingo: Queer Lives

In July, the Forever Young Adult Reading Challenge prompt was Banned Books. Since All Boys Aren't Blue was the second most banned book in America during the 2021-2022 school year, only beaten by Gender Queer, and I'd had the book on my digital bookshelf for a while, it felt like a suitable book to choose. This book was also one of the book club selections last year for the Cannonball book club, when we did banned books (this year we did banned graphic novels) and I never got round to reading it back then. But now I have.

All Books Aren't Blue is a memoir aimed at young adult readers, written by queer activist George M. Johnson (they/them). The book is about growing up Black and queer, and always feeling different but not having the words to express it. Johnson wanted to give black and queer youths growing up now more of a vocabulary to talk about their own experiences. Johnson said in an interview with NPR that although the book has been banned or challenged by more than 26 school districts, it still has more defenders than detractors, and he doesn't regret writing the book. They say that "students have publicly said on record that works like mine have saved their lives, works like mine have helped them name their abusers, works like mine have helped them come to terms with who they are and feel validated in the fact that there is somebody else that exists in the world like them,"

I am a white, middle-aged, cis-gendered woman, so the experiences Johnson writes about in this memoir were entirely different from anything I experienced growing up in a privileged middle-class family in Norway. I am deeply grateful that books like this exist, so youths in similar situations to Johnson, black and/or queer, can see that they are not alone out there. I am grateful that I can learn and expand my own understanding of the lives of others because it's only through being open and interested that we continue to grow and improve as people. I am glad that there are still a lot more parents,  educators, and/or librarians out there working to get this book out to young people than there are trying to repress and ban this book. 

Judging a book by its cover: The beautiful flower crown that Johnson is wearing on the illustrated cover of this book feels very joyful, and it certainly caught my eye and made me read more about it the first time I saw it. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 42: "Graceling" by Kristin Cashore

Page count: 481 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Katsa lives in a series of kingdoms where a small percentage of the populations have a unique ability or grace. These people are known as Gracelings, and the abilities can be benign and useful, like being extremely skilled at baking, cooking, sewing, or in one case, being able to smell exactly what the person in question wants to eat or drink. They can also be dangerous, like Katsa's extreme fighting ability, which was discovered when she accidentally killed someone in self-defense when she was only eight years old. All Gracelings are clearly identified by eyes of different colours, but it can take a few years for the eyes to change colour, and even longer for the grace to actually become obvious. It is the rule in the various seven kingdoms (with the exception of the island kingdom of Lienid) that Gracelings pretty much become the property of their king, forced to serve him in return for room and board. Katsa is the niece of king Randa of the Middluns, and he forces her to use her abilities to threaten and sometimes even kill for him. The older she gets, the more unhappy she is about this, so she secretly also runs an underground group, of resistance fighters, the Council, in the various kingdoms, trying to secure justice for the ordinary people.

The book begins as Katsa and some of her allies are breaking into the dungeons of king Murgon of Sunder to rescue Prince Tealiff of Lienid, the elderly father of the current king of Lienid. Neither Katsa, nor her friends understand why in the world king Murgon would kidnap the kindly old man. While on the mission, Katsa also encounters Prince Po of Lienid for the first time, who is also in the kingdom looking for his missing grandfather. Katsa is trying to escape detection, so is forced to knock the handsome young man out, but when he later shows up at king Randa's court, suspecting that Katsa and her friends may know more about the whereabouts of his grandfather, they strike up a friendship. Po's grace makes him remarkably skilled at fighting, and he becomes one of the few people Katsa can really spar with, without having to worry that he won't be able to hold his own and she'll accidentally kill him.

Katsa's friendship with Po makes her realise that she's deeply unhappy with what she is constantly forced to do, and after king Randa sends her on a particularly unfair mission to threaten a good man into doing his bidding, Katsa instead disobeys his orders and subsequently confronts her uncle and refuses to work for him any longer. She knows she has enough friends and allies in the various kingdoms to manage perfectly well on her own, she was never comfortable with the privileged life of a princess anyway. She is determined to find out why Prince Tealiff was abducted and who could benefit from it, and Po accompanies her on her quest. As they travel through the various kingdoms, they come to the conclusion that there is something strange going on in Monsea, the most remote of the seven kingdoms. King Leck, who rules there, is married to one of Tealiff's daughters, who is said to have locked herself and her daughter away, grieving because of the uncertain fate of her father. King Leck is rumoured to be a kind and beloved ruler, especially fond of children and animals, but the more Katsa and Po investigate, the stranger some of the stories coming out of Monsea become, and there is clearly something very strange going on there. Why would the kindly Leck pay a fellow king to have his father-in-law kidnapped?

I first read Graceling back in 2009, about six months after it was first released. I remembered some of the details of the story and world-building, but there was also a lot that I had forgotten, such as how dark this book gets in places. It may be Young Adult, but there are a lot of serious issues covered over the course of the story, such as physical and emotional abuse, violence, manipulation, and coercion. In the second half of the book, where Po and Katsa start discovering the truth about Po's grandfather's abduction, they have to travel through very inhospitable terrain to Monsea, where they face some very unique dangers.

There is a lovely, slow-burning romance as part of the story as well, as Katsa, who has always been fiercely independent and very reluctant to ever marry, comes to discover that Po loves her, and to her surprise, she returns his feelings. Katsa never got to have much of a childhood, once it was discovered that she had a lethal grace, and she is determined never to have any children of her own who might inherit her abilities. She can't imagine why a charming, handsome and clearly very popular prince (even though he is the youngest of many) would want her. Po, on the other hand, doesn't see a ruthless thug and killer when he looks at Katsa. He sees her strong spirit, her desire for justice, he knows she started the Council and has worked tirelessly for years behind her uncle's back to stand up for the poor, downtrodden, and those who can't fight for themselves. He sees how determined she is to discover the truth behind his grandfather's kidnapping, even willing to risk her life to get to the bottom of things. It's not at all surprising that he falls for her.

One thing I didn't really realise when I first read this book, is how well the entire series by Cashore deals with female agency and control over their own lives and bodies. There is a seed that women can eat to prevent conception, and neither Katsa nor the heroines of the subsequent books are in any way shamed when they decide that they are ready to have sex. There is clearly some societal expectations that Katsa will start acting more feminine in time, and that she should settle down, marry someone and have children, but Po seems quite happy to just be with her for as long as she's willing to have him, whether they are married or not.

I remembered this as a very good example of YA literature, with a strong and admirable protagonist and a sweet romantic subplot, but I had not remembered just how complex and dark it got, and how much trauma the various characters are put through over the course of the story. So it's absolutely a book I recommend, but with some content warnings for those thinking it's just a straight-forward fantasy adventure story.

Judging a book by its cover: I have the UK paperback edition, where a girl with flowy hair and a very large sword appears to be partially clad in armour, but also ill-prepared for the snowy landscape around her, what with the bare arms and all. A lot of the other editions of this book have a stylised dagger on the cover, which seems to fit much better, as Katsa never uses a giant broadsword, but frequently relies on her daggers.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR12 Book 25: "Queenie" by Candace Carty-Williams

Page count: 336 pages
Audio book length: 9 hrs 45 mins
Rating: 4 stars

Official book description:
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle-class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

I'm not the first Cannonballer to read Queenie and thanks to the reviews of others, I knew that the only thing this book seemed to have in common with Bridget Jones' Diary is that they are both about young British women with a supportive friend group. I suspect a lot of people who picked up the book based on such a comparison would have been shocked, and quite possibly put off. Poor Queenie is a mess, personally and professionally. Her white boyfriend has broken up with her, but she keeps telling herself that they are just on a temporary break and will be getting back together again after some months apart. From Queenie's own flashbacks to the relationship, not only did her boyfriend's family contain several blatant racists, but they were never a particularly healthy couple and it's probably best in the long run for Queenie to be rid of him.

Not that she realises this, and she deals with being single by pretty much hooking up with and having unprotected sex with increasingly more awful and unsuitable guys (including one who is really violent towards her). She wants to be taken seriously at work and write about serious issues like racism, police brutality and the gentrification of previously immigrant-rich areas, but also comes in late, takes super long lunches, spends a lot of her day on social media and is generally a hot mess. Despite all this, her boss really does seem to want to keep giving her chances. Queenie also has a group of loyal and supportive friends (the chat group is called "the Corgis", which is just super cute) who keep trying to be there for her, even as she keeps spiralling further and further into bad decision territory.

One of the major issues in Queenie's relationship with her unsuitable boyfriend was that she would have nightmares and occasionally freak out when he touched her. It becomes clear the further into the book we get that Queenie's mother also made bad choices with regards to men, and a violent stepfather in Queenie's past has left her deeply traumatised. She's currently estranged from her mother but has grandparents who take her in and try to help her when she can no longer to afford her flat. Several of the nurses at the free clinic that Queenie has to keep visiting because of her impulsive and unprotected hook-ups start showing concern for her and recommend that she see a therapist. It's made very clear that in the Jamaican culture, you don't go talking to strangers about your problems, and it takes Queenie a really long time to convince herself (not to mention her concerned grandparents) that this is a necessary step in her road towards healing and self-improvement.

I finished this book in early March, before the corona pandemic really erupted in the western hemisphere and the world changed completely. Reviewing it now, as multiple cities in America have literally been burning and there are protests all over the world to protest police brutality and to express solidarity with #blacklivesmatter, I wonder what Queenie would think if she were a real character and saw what was happening? Would she feel hopeful? Would she fear that it was only a momentary distraction and soon the world would have moved on, allowing the systemic racism to continue?

For the first two thirds at least, this book is dark and miserable and there are graphic descriptions of emotional and physical abuse and some of Queenie's sexual encounters could probably be classified as rape. She keeps making terrible choices, both personally and professionally and if I'd started this book a month later, in the midst of lock-down with all the worries about corona and my anxiety constantly spiking, I'm genuinely not sure I would have been able to finish the book. It's certainly NOT a light, frothy, comedic romp about a woman just trying to find love. It's a harrowing description of an individual in crisis with a lot of undiagnosed mental issues, and we follow along until she hits rock bottom. If you can get through the difficult parts, I can assure you that the book goes to a much more hopeful and encouraging place once Queenie starts accepting that she needs professional help, and needs to start loving herself and staying away from her terrible life choices.

I'm very glad that I read the book. I really liked the narrator and being fore-warned, I knew I was going to have to get through some unpleasant stuff before Queenie began to work towards a better life for herself. I will say that times are tough and depressing right now, and if you're looking for some light escapism, this is not the book for you. It's an excellent story, but very unpleasant in places.

Judging a book by its cover: I've seen this cover with a bright, almost neon-pink background and this warm orange-red one. In both, you have the same central image, an elaborate hairdo of intricate braids piled on top of a young woman's head. We don't get to see her face, only her hair and an ear with some piercings. I love how it looks as if the title is woven into the braids, like some sort of ornamentation in itself. Queenie is very protective of her hair (and why shouldn't she be?), yet she keeps having to suffer micro-aggressions like people touching it without her permission. So it's a good choice to have the hair featured on the cover of the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 89: "Milk and Honey" by Rupi Kaur

Page count: 208 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Official book description:
milk and honey is a
collection of poetry about
love
loss
trauma
abuse
healing
and femininity
it is split into four chapters
each chapter serves a different purpose
deals with a different pain
heals a different heartache
milk and honey takes readers through
a journey of the most bitter moments in the life
and finds sweetness in them
because there is sweetness everywhere
if you are just willing to look

Poetry is just one of those genres I don't really read, at all. So when the Diversify Your Reading Challenge asked me to read one or more collections of poetry in November, I was initially a bit stumped. However, one of my keywords in my Monthly Keyword Challenge (so many reading challenges, you guys!) for November was food, and this poetry collection, which is very highly rated on Goodreads, by a woman of colour I had actually heard of even before I picked up the book, fit perfectly.

Obviously, this was a very quick read. I have to be honest, and say that in the first section, which deals with sexual abuse and trauma, I mostly skimmed the poems to get through quickly, because I do not have the mental head space to deal with that right now. The other sections were nowhere near as traumatic, and some of the poems are absolutely lovely.

I can see on Goodreads that while some people have found the contents of the book rather trite and cliched and simple, a whopping 49% have rated the collection a full 5 stars. I would not quite go that far with effusive praise, but as I said, poetry just really isn't a genre that tends to do much for me. I'm glad this reading challenge made me open up to something new, but I still don't see myself reading a lot of verse in the years to come.

Judging a book by its cover: It's not exactly the most exciting of covers, but the bees make you think of honey, which is, after all, highly relevant to the title. The illustrations on the cover are in the same simple style as the ones throughout the volume, accompanying the poetry.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 110: "Rock Redemption" by Nalini Singh

Page count: 349 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

This is the third book in the Rock Kiss series, but it can easily be read without any previous knowledge of the other books or characters.

Noah St. John is the guitarist in world famous rock band Schoolboy Choir. Due to some really dark shit in his past, he's incredibly messed up and has tremendous difficulties trusting or connecting to people. He doesn't really feel comfortable around anyone but the other guys in the band, who he's known since he was a kid in school with them. One notable exception is Katherine "Kit" Devigny, a struggling to make it actress the band met when they were all starting out. The other guys in the band pretty much adopted Kit as a sister, but the chemistry between Kit and Noah was always too volatile for friendship to blossom easily. Yet they become true friends, moving towards something more, a change Noah can't handle. He makes sure that Kit walks in on him in bed with a random groupie, completely shattering her trust or any affection she felt for him.

Haunted almost nightly by nightmares, one-night-stands and meaningless hook-ups seem to be the only thing that drains him enough to sleep peacefully for a few hours. It has rightly earned Noah a reputation as a notorious womaniser. His only other escape is the music, but now the band in between tours and albums, and the ghosts of the past constantly threaten to destroy what little peace he manages to summon.

It's been years since he destroyed Kit's good opinion of him, and she's no longer a struggling soap actress, but an Oscar-nominated and very sought after star. Photographed together at a big media event, the gossip journalists assume that Kit and Noah are finally a couple, and the positive press is extremely beneficial for Kit's career. She needs all the good media cover she can get in order to secure an audition for a sought-after film, and Noah agrees to play her adoring boyfriend to help her. He desperately wants to make amends for his previous actions, but is also terrified that Kit, the woman he adores, will discover his darkest secrets, convinced it will drive her away forever.

Nalini Singh's Rock Kiss series has been quite hit and miss for me. The first one, Rock Addiction, where the vocalist fell head over heels for a the half-sister of the band's publicist after a one-night-stand, was merely ok. I liked the second one, which was more of a long novella, Rock Courtship, where the band's drummer after a long and patient campaign wins the heart of the band's publicist, a whole lot more. The heroine in book 1, Molly's best friend, Charlotte, gets her own book in Rock Hard, (which really is only very tenuously connected to the rock stars or their love interests) where there is a subplot involving stalking, something that's also an important subplot in this book. While on the surface Kit seems rich and successful, most of her money was sunk into a new house with very secure grounds and a security detail after her stalker broke into her previous home. She can make ends meet, but needs a couple of big contracts to make sure she actually has enough money to keep paying for her house and her bodyguards.

I find a good friends to lovers plot very satisfying in romance, and I find reconciliation stories can also be very effective. Singh sort of combines the two tropes in this book. Kit and Noah were incredibly close, until Noah got spooked and did his very best to drive Kit away. Because she's such an important person in the lives of his band mates, though, it's not like they can avoid seeing each other, and Kit is constantly reminded of the calculated cruelty with which Noah chose to show her "his true self".

Noah is the modern equivalent of one of those rakes who are so dissolute and jaded that it's hard to see how they'll ever make for a satisfying romantic lead. Of course, the reason for his wild behaviour is found in his dark past, and while I had my suspicions of what he was so terrified of Kit discovering, it was actually in some ways worse than I had expected, and I can see why he was so incredibly messed up. When the truth comes out, Noah's warped world-view and his huge trust issues make it very hard for him to believe Kit could still care for him, let alone want to be with him.

Kit has been a supporting character in more than one of the previous books, and her fraught relationship with Noah has been simmering in the background. The daughter of a supermodel and a tennis pro, she deliberately chose to act under an assumed name, to make sure she made her way in the business through her own achievements, rather than coasting on nepotism. The child of parents who loved each other so much they barely noticed others, she frequently felt alone and it's clear that the three other guys in Schoolboy Choir are the brothers she wishes she'd had growing up. Having had difficulty forming other female friendships, Kit now has a few really good girlfriends she can count on and who help keep her stable and grounded. I suspect the "behind the scenes" stuff about acting and the pressures put on young actresses is probably very carefully researched by Singh. The way Kit has to manouver to secure herself new parts certainly felt very believable.

I don't do trigger warnings, but readers should know that there is a lot of pain and darkness in Noah's past, and there are reasons why he tries to find oblivion in meaningless sex, keeping nearly everyone, including most of his band mates, oblivious to his true suffering. If I hadn't liked Kit as a heroine as much as I did, this book would probably just have been 3 stars. It's not my favourite of the series, but a much better read than the first one. All signs suggest that the next book in the series will be about Abe, the fourth and final band member, whose ex-wife features prominently in a subplot in the final half of this book. It seems very likely that there may be another reconciliation story coming up.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.