CBR17 Book 22: "Lady Knight" by Amalie Howard

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Books Bingo 25: Book by an author you've never read

Thank you to Netgalley and Joy Revolution for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

Lady Zenobia "Zia" Osborn and several of her female friends have started a secret society, calling themselves Lady Knights, and at night, they dress up as highwaymen and rob the carriages of Lady Zia's brother's rich friends. They need to collect enough money to ensure the survival of their boarding school, not to mention the orphanage next door to the school. The rents keep being raised, and if the nuns who run the orphanage can't pay, they and all the helpless children will be evicted. 

One of Lady Zia's teachers is a progressive young woman who allows her charges to read controversial literature, like Mary Wollstonecraft or Frankenstein. She also encourages the young women's intelligence and critical thinking and encourages Zia's interest in music. Despite their best efforts to disguise themselves, someone recognises Zia, and can't for the life of him figure out why the daughter of a duke would risk her life at night, robbing noblemen.

Mr. Rafi Nasser, nephew to the unscrupulous nobleman who wants to evict the orphans, also happens to be the best friend of Zia's older brother. As such, he's had plenty of opportunities to observe Zia, and he can recognise her distinctive perfume and her voice, even when she's dressed up and robbing him at gunpoint. Even when he finds out why Zia and her friends (none of them from families as rich and influential as herself) are doing their dangerous nighttime raids, he encourages her to stop, before anyone gets hurt. 

Even Zia's daytime pursuits are enough to make her father upset with her, wanting her to settle down and find a suitable husband. Rafi has a vested interest in keeping an eye on Zia, Zia needs someone her parents like as a suitor, so they agree to a fake courtship to get Zia's parents to calm down. As is always the case with fake courtships, it doesn't take very long before the feelings are all too real.

I know Amalie Howard has written a number of historical romances for adults, and this is her second one for a YA audience. While I own several of her books, including Queen Bee, the companion novel to this one (featuring Zia's brother and the woman he eventually ends up engaged to, in a YA Regency twist on The Count of Monte Cristo, if the description is to be believed), I have never actually sat down to read one of her books. So getting this ARC was a good thing because it forced me to actually commit to reading one of her books. I'm now really glad that I have a large back catalogue of her books to dive into, because this book was delightful.

While it may seem like Zia and her friends get up to all sorts of anachronistic lady shenanigans, it seems like Howard has actually done her research pretty well, although as with the Bridgerton TV series, the English nobility of Howard's fictional universe is certainly a lot more diverse than I suspect was the case in real life. Zia's formidable duchess mother is from India, and Rafi's mother is Persian. One of Zia's best friends is Asian, and there is also some very nicely done queer representation in the book, including Zia's asexual best friend, who's known her intended (also ace) husband since childhood. Representation matters, people, especially in YA books. 

Since this is a YA novel, it is a rather chaste affair. I think there was some kissing between Zia and Rafi, but nothing beyond that. Their romance was very sweet, though, and I can't wait to go back to read the story of Zia's brother and future sister-in-law. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not only does this have yet another animated cover, but it looks a bit like it was made as a colouring book template. The whole thing looks like it may be from a "Regency colouring book for adults". The couple on the cover at least look like they might be Zia and Rafi, though, so I guess that's a good thing. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR13 Book 32: "Meddling Kids" by Edgar Cantero

Page count: 442 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 54 mins

Rating: 4 stars

CBR13 Bingo: Book Club (the July selection of my fantasy/sci-fi book club here in Oslo. I read it in early June)

Official book description:

The surviving members of a forgotten teenage detective club (and their dog) must reunite as broken adults to finally solve the terrifying case that ruined them all and sent the wrong man to prison. Scooby Doo and the gang never had to do this!

1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven t seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Keri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she s got Sean, an excitable Weimeraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter s been dead for years.

The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting.

Long-time readers of my reviews know that I'm not a huge fan of the horror genre. Luckily, this book is more in the vein of Stranger Things or Cabin in the Woods, a mix of comedy and horror that makes it a lot more palatable for me, even as I cringe occasionally. It doesn't hurt that Cantero, originally a Spanish novelist, in his first English novel has a way with language that really appealed to the language nerd in me, even as he occasionally described eldritch horrors in a little bit too much detail. This is also a book full of pop culture references, and for someone who read and re-read all of Enid Blyton's Famous Five novels at an early age and then graduated to Nancy Drew, there are a lot of fun nods, not just the place where the children used to meet up being called Blyton Hills (the dog is even called Tim!) I never really watched a lot of Scooby Doo, but the nods to this are also obvious.

This was the July selection of my local fantasy/sci-fi book club and I ended up listening to the audio. Kyla Garcia does a good job with the narration, which isn't always easy as the POV switches between all of our protagonists, as well as some supporting characters. The plot is action-packed and suitably creepy, with your teenage detective gang turned twenty-somethings with clear trauma responses to some of the bad stuff they experienced as adolescents. While some of them are reluctant, they go back to the place of their many childhood adventures to revisit their last big case, which is still haunting all of them in various ways. The town is no longer as idyllic as it once was, and it becomes clear that something sinister is indeed still lurking in the wilderness.

Yet again, I'm reviewing this far too long after finishing it to remember a lot of specific details, but the book has a fun cast of characters, some exciting and interesting twists, decent queer representation, a few jump scares, an excellent dog companion, some Lovecraftian monsters and kept me entertained throughout. The other members of my book club who finished the book also enjoyed it, but we agreed that it wasn't necessarily the deepest or most nuanced work of fiction we'd ever read. It's a fun, pop-culture infused read, and I'll keep my eye out for more of Cantero's English-language work. 

Judging a book by its cover: Occasionally, you can judge a book a bit by the cover. There are most certainly tentacly horrors from the deep featured in this novel, as well as a group of plucky protagonists with a lot of issues to work through. The bright neon colours are fun, as are the contents of this book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 48: "Places in the Darkness" by Chris Brookmyre

Page count: 416 pages
Audio book length: 14 hrs 42 mins
Rating: 3 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Book Club (this was a pick in my fantasy/sci-fi book club a few months back)

Offical book description:

Hundreds of miles above Earth, the space station Ciudad de Cielo - The City in the Sky - is a beacon of hope for humanity's expansion into the stars. But not everyone aboard shares such noble ideals.

Bootlegging, booze, and prostitution form a lucrative underground economy for rival gangs, which the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to until a disassembled corpse is found dancing in the micro-gravity.

In charge of the murder investigation is Nikki "Fix" Freeman, who is not thrilled to have Alice Blake, an uptight government goody-two-shoes, riding shotgun. As the bodies pile up, and the partners are forced to question their own memories, Nikki and Alice begin to realize that gang warfare may not be the only cause for the violence. 

This book, a science fiction mystery from an author I'd never even heard of, was the June selection of my local fantasy/sci-fi book club. We met up in a park for the first time in several months, responsibly distanced at least six feet apart, to discuss it. As is often the case, I had started the book (in this case, the audio version), but had only gotten about ten chapters in and was unsure of whether I wanted to continue or not. The rule at our book club is that you're absolutely welcome to show up even if you haven't finished the book (or read it at all, which seems to happen a lot with a lot of the members), but you don't get to be upset if you get spoilers. I think it's a fair rule. Happily, the book club meeting and subsequent discussion made it clear that the story WOULD pick up and that the mystery was interesting and had an unusual outcome. 

So I kept going with the book, and while it isn't going to be one that I'm likely to remember for years to come, it ended up being entertaining. I liked that while the book was written by a man, both the main protagonists are women, and no point was there anything that made me think this author should be made fun of on one of those "men writing women badly" lists. The characters may be quite tropey for a mystery, one is a middle-aged former police detective with a haunted past who has now given up a bit and is involved in local corruption, while the other is the up-and-coming, talented and ambitious administrator from a privileged background - yet in so many of these stories, these characters would be men. That Nikki is also an openly queer woman, without it in any way seeming to be written for titillation was also encouraging. 

Alice Blake has been sent to Ciudad de Cielo as the new head of security and asks that her true rank and position is kept hidden when the murder is announced. She wants to observe Nikki Freeman, one of the few security officers with former homicide experience, without the other woman knowing she's being evaluated. They don't exactly hit it off and become friends, but when it seems as if Nikki is being set up as the culprit for the murders (because of course there is more than one) and Alice starts to question her memories and control of her own actions, the two women grudgingly agree to work together to figure out who is treating the space station as their own private murder party. 

All in all, this was a perfectly fine read. I doubt I'll be checking out any more books by the author (who mostly seems to do traditional, non-sci-fi mysteries), but considering I knew absolutely nothing about the book or author going in, save that it was set on a space station, it turned out to be a fun ride. 

Judging a book by its cover: There is no doubt, looking at the cover, that this is a sci-fi story, with the futuristic-looking space station floating in the darkness of space front and centre on the cover. That it's also a fairly clever mystery isn't as immediately obvious. 

CBR2 Book 23: "The Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler

Publisher: Penguin Books
Page count: 288 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: January 19th, 2010
Date finished: January 21st, 2010

This is the first book I bought as a direct result of the Cannonball Read, having read a review of it published on Pajiba (all thanks to Caroline's good review of it). The book is divided into six sections, preceded by a prologue introducing the characters, and followed by an epilogue. In each section one of Jane Austen's novels is read and discussed by the six members of the book club, but very little exploration of Austen's novels really take place. Instead, each section lets us get to know the various members of the little book club better. The book jumps back and forth between the present (where the characters are preparing for or participating in the book club) and the past (where we find out their various back stories). Sometimes this annoyed me a bit, but all in all, the book was sweet. This is probably also one of the few books where the suggested discussion questions have entertained and amused me more than annoy me.

I love Jane Austen, and feel a bit ashamed to say that I have yet to read all of her novels. I have yet to read Mansfield Park, because everyone says it's the one with the dullest hero and heroine, and while The Jane Austen Book Club was not the sort of book that completely sucks me in and makes me sorry I have to put it down to do some work or go to the gym or make my dinner, it did entertain me, and did make me resolved that before 2010 is out I will have read the final Austen novel.

I finished the book this afternoon, and also watched the movie adaptation. While a lot of it was very well done (although I get the impression they cast at least three of the characters much younger than they are in the book), I really hated the changes they made to Prudie's story and especially the idiot they turned her husband into. I did not think Prudie's character or story development in the book was such that it needed to be dramatically altered to create phony tension in the film. Yet another case where the book is in the end, better than the movie adaptation.