CBR18 Book 44: "Scandal of the Summer" by Alexandra Vasti

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC. This book is on sale now.

Lady Ruby Ballimore has tried her very best to be the perfect debutante, but no matter how hard she tries, she can't be quiet and biddable and seemingly empty-headed. After yet another disastrous dinner party, which has shown off her unladylike academic prowess to the Ton and enraged her father, she decides that she needs a change of setting.

Ruby's father is the ambassador to a small European principality, and Ruby happens to know that the Princess has a mansion in Cornwall that's just conveniently standing empty. She forges a letter of introduction from her father, claiming that she and her two best friends are ladies-in-waiting to the Princess and have been sent to prepare the house for her possible visit in the future. 

The ladies are not prepared to find a mostly derelict house full of an odd assortment of supposed staff. Malcolm Archer has, in fact, been hired as the steward of the estate, but none of his former crew, who are basically his family, have been officially hired. They are squatting in the house and running multiple smuggling schemes to make enough money to survive. None of them was expecting the arrival of Ruby and her friends, so they set a number of schemes in motion to try to scare away the ladies. Terrible food, an infestation of beetles, and a made-up sea monster. Nothing works. The ladies keep ignoring the discomforts and work diligently to make the mansion habitable again. Which turns out to be good, because it seems like the Princess may be making an unexpected visit, and her arrival will force the deceptions of both groups of occupants of the house out in the open.

I've been lucky enough to read several of Ms. Vasti's romances as ARCs. They are usually well-researched and very entertaining. In this, we get the unlikely pairing of a bluestocking wallflower and a disgraced naval captain turned smuggler. Both protagonists have found families of sorts. Ruby has her ride-or-die friends, both of whom I'm assuming will be getting books later in the series. Malcolm has a number of former crew members who left the navy when he was dismissed, and while he may be a former privateer and now a smuggler and occasional con man, all his lies and schemes and his considerable charm are used to support his people and create a safe haven for them. Unfortunately, he is so used to lying and tricking people that even when he may be hurting those close to him with his deceptions, he sometimes has trouble being truthful.

Ruby is the eldest daughter of an earl, and no matter what she says or does, she ends up making a mess of things. She has travelled through Europe with her father and younger sister (who is now a viscountess) and is very well-educated, but lacks the necessary social skills to be a hit on the Marriage Mart. One of her two best friends, Alice, is the daughter of a man who was accused of treason and therefore mostly shunned by polite society. She's rather shy and soft-spoken, but also a keen entomologist (and hence is delighted by the bugs, rather than scared off). Ruby's other BFF, Tamsin, is a self-proclaimed sapphist, has cut her hair into a pixie cut and prefers to wear trousers. The aunt she had been living with got married and conveniently moved to Cornwall, so Ruby lied to her father about spending the summer there. 

As well as being rather run-down when the ladies arrive, the manor house is also full of dogs, since Wall, one of Malcolm's former crew members, has begun to specialise in veterinary medicine, and keeps adopting stray litters of puppies. So there's a surprising number of dogs for a historical romance, some even prove central to the second half of the plot. 

If you haven't read any Alexandra Vasti before, this is a good place to start. If you have read any of her books and enjoyed them, this is another delightful read.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 18: "Cherry Baby" by Rainbow Rowell

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 3 stars, I think. It may be 3.5, but I'm not actually sure right now. 

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on April 14th.

Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Los Angeles, working on turning his web comic-turned extremely successful graphic novel, Thursday, into a movie. His semi-autobiographical comic, which happens to have a caricatured version of Cherry in it, who is called Baby. Now that there are multiple trailers, even complete strangers recognise Cherry in all sorts of strange places. She is trying very hard not to pay any attention to all the publicity.

Very few people know that Tom has been away for the last year, and that Cherry asked him for a divorce. The rest of Cherry's family is all very religious and keeps telling her to forgive him and take him back. However, Cherry is bitter. Tom's off living the high life in Hollywood, while she's at home, in the house they bought together to possibly build a family in, taking care of the gigantic dog that Tom wanted and left Cherry with. One evening, when Cherry is out at a concert, she reconnects with an old friend from college, whom she had always had a crush on but never acted on, because he dated her best friend. Russ Sutton is still very handsome and seems utterly delighted to see Cherry again. While she was pretty solidly friend-zoned back in college, he now seems absolutely crazy about her. He also appears to never even have heard of Thursday. 

But suddenly, Tom is back from Los Angeles, ready to pack up his things and make the move permanent. Deciding how to split the contents of the house turns into a long, drawn-out process (after more than a decade together), and Cherry starts realising that she might not be ready to give up on her marriage, after all.

I was so incredibly excited when I was granted an ARC for this novel. Rainbow Rowell is one of my favourite authors. So many of her books have elements that feel like they were written for me, specifically - especially Attachments, Fangirl and Landline. I bought Slow Dance in hardback when I was in Vermont visiting my best friend last year, so I could read it on release day. So it's really difficult for me to write this review, because this is the first book of Rowell's where I'm not actually sure what I think, and how I should rate it. I read it in two days (because I thought it was coming out on April 7th, and I like to try to get my ARC reviews done around the release date of the book - turns out I was a week early) and I feel really conflicted, because while there were things I liked about it, there were also a lot of things that I disliked and/or that made me uncomfortable. 

Things I liked:

- Cherry's friendship with Stacia. 

- The way Rowell's writing always makes the characters feel complex and real. 

- Some of the family dynamics in Cherry's family. 

- Cherry's relationship with her boss.

- Most of Cherry's whimsical dress sense. 

Things I didn't like as much:

- Cherry's insistence on wearing heels, even when it was clear that it was causing her excruciating pain in her feet, legs and lower back. 

- The way Cherry acted towards Russ after one argument

- Cherry may be very good at her job, but she seems like quite an unpleasant person, overall. Most of her sisters also seem quite petty and mean. 

What I actively disliked:

- The massive focus on fatness throughout the book. The word "fat" is used 72 times in this novel, and most of it is to describe Cherry, but it's also made very clear that her mother and four of her sisters are also fat. Cherry and three of her sisters have a group chat, excluding the eldest, Hope, because she has been losing more than half of their body weight in the last year, and they're sure she's on Ozempic and just not telling them. They are REALLY mean about it, and seem to think it's some sort of personal betrayal of all of them that she has lost the weight (even though it seemed incredibly obvious to me that it was probably because of health reasons, and moreover, none of their d*mn business). The fact that it's also mentioned at one point that Cherry is a US size 18, which happens to be the size I am now (after several years of treatment with GLP-1 medication, also for health reasons), made it seem all the more pointed to me. With so many books of hers that felt like they were mirroring me and my life in some ways, this felt more like a personal attack, which is never a nice feeling, and certainly not something I was expecting from a Rowell book. 

Maybe I wasn't in the right headspace for this, maybe it's just that I was still processing my book hangover from This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (review to come when I catch up on my backlog), but this is my least favourite Rainbow Rowell novel so far, and the only one so far I don't think I actually want to spend money on while it's full price. I may get it if I find it for less than 3 dollars in an e-book sale, but unless I re-read this and discover I was completely wrong the first time around, I will not be wanting a physical copy of this book on my shelves. And that makes me really sad. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover is simple and cheerful, and the cream, black and red, with a little bit of green makes it eye-catching. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 62: "The Inheritance" by Ilona Andrews

Page count: 280 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Free (swapping out Migrant)

In a world pretty much like our own, people were just going about their ordinary lives when suddenly, everything changed. Gigantic portals to some other mystical dimension began opening all over the world. It soon became clear that if the portals were left unattended for a while, hordes of horrific monsters emerged and proceeded to wreak havoc. Once specialised teams started breaching the gates, they discovered each portal contained a lot of rare and valuable minerals and resources, as well as the scary monsters, and each gate had an anchor, which, when destroyed, would collapse the gates. Humans started developing specialised talents that allowed them to help explore the gates and fight the emerging threats.

One of the people whose world changed irrevocably with the appearance of the first gates was Adaline "Ada" Moore. She had a supportive husband and two kids, but after the chaos and terror of the first invasion of monsters, her husband decided he had other places to be, and abandoned her and her children entirely. Ada is now employed by the government, and her Talent allows her to survey the various breaches for whatever resources are there, to ascertain what needs to be extracted before the gate collapses. Her talent is rare and sought-after, so she has been in hundreds of breaches over the past decade, always carefully guarded and one of the first people to be evacuated if something goes wrong.

But not this time. Going into a breach, there is an unexpected attack of monsters that the advance team didn't find and neutralise, and the man who is supposed to guard Ada panics, lets off an explosion to hide his tracks and runs away, trapping Ada, the only human survivor, in a labyrinthine cave system with no obvious exit. Her only companion is a scared tracker dog, a German Shepherd named Bear. She is granted an unexpected gift by a dying alien warrior woman, who was fighting the ruthless monsters that attacked the team. The woman basically dies in Ada's arms, but gifts Ada a mystical gemstone which sinks into Ada's forehead before the woman dies. She is told this is her "inheritance", and as she is forced to traverse the creepy and dangerous passages in the dark, Ada discovers that the gemstone has given her increased endurance, the ability to see in the near dark, as well as a wealth of knowledge about alien worlds and civilisations Ada never dreamed existed.

Ada believes herself to be abandoned, assuming everyone outside believes she died in the attack. However, she promised her children she would be home, and refuses to leave them orphaned if she has anything to say about it. Ada has no previous experience with fighting and self-defence, and Bear is only barely an adult dog. Nevertheless, they are forced to fight for their lives and level up quickly to survive. As an unexpected side effect, it turns out that eating alien monster mystery meat as your only source of protein comes with a number of new and exciting mutations that enhance Ada and her trusty dog considerably.

Of writers still alive today, Ilona Andrews are among my absolute favourites. The husband and wife writing team have written some of my favourite paranormal fantasies over the past decade and a half, and I love that some of their most creative works have begun as free episodic fiction on their website, to give their fans something diverting to read when times get tough. The Inheritance, now part one of The Breach Wars was supposed to be a novella length story, published in installments about once a week, but as is so often the case, the authors discover that they need to write more and longer to make the story complete, and we lucky readers therefore ended up with a short novel instead, and the promise of more excitement to come.

One of their strengths when writing is the characterisation, not only of their protagonists (in this case, Ada Moore, forty-something mother-of-two, and developing badass), but also the supporting cast. When people began developing Talents, some got enhanced speed, endurance and fighting abilities and are counted as combat classes. Ada's talent is that of Assessor, very much a non-combat class, but since she is one of the people who help determine what all the various goodies can be found inside the gates, she makes the companies that she is hired out to, and the government she works for, huge amounts of money, and is therefore treasured and protected. She knows the work is dangerous, but it pays extremely well, and the benefits allow her to feed and house her kids well, send them to the best schools (and the death benefits are enough to support them until adulthood, should the worst happen). While she's seen some scary things in the past, she's never been in a situation as bad as the one she finds herself in here, abandoned by people who were supposed to protect her and left for dead.

If she were alone in the world, Ada might have given up and let herself die in the breach, but she knows that her deadbeat husband won't be there for the kids, and she can't stand the thought of them being left orphaned and scared. So she ovaries up and determines to find an alternate way out of the gate, nearly dying more than once, but emerging stronger and fiercer with each near-death experience.

In the decade since the Gates started appearing and threatening the world, large organisations or guilds have been formed with both combat and non-combat Talents, specialising in killing any hostile threats inside, extracting valuable resources and collapsing anchors to neutralise the gates. Elias McFeron works for the guild that employed the team supposed to protect Ada. He's not exactly happy when he discovers the cluster f**k of incompetence that led to most of a team being left for dead inside a Gate they were responsible for, including a very experienced Assessor. The stories of the few survivors who made it out, including the guy who was supposed to sacrifice himself to protect Ada, if it came to that, are a little bit too similar and rehearsed to be believable, and they know something untoward went down. Elias and his team are so far secondary characters, and this part of the story is more of a minor subplot (somewhat fleshed out in the extended scenes added once the book was made ready for publication), but for the reader, it's nice to know that someone trustworthy and honourable out there is working to get Ada out, even if she doesn't know it herself.

I know that the audio version of this hasn't been finalised yet and will hopefully become available at some point in November. This is primarily a digital release, but print-on-demand copies can be purchased as well. While the story was being serialised on their website, the authors commissioned accompanying art, which is all included in the e-book (in colour if you have a colour screen), as well as additional art released only in the full version. So you get some really gorgeous illustrations accompanying the story. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover art and internal illustrations in The Inheritance are all done by Candice Slater, and once again, prove that Ilona Andrews can have decent covers, as long as they are the ones commissioning it. What I especially like about this cover is that it seems to reveal new details every time I look at it. There are so many tiny details. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 58: "The Listeners" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Culture (A lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds, countries and cultures are forced together for a time during World War II)

Official plot summary:

January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile, FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats’ secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.

I've been a fan of Maggie Stiefvater's since 2010, when I read her debut novel, Lament. So I was obviously very excited when I heard this year's release was going to be for adults. That it was going to be a historical fiction novel with elements of magical realism just made me more eager to read it. So much so that I pre-ordered the UK edition in hardback (normally, I wait until the books are in paperback before I pick them up). As an exciting bonus, I realised my book was signed when I opened the book from Blackwell's. Did the book live up to my expectations? Very much so.

In Europe, unsurprisingly, we learn a lot about the Second World War in school (especially in Norway, where we were occupied by the Germans for nearly five years). I developed an interest in history from a fairly young age, and as such, I feel like I know quite a bit about the conflict from the European side of things. For other parts of the world, I am a lot more ignorant. This novel is in part based on true events, they did in fact house diplomats from the axis countries (Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) in luxury hotels in various places in the USA, to be able to use these esteemed guests (read: hostages) to negotiate the safe return of diplomats and American citizens of their own from the opposing countries. And the owners of said hotels had very little say in whether or not they wanted the guests there in the first place. 

One of Stiefvater's strengths as a writer, in my opinion, is her way of crafting interesting stories in worlds similar to, but not quite like, our own. In this book, the paranormal aspects (such as characters being able to manifest stuff from out of their dreams) are toned down, but there is a touch of magical realism in the strange, seemingly sentient sweetwater at the Avallon spa. Water that has an affinity for certain individuals, the Avallon manager, June, being one of them. This clearly has both its benefits and disadvantages for her. 

One might think that a woman being the general manager of a large luxury resort in the 1940s is one of the more fantastical elements of this story, but June Porter Hudson is based on real women in history who held the same position as her. A lot of people assume that because of her title and responsibilities, June is related to the Gilfoyles, who own the hotel. They are wrong, although June has been close, in different ways, to many of the family members. 

As well as June, the readers follow (among others) the secretive FBI Agent Tucker Minick, who knows that this posting may be his last, yet still struggles to toe the line of the bureau. While he refuses to talk about it, he has more knowledge of the secrets of the West Virginian sweetwater than he lets on, and his experiences are clearly not of the positive kind. 

We also meet the curious Hannelore, daughter of German diplomats, who appears to be mute, but astutely observes everything around her, with near-perfect recall. While children in novels can often end up feeling like nothing more than plot moppets, that is not the case with Hannelore, who is clearly neurodivergent (which makes it a rather risky proposition for her parents to take her with them to Nazi Germany, where diversity of any kind wasn't exactly encouraged or rewarded). 

I'm once again reviewing books I read months ago (thanks to my inability to keep up with any other reviews than for my ARCs, and only barely those), so I don't remember all the details as much as I'd like. Suffice it to say, this was a really good book, with an interesting story, engaging characters, some tricksy mysteries and, as the story progresses, a hint of romance. 

Judging a book by its cover: I much prefer the UK cover to the American one (a black and white photo looking down a long, winding staircase). In this, the reader gets a lot more elements from the story: the imposing Appalachian mountains in the background, the majestic hotel, the local apples, obviously the water, and if you look very closely at the entrance to the hotel, June's three loyal dachshunds. 

Crossposted by Cannonball Read