CBR17 Book 63: "Magically Generated" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 85 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Arts (Everett makes detailed sketches before making his amazing snow sculptures)

This was an ARC from the author. My opinions are my own. 

Nora Blackburn no longer believes in love and is super wary of anything that might be a fraud or scam. Her previous relationship was with a man who scammed her out of thousands of dollars, and she's determined not to be fooled again. Her state of constant hyperawareness and scepticism of everyone and everything also means she isolates herself, and she certainly doesn't want to go out to experience new things. Now it's coming up towards Christmas, which was never her favourite time of year, but which is extra hard after her mother passed away during the holidays last year. 

When pictures of a large, elaborate snow sculpture that has appeared in a Toronto park start circulating, Nora is convinced it's all just AI fakery. But then, more pictures from various angles, and even videos of people with the snow sculpture are shared, and her curiosity is piqued. When she visits the first one, to see it for herself, she runs into her neighbour across the hall, Everett Sun, a man so positive and full of Christmas spirit that she's been avoiding him in self-defence. As always, Nora is deeply wary of him at first, in case he is another scammer, but he seems so gentle and genuine that she is drawn to him. As more snow sculptures appear, they go to visit them together, and the park visits develop into more elaborate dates. 

What Nora doesn't know is that it's not some mysterious team of performance artists making all the sculptures; it's all Everett. He discovered his strange, magical ability to manipulate snow when he was younger, and has been going out to make the sculptures partly as a way of spreading holiday cheer, but mostly to actually impress and entertain Nora. She's been hurt before by dishonesty. What is going to happen if she discovers that Everett has been withholding the truth about the sculptures?

This holiday novella is a quick read of fewer than a hundred pages. Nora is the grumpy one, not quite having sunk into Grinch territory with her pessimism and impatience about Christmas, while Everett is the cheerful, sunny one, who's always smiling, positive, friendly and welcoming. He doesn't like having to keep the secret of his ability to create the sculptures from Nora, but since no one appears to be able to see him actually "do" the magic, just the results of it, it's not like it's an easy thing to demonstrate to her. Making the sculptures requires a lot of advance planning, and he expends tremendous amounts of energy while doing it. One night, Nora finds him collapsed in the hallway outside their apartments, and starts to worry that he has a health condition. Having to deceive her makes him uncomfortable, but he's also worried she'll think he's crazy if he confesses the truth to her. 

This might be the first Jackie Lau romance in a while, where food doesn't seem to focus heavily in the story, even though Everett has to eat a lot to keep his energy when creating snow art. It's also a very quick read, and as is often the case in novellas, the characters don't have as much space to develop. If it hadn't been an ARC, I think I would have saved this to read closer to Christmas. It felt a bit weird to read Christmas stories in mid-October, but it's very sweet and well worth picking up if you want a little touch of magical realism as the days get darker (both literally and figuratively).

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

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

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Alliteration

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Eyes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 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

CBR17 Book 49: "The Change" by Kirsten Miller

Page count: 480 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Buzzwords Cover Challenge 25: Pattern

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

Official plot summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 27: "Time Loops & Meet Cutes" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley, Jackie Lau and Atria Books for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

Noelle Tom feels like she's in a rut. She's underappreciated at work, she doesn't have much of a social life to speak of, and she's pretty much given up on love and dating. Having worked late yet another Friday evening, Noelle goes to the night market and buys some dumplings from a mysterious old woman who claims they will "give her what she needed most". 

Unfortunately, eating the dumplings causes Noelle to be trapped in a time loop. Every morning, no matter what she tries or does, she wakes up on Friday the 20th of June. All of her work is reset, any conversations she has are forgotten the next day. She can cut and/or dye her hair, and it's back to her usual length the next morning when she wakes up. Any money she spends, no matter how big a sum, is back in her bank account as well. When she tries to return to the night market, the old woman's food stall is nowhere to be found, even if everything else plays out the same for her, every day. Only Noelle remembers all the things she has tried and experienced. She needs to figure out what will break her out of the time loop.

After some time, reliving the same day on repeat, Noelle locates another woman, Avery, who also ate the mystery dumplings and is stuck in the same time loop, if possible in an even worse situation than Noelle (she has her period and has discovered that she wants to break up with her boyfriend - and every morning she wakes up in bed with him again). Avery and Noelle bond over their unusual situation, and while everything else resets each morning, they remember the conversations and experiences they have have together, allowing them to slowly develop a firm and supportive friendship.

Noelle keeps running into Cam, a friendly and handsome brewery owner. Every time he sees Noelle, he seems to almost remember her, prompting Noelle to believe he might be able to help her get out of her predicament. She orchestrates a long series of different meet-cutes, and as she gets to know him in a series of dates, she falls in love with him, while he has to be reminded of who she is with each new reset. 

I've been reading Jackie Lau's novels for a few years now, and she keeps getting stronger and more sophisticated as a writer. Normally, her novels are straight contemporary romances, set in Canada. Here she introduces an element of magical realism with the time loop, and in the first half of the novel, especially, the focus of the story isn't so much on the romance between Noelle and Cam, but the friendship between Noelle and Avery, who both very much need someone else to listen to and support them in their lives. While Noelle is trapped in the time loop, as she gets to know Cam a bit more with each new encounter, he keeps forgetting her, and it's not possible for their relationship to really progress.

In the second half of the novel, Noelle and Avery are faced with a new challenge, as they are unexpectedly freed from the time loop, but instead of waking up on June 21st, it's January 24th. More than seven months have passed, and some version of them seems to have lived through these months, without either of them having any memory of the passing time. Avery seems to actually be engaged to her boyfriend and will need to deal with that. Meanwhile, Noelle needs to figure out why her sister doesn't seem to want to see or speak to her anymore, but also has a real chance to build a proper relationship with Cam. 

Because of the time loop element, this novel is a rather unusual romance. If the friendship developing between Avery and Noelle doesn't work for you, this book might seem slow and frustrating, since most of the actual romance stuff comes in the second half. I really liked it, though, and recommend it to fans of Lau's previous novels. 

Judging a book by its cover: I think the cover is cute, and the dark blue background with what looks like little golden dots gives it a more magical, whimsical feel. I like how we get three versions of Noelle and Cam, growing increasingly closer to one another as the story progresses.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 15: "The King's Messenger" by Susanna Kearsley

Page count: 512 pages

Rating: 4 stars

StoryGraph Easy Reading Challenge 2025: All Alone - Read a stand-alone book

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC. My opinions are my own. 

It is 1613 and Prince Henry, James I's eldest son and heir has tragically died. Rumours whisper that it might not have been by natural causes. Queen Anna is distraught, and King James is determined to punish the guilty. 

Andrew Logan is one of the king's messengers and he's tasked with going to Scotland to apprehend Sir David Moray, Prince Henry's closest companion, and bring him safely to London to face 'trial'. Logan will not be travelling alone, along for the journey will also be an experienced scribe, Lawrence Westaway, who will write down anything that Moray says or does during the trip. Because Lawrence is elderly and of ill health, Westaway's daughter Phoebe will also accompany them. Complicating matters somewhat is the secret Logan needs to keep from everyone around him. He has the Second Sight, and can occasionally catch glimpses of things that will happen. In a time where the least unusual behaviour could have you accused of witchcraft, Logan dares not tell Phoebe that he can see her father's poor health will shortly lead to his death. 

While the queen is mourning her son, she doesn't necessarily believe Sir David is responsible for his death. She wants him brought safely to her so she can speak with him, Logan's orders are to bring him directly to the king. Logan suspects that by arresting Moray, he may be complicit in the man's demise. It doesn't help matters that Logan and Phoebe don't exactly get along. She believes him to be a brutish and uncivilised man, swayed by the words of others in her acquaintance. He believes her to be a judgemental snob who has coldly rejected any of his overtures of friendship since they were younger. 

The journey from Edinburgh to London is long, however, and the travellers spend a lot of time in each other's company. Logan arrests Sir David as his ship from France arrives in the port in Leith, and on their return journey to London, the group are also joined by a young stablehand who idolises Logan and wants to become a royal messenger like him. Sir David is obviously grieving the loss of Prince Henry deeply and it becomes obvious to everyone in the group almost immediately that he is an innocent man, and that taking him to London would be to commit an act of injustice. Their return to London will also be dangerous, as one of Sir David's Scottish kinsmen is pursuing them with a large band of his soldiers, determined to spirit his cousin away to safety.

Searching my blog, it turns out I haven't actually read a single of Kearsley's novels since 2014 when I finished The Firebird. It surprised me that it's been so long, I remember the ones I read quite well and liked all three. She writes very well-researched and engaging historical fiction, sometimes with a light supernatural element, such as Andrew Logan's occasional glimpses into the future in this book. Based on the plot descriptions of this book online, I was expecting more of a suspense book, possibly something involving espionage - which is not the case. In some ways, it's a road trip novel, only the mode of transportation is horses, and it takes a considerable amount of time riding from Edinburgh to London, even when keeping a brisk pace because rebellious Scotsmen are in pursuit. I actually preferred this quieter story to the one I thought would be happening, so in my case, it worked out fine.

In several of the Kearsley books I read in the past, there are two parallell storylines, one set in the past, one in the present day. Here, it's all in the early 1600s, chiefly 1613, but several of the POV characters, like Sir David and Queen Anna have flashbacks to previous events, mostly concerning Prince Henry. There is absolutely romantic tension between Logan and Phoebe, but it's not exactly a sweeping love story that dominates the plot. It becomes clear to the reader (who gets to read the POV of both characters) that a lot of their mutual distrust and animosity comes from misunderstandings early on in their acquaintance (and in Phoebe's case, that she's listened to people who spread malicious gossip, some of which is clearly untrue). 

I was also worried, when I realised how much of this book deals with grief of losing a son (Sir David may not have fathered Prince Henry, but he cleary loved the young man as a son, probably much more than King James ever did), which since I became a mother is one of my biggest nightmares. Sir David and Queen Anna's flashbacks were sad, but thankfully there was nothing to emotionally destroy me.

The King's Messenger is out this week in the US. In the rest of the world, it's apparently been out since August 2024, so there are already lots of readers out there that share my view on the quality of this book. It was a lovely read, and made me determined to check out more of Kearsley's back catalogue before another decade passes.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Book 55: "Touch Not the Cat" by Mary Stewart

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: From the decade I was born (1970s)

Smart Bitches Book Bingo: Published in 2000 or earlier (first published 1976)

CBR16 Bingo: Vintage (published 48 years ago)

Briony Ashley is working in Portugal when she recieves word that her father has died, in what appears to be a hit-and-run accident. Her father didn't die instantly, but had time to ramble some strange and slightly mysterious things, among them a warning that Briony needs to be careful. She goes home to what is now her cottage, bordering Ashley Court, the large and expensive estate her father could really only keep by renting out parts of it to wealthy Americans, and letting the National Trust conduct guided tours in other parts of it. Briony is rather relieved that the estate will no longer be her responsibility, and doesn't begrudge her male cousins the inheritance at all. However, she is a bit taken aback when she discovers that several valuable artifacts have been removed from the house. Have they been stolen?

It seems to be an occasional family trait in the Ashley family, going back generations, that some of them have the "sight", that grants them premonitons, and sometimes the ability to telepathically communicate with other family members. Briony has been using this gift since she was a child, able to transmit words and emotions to another, who by now she just calls 'lover' in her mind. She doesn't know the actual identity of her secret telepathic friend, but since the "sight" only seems to be shared by other Ashleys, this 'lover' is most likely one of her three male cousins. Since Briony in time also becomes convinced that one or several of these cousins were responsible for her father's untimely death, the whole telepathic soulmate that she's never actually confirmed the identity of, but who may be a close blood relation gets a bit squicky. 

I've only read one other Mary Stewart mystery, and Madam, Will You Talk? was a lot more batshit than this. In the previous novel, in between chain-smoking from waking up to literally being in bed in the evening, the heroine thought the love interest might be a murderer stalking her through Europe. Here the potential love interest's true identity isn't revealed until about two thirds of the way through, but it's strongly implied that said person may also be a murderer, and even overlooking that, he's one of Briony's cousins. 

There was a much more convoluted plot in the previous book I read, here a lot of the plot is quite slow, and while I see what the author was trying to do with the little snippets of a story from the late 19th Century included at the end of each chapter, I don't think it worked very well and felt rather unneccessary on the whole. Because I bought a whole load of Mary Stewart mysteries in an e-book sale a while back, I'm sure I'll be reading more of them eventually. At the moment, however, I finished this book mainly because it fit into three different bingo challenges. 

Judging a book by its cover: This book came out in the 1970s and consequently has had a number of covers, some of them more baffling and crazy than the next. The cover of my edition is a fairly boring one, with a grave in the foreground and some houses from an English village in the background. Nothing here screams romantic mystery with mild paranormal elements. 

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

#CBR12 Book 53: "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" by Alix B. Harrow

Page count: 385 pages
Audio book length: 12 hrs 20 mins
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Debut

Official book description:

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artefacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

Little January Scaller is fully aware that even though she gets to wear fancy dresses and take trips to foreign locations with the rich Mr. Locke, her father's employer, she doesn't really belong in his big, sprawling mansion in Vermont. He's an old, white man, she's a little girl with dark hair and skin a brownish coppery hue. Her mother is dead and her father travels the world, risking his life and acquiring exotic treasures for Mr. Locke's collection, but is hardly ever back long enough to spend any time with his little girl. The only friend January has is the grocer's boy, Samuel Zappia, who sneaks her adventure stories to read and who she manages to get away to play with on weekends. But as Mr. Locke's ward, January is expected to behave well, and not "consort with the help". 

While on a journey with Mr. Locke to sell some artifacts, January finds a strange door in a field and manages to open it by writing about it in her journal. The door opens to a beautiful seaside village somewhere obviously different, and January finds a foreign coin, before Mr. Locke discovers her and burns both the door and her journal. He hires a strict governess to take care of January and admonishes her that she needs to stop being so wild and start behaving properly. When she's seventeen, January finds a strange book called "The Ten Thousand Doors" and the book makes her realise that she didn't imagine the incident with the strange door when she was younger, and there's a lot more mystery and adventure in the world than she imagined.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a remarkable debut that has been nominated for pretty much all the major genre awards (the Nebula, the Locus, the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award) and while it's a bit slow to start, it tells a story of travel and adventure, portals to other worlds, friendships, love, but also dark forces with the wish to colonise, subjugate and control, taking riches and resources to enjoy as your own. I enjoyed the book a lot, but with every piece of foreshadowing, I found that I had figured out where the story was going long before the actual reveal. There were very few real surprises for me over the course of the novel. Considering the book is about portal doors between our world and various exciting fantasy worlds, I wish we'd gotten to explore and see more of the various other worlds than we did. Some of the supporting characters, like Samuel and Helen, January's loyal friends and helpers, could also have gotten a bit more characterisation. 

Still, it's a good read with an interesting message about family and belonging, as well as condemning colonisation and the appropriation and subjugation of foreign cultures to gain wealth and riches. I liked it a lot, but I didn't love it. I'm nevertheless very interested in seeing what Alix B. Harrow writes next.

Judging a book by its cover: I'm not entirely sure what I think of this cover, it gives you very little idea what the book is about or what you might expect to meet between its pages. There's a number of colourful flowers, with elaborate keys hanging from them, and what appears to be a keyhole, or maybe a portal doorway. Considering most of the Doors in the book don't require keys of any kind, I'm not entirely sure what the cover designers were going for. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 96: "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

Page count: 502 pages
Audio book length: 13 hrs 40 mins
Rating: 4.5 stars

Official book description:
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love - a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

I first read this book back in 2011, during Cannonball III. I revisited it a few years later, to see if it was as magical and unusual a reading experience as I remembered, and I still pretty much loved it. This autumn, trying to challenge myself and move outside my comfort zone, I joined a book club and despite my busy work schedule and my extreme tendency for introversion, I've actually managed to go to every meeting since September. This was the December book, and so I had the perfect excuse to re-read the novel once more, this time in audio. I found Jim Dale's narration to be very good, although I'm not sure he did all of the female characters' voices justice.

Re-reading and then discussing a book I love with near-strangers with different opinions was an interesting experience for me. From month to month, it varies how many show up to the meetings, and also how many who actively take part in the discussion. For December, turn-out was unusually high, and a lot of the members had feelings they wanted to share. To my dismay, many of them seemed not to like the book all that much, or to have serious problems with it. Since I still pretty much loved the book, that wasn't the easiest thing to hear.

So what were problems that fellow members of my book club had with this book? Quite a few people thought the romance between Marco and Celia to be either far too underdeveloped or wholly unnecessary. She didn't really make the reader see why exactly they were so drawn to one another, it all had a bit of a fated mate feel to it, which is an unpopular trope. A few thought Isobel, Marco's jilted girlfriend, would have been more interesting if she'd turned out to be villainous. Several were of the opinion that Morgenstern's writing was too unfocused and all over the place, and that she didn't really go into depth about any of the things that were truly interesting - like the inhabitants of the circus and how the strange magical stasis affected them.

There was agreement that the best bits of the book were the sections seen through Bailey and Herr Thiessen, through whose eyes we really understand more of what makes the circus just so fascinating and appealing. I also think that everyone felt that our doomed lovers had some pretty dreadful father figures in their lives, and that the physical and emotional abuse they both went through was awful.

As is always the case at our book club meetings, a good third of the attendees had either not read the book at all, and just showed up for the social aspect, or at least not finished the book before the meeting. No one seemed to have loved the book as much as I do, which I found very sad, as while I can see a lot of some people's complaints, I still very much love the book. I'm desperately sorry that the Cirque de Rêve is entirely fictional and not a place that can actually be visited.

Judging a book by its cover: My copy of this book has the UK cover and I bought this very edition because I love the cover so much. The white silhouettes on a stark black background. The little touches of red to help draw the eye. The gorgeous Victorian costumes the couple on the cover are wearing. The silver of the cover quotes. All the colours are the primary ones used in the Night Circus itself, so it feels entirely appropriate that only they are used in the cover design.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 84: "The Book of Speculation" by Erika Swyler

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Official book description:
Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone in a house that is slowly crumbling toward the Long Island Sound. His parents are long dead. His mother, a circus mermaid who made her living by holding her breath, drowned in the very water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, ran off six years ago and now reads tarot cards for a traveling carnival.

One June day, an old book arrives on Simon's doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on speculation. Fragile and water damaged, the book is a log from the owner of a traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. Since then, generations of "mermaids" in Simon's family have drowned--always on July 24, which is only weeks away.

As his friend Alice looks on with alarm, Simon becomes increasingly worried about his sister. Could there be a curse on Simon's family? What does it have to do with the book, and can he get to the heart of the mystery in time to save Enola?

One of the many reading challenges I'm doing this year is the Monthly Motif Challenge, and for October, the challenge was "Read a book set in a theater, an amusement park, a circus, or a book involving magic, illusions, or characters with special powers." This was pretty much the only TBR book I had involving a circus. It features a lot of things I usually like, librarians, old books, intricate family histories, folklore, mysterious curses and a romantic subplot, yet it failed to really wow me.

Simon spends pretty much all his time not working in a library desperately trying to keep his childhood home from falling apart. After his mother committed suicide in the water nearby, his father just refused to do any work on it, and now it's getting so bad Simon's no longer sure he can save it. Nevertheless, he keeps trying, as he doesn't want to lose the connection to his past, and he wants his younger sister Enola to have something to come back to when she's ready for it.

He's sent a mysterious old book by an antiquarian who claims that it is relevant to his family history. While he initially dismisses the claim, he gets more and more caught up in the tales told in the book's pages, and as he keeps digging, he discovers that his mother is just the last in a long line of women in his family who, despite being absolutely amazing swimmers, able to hold their breaths for unprecedented amounts of time, they have all died by drowning, on the exact same date. As Enola suddenly returns after several years' absence, and the fateful date is approaching fast, Simon becomes terrified that the curse will strike her as well, unless he finds a way to stop it.

I liked the historical bits of the novel, the ones exploring how the curse came to start in the first place, to be the most interesting, but even those sections failed to entirely hold my attention. I also found some aspects of the story to just be too difficult to suspend my disbelief about, and I genuinely couldn't understand why Simon would spend so much time, money and effort to try to save a crumbling old house, especially considering his memories concerning it were more negative than happy.

It's a definite downside when I fail to entirely connect with the protagonist of a novel. Here, I just didn't care all that much about Simon. I liked Enola a lot better, as well as his fellow librarian/childhood friend (although I think she could do way better romance wise). Still, a lot of the Eastern folklore bits in the historical sections of the book, as well as the depictions of the travelling circus were good.

I don't regret getting this book in a sale, or the time I spent reading it, but I doubt I'll ever feel the need to re-read it, either.

Judging a book by its cover: I'm wondering the publisher made a conscious choice to have a woman holding a stack of old books on the cover is because this book is clearly aimed more at a female than a male audience, and it was assumed that this would be more appealing? We basically see the story through the eyes of several men, our protagonist himself being a librarian. It seems a bit odd to me to have the pile of books being carried by a woman (even though, yes, there are lady librarians in the book, as well).

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 65: "All the Crooked Saints" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 320 pages
Audio book length: 9 hrs 9 mins
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR10 Bingo: Birthday (Ms Stiefvater's birthday is November 11th)

From Goodreads, because it sums it up nicely:
Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle.

Here is a thing everyone fears:
What it takes to get one.

Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars.

At the heart of this place you will find the Soria family, who all have the ability to perform unusual miracles. And at the heart of this family are three cousins longing to change its future: Beatriz, the girl without feelings, who wants only to be free to examine her thoughts; Daniel, the Saint of Bicho Raro, who performs miracles for everyone but himself; and Joaquin, who spends his nights running a renegade radio station under the name Diablo Diablo.

They are all looking for a miracle. But the miracles of Bicho Raro are never quite what you expect. 

In this rather strange tale about the sprawling Soria family and the many pilgrims they surround themselves with, all people who have come to see them in the Colorado desert to have miracles performed, Maggie Stiefvater takes on magical realism.

In the 1960s, in the little desert town of Bicho Raro in Colorado, a number of pilgrims come to see the Saint and experience a miracle. The Saint of Bicho Raro is always a member of the Soria family, yet the miracles are strange and usually rather complicated. The  first miracle forces the pilgrim to face up to whatever darkness they have inside them, and only once they are ready and able to confront and process that darkness are they able to experience the second miracle and leave, finally free. If any of the Sorias try to speak to or help the pilgrims in any way, they risk their own darkness (which is apparently usually a lot more serious than that of a regular pilgrim) confronting them, and as a result, they have a strict rule against doing so. However, it means that over the years, more and more pilgrims are stuck in Bicho Raro, unable to complete their second miracle.

With the introduction of each new character, be they a member of the Soria family or a pilgrim, we are told a thing that character wants and a thing that character fears. We learn about the Sorias' history and the strange ways the miracles change the pilgrims. There's a priest with a coyote's head. There's a set of twins connected by a snake. There's a woman in a wedding dress, covered with butterflies, who's constantly wet because of the rain clouds that follow her. One woman can only ever repeat the last thing someone said to her. A radio DJ becomes a literal giant.

Of the younger generation of Sorias, there are three cousins. Beatriz believes herself to have no feelings, but discovers differently when a young man with a weak heart arrives in town to work for the Sorias. Joaquin loves music and wants nothing so much as to become a famous DJ. With his two cousins, he drives a box truck into the desert at night and runs a pirate radio station. Daniel, the current Saint of Bicho Raro defies the taboo of speaking to the pilgrims because he's in love with one of them. Struck down by his own darkness, he leaves his family to keep any of the other Sorias from being likewise cursed.

Beatriz and Joaquin are determined to save their cousin, no matter what the family rules state. They defy their elders and along with Pete, the young man who they were both initially so sceptical about, they set out to save him.

I don't think I've read a Maggie Stiefvater novel that I didn't enjoy. Some of them I absolutely adore. This book was very different from her previous novels, yet was still clearly very much her work. She has a way with words and descriptions that almost ensorcells the reader and keeps you spellbound. This book started slow, and it may have taken a bit too long to introduce every single character before actually getting to the "meat" of the story. But it's all worthwhile in the end. I listened to the audio book, narrated by Thom Rivera, and can very much recommend it.

Judging a book by its cover: The cover features ban owl and black roses, both things that play a significant part of the story. I'm unsure of whether the orange circle is supposed to be the sun or an actual orange - it's unclear.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 59: "A Million Junes" by Emily Henry

Page count: 398 pages
Rating: 4 stars

From Goodreads:
Romeo and Juliet meets One Hundred Years of Solitude in Emily Henry's brilliant follow-up to The Love That Split the World, about the daughter and son of two long-feuding families who fall in love while trying to uncover the truth about the strange magic and harrowing curse that has plagued their bloodlines for generations. 

In their hometown of Five Fingers, Michigan, the O'Donnells and the Angerts have mythic legacies. But for all the tall tales they weave, both founding families are tight-lipped about what caused the century-old rift between them, except to say it began with a cherry tree.

Eighteen-year-old Jack “June” O’Donnell doesn't need a better reason than that. She's an O'Donnell to her core, just like her late father was, and O'Donnells stay away from Angerts. Period.

But when Saul Angert, the son of June's father's mortal enemy, returns to town after three mysterious years away, June can't seem to avoid him. Soon the unthinkable happens: She finds she doesn't exactly hate the gruff, sarcastic boy she was born to loathe. 

Saul’s arrival sparks a chain reaction, and as the magic, ghosts, and coywolves of Five Fingers conspire to reveal the truth about the dark moment that started the feud, June must question everything she knows about her family and the father she adored. And she must decide whether it's finally time for her—and all of the O'Donnells before her—to let go.

First of all, must all forbidden love between the children of antagonistic families be compared with Romeo and Juliet? Will this play always be the template for forbidden love, no matter how different all other aspects of the stories being compared? It annoys me. Anyway, about this actual book. The comparison to One Hundred Years of Solitude is more accurate, although I wouldn't say that they're very close either. But this is a story that features magical realism, and the story of several generations of two families, plus a lot of odd and inexplicable behaviour from local animals.

Our poor heroine, who is in fact the fourth Jack O'Donnell of her family, despite being a girl (and mostly goes by June) has always been told that she must stay away from the Angerts. However, her best friend has a crush on Saul Angert, who has recently returned after three years away, and insists on dragging June along on a strange sort of double date. While both June and Saul know from their family history that they should stay away from one another, there is undeniable attraction between them.

One of the aspects of the "family curse" that the O'Donnells experience seems to be that they can't really travel too far away from their home and the apple tree there. So while June's mother and supportive stepfather (her dad is dead) would like her to think about college, June hasn't really considered this to be an option for her. Yet she signs up for a creative writing class run by a new teacher and becomes almost obsessed with doing well in it, trying to write down the family legends, told to her by her father before she died. While her stories clearly have promise, her writing teacher wants her to improve her craft, and Saul, whose father is a NYT bestselling author (and constantly sarcastically referred to as such by Saul) offers to tutor her to make her writing better.

Both June and Saul have been told to stay away from each other their entire lives (because the O'Donnells and Angerts have been enemies for four generations, and that's just the way it has to be) and that they must never go to the waterfall in the woods. June keeps seeing visions of her dead father, and after a while, she and Saul discover that they can both see pieces of their pasts (he sees his dead twin sister) and they start to piece together what actually happened way back in the past that led to the generations long feud and cursed both families. They are both very invested in getting to the bottom of the curse's origins and figuring out a way to break it, so they can have the possibility of a future together.

I really liked June (she also goes by Jack and Junior, what with being Jack O'Donnell IV) and Saul, as well as their sidekicks (June's BFF Hannah is especially great), not to mention June's family. The first three quarters of the book were engaging and kept me entertained, but in the final quarter, where the mystery finally starts to unravel and June and Saul work to break the curse, the storytelling became a bit of a mess and the whole dramatic resolution to the story went a bit off the rails. Overall, the book was a nice, quick read, though and a lot of the writing advice that June gets from Saul and her creative writing teacher is stuff that I may shamelessly steal and use when trying to coax my own future students into becoming better and more entertaining writers. This is my first book by Emily Henry, but I doubt it will be my last.

#CBR10Bingo: Listicles. From FYA's "Swoony YA books for your next Beach Vacation"

Judging a book by its cover: In the acknowledgements, Emily Henry thanks the cover designer for doing a great job. I cannot say I agree with her. This appears to be a blurry stock photo of a waterfall in the woods, with a badly cut out silhouette of a girl awkwardly stuck on top of it. This is not a cover that would make me want to pick up a book, rather the opposite.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 78: "I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Jude and Noah are twins and have always been very close, to the point where they seem able to communicate without words, reading each other's minds. During the summer when they are thirteen, things are changing. Getting ready to apply to a creative arts high school, Noah is elated, while Jude is less so. Noah is falling madly in love with the boy next door, while desperately trying to appear normal so no one finds out his secret, growing even more introverted, expressing himself only through his impressionistic art. Jude starts acting even more extroverted, wearing more makeup, dressing in skimpy outfits and hanging out with older boys who take her surfing or cliff-diving. The twins remain close until the day their mother appears to prefer Noah's artistic contributions to Jude's and something in their relationship fractures.

Three years later, the siblings, once so close they felt like they shared a soul, barely speak. Jude attends the creative arts school they both applied to, while Noah goes to regular high school, hanging out with his friends on the track team, seemingly no longer interested in art at all. After a series of accidents ruin every single ceramic piece Jude has produced, she gets her professor's permission to find a tutor who can teach her to carve rock. Seeking out the reclusive genius who may finally help her express her feelings in a sculpture leads to dramatic changes in the lives of both twins.

Noah narrates the sections of the book that are set during the year before the twins turned fourteen, while Jude narrates the later parts. They alternate, so that the reasons for their falling out and the truth behind all the things they are concealing from one another, the actions that led to their estrangement and the events that could help them heal are slowly portioned out by the author. The Noah-narrated sections are frantic, almost stream of consciousness on occasion, full of energy and anxiety and repressed emotions. While he loves his sister, he is also a teenage boy, and just as prone to self-obsession and narcissism as other teens. Jude is prickly, wounded and lonely. She's haunted by mistakes in her past and yearning for a chance to make amends, to repair the bond with her brother.

There is a heavy feel of magical realism running through this book, with strange and inexplicable occurrences being taken as something entirely unremarkable. Noah's art is so vividly described and there is a tangible sense that magic could indeed be involved in the lives of these teens. The kids described in these pages felt very real - not just the twins whose story we share, but their friends and the complicated social hierarchy that it's so important to fit into when you're in school. Noah's terror that the boys who often bully him or that his sporty, masculine father discover that he's gay. Jude's growing rebellion towards her mother, trying to create an identity of her own, separate from that of daughter or twin sister. The little exquisite little cruelties that only siblings who love each other deeply are able to perform, because they know better than anyone where the others' vulnerabilities lie.

I've seen this book on countless "Must read" and "Best of 2014" lists. According to Goodreads, it's won several awards, including the Michael L. Printz award for 2015. I can see why it's become so acclaimed, because it really is something special. I did, however, find the disjointed and constantly jumping narrative to be a bit confusing and got somewhat tired of the device in places. As is frequently the case when I read books with multiple narrators, set at different times - just as I've gotten really comfortable in the head of one person and things start getting really interesting, I am ripped away and forced to adjust to someone else in a different place and time. This makes me impatient and takes away from the immersive reading experience I really enjoy. It's a very minor niggle, though, and I appreciate that I was able to share both twin's head space to see what moved them and motivated them.

I also found certain plot events very predictable - this may again be because I've read a lot of books, but a lot of the "twists" seemed really rather obvious to me and I don't know if I was actually supposed to be all that surprised by them. It didn't in any way take away my enjoyment, though. The enthusiastic critics are right, this is a very good book. Just the fact that it's not part of a dystopian sci-fi trilogy or featuring any kind of supernatural creature seemed very refreshing to me.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 14: "First Frost" by Sarah Addison Allen

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer! St. Martin's Press gave me an ARC of this through NetGalley in return for a fair and honest review.

Ten years have passed since the events of Garden Spells. Claire Waverly has put her catering business on hold and branched out with boiled candy. The lemon verbena can soothe any throat or heartache, the rose candies can make you recall lost love and the lavender makes you calm and happy. After a feature article in a high-profile magazine made demand for her candy explode, Claire has had to hire in external help, as well as purchasing ready-made essences as the production needs far more than she can make from her own garden. While she used to love cooking and baking for her family, now she serves them take out, and she barely has time for her husband and daughter. Always uncertain about how deserving she was of the Waverley legacy, she keeps searching for answers in her grandmother's old journals and trying to figure out how she's going to manage her future. 

Her sister Sidney is happily married and running her own salon, wildly popular, because a haircut from Sidney Waverley is not only extremely flattering, but seems to bring luck and success. Yet Sidney is longing for a baby, a son for her husband Henry, who can help him run the farm, like he used to help his now dead grandfather. She puts up with the extreme unreliability of the newly hired receptionist Violet because with Violet in the salon, she more often than not tends to bring her toddler, Charlie, and if Sidney can't have a child of her own, at least she can spoil this scatter-brained young woman's when she has opportunity.

Sidney's daughter Bey, now in high school, has always known exactly where things belong. She could go into a completely new house and help put away dishes or bed linens, which tends to scare people as often as it impresses them. She knows, with every fibre of her being, that she belongs right there in Bascom, North Carolina, in the Waverley house, and that Josh Matteson, youngest son of her mother's high school sweetheart belongs with her. She foolishly wrote him a note to this effect some months ago, which has made her the laughing stock of her school, but she knows that if she patiently waits, he will realise the truth soon enough. While she waits, she helps her aunt Claire make sweets and hopes her mother will stop nagging her about the identity of the boy she likes.

It's October, and the Waverley women, as well as their men, are awaiting the first frost of the season, when the peculiar apple tree in the back garden will blossom. The weeks before this event always leads to some kind of craziness, and this year there is a mysterious stranger in town, with ties to Claire and Sidney's mother and stories to tell that could change all their lives forever.

I re-read Garden Spells for the first time in four years before I read this book, to remind myself of the story of the Waverley sisters. I don't doubt that you could read First Frost without having read the former, but as it's probably my favourite of all of Sarah Addison Allen's excellent and magical books, I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to. This book will be so much more satisfying if you have the back story of the characters, and it's a lovely book. So if you haven't already, go read it first. This book can wait until you're done.

I must admit, I was a bit worried when I heard this was a sequel. The first book ended on such a hopeful and happy note, and sequels rarely involve only sunshine and puppies for the characters. The blurb suggested that all was not right with the Waverley women who I'd come to love, and I was deeply concerned that this book was going to mess things up badly. Of course, I shouldn't have been. While both sisters are less than happy at the start of First Frost, and there are events in the book that could spell further misery and disaster, the strong relationship that has formed between the two women, not to mention the support of their families and friends is powerful enough that no external threat can faze them for long. Sarah Addison Allen, for all that she tackles dark themes in her books on occasion, is ultimately about the happy ending, and I'm sorry if you feel that I'm spoiling when I say by the end of this book I had a goofy grin on my face.

As well as showing us what has happened with the Waverley sisters and their families in the ten years since the last book, First Frost also sheds further light on their grandmother Mary and their unfortunate mother Lorelei. This book will be a very satisfying read for anyone who has enjoyed Sarah Addison Allen's previous books. She's a writer whose characters I want to be friends with and she writes places I wish were real, so I could visit or even live in them.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 73: "Landline" by Rainbow Rowell

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 5 stars

I don't actually have the words to properly summarise the plot for this book, because I have so many feelings about it. Formulating them is going to be difficult enough. So I'm going to take the easy way out, and rely on the blurb:

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it's been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply - but that almost seems beside the point now.

Maybe that was always besides the point. 

Two days before they're supposed to visit Neal's family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can't go. She's a TV-writer, and something's come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her - Neal is always a little upset with Georgie - but she doesn't expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her. 

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she's finally done it. If she's ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It's not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she's been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts...

Is that what she's supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

It's not secret to anyone who reads my reviews that I love Rainbow Rowell's writing. So to say that my expectations for this book were high, is a gross understatement. There are certain authors where I clear my entire schedule for their new books. I was lucky enough that this book came out during the summer holidays, the best time of the year to be a teacher. No lesson planning, no grading, no endless essay correction - just long days of indulgent reading. So I was able to devote myself properly to reading the book. I was a bit wary, because having read the blurb as soon as it was available, it was clear that this was going to be a more serious book, with a fairly painful subject. Eleanor & Park nearly broke my heart because I felt so strongly for the characters. A novel about a marriage in real trouble didn't exactly sound like a fun read.

Let's just say that I'm so glad I didn't read this book about three and a bit years ago, when my own marriage was going through a serious rough patch. This book would have destroyed me utterly. In this book, we get to see Georgie's present, but also how she and Neal met, and little glimpses into their married life together. As Rowell does so brilliantly, she shows us how they gradually fall in love, and how they ended up married, despite being vastly different people, with different goals and aspirations. Because Rowell writes such achingly realistic characters, we share her concerns and worries. We are given a chance to understand why she so desperately wants her new television show, and is willing to possibly risk her marriage to stay in Los Angeles to write scripts to show the network exec. We see how her writing partner and best friend is hugely important to her life, but that Neal is clearly the cornerstone who grounds and fuels her.

Being fully aware of your own flaws, and feeling like you are constantly disappointing and possibly even hurting the person you love most in your life is a terrible thing. Thinking that that person may, in fact, be better off without you, that their hopes and dreams and aspirations might be better fulfilled if you hadn't dragged them into the life they share with you now. It's all there in this book, Georgie is nothing if not honest with herself. She can rarely make herself go back to her big empty house after working on her show, so stays with her mother and stepfather instead. In her old room, on a old-fashioned, bright yellow rotary phone, she appears to be able to call a different Neal in Omaha, one who is home for Christmas after a brief break-up they had in college. At the end of a week apart way back then, Neal showed up on Georgie's doorstep and proposed. Now Georgie is wondering if she should try to convince Neal that he's better off without her instead.

I met my own husband when I was at University in Scotland. He was 19, I was 21. In November of this year, we'll have been together for fourteen years. We recently celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. I've spent more than a third of my life with this man, and while I am clearly much more the Neal in our relationship, the one that takes care of the practical, everyday matters, who is the less creative, pragmatic and grounded one - I so understood and recognised Georgie's doubts, guilt, fear and pain. When we were having trouble, because moving in with and then marrying your first boyfriend/girlfriend doesn't come without it's fair share of complications as well, so much of what goes through Georgie's head, went through my own.

In Attachments, the e-mails that Beth and Jennifer constantly send each other at work reminded me so strongly of my friendship with my best friend Lydia, who I got to know through letters. In Fangirl, I recognised so much of my own social anxiety, fear and difficulty to adjust during my first year away at University, being far away from home for the first time, in my case, in a foreign country, suddenly having to re-shape myself to fit into a vastly different education system from what I was used to. In this, I can see so much of what my husband and I went through before we came through our troubles stronger, better and much better at communicating and respecting each other. I suspect one of the reasons I adore Rowell's writing so much is that it seems to speak directly to me. I'm clearly not alone in loving her. I don't think a single Cannonball reviewer who has read her books rates any of them under 4 stars, and we're a wildly diverse bunch with extremely differing tastes. So she seems to have a fairly universal appeal, which fills me with joy. I gift her books to all my friends, hoping to share the awesome.

I haven't even said anything about the amazing way Rowell has with words, and the many quotes I highlighted and wanted to read out loud to myself. The way the book, as with all her others, sucked me in and made me feel as I was actually living and breathing with the characters. It made me feel all the feels, from giddy joy to heart-wrenching anguish. I was angry with Georgie, but also deeply sympathetic to her. I felt her frustration when she couldn't get Neal on his mobile, instead talking to her little girls who didn't seem all that bothered that their Mum was far away, full of doubt and guilt and insecurities. I loved Georgie's little sister, who has her own romantic dilemmas, and Georgie's Mum and stepfather are wonderfully realised supporting characters, as are Seth and Scotty, Georgie's colleagues. Really, I don't have the words to fully express how much I loved the book. Immediately upon finishing the book, I wasn't sure if I could rate it a full five stars, because I have some doubts about the ending and as she frequently does, Rowell leaves a LOT open to interpretation, which frustrates me every time. Yet I chose to remain hopeful for Neal and Georgie, and having thought so much about the book and discussed it with others, I can't give it any less than top marks.
If you haven't read any Rainbow Rowell yet, what are you waiting for?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.