CBR18 Book 52: "Bright Young Women" by Jessica Knoll

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Monthly Keyword 26: Bright

Reading the Rainbow: Yellow

CBR18 Bingo: Versus (The brave, tenacious and determined women vs the spineless and depraved serial killer

Official plot synopsis:

Tallahassee, 1978. Sorority president Pamela Schumacher wakes to a shocking scene of implausible violence and death, and is drawn into a mystifying crime that grips the nation for decades . . .

In Seattle, Tina Cannon connects her best friend's disappearance to the Tallahassee tragedy, and is convinced that a single man is responsible.

Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation . . .

This is probably going to be my most surprising 5-star read of the year. If you had told me before I started it, that not only would I have trouble putting it down, finishing it in less than 48 hours, but that I would absolutely love it, I likely would have seriously side-eyed you. True Crime is not a genre that has ever really appealed to me. Serial killers creep me out. I find violence towards women and children incredibly distasteful and upsetting. So tremendous kudos to Jessica Knoll for writing so well that I not only devoured this book, but found myself regretting my compulsive need to check the Wikipedia entry on Ted Bundy (never named, referred to as «The Defendant» throughout the book). This book made me care deeply for the brave female protagonists, and at several points throughout, I cried. 

While I knew it was going to upset me and creep me the f*ck out, I couldn’t help myself from reading about the real events this book is based on. The fact that such a sick, sad, thoroughly mediocre man was able to keep abducting, terrorising, sexually assaulting and murdering women for so long – it didn’t seem possible. Sadly, truth is frequently a lot stranger than fiction, and most of the time, women still aren’t believed in cases like this. It was so much worse in the 1970s. 

This will very likely end up in my top 10 of the year. I tend to be very safe in my reading choices, and rarely read things that may force me out of my comfort zone. Thanks to the Monthly Keyword challenge, I decided to read this book, and I’m so glad I did. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 51: "The Tainted Cup" by Robert Jackson Bennett

Page count: 410 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Dark Corner selection: April 2026

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: Award Winner (Hugo and World Fantasy Award 2025)

CBR18 Bingo: Map (there's a map at the start, showing the various walls to keep out the Levianthans)

Official plot synopsis (since I'm reviewing a book I finished in APRIL):

In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.

Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

My book club discussed this book at the end of April (we meet on the last Wednesday of every month), and my memory is not as good as it once was, so there are absolutely talking points I will have forgotten by now. I think most people enjoyed the story, but some thought it was a bit too tropey as a mystery, and had figured out a lot of the plot twists ahead of time as a result. At least half the readers were especially fascinated by the giant leviathans that appear and threaten the developed areas every so often, and our collective guess is that they may be more sentient than we are told in this first story.

The worldbuilding is very interesting, with everything technological being biologically based, rather than industrial, such as giant mushrooms cooling down a room rather than an air conditioner. The various modifications people could make to their minds and bodies were also fascinating. Our POV character, Dinios "Din" Kol, has been altered to have absolutely perfect recall. He can remember anything he observes or hears, with the help of little vials of scent. He smells the vial before he starts "recording" and will then be able to recall everything he saw, heard, smelled, and/or tasted forever afterwards, by just smelling the same scent one more time. Due to his abilities, he is highly sought when it comes to investigative work. He hides a big secret, which he is terrified of anyone discovering, especially his superior, the brilliant Ana Dolabra. 

I think it's impossible not to compare Ana to Sherlock Holmes, one of fiction's most famous and very eccentric detectives (the only one to rival him would be Hercule Poirot, I would guess). She's brilliant, strange and behaves in ways odd to absolutely everyone, including her patient and long-suffering assistant. Her mind is a steel trap, and she has any number of strange rituals and habits to make her function properly. She even plays a stringed instrument (bringing to mind Holmes' violin). There doesn't seem to be such a thing as neurodivergence in this universe, but doing a mental tally of all the various mystery books I've read, it seems likely most of the really clever sleuths are on the autism spectrum. I don't want to say that neurodivergent minds are just better at solving mysteries, but mystery fiction strongly seems to suggest it. Some of the people in my book club felt that she was more like a series of quirks in a trench coat, but she's memorable, and I'll be intrigued to see how the relationship between her and Din develops. Also, I don't think this counts as a spoiler - of course she knows exactly what Din's deep, dark secret is; he's just an idiot for realising it. 

I had thought this was the first book in a trilogy, but now it seems as if it's going to be a longer, ongoing series. I have only heard excellent things about the next books as well, and I want to spend more time in this unusual fantasy world, so I'm happy. 

Judging a book by its cover: In a lot of cases, I prefer the UK covers to books than the American ones, but in this case, the US cover is SO much nicer. The UK cover is basically just mushrooms and other plant matter (not a huge fan of mushrooms). The elegant black and gold, with the plants seeming to be creeping in from one side - this is the book I wish I had on my shelves.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR18 Book 42: "The Fatal Unpleasantness at Netherfield" by Claudia Gray

Page count: 336

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage for this ARC. This book is on sale now.

Jonathan Darcy is getting tired of his parents nervously hovering around him and keeping him from doing anything more strenuous than sitting in front of a fire, reading. So when a letter arrives from his aunt Jane at Netherfield, who is feeling rather inundated with Bingley's sisters and their spouses, and his mother is unable to go, he eagerly volunteers to go in her stead. He has not stopped thinking about Juliet Tilney, but his parents think it is best that they have no further contact.

Poor Juliet Tilney hasn't really been able to leave her home for months, and now it seems unlikely that she'll ever find a husband, certainly not Jonathan Darcy. So when she is unexpectedly called to Netherfield to assist Jonathan in yet another unsolved murder, she knows it's unseemly, because someone (in this case, Bingley's brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst), but she's just so happy to be reunited with him and investigating once more. She refuses to consider her grandfather's suggestion that she entrap the young man to secure her future. She knows she can never be accepted as a suitable daughter-in-law by the Darcys after the scandalous events in London. 

The young investigators find an unexpected supporter in Jane Bingley, however, who sees how much they clearly love one another, and is deeply saddened that Juliet's life has been so negatively affected because of a cruel prank. Jane still remembers the months she was separated from Bingley because of the scheming of his sisters and Darcy, and doesn't want any young couple to ever have to face anything like that. While she may be rooting for the young couple, Mrs. Caroline Allerdyce, Charles Bingley's sister, is still determined that her daughter, Priscilla, will be the future mistress of Pemberley, and keeps trying to push them together at every available opportunity.

I had to catch up with the previous two books in the series before I read this one, and I'm glad I did, as it meant I hadn't forgotten any major details from the previous two books that might be relevant in this story. I would absolutely not recommend anyone start with this book; it is very much a fifth book in a series, and if you haven't read some of the others, especially book 4, The Rushworth Family Plot, there will be plot lines that don't make as much sense.

While the previous book focused on characters from Mansfield Park, here Claudia Grey shows us the lovely and kind-hearted Bingleys many years into their marriage. Their daughters have moved away and are married, and now they are playing host to two of Bingley's sisters, with their husbands. When Juliet comes to help with the investigation of the poisoning of Mr. Hurst, Jonathan is noble enough to surrender his room at Netherfield and goes to stay with his grandparents at Longbourn, a place he has never felt at home, and he's determined that Juliet never realises what a sacrifice he is making for her sake. Even though all her five daughters found husbands (three of them even very well-off ones), Mrs. Bennett is still displeased about all sorts of things in her old age, while Mr. Bennett cares for little other than his books. Neither of them has any understanding of what they see as Jonathan's peculiarities, and he can never be at ease in that house.

Ms. Gray's authorial voice really is very close to Austen's own, and while you are aware that you are basically reading fan fiction about the continued lives of all of these characters, she captures the essence of them so well, and it seems like such plausible lives for these characters to have. Charles and Jane Bingley have clearly had a very happy life together, and still bend over backwards to help all of their various family members, even at the cost of their own comfort. With so many characters early in the series having been disapproving of either Jonathan, Juliet or their relationship, it was a great comfort to have these two characters wholeheartedly supporting the young couple and refusing to judge or blame Juliet in any way for her unfortunate circumstances. 

Having checked Ms. Gray's website, because it was unclear to me how long she was planning on continuing this series, it does seem as if she's contracted for at least one more book about our young sleuths. Without wanting to spoil too much, there was at least SOME romantic development in this book, and while I was frustrated for a while, I am now very excited to see where the next book takes our characters (I'm guessing they may have to solve murders among the characters of Persuasion, that's pretty much the only book that hasn't been featured much). 

Judging a book by its cover: Dare I hope, based on the silhouettes on the cover, that this book will finally have some sort of forward momentum in the glacially slow romance between our protagonists? Or is it a cruel trick from the publishers to fool me into committing to another book? 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

 

CBR18 Books 38-39 : "The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh" and "The Rushworth Family Plot" by Claudia Gray

The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Since Mr Jonathan Darcy, son of the esteemed Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Miss Juliet Tilney, daughter of Henry Tilney, have now solved not one, but two murders among their extended acquaintance, word has gotten around, and as a result, Lady Catherine DeBourgh has summoned the young Mr Darcy to come to Rosings Park to help her identify the person who is trying to kill her. He insists that Miss Tinley be invited as well. Both young persons are accompanied by their fathers, who, unfortunately, take an instant dislike of each other. Mr Tilney thinks Mr Darcy is a supercilious snob, while Mr Darcy thinks Mr Tilney takes things too lightly and jokes too much at inappropriate times, not at all a suitable manner of behaviour for a clergyman. 

Some of the people surrounding the dowager suspect she may be exaggerating the danger she is in. She claims her carriage was sabotaged, then someone tried to shoot her, and when this failed, they nearly pushed her down the stairs. As the two young people start investigating, it becomes obvious that someone is indeed trying to do away with Lady Catherine, and that their attempts are becoming more aggressive. Because Lady Catherine rarely leaves Rosings Park, it also means the culprit is someone very close to her, a family member or loyal retainer. Can our young detectives figure out the identity of the would-be murderer before they actually succeed in doing away with the old lady?

The Rushworth Family Plot

Page count: 336 pages

Rating: 4 stars

While Mr Jonathan Darcy and Miss Juliet Tilney have been very clear with each other about their mutual fondness and hopes for a future match, their fathers developed a mutual dislike during their stay at Rosings Park. General Tilney, Miss Tilney's tyrannical grandfather, who normally isn't known for his generosity, is incensed enough by the perceived snub of his grandchild by the Darcys, so he is determined she will make a grander match during the London season. Juliet and her authoress mother is ordered to London to purchase a new wardrobe of clothes for her, and find her an appropriate suitor.

Jonathan, meanwhile, is also in London, staying with the family of Edmund and Fanny Bertram, since his family had to return to Pemberley after his younger brother broke his arm. He knows his parents would like him to find some suitable young lady to court, but he has no intention of asking anyone but Juliet Tilney to marry him. However, the ambitious Mrs Allerdyce (who was Caroline Bingley before her marriage) is determined that if SHE couldn't be the mistress of Pemberley, then her daughter will instead. Jonathan may be a keen investigator of murders, but in social situations involving young ladies, he is far too clueless to realise he's being manipulated. 

Claudia Gray also reintroduces some of Austen's most scandalous characters (how can Mansfield Park be so painfully dull when it also has the dastardly Henry Crawford and the whole running off with Maria Rushworth, nee Bertram subplot). Maria Rushworth, now many years divorced, shows up in London with her aunt/companion in tow, along with a daughter who was clearly born out of wedlock. Maria swears that Rushworth is the father, but anyone with eyes can see the strong resemblance to Henry Crawford. Maria claims that she and Rushworth are going to reconcile and marry again soon, but lo and behold, it doesn't take long before Mr Rushworth is found brutally strangled in his townhouse. Jonathan and Juliet promise the Bertrams they will do their best to find the murderer before the scandal surrounding the whole thing further tarnishes the family.

I have long complained that Gray is being far too slow and dragging out the romance between Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney too much. I get that they are unlikely to surrender to the throes of passion while investigating murders (or attempted murder, in the case of Lady Catherine), but I would still have liked some stronger declarations from both parties. Gray keeps throwing obstacles in our young sleuths' way. In The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, both young people are accompanied to Rosings Park by their fathers, who are vastly different and dislike each other pretty much on sight. Their antipathy towards each other does not get better as the story goes on. 

In The Rushworth Family Plot both the elder Mr Darcy and Mr Tilney are safely away in their homes, and the only parental figure around is Juliet's mother, Catherine Tilney, now a famous author of Gothic novels.  She sees the warmth and attraction between the two and is very surprised by her husband's impression that Jonathan Darcy is cold and indifferent towards Juliet. She is very impressed with how he seems to genuinely listen and trade ideas with her daughter, never seeming dismissive or overbearing. She can see that they have a very good partnership while investigating and is convinced they would make a very good match. Unfortunately, because as soon as the parental disapproval may have been dealth with, there need to be other difficulties, Juliet is embroiled in a scandal of her own, through absolutely no fault of her own. Because of the careless and opportunistic acts of someone else, her reputation may be absolutely ruined. Jonathan Darcy, who is appalled by this turn of events, challenges the besmircher of Juliet's honour to a duel to prove her innocence. It all went a bit melodramatic, and I really hope Gray can let these two have a happy ending soon.

With Juliet falling victim to the Regency version of a manipulated photograph, which marks her as utterly unsuitable as a wife to anyone with taste, as well as Mrs. Caroline Allerdyce's scheming to get her daughter married to Jonathan, it just felt like too many things still muddying up the works.

One of the very fun things with these books is obviously how Gray takes the minor Austen characters from various novels and gives them more prominence. In The Perils of Lady Catherine DeBourgh, we see that Lady Catherine's sickly daughter in no way minded that Mr Darcy chose someone else. She has married his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam and seems mostly very happy with him. They are both very sad that their young son has been sent away to boarding school (because no heir of Lady Catherine is to be homeschooled), and there are certain communication difficulties leading to friction, but it all gets sorted out in the end. We also see how Charlotte and Mr. Collins are managing in their marriage. They now have two children, a son and a daughter, and there is something strange in the son's behaviour that neither Jonathan nor Juliet can figure out at first. 

In The Rushworth Family Plot, we meet Edmund and Fanny Bertram again (who were also supporting characters in The Murder of Mr Wickham), as well as Edmund's older brother, now the head of the family, his dog-obsessed mother, their vivacious non-scandalous sister, and, of course, Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford. Fanny is deeply depressed after a failed pregnancy, and Edmund is unaware that she overheard the doctor say she is unlikely to ever bear children. Edmund's brother has been persuaded that selling their plantation in Barbados is the only humane thing to do because of the evils of slavery. He is also courting Caroline Allerdyce's eldest daughter. Gray does a good job of showing the readers that Caroline Bingley never really wanted Mr Darcy, only the wealth and prestige of being mistress of Pemberley. She has clearly been very happy in her marriage to Mr Allerdyce, but now that Jonathan Darcy is present and available in London, she can't help but scheme and manipulate to try to make her daughter mistress of Pemberley in the future instead. 

I have an ARC of the fifth book in the series that I need to read in the next couple of days (it's also why I finally needed to knuckle down and review these two books. I really hope that Gray is bringing the series to an end soon, I don't know how much longer I can wait for Jonathan and Juliet to get their happy ending. 

CBR18 Book 33: "A Marvellous Light" by Freya Marske

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Monthly Keyword 26: Light

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: LGBTQIA+ rep

Buzzwords Challenge 26: Parts of a house

Buzzwords Cover Challenge 26: Featuring a silhouette

Sir Robert "Robin" Blyth ends up in a civil service position he is vastly unprepared for, as it turns out, he is supposed to be a liaison between the secret magical world and the more mundane regular world. Usually, the post is held by an individual from a magical family just unlucky enough not to have any magic of their own (seems like there are quite a few such "duds" in the magic-wielding families of society). Robin, on the other hand, is both shocked and rather intrigued when his co-liasion, Edwin Courcey, has to reveal the existence of magic to him. 

Edwin Courcey is both annoyed and worried at the disappearance of Robin's predecessor, especially when it becomes clear very quickly that something sinister is probably to blame. When Robin is attacked and a curse is placed upon him, a side-effect also appears to be that he can now receive visions of the future. Unfortunately, they are vague and usually seem to involve strangers. The curse is visible as a strange tattoo on one of Robin's arms, and with each new excruciatingly painful attack, the tattoo climbs higher up his arm, and the pain increases. Edwin can't leave an innocent man who didn't even know magic existed, least of all, where some magical artefact that the villains are searching for is located, suffer and potentially die. Unfortunately, most of the reference books he requires are at his family home, and Edwin doesn't exactly love returning to the bosom of his family.

Edwin may have magical powers, but he is seen as a huge disappointment in the Courcey family. He reluctantly goes back home, bringing Robin with him, to try to find a way to lift the curse. Edwin's plan is basically to get rid of Robin's pesky curse and then magically make him forget he ever even heard of magic (which seems to be the standard way magicians deal with regular humans). There is also the mystery of where Robin's predecessor disappeared to, the identity of the shadowy individuals who cursed Robin, and exactly what the artefact they are looking for is. 

This has been on my TBR list for a long time. I was initially waiting for the trilogy, of which this is the first part, to be completed, but by the time that happened, I sort of forgot about the whole series. This year, it fit into several of my reading challenges, however. As so many online friends whose opinions in books I trust have rated it highly on Goodreads, it felt like it was time to pull it off my shelf (I keep all of my unread dead tree books in a bookshelf in my bedroom, in the hopes that it might make me read them faster. Once I finish one, it gets moved up to the living room, where the majority of our fiction books are located.) Since I read this in mid-April and have since completed 22 other books, some of the finer details of the plot are now rather hazy to me. The book starts a bit slow, but once Robin is attacked and cursed, and Edwin realises that he has no choice but to help this handsome golden retriever of a man, I was pretty hooked. 

The book is set in Edwardian times, in an alternate history England where magic obviously exists. Robin and Edwin are pretty much opposites, with Robin being, as I previously mentioned, much like a golden retriever, while Edwin is a skittish black cat. Because Edwin has always been made to feel like a failure in his own family and generally lacking among his magical peers, he's got quite a big chip on his shoulder, and Robin's charming himbo ways are both attractive and frustrating to him. 

This is a slow-burn romance, but once the men actually admit their feelings for one another (and Edwin gets over a lot of his trust issues), the relationship between them is so beautiful. I also very much liked several of the supporting female characters, including Robin's younger sister (who I think is one of the protagonists of the second novel) and Robin's extremely overqualified and underestimated secretary in the civil service. They were both great.

There's clearly an overarching plot to the series, and some sort of mysterious cult of bad guys who will need to be stopped. However, this book also has a self-contained ending, and I didn't feel the need to rearrange my entire TBR list to read the two sequels right away (I will try to get to them before the end of the year, though). 

Judging a book by its cover:

I think the cover of this book is my least favourite thing about it. I have never liked the colour orange, and the orange silhouettes, accompanied by the most hideously busy wallpaper pattern covering the rest of the book, it gives me a headache if I look too closely at it. I would never ever have picked up this book if I hadn't been assured by several people that I trust that it was excellent. I find this cover very ugly. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 26: "The Magician's Daughter" by H.G. Parry

Page count: 372 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Defeat the Goblin TBR 26: The Magic book - A book with a magic system, or magic-related system (this one has both)

Buzzword Reading Challenge 26: Occupations

Buzzword Cover Challenge 26: Wings

Biddy lives on a small, magically isolated island off the coast of Ireland with her guardian/foster father, Rowan, and his familiar, the rabbit Hutchincroft. No one who doesn't know that it's there can find it. While Biddy has no magic of her own, she has grown up with it all around her. Yet magic is fading in the outside world, and far too often, Rowan has to leave Biddy to go to the mainland in bird form to find some small reserves of it. She hates it, but he is always back before dawn.

Then one night, Rowan doesn't come back, and Biddy, desperate to find him, uses a magical ring that allows her to travel through his nightmares to find him. He's been captured by powerful enemies and can only escape with Biddy's help. Once he returns home, shaken and weak, he tells Biddy a lot of things previously kept hidden. Not only that, but after telling Biddy that she cannot leave the island, because it wouldn't be safe, he now needs her to go to London, in disguise, to act as a distraction for his enemies. 

The real world is a big and scary place, and it doesn't take long for Biddy to discover that Rowan may not have been telling the whole truth, or has possibly just badly underestimated the forces against him. Rowan ends up captured once again, while Biddy is in terrible danger. Nevertheless, she needs to be brave and resourceful in order to not only save Rowan's life, but possibly restore magic to the world once more. 

Back in 2020, my book club read The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heap, and while it was fine, it also didn't make me run out and read more from the author. I'm not actually sure I remembered what else I had read by the author when I picked this out in a 3 for 2 sale. I just really liked the pretty cover, and the title sounded interesting. As so often happens, it went on a shelf, and I forgot all about it. Then it turned up on my friend Ashley's Vlog, as one of 11 underrated books more people need to read, and since Ashley and I still like a lot of the same books, a recommendation from her means I need to read it (unless it's horror, of course, I'm most likely not going to want to read those). 

Once a year, five of my friends and I try to take a weekend away from our families, and we go on a cabin trip. While two are childless by choice, the rest of us have children, and just getting a weekend away to relax is a massive luxury. So of course, I was going to get lots of reading done, and this was one of the books I brought along. I think I made it to page 25, because I was busy chatting and catching up with my friends, and was too tired by the time bedtime came around to get anything much read at all.

So it took me a while to properly start this book, but when I finally did, it didn't take long before I didn't want to put it down. Biddy is an engaging heroine. She's curious and spends the first part of the book restless and frustrated that Rowan won't ever let her leave the island to explore. She's inquisitive and lonely, but when it finally becomes time to leave her safe home for the first time, it's with the knowledge that she's basically "bait" and could be in a lot of danger. To help Rowan, she's nevertheless willing to do it. She makes one of her first friends ever at the depressing, poverty-stricken children's home she's sent to live and work at. 

Once the danger ramps up, she is naturally very scared, but doesn't let it stop her from acting. She meets several people from Rowan's past; one very sinister, one deeply terrifying and one who may turn out to be a useful ally. 

My favourite supporting character was Hutchincroft, Rowan's bunny familiar. He can use magic to turn himself human, on occasion, so he and Biddy can speak (he speaks telepathically to Rowan), but a lot of the time, he's just a big, soft rabbit. I wish the reader could have got a bit more insight into his and Rowan's connection, but with the entire POV being from Biddy, I guess we can't have everything.

Parry has a lovely turn of phrase, and this story was unusual and went some unexpected places. While I wasn't too curious about her other writing after the Uriah Heap book, this makes me think I should give her other books another chance. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really like the silhouettes on the cover, all very suitable. Young woman, bird, rabbit. I like the vines and flowers and the swirling patterns on the green background. What I don't like are the weird yellow spikes, like some sort of halo behind the woman's silhouette. Could absolutely have done without that. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR18 Book 3: "Silver & Blood" by Jessie Mihalik

Page count: 448 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon for this ARC. It has not affected my opinions or my review.

About a year ago, the small village where Riela lives alone after the death of her father was threatened by a flood. Riela unlocked magical powers and managed to divert the water and save the village. Now one of the villagers has been savaged by a monster in the woods, and the mostly hostile villagers insist that she go into the forest and dispatch the monster for them. Unfortunately, Riela doesn't really have much control over her magical powers, and when she encounters a scary creature seemingly made out of tangled vines, which then divides itself into two, she's pretty convinced this is how she's going to die.

It would be a fairly short book if Riela died in the opening scenes; however, instead, she is rescued by a handsome, yet grouchy, mage and wakes up in his strange castle, where she initially can't go anywhere but where the castle feels like letting her go. While she's happy to have escaped death, Riela is upset when Garrick reveals that she is now confined to the forest. There's a magical spell that traps anyone with magical powers inside its borders, so now Riela can't return home. While Garrick claims she can stay in his magical castle (with a gorgeous library) and that he'll help her try to get better at controlling her magic, he also seems deeply suspicious of her and her motives. 

Spending more time together, Riela discovers why Garrick is so suspicious of her. He is, in fact, one of the legendary Etheri sovereigns, and because of a curse, he has been kept away from his magical realm for the last century, and now it seems like Riela might be instrumental in helping him open the gate again. Was she sent there by his enemies with sinister motives, or is she what she appears to be, an orphaned village woman with no idea how to control her magic? 

There are strong Beauty and the Beast vibes in this first part of a fantasy duology. The orphaned village maiden. The strange, magical castle in the woods (although there is no talking furniture in this one). The grouchy resident of said castle, and the maiden's inability to go back home. There is also a shapeshifting wolf, but he's the sidekick, not our hero. While the mystical, magical beings of this fantasy are called the Etheri (there's a bunch of different courts, ruled by various sovereigns), they are very fay-coded, both in their grace and viciousness. 

When I received this ARC, I thought this was the first part in a trilogy. I am very happy to discover that it's a duology instead, and according to Ms. Mihalik's website, book 2 may be coming out towards the end of 2026. There was a lot to like in this book, although the stretch where Garrick's internal monologue seems to switch between how attractive he finds Riela and how convinced he is that she is some dangerous creature sent to entrap him somehow goes on for too long. 

It's going to come as no surprise to anyone who has read fantasy in the past that there is more to Riela's identity than meets the eye, and the plot of the story is trying to figure out both how Garrick can get the magically sealed portal in his castle garden open again, so he can go back to his magical court, and why Riela's magic is so strange and she seems to be the key to getting the portal open again. 

For the most part, I liked the banter between Riela and Garrick, and I especially enjoyed Riela's disastrous attempts to get the magical castle to conjure food for her. For the first half of the book, the entire story is just Garrick and Riela, but in the second half, more supporting cast are introduced, and I liked their interactions with both Garrick and Riela. This book ends in a good place, while still making me very excited to read the second part. 

Silver & Blood comes out on January 27th, 2026. 

Judging a book by its cover: Mostly, I really love this cover, drawn by the talented Luisa Preissler (although I'm not sure why Garrick appears to have forgotten to put on his shirt. The silver embroidery on Garrick's tunic is nice, as are the tiny white flowers in Riela's hair. The castle in the background and the red roses are also cool story elements to include.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 68: "One of Us is Lying" by Karen M. McManus

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: School (The Breakfast Club with murder. So much high school drama)

On a Monday afternoon, five high schoolers find themselves in detention after someone planted phones in their bags. They all claim the phones are not theirs, but the teacher is not listening. There is Cooper, the star athlete, with a promising career in baseball ahead of him. There is Addy, always perfectly put together and the homecoming princess. There is Nate, the school's bad boy, who is on probation for dealing drugs. There is Bronwyn, most likely to become valedictorian and hoping for a spot at Yale, where several generations of her family have studied. And finally, there is Simon, who runs the school's extremely accurate, and frequently cruel, gossip app. Everyone follows it, and while he may ruin reputations in the process, Simon never lies.

Less than an hour later, only four remain, after Simon is taken to the hospital after suffering severe anaphylactic shock. Strangely, while everyone was scrambling to try to save him, he didn't appear to have an EPIPen in his bag, and every single EPIPen in the school nurse's office was also found to be missing. By Monday evening, Simon is dead. The cause of death appears to have been peanut oil at the bottom of the paper cup he drank from, just before he collapsed. It was well known at school that he was deathly allergic to peanuts. The police don't think his death is accidental, and as the four remaining students from detention are questioned by the police, it becomes clear that Simon had planned to reveal a deep, dark secret about each of them the next day, so they all have motives for wanting him dead. He just hadn't had time to post the entry yet, but it's there on his computer for them all to see. 

Four teens, who previously barely spoke to one another, are now cast into the spotlight, all suspects in a murder investigation. Is one of them a ruthless murderer, or did someone else manage to sneak inside the classroom while everyone in there was distracted by a collision in the parking lot?

Mostly, I only read historical mysteries, set in the Victorian era, with lady sleuths. However, this year, not only have I read a lot more mysteries in general (24 so far), but the majority of them have been contemporaries. Thanks are due to Richard Osman and Karen M. McManus. This book was entertaining and twisty enough that I immediately ignored my planned TBR list for October to read the two sequels (which I won't be reviewing, because I don't need to). Book 1 is still the best, book 2 was a bit weaker and book 3 was pretty good again. 

McManus alternates chapters for each of the protagonists, the Bayview Four, as they come to be known in all the news reports. It allows us to share in their fears and insecurities, and makes us as readers understand why Simon revealing their secrets would be so devastating to them. One of them is likely an unreliable narrator, because it wouldn't be much fun if we found out who the killer was too early in the story. Very shortly after Simon dies, someone starts writing anonymous Tumblr posts claiming to be Simon's killer, revealing things that it seems only someone in the detention room would know. It also becomes obvious that Simon must have shared his password with someone, because all those secrets Simon didn't have time to reveal before his death are published, showing the world exactly what may have motivated one (or several) of the Bayview Four to want to poison Simon.

I've read quite a few mysteries, so there were a couple of twists in the story that I had predicted before they were revealed, but part of why this book is so entertaining isn't even the central mystery, it's getting to know Bronwyn, Nate, Addy and Cooper, and seeing these four very different people form an unlikely friendship because they are now murder suspects. It was also why I wanted to keep going with the series, I really liked all of them, and wanted to find out what more was in store for them.

I saw on the internet that this book was also turned into a TV series. It looks like they made big narrative changes to the story, though, which did not appeal to me. There are far too many good things out there that I don't have the energy or will to watch right now, I'm not going to watch a disappointing adaptation of a book I really enjoyed. 

If you're not put off by YA books and want a fun, slightly twisty read, this is worth picking up. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have the UK paperback cover, and I much prefer it to the American cover with the four faces in a grid (where the faces are all cut out, creepy much?) This is sparse and elegant, and while the tag lines are a bit hokey, they fit with the contents of the book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 64: "The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman

Page count: 382 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: White (a book with a white cover)

In a charming retirement village somewhere in the south of England, four elderly individuals solve cold cases for fun. Retired nurse, Joyce, is the last to be inducted into "The Thursday Murder Club", as they are in need of some of her medical expertise in trying to solve their most recent case. Led by the formidable Elizabeth, who used to be a spy, aided and abetted by Ibrahim, a retired psychologist and Ron, a former trade union leader, the club used to have a fourth member, who co-founded the group with Elizabeth. Penny, a former Detective Inspector, is now in a coma, but is watched over daily by her husband and visited frequently by Elizabeth with updates about all their investigations. Joyce, who wasn't really sure she was going to settle in at Coopers Chase, happily shares her medical knowledge, and while she is clearly a very different woman from Penny, her cheerful demeanour, her excellent baking skills, and her wits make her a valuable new member of the group. 

Investigating cold cases takes a back seat to investigating an actual murder when Tony Curran, one of the developers who built Coopers Chase, is found bludgeoned to death in his home, with a photograph of some pretty shady characters left next to him. Now that he's dead, the other developer, Ian Ventham, has no one to oppose his plans to sell the retirement village and turn everything into luxury flats. He also wants to dig up the local graveyard and move all the bodies, to the horror of many of the long-time residents, whose family and friends are buried there. 

Having previously befriended Police Constable Donna de Freitas, recently transferred from London and is clearly rather bored with the routine tasks she's being given in the quiet country town. Thanks to some trickery from Elizabeth and Joyce, Donna is invited to join the murder investigation, shadowing the head investigator, DCI Chris Hudson. 

As the case progresses, it turns out that there is more than one individual with a motive to kill Tony Curran, and as often happens in these sorts of stories, his is not the only murder in need of solving by the end. 

By now, The Thursday Murder Club, published in 2020, has become a series of five novels and was recently turned into a Netflix movie with a very stacked cast. Because I didn't start reading the book until after the movie was announced, and I'd seen several trailers, my mental images of a lot of the characters matched up with their movie counterparts. For the most part, I think they cast the characters really well, with the notable exception of Pierce Brosnan, who is a very handsome man, but not even a little bit convincing as a former working-class labour rights champion. As my BFF Lydia says, Sean Bean was right there! 

Having now seen the film, I would strongly advise anyone who has read and likes (or loves) the book to skip it, because they had to cut so many corners, including several engaging subplots and change a bunch of stuff to cram it into a family-friendly Netflix film, and while it was well-acted, I was disappointed at the choices the filmmakers made. However, I suspect it's going to result in even bigger sales for Richard Osman, something I can't be disappointed about; he seems like a very clever and delightful man. 

I don't know exactly why it took me so long to read this, but I guess I should be grateful for the adaptation to finally make me pick the book up. I was pretty sure I was going to like it once I got around to it. I even gifted this and several of the sequels to my Dad some Christmases ago, based on other people's reviews, because he likes a good mystery novel. For the record, he was also disappointed by the second half of the movie. 

Despite featuring several rather grisly murders and a bunch of interconnecting mysteries, some of which go decades back, it's a very funny book, and I absolutely adore the characters. Not just our central four protagonists, either; there are so many minor supporting characters who give the story life and make it so very entertaining to read. Once I started reading, I could barely put the book down, and I also proceeded to read all the sequels over the course of a week in late August. I can't remember the last time I binge-read four books that fast. I just love hanging out with the characters and got genuinely emotional several times while reading the books. I'm very happy Osman has said he has many more adventures in store for Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron (not to forget Donna, Chris, Bogdan and importing supporting players). 

Judging a book by its cover: By now, it feels like every third mystery novel you see looks like this book, but this was the book that started the trend. So many other books with simple covers and similar fonts, just because Osman's book is so awesome. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 55: "Paladin's Grace" by T. Kingfisher

Page count: 360 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR17 Bingo: Purple (most of the cover, barring the cover image, is a lovely lavender purple)

Stephen is one of the paladins of the Saint of Steel (who was a god, despite the name), who died very suddenly and unexpectedly a few years back. No one thought gods could die, and a lot of his paladins killed themselves and caused massive amounts of damage when it happened. Now, Stephen and the six other paladins who remain are housed at the Temple of the White Rat and volunteer as bodyguards whenever that's required. Stephen and the other paladins are berserkers; they used to descend into battle madness when fighting for their god. Without their god to call them back, the paladins worry about new berserker rages, as they may not be able to stop without any force to call them back. So Stephen knits socks and does his best to see to the well-being of his brother and sister paladins.

 One day, when patrolling the city, he runs into a woman being harassed, and to foil her attackers, they pretend to have a steamy tryst in an alleyway. Grace is a skilled perfumer, with nothing but negative baggage in the romantic department. She shares her lodgings with a charming spy, who acts as her agent and tries to make sure Grace makes the sort of money she deserves. Grace wasn't really expecting to ever see her rescuer again, but they meet at a court function, and are soon witnesses to an assassination attempt. Soon, both Grace and Stephen are involved in a complicated power struggle, and to make matters worse, there's a mysterious killer out there on the streets who chops the heads off its victims. 

I've liked all of the Kingfisher books I have read, especially her fairy tale retellings. I even mostly liked What Moves the Dead, despite being very creeped out by it throughout. I've owned many of her Saint of Steel books as e-books for a while, but when it was announced that T. Kingfisher (or Ursula Vernon, as she is really called) would be one of the guests of honour at Norcon (a very small and intimate fantasy/sci-fi convention at the University of Oslo) this year, it seemed like the perfect time to acquire the books in paperback, so I could get them signed. I also had grand plans to read all four stories before the festival started, but since this happened just before the end of term, I was pretty exhausted from work, and had only read a book and a half of the series.

Meeting authors is always such a strange and wonderful experience to me, but T. Kingfisher was funny, gracious and very interested in chatting with her fans in between the panels she took part in. There were also several opportunities during the two days to get books signed. She also had a big signing in the fantasy/sci-fi/all things nerd shop in the centre of town, where I saw a picture of the queue. It went for more than a block and a half. At the actual festival, I don't think there were ever more than six people having to wait in line - it was great.

It's not that I've gone completely off YA as I get older, but romantic fantasy with YA characters is getting less appealing to me. A romance with slightly more mature characters is therefore feels so much more satisfying. None of the protagonists in any of the Saint of Steel books are teenagers (or the age where they could play teenagers on TV). They have lived eventful lives, with all the advantages and disadvantages this involves, and they have to negotiate their awakening romantic feelings while considering the position they're in and the people they feel beholden to. 

Grace used to be married, and her ex is clearly a real piece of work. Stephen struggles to find a place where he truly belongs, and is a protector through and through. He wants to protect and be with Grace, but the thought of abandoning his fellow paladins at the Temple of the White Rat, the only family he now has, may be impossible for him. Trying to sort out the political machinations and trying to find a creepy decapitating killer are challenges enough, but Grace and Stephen also need to figure out how to hopefully manage a happy ending together. 

As well as the romantic relationship, which develops gradually between Grace and Stephen, Kingfisher also includes other important people in her protagonsist's lives. Having lost pretty much everything, even his sense of identity, when his god/Saint died, the remaining surviving paladins are all Stephen have left, and they are all as family. The bishop in the Temple of the White Rat may be his benefactress and de facto employer, but she clearly cares a lot for the broken knights. Grace may have had a troubled past, but she's found herself with a formidable best friend. Because of her husband, Grace doesn't really have any way to prove her previous accomplishments, which might have made it difficult for her to support herself, but thanks to her friend and landlady Marguerite, her perfumes are sought after and exclusive. In fantasy, the heroines are often independent and move about in male dominated societies, not all of them have any female friends. Women supporting other women is one of my favourite things, so I'm glad Kingfisher showed how loyal the women are towards one another. 

Of the four books in this series, I think the third, Paladin's Hope, is my favourite. I really enjoyed all of them, though, and hope that Kingfisher will write books about the remaining paladins who haven't found their happy endings yet, as well. 

Judging a book by its cover: When I first got the new paperback editions of the Saint of Steel series, I was a bit taken aback by how very pastel they all were (this one is lavender, the second is a delicate pale green, the third is baby blue and the fourth book is very pink). The cover illustrations are really nice, though, and really give a good impression of how the characters are described in the story (sadly, not always the case). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 53: "The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold" by Ally Carter

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

Official plot summary: 

Ten years ago, they joined the CIA.

Six years ago, he left the game.

Five years ago, they fell in love.

One year ago, she ran out into the cold with absolutely no intention of ever coming back.

And two minutes ago, they woke up, bloody and bruised and handcuffed together in the dark.

They don’t know where they are. They don’t know how they got there. And they have absolutely no idea who is after them or what this nameless, faceless villain wants.

The only thing that’s clear is that, after ten years of covers and chemistry, secrets and lies, these two rival spies have been sucked into their greatest mission yet, and now they’re going to have to team up to stay alive. (If they don’t kill each other first.)

Ten years ago, Alex and King enroll in "spy school" together and become instant rivals. King is basically a legacy recruit, with his grandparents and father absolutely legendary in spy circles. Alex wants adventure and a challenge and getting away from her constant guilt of being the healthy twin, while her sister had multiple heart surgeries and ended up very frail because Alex took up too much space in the womb. She's got a lot ofissues, and she'd rather cut herself off from her entire family to live a life of constant subterfuge rather than properly deal with them.

While Alex and King are bitter rivals, they also clearly do excellent work together, with the result that they keep being paired up on missions, where both of them staunchy ignore their amazing chemistry and mutual attraction to continue their weird feud. As the summary reveals, they eventually admit their feelings for one another. However, after Alex' twin sister is kidnapped by sinister forces who believe her to be Alex (not knowing that Alex had an identical twin in the first place), she is prepared to drop everything to go rescue her twin. King, being the more cautious of the two wants her to take some time and make a plan, resulting in an argument where foolish things like "If you leave now, never come back" are uttered, and actually believed. 

So for a whole year, King has been desperately searching for Alex to apologise and win her back, while Alex has hidden herself away so well that no one knows where she's been. They wake up handcuffed together, with no memory of the previous 48 hours, and need to use all of their wits and skills to figure out why they've been tricked into a trap of some sort, who is behind it and how they are going to get the best of their mysterious enemies.

The story is told mostly in alternating chapters set in the present, where Alex and King are in a strange and very dangerous situation, and trying to figure out what the heck is going on, while also trying to process all their hurt feelings about the last time they saw each other, and the past, starting with the evening before Alex goes to "spy school" and first meets King, who tries to warn her off a career in espionage. As the book progresses, we skip between the present and get glimpses into the past ten years, in especially significant points of Alex and King's relationship, seeing their relationship develop slowly from rivals to reluctant allies to friends to lovers.

As someone who loves a good spy story (in book, TV or movie form), this book was exactly my wheelhouse. It's action packed and features all sorts of exciting spy scenarios, but if Alex and King weren't such engaging protagonists, I don't think it would have mattered what the plot turned out to be. By alternating between the present and the past, Ms. Carter keeps gradually showing the readers how the couple's relationship came to be, and why it was such a dramatic thing for Alex to cut off all contact with King for a whole year. The couple are clearly much better together than apart, but have both had complicated lives and steamer trunks full of emotional and psychological baggage that make it hard for them to actually believe anyone could love them or want a life with them.

This is the second book in the series, but works perfectly well as a standalone. In fact, I hadn't read the first one when I got this ARC, and rather went back and read the first book, The Blonde Identity, once I was done with this one. That book gives us the POV of Alex's twin sister who is on a breakneck adventure through Europe, while suffering memory loss, and the handsome spy who is trying to keep her from being captured by rival spy factions or killed. 

If you like action and suspense and prickly rivals becoming each other's perfect partners, this is a fast and entertaining read. I highly recommend it. 

Judging a book by its cover: I am frequently very critical of the cartoony covers, but there are exceptions to the rule, and this is one of them. This image is really nicely stylized and it would not be as charming or effective if there were real people on the cover. Then it would just look sort of naff. The colour choices, the cat's eye sunglasses, the reflection in the glasses, our heroine looking so very cool - it all works for me. 

Crossposted on 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 47: "Partners in Crime" by Alisha Rai

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Skyline

CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity 

Yet again resorting to the official plot summary, because I finished this in mid-April and I just cannot remember all the of details of the plot anymore:

At thirty-five, with a stable job as an accountant, Mira Chaudhary wants nothing more than to find a boring man to spend the rest of her life with. Having had enough excitement in her younger days and desperately trying to escape her dysfunctional past, she turns to a matching app specializing in Indian American singles to help her find someone to settle down with.

Enter Naveen Desai. An English professor with an uneventful, normal, and—dare she say it, boring—life, Naveen is perfect.

But just when things are going well, Mira receives news that her aunt has died. Suddenly, a trip to Las Vegas to settle her aunt’s affairs turns into a mad dash to escape kidnappers, evade art thieves, and consorting with hackers who can decipher just what it was Mira’s aunt was involved with. Mira just hopes that Naveen isn’t chased away by the very same life of “excitement” that she’s been trying to get away from. But maybe, over the course of one wild night, Mira and Naveen will find the love connection that neither expected.

Mira is trying to be traditional and respectable, to distance herself from her family's less than savoury past. Naveen is trying to help his grandfather keep his lawyer's practice. The two of them have a past, and Mira broke up with Naveen via text message. Not exactly classy. He's right to be pissed off at her.

However, when they end up drugged and abducted together to Las Vegas, they try to figure out what the bad guys want from Mira's dad and aunt's pasts, before bad things happen to them (or people they care about, like Naveen's grandfather). They are forced to work together to stay ahead of their pursuers, and over the course of a whirlwind adventure in Vegas, they also get a chance to reconnect, reevaluate their past relationship and see each other honestly as the people they really are now.

Unfortunately, I don't remember a lot of details particularly clearly, but at the same time, I also don't remember anything that annoyed me while reading it, either. It was a fun read, and I finished it in less than 48 hours. 

Judging a book by its cover: Standard grumble about cartoon cover trend - but I do appreciate that both the characters on the cover look approximately as described in the story, and the scene in question, complete with fancy car and evening wear, does actually take place in the story. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 46: "Listen for the Lie" by Amy Tintera

Page count: 384 pages

Audio book length: 9 hrs 17 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Truth and Lies

CBR17 Bingo: Review (this was very favourably reviewed by Pooja, Narfna and Chairbrarian)

Five years ago, Lucy's best friend Savvy was murdered and Lucy was found wandering along the road, absolutely covered in Savvy's blood. Unfortunately, Lucy also had a pretty severe head wound, which resulted in amnesia, and can't remember anything about the night in question, before or after the murder took place. There wasn't enough evidence to convict her, but most people in her home town of Plumpton, Texas made up their own minds.

Since absolutely everyone back home is convinced Lucy is a murderer, she's been living and working in LA, writing romance novels under an assumed name and doing her very best to try to stay as anonymous as possible. Unfortunately, podcaster Ben Owens has decided to dedicate the second season of his very popular podcast 'Listen for the Lie' to investigating Savvy's murder, and all the sordid details are being dragged back into the light. In short order, Lucy gets fired from her job, and it becomes clear that her throroughly average boyfriend is too scared of her to actually break up with her, but very much would like her to be gone, from his life and apartment. So when Lucy's grandmother calls and emotionally blackmails her into coming back to Texas for her 80th birthday, Lucy doesn't really have a lot of options.

Of course, back in Plumpton, Ben Owens is going around interviewing people and asking intrusive questions, making Lucy's life oh so much more awkward. That he turns out to be handsome and very charming, and that Lucy's grandma is a big fan of his, makes the situation even more annoying. Did Lucy actually kill Savvy? If she didn't, who was the actual murderer and why have they managed to stay hidden for the past five years? Lucy wants Ben to find out the truth, but also fears that it may turn out she was guilty all along.

As I mentioned above, several Cannonballers whose opinions I trust recommended this book, and I had Audible credits to spare, so I figured it might be an entertaining Spring read. There is a tradition in Norway, that during the Easter holidays, you do very little (if you're outdoorsy, you go to a cabin in the mountains somewhere and ski, either cross-country or downhill) and you read crime novels. The various television networks all show mystery mini-series and the book stores put all their crime novels front and centre on their displays. We even have a specific term for it 'påskekrim', roughly translated as Easter Crime/Mystery. It's a whole thing. So listening to a novel about murder and true crime around Easter seemed very fitting.

The audio book is very well done. It alternates between chapters narrated by Lucy, who is a very sarcastic and cynical individual. January LaVoy does an excellent job conveying her snarky tone. Then in between, there are the 'podcast' sections, narrated by Will Damron as Ben Owens. I don't listen to podcasts, really (they take time away when I could be reading, or watching something with my husband, who is already a bit cranky about how much time I would rather be reading than watching stuff with him). So I'll take other people's word for it that these podcast sections are well-done and feel realistic. Based on what I heard, if I had ANY interest at all in true crime (I do NOT - the world is an awful place and I do not need to find out about all the horrible things people to do one another this way), 'Listen for the Lie' sounds like it would be a good podcast to follow.

I really liked that Tintera let Lucy be a quite spiky and hostile character. Convenient though it may seem, the amnesia makes her life more difficult, because there is always that nagging doubt that something horrible happened, and she actually murdered her best friend. Her complete lack of memory of the whole evening (including the events leading up to the murder) also makes it impossible for her to help the police investigate and find the real killer, when she desperately wants justice for Savvy. So a little part of her is relieved that Ben Owens is investigating the case again. It's obvious that a lot of people have been lying about and keeping secrets about the night of the murder, but he manages to ferret out the truth and uncover a lot of information the police never discovered.

This was very entertaining, and I'm impressed that this was Tintera's debut into crime fiction She seems to have only written YA fantasy before this. Nevertheless, I didn't love it as much as Narfna and Chairbrarian. There were some story developments that I found a bit unneccesary. I would absolutely read more of Tintera's books in the future, though. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not the most exciting cover, really (and it also seems like it directly ripped off the cover design of Good Girl, Bad Blood, which came out four years before this book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 3: "Bookshops & Bonedust" by Travis Baldree

Page count: 356 pages

Audiobook length: 8 hrs, 1 min

Rating: 3.5 stars

Buzzwords 2025 Title Challenge: Contains punctuation

Twenty years before the events in Legends & Lattes, Viv is a young and relatively inexperienced mercenary, who gets badly injured fighting undead monsters while hunting for a powerful necromancer. Her mercenary band leave her in the quiet and mostly empty seaside town of Murk to heal up and recuperate. She worries that the group are going to leave her there, but thankfully, to take her mind off her fears, she encounters the local bookshop owner, who manages to persuade her (Viv has never exactly been a big reader) to buy a book, which she is surprised that she can barely put down. 

Soon a beautiful friendship is born. Viv spends most of her days hanging out in Fern the Ratkin's rather run-down store, trying to help her come up with ways to make the place a bit less dilapidated and more inviting to customers. Fern keeps giving Viv new books, and after having eagerly completed a few, Viv stops trying to pretend that reading isn't for her. There are some added complications involving a fierce gnome fishing for an invitation to Rackham, Viv's employer; a suspicious city guard captain, and the discovery of the corpse of the sinister fellow who Viv got into a very public fight with after he was rude to Fern's pet. 

Viv also befriends the local bakery owner, a cheerful dwarf who keeps bribing Viv with delicious baked goods. They develop the chastest of romances, which basically amounts to them talking walks, feeding the fish and holding hands occasionally. Both know that Viv isn't going to be staying in Murk for very long, so their flirtation has a definite end date. 

While Viv is worried that her time in Murk is going to be too uneventful and boring, some strange artefacts left behind by the dead fellow on the beach, turn out to be rather exciting and may have links to the necromancer that Viv's mercenary band were hunting. 

This was the December pick for my IRL book club, and we met in early January to discuss it. While most people liked it, a few people disliked it because they felt it was just too bland and uneventful to really hold their attention. Most of the readers agreed that the book was not without its flaws, but you don't read a book like this when you want to be overly critical and therefore they weren't too bothered. This, like Legends & Lattes is like candy for your brain, and the occasional plot inconsistency or lack of consistent world-building shouldn't distract from the silly cosiness of the read. The majority of us were in agreement that we liked Legends & Lattes more, and a few of the flaws with this book came from the fact that it was a prequel and therefore hampered by a few things already established in Baldree's first book. 

One of the readers pointed out that the way the book depicts what a great experience reading can be, and the way it opens Viv's eyes to adventures and new perspectives through reading is very pedagogical, and that a book where so much of the plot centres around books, how great hanging out in a bookshop, and reading can be, it will hopefully get more reluctant readers to try more books. Which can only be a good thing. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover of my paperback copy of this is in the same style as that of the first book, with more seaside elements and the mysterious book Viv finds very much the focal point. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 2: "Hildur (The Clues in the Fjord)" by Satu Rämö

Page count: 353 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Books 2025 Bingo: A book in translation

Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police investigator on Iceland's harsh and rather sparsely populated west coast. When she was only a child, her two younger sisters disappeared without a trace, and now she's the head of the division for missing children in her part of the country. Her only remaining relative is her aunt, who she eats dinner with every Monday. Her aunt raised her after her parents died in a car accident about a year after her sisters went missing. Hildur surfs in the cold Atlantic Ocean to clear her mind of worries. She has a 'friends with benefits' relationship with one of her neighbours, but neither wants to make it anything official. 

Jakob Johanson is a police trainee from Finland, who always wanted to visit Iceland and has therefore decided to complete his mandatory training period there. In Norway, he has a five-year-old son that his ex-wife refuses to let him have any contact with. He knits to relieve stress and loves the chance to design knitting projects with unusual Icelandic yarns. He and Hildur complement each other well as partners, but Jakob is frustrated that there are parts of the job he has difficulties with since he can't speak Icelandic yet and not all of the locals speak English. 

Murders are rare in Iceland, so when Hildur and Jakob find themselves investigating the murder of an elderly local pedophile, they are surprised to find that it may be connected to the murder of a wealthy lawyer in Reykjavik. The two men seem to have absolutely nothing in common, but there is a strange calling card left with both of the bodies. The body of the old man was found in the ruins of a cabin crushed by an avalanche, while the security cameras in the parking garage where the lawyer was repeatedly run over by his own car were offline at the time of the murder. The killer seems to be meticulous and careful to not leave any traces. Then there is a third murder, and this time, the victim is someone with a direct connection to Hildur herself.

I put myself on the waiting list at my local library for this book, after reading this article about the author in the Guardian. It turns out that only the first novel of her bestselling series is available in Norwegian so far, with no clear sign of when the next books will be translated. In English, this book is called The Clues in the Fjord (which is a strange title, as there are absolutely no clues to any of the murders found in or around any of Iceland's many fjords. I guess it makes it more authentically Icelandic to use the word fjord in the title?) and books 2 and 3 should be out in English throughout 2025. So if I can't read them in Norwegian, I can always check out the English translations.

I don't think I've read any books set in Iceland since I studied various Norse sagas for my Master's thesis at University more than 25 years ago. These books are apparently massive bestsellers in the author's native Finland (she has lived in Iceland for more than 20 years, the books are set close to where she lives). The publishing rights have been sold to more than 17 countries, and I doubt I would have heard of her if it wasn't for the Guardian article. 

Apparently, these books fit into a genre called "Nordic blue", which differs from the already popular "Nordic noir" in that the books focus not only on the crimes committed and the whys and wherefores but also on the lives and worries of the people investigating the crimes. It's as concerned with the social aspects of the crimes as the psychological. 

I used to love reading crime novels, especially by several prominent Norwegian authors (although not Jo Nesbø, those never worked for me). As a teenager, I absolutely devoured everything I could find by Agatha Christie. For the last twenty years or so, though, I have hardly ever read mysteries, with the exception of some historical series featuring strong-minded Victorian lady sleuths, and they are a lot closer to cosies than the gritty psychological crime dramas of Nordic noir writers. I did read the original Lisbeth Salander trilogy by Stieg Larsson (I refuse to acknowledge any of the cash-grab fan fic sequels published after his death), but I found them mostly unpleasant. So much violence, especially towards women.

So this was a nice change of pace for me. Without spoiling anything, it is clear that the disappearance of Hildur's six and eight-year-old sisters twenty-five years in the past is going to play an important role in the series going forward. Since I have become completely incapable of tolerating violence or harm happening to children since I had my own child, I hope there won't be explorations of anything too graphic, or I'm going to freak out. But I am very interested in reading future books. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover is fairly neutral, showing partially snow-clad hills in a striking landscape. The little red dots are nevertheless a hint that this is a crime novel, as my soon-to-be seven-year-old exclaimed: "That looks like blood, Mama." He's not wrong, it looks like blood spatter and gives you some idea of what you'll find in these pages.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.