CBR18 Book 58: "How to Kill Your Rival" by Effie Campbell

Page count: 272 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Thank you to Boldwood Books and NetGalley for this ARC. This has not influenced my review in any way. This book is on sale now.

Eliza Hamilton (yup, that is her name; not sure if the author is a fan of the musical or if the name is a coincidence) is the heir apparent to the Death Council, a secret organisation full of hired killers. While her father is battling cancer, she is to lead in his place, but most of the other members of the Council are sexist old men (or their equally sexist sons), so she's fighting an uphill battle.

In addition to having to fight with the bullheaded Council Members, someone is sabotaging her missions and stealing her kills. She briefly suspects her stepbrother James (her father is married to his mother), but he so vehemently denies it and is so determined to kill whoever's doing it on her behalf that she quickly rules him out. 

James has clearly been madly in love with Eliza for years. Since there are a bunch of references to things that happened in the first book in the series, and I don't know how much of their backstory was established there, the opening of the book was rather abrupt and confusing to me. Trying to impress her and make her notice him has made James compete professionally with Eliza for about as long, and it seems like Eliza's feelings towards him are finally changing. 

As part of an underworld crime syndicate, it's not like Eliza has a lot of people she can trust. It becomes clear that Eliza isn't going to figure out who is targeting her by herself, and James is fiercely protective of her and insists on using all of his computer skills to help her track down whoever is plotting against her. 

The plot summary for this book makes it seem like a rather different story from what we actually get. It makes it seem like there isn't already a very potent attraction between Eliza and James, and that the rivalry between them is a lot more hostile than the playful one-upmanship they have clearly been engaged in for several years. It makes it seem as if they are forced to work together, which is also not the case. Eliza doesn't want to confide in her father, who is ill. Her elder sister isn't in the family business (nevertheless, they have a lovely and very supportive relationship), and she feels too protective of her younger brother to want to involve him. So James is pretty much the only person she can turn to for help, and he would cut his own throat before he in any way betrayed her. 

For the first 15% or so, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep reading. I genuinely don't know if the weird opening chapters would have made more sense if I'd read the first book, but in a series like this, the stories need to be able to be read in any order and make sense to the reader, even if they've not started at the beginning. It probably doesn't help that I was expecting a slightly different story, based on the plot description. 

The book is in dual POVs, with some chapters from Eliza's POV and some from James. At first, I didn't like Eliza at all; she seemed abrasive and too arrogant for me, but thankfully the chapters from James were easier to read, and before I knew it, I wanted to keep reading just to see how the story played out.

Just in case it wasn't obvious from the review so far, this book is a dark romance, with protagonists who are extremely skilled at doing very bad things to people, and seem to get off on it too. It is explained that the Hamiltons (and James, who is married into the family) only take contracts on really despicable people; they don't just off anyone for money, but they still literally murder people for a living, and both James and Eliza torture several people over the course of the book to get answers when they are trying to figure out who is trying to sabotage Eliza. So if you don't like graphic violence mixed in with your romance, this is probably not the book for you.

Not sure if I want to read more from this author or not. Once I got past the clunky beginning, it was a quick read. I just don't know if I'm interested in reading about the other two Hamilton siblings. 

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. 

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 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 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. 

CBR16 Book 64: "Obsidio" by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Page count: 615 pages

Audio book length: 13 hrs 1 min

Rating: 5 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Binge

CBR16 Bingo: Celestial (set in space. I'm sure the characters observe lots of stars on their epic journeys through space)

Spoiler warning: this is the third and final book in the Illuminae Files. A lot of stuff happened in the previous two novels, and it will be impossible to review this book without referring to some significant plot points. Additionally, I don't see how this book would be a satisfying reading experience taken out of context. So if you aren't up to date, and have finished Illuminae and Gemina, skip this review until you can return unspoiled. Or you know, read it and get minor plot spoilers. It's your life, you do you.

'

Previously in these books. The evil BeiTech corporation attacked an illegal mining colony on a small ice planet called Kerenza. They also deployed some scary biological weapons with disastrous results. Only very few of the refugees who originally escaped Kerenza in various rescue ships are still alive, now doing their best to stay alive on the Hypatia. They were trying to get to the wormhole at Heimdall station, but BeiTech's evil goons arrived before them and did their best to wipe out everyone there as well, trying to cover the tracks of their evil actions. Now the Heimdall space station is no more, the wormhole is useless and the survivors from Heimdall station need to join forces to survive. Luckily, the leader of the BeiTech assassination squad had a pretty cool spaceship that they now have access to, but it wasn't really designed to hold and transport several thousand passengers.

'

Our intrepid YA heroes include Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik, not to mention Nik's genius cousin Ella. Despite all the amazing feats these young people have managed to perform, a lot of the older crew members now distrust and underestimate them, which leads to conflict and frustration. They discover that there are still people alive on Kerenza and that BeiTech hasn't been able to mine enough fuel to leave the place yet, but the clock is ticking, and despite the reluctant mining crew's many attempts at sabotage and delay, soon the evil corporate overlords will have what they need to leave for good, and whatever survivors are still on Kerenza will be disposed of.

On Kerenza, we are introduced to two new young rebels to cheer for, even though Rhys is working as an engineer for BeiTech and is now forced to work with the mercenary soldiers on the planet itself. He is shocked to reunite with his old girlfriend, Asha, who also happens to be Kady Grant's cousin. After a very passionate love affair a few years back, where both of them made some questionable decisions and got involved with some unsavoury people, Asha and Rhys were forced apart. Rhys was enrolled in a military academy, and Asha was sent to live with her relatives on Kerenza. While actually a pharmacy trainee, she now works as a nurse and pathologist at the only med centre left on Kerenza, and she is also a member of the resistance trying to sabotage BeiTech's remaining operations as much as possible. She can't believe that the man she loved is now part of the evil organization who is oppressing her friends and neighbours, but obviously, there is more to the story that she knows - and it will surprise no one that Rhys isn't actually a villain.

So we have the desperate people trying to stay alive on Kerenza, and the harried survivors returning through space from Heimdall station, on a ship that may not have enough resources to get everyone safely there in time. It's clear that these brave young people have to outsmart BeiTech once and for all, and to do that, they also need to make sure that all the atrocities are documented. So in this book, we finally find out how a lot of the material we've been reading for the past two books was assembled, and we discover the identity of the snarky young tech who has been narrating all of the video files throughout.

This is the first of the books I read partially in audiobook, after recommendations from among others, my friend cheerbrarian (she also has a podcast). I don't know if I would have liked the audiobooks from the start, knowing how many different types of text are collected in the novels, but having read the other two in paperback, having this as an audiobook for when I was out and about was great. I have also gotten the audios of the previous two and can see myself using them when I want to reread in the future.

This YA series is unlike anything I've ever read before and it made me feel pretty much all the feels at some point or another. I've been scared, grossed out, I have laughed and cried. Despite all of these events clearly being told after the fact at a tribunal for the head of BeiTech industries, so it's obvious that our band of heroes will be OK in the end, I was still on the edge of my seat and scared that one or more of them wouldn't make it. It's also important to note that while our protagonists survive, these books have death counts in the multiple thousands. So many innocent (and not so innocent) people die, in all sorts of horrible and/or tragic ways, and yet you feel elated and happy at the conclusion of the trilogy, because a little core of found family is safe and well, despite everything. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 47: "Gemina" by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Page count: 672 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Binge

Nowhere Book Bingo: A YA novel

Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Epistolary romance

CBR16 Bingo: Part 1 and Part 2 (the book has more than 600 pages)

This is the second book in a series, and starting with this one means a lot of stuff won't make much sense. I also don't think it's possible for me to review this book without spoiling the previous one, so if you're not up to date, start with Illuminae.

After the disastrous events, first on the mining colony of Kerenza, and then on the space fleet evacuating survivors, the only remaining ship, Hypatia, is on its way to Jump Station Heimdall, hoping for aid. BeiTech, the organisation which launched the attack on Kerenza and utilised the bioweapon which led to a plague, cannot risk word getting out about their heinous deed and therefore need to make sure that they eradicate the Hypatia. To do so, they will need to use the jump station's wormhole, and later make sure that there are no survivors on Heimdall left to reveal the truth.

Entirely unaware of BeiTech's sinister goals are two teenagers aboard the Jump Station, Hanna Donnelly and Niklas "Nik" Malikov. Hanna is the station captain's beloved and pampered daughter, Nik is part of the Malikov crime family, and Hanna's occasional drug dealer. There's clearly an attraction between them, but Hanna is in a relationship with the dashing Jackson Merrick, one of her father's officers, and consequently doesn't really have time for more than some light flirtation with Nik. Life onboard a space station surrounding a wormhole obviously isn't very exciting for either of them, but Hanna tries to pass the time by studying, parties and working out, while Nik reluctantly assists with his family's business.

Both of their lives are irrevocably changed once an elite team of BeiTech mercenaries arrive, and very rapidly take control of the station. The mercenaries start by wiping out the people who helped their ship get onboard (Nik's family) and Nik only survives because he's on his way to deliver party drugs to Hanna. Thankfully, while she's annoyed that Nik is late for their deal, Hanna is also spared from seeing her father shot in the head when the mercenaries take control of the majority of the station. Now, Hanna might seem like nothing but an airheaded, fashion-obsessed teen, but being the daughter of a military commander with a keen interest in history, she's picked up a lot of useful knowledge about strategy, tactics and how to be stealthy. Nik, meanwhile, has only one family member left alive and is determined to avenge the Malikov crew in any way he can deal hurt to the mercenaries. Unfortunately, in all the sudden danger, both Nik and his computer genious cousin Ella completely forget about the very dangerous alien parasites hatching in a secluded part of the station (long story, the drugs the Malikovs sell are derived from some truly scary creatures, who should not be left unattended and allowed to crawl through space station vents and the like). Of course, the BeiTech baddies don't know about them either.

The BeiTech kill squad need to take control of the wormhole so that a second kill team can be sent through to deal with the Hypatia. They were not expecting to be foiled by a few teenagers and a few officers having sealed themselves on the bridge of the space station. Can Hanna, Nik, and Ella with a few ragtag allies foil their enemies, warn the Hypatia, save the remaining crew and thwart BeiTech's evil schemes? (This is book 2 of 3, what do you think?)

Fans of Ezra and Kady (her dad is the chief of security on Heimdall), not to mention AIDAN, will be pleased to know that in the latter half of the book, they do appear, although they are not the focus of this story, that would be Hanna and Nik. While Kady and Ezra had a past, and many months of separation with only computer chats to make the heart grow fonder, Hanna and Nik's attraction to one another is basically put to a boil in an insanely tense and demanding situation, where they are fighting for survival, grieving loved ones and trying to find a way to help complete strangers aboard the Hypatia. 

Hanna is unbelievably badass, and Nik may seem like he's got a dangerous and ruthless past but is really just a big, tattooed cinnamon roll (who will still do what is necessary if his or others' lives are in danger, he just needs more time to process it than Hanna). Ella is more of a secondary character, but the girl is fierce, especially since she's not really able to move around except via her computer. I love all of them and am so glad that Kaufman and Kristoff had the surviving characters from Illuminae take a backseat so readers could get to know these guys as well.

I am also grateful that while the lanima (super creepy alien parasites) are scary and unpleasant, any scene involving them (including the early ones where it's explained how they incubate) was a pale shadow of all the horror with the virus rage zombies of the previous book. I really liked how the book includes the photos and call signs of all the BeiTech mercenaries, and how as the book proceeds, more and more pictures are just crossed out (they may be teenagers, but Hanna, Nik and Ella are NOT messing around). 

Having now read two of these books, I have absolutely no idea what the authors are going to come up with next, but I'm hopeful that eventually the BeiTech corporation will be brought to justice for all the horrible things it has done. Having now heard so many cool things about the audiobooks, I may do the third and final book partly in audio.

Judging a book by its cover: While the first book was all warm colours, red and orange, this one is all cold, with a cloud of something (dust? smoke?) blue over a black background. I think this entire series has a very well-done cover design, with the covers of the trilogy complementing each other so well. 

CBR16 Book 36: "Leather & Lark" by Brynne Weaver

Page count: 400 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 15 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR16 Bingo: Bananas

Lark Montague and Lachlan Kane have an unfortunate first meeting, when Lark during Halloween has had an "accident" and needs a car and a body fished out of a lake. Lachlan is the man forced by his employer to come help her do this. Lachlan is in scuba gear, Lark is heavily made up in a Halloween costume. Lachlan chooses to force Lark into the car of his trunk to transport her unseen away from the incident site, not realising that Lark has intense claustrophobia. She breaks out of his trunk, and runs off. Lachlan's employer is NOT impressed, and any hopes Lachlan had of escaping his violent fixer jobs go up in smoke.

The two meet again when Lark's best friend Sloane and Lachlan's younger brother Rowan celebrate their engagement. They are initially very attracted to one another, but once Lark figures out exactly where she recognises Lachlan's voice from and confronts him about their previous encounter, any sexy time feelings they felt towards the other are as dead as one of Sloane and Rowan's serial killer victims. They try not to let their dislike show too much, as the people they care most about are about to get married, but the animosity between them is palpable.

Lark's dying aunt runs a very successful, but cut-throat cupcake empire. Apparently,  someone (they suspect a business rival) is killing off some of their associates. Lark's parents suspect Lachlan is the man doing the hits, and Lark hears them threatening not only to take out Lachlan as a defensive measure but both of his brothers as well. Lark will not let anything get in the way of Sloane's happiness, and when her aunt points out that her parents won't threaten anyone considered family, she hatches a plan. She and Lachlan will have to get married, and convince her parents that they are actually in love. 

Lark promises Lachlan that she will get him free of his capricious and demanding employer if he helps her figure out who is killing her family's business associates. As it turns out, the guilty party isn't a business rival at all, but someone who wants very bad things to happen to both Lachlan and Lark. 

While not as wonderfully compelling as Butcher & Blackbird, the first book in the Ruinous Love trilogy, Leather & Lark was still a fun read (and listen), and I feel it fits into the "Bananas" square on the CBR16 Bingo card, because there is a leather working crime fixer, a cute folk singer who happens to have a side hustle murdering sexual predators, drugged cupcakes, serial killers getting married, murder victims being turned into crafts project, you name it. There is a long list of content warnings at the start of the book, although there's a lot less squicky stuff with eyeballs in this one. 

Considering I was entirely unprepared for how much I adored the first book, this book was unlikely to live up to my expectations. It was still a fun read, but I found neither Lark, nor Lachlan as charming and interesting as Rowan or dorkily insecure as Sloane (loved their cameo appearances in this book, though). Lark's aunt was a lovely supporting character, however. I had no need to immediately re-read this one, and while I might not want to revisit it in the future, I'm still very much looking forward to the third book in the series, where we get Rose and Fhion's story. 

Judging a book by its cover: I possibly like the turquoise and black better than the hot pink and black of the previous book, but the various objects representing the protagonists are less fun. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 16: "Butcher & Blackbird" by Brynne Weaver

Page count: 360 pages

Audiobook length: 8 hrs 43 mins

Rating: 5 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Excited (I love this book and would like everyone I know to read it, but also understand that it's very much NOT for everyone).

Spoiler warning! I will do my best to review this without major plot spoilers, but if you want to experience this book without any prior knowledge of the contents, possibly skip this review until you've read the book.

Sloane "Blackbird" Sutherland and Rowan "Butcher" Kane have a rather unusual meet cute. He finds her locked in a cage, starved and desperate, and a decomposing corpse on the floor just outside the cage door. Sloane and Rowan are both serial killers, but only murder other killers. Obviously, they don't meet a lot of people who share their unusual hobby, and once they establish that they know of each other's reputations, end up having lunch and agreeing to a friendly competition. Once a year, they'll meet up to hunt the same killer. The first to five kills gets the honour of killing a particularly infamous one. 

Rowan is smitten with Sloane from their very first meeting, and Sloane certainly finds Rowan attractive. She's just so shy, paranoid, and socially awkward that she cannot imagine what a handsome, charming, outgoing, and flirtatious man like him might see in her. So they develop a friendship, which clearly starts developing into more with each meeting, but it takes more than four years before Sloane actually dares believe that Rowan likes her as more than just a like-minded friend. Can the two of them, restless, dark-souled, murderous, and obsessive, actually make a relationship work? And will they survive long enough to enjoy a HEA? It's not like their recreational activities are risk-free. 

There is a LONG list of trigger warnings at the very start of this book. If you find eyeballs and the removal of them unpleasant, then this book is probably not for you. These people are murderers, and there are graphic depictions of both a violent and sexual nature (there's a lot of mutual pining until about 60% into the book, and then they really make up for lost time and things get very 18+ afterwards). I tend to find suspense novels stressful, I don't really like horror. I never understood the fascination a lot of people have with True Crime. This book is basically what you'd get if Hannibal had a baby with a snarky romantic comedy. It's adorable, laugh-out-loud funny, very romantic, extremely spicy, and very very gross in parts. Both protagonists kill without remorse, and experience some pretty dangerous situations over the course of their strange murder quests. Yet I absolutely adored this book. 

Sloane is so shy, dorky, and socially awkward. She literally has one friend in the entire world, no siblings, and doesn't seem to talk or interact much with her parents. Since she seems to be bad with people in general, it's no wonder that she's intimidated and a bit confused by Rowan at first. He's outgoing, gregarious, charming, and very good-looking. He seems to flirt with everyone, so for a while, it's understandable that Sloane doesn't clue into the fact that he's clearly completely obsessed with her. 

I was completely hooked by this almost instantly. I bought the audiobook in an Audible sale in early January and thought it might be a fun and unusual read for Valentine's Day this year. I started listening in the morning on my way to work and stayed up late so I could actually finish the audiobook the same day. While I don't have as much time as I used to just for reading, I do occasionally finish a book in a day. But I can't remember the last time I finished a whole audiobook the very same day I started it, even listening at x1.5 speed.

I had a major book hangover and kept thinking so much about the book and the characters that I had to just start the audiobook all over again. That level of obsession only happens every few years for me, and should tell you something about how much I loved this book. The list of content warnings for this book is on the author's website, so if any of these seem like dealbreakers to you, it's probably best to skip it. On the other hand, I also have two friends who were disappointed that the book didn't go enough into detail about the planning and actual murdering, so that's also worth bearing in mind. 

Judging a book by its cover: The neon pink and purple against the black background is eye-catching even before you see the details, like the chainsaw, cleaver, axe, and obviously all the bones. It's sort of cute and sinister at the same time, which pretty much perfectly sums up this book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 14: "Illuminae" by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Page count: 602 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: An epistolary novel

CBR16 Sweet Books: Binge (I have already bought the next two books in the series in paperback, so I can read all of them as soon as possible.)

Official book description:

Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she'd ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their biggest threat; and nobody in charge will say what's really going on. As Kady plunges into a web of data hacking to get to the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: Ezra.

Kady is a talented hacker and is fully aware that the evacuated passengers aren't being told much of anything. She is determined to find out the truth of what is going on, especially after the AI of the leading evacuation ship, AIDAN, blows one of the other two up unexpectedly. Naturally, the remaining ship's crew are rather nervous about the incident being repeated and the AI needs to be shut down until they can figure out why it acted so erratically. Ezra is recruited as a fighter pilot, working to defend the evacuation fleet, not exactly a job without significant risks.

As Kady becomes more and more isolated, and the losses really start affecting her, her illegal communication with Ezra becomes one of the things that keep her going. Neither of them has anyone else significant left in their lives, and it becomes clear that the reasons why Kady dumped Ezra in the first place become very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and now they would just like to be reunited, before they quite possibly die. 

As the back of the book says, the novel is "Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more". I am very glad I got the paperback from the library, I'm genuinely not sure how in the world this book would work in audio, and I don't think I would have found it as engrossing a read on an e-reader screen. There were sections where I literally had to keep turning the book sideways or on its head to be able to read everything. It's a very interesting take on the epistolary format. 

I can absolutely see why this book wouldn't be a 5-star read for some people. It was a bit slow to catch my interest in the beginning, but since it's not divided into chapters like a traditional book, but interview transcripts, memos, chat logs, and the like, it's very easy to get tempted to read just a little bit more, since each individual section is so short. Once things really started escalating, I had trouble putting the book down. I stayed up until far too late o'clock on a work night just to finish it (and had to actually peek at the ending about halfway through the book because all the tension was going to kill me if I didn't know how it all turned out). So to me, this was a five-star read, even though some of the characterisation probably could have been deeper, and parts of the book were pure horror, and really upsettingly graphic when it came to the violence perpetrated by those afflicted with the virus. 

I have now bought this book for my keeper shelf, along with the two sequels, if they're even half as gripping as this one, I want physical copies of them for my very own. Also, having read the first one in a physical format, I'm not even sure it would be possible to get all the necessary information if you read them as an e-book or listened to it in audio. 

Judging a book by its cover: The reds and oranges are very eye-catching and I'm not entirely sure what the cover is supposed to show, but I think it might be a firestorm, suggesting either the original attack on Kady and Ezra's home world or the subsequent explosion of one of the evacuation ships. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Books 87-91: "Spy x Family, vol 1-5" by Tatsuya Endo

Total page count: 1040 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Agent Twilight is the best spy in the business and he's willing to do absolutely anything to protect his country. For his latest mission, Operation Strix, he needs to get close to high-ranking politician Desmond Donovan. To do this, he needs to be married and have a child and said child needs to be admitted to the prestigious Eden Academy, where Desmond Donovan's son Damien is a pupil. Agent Twilight creates the alias Loid Forger, a clinical psychiatrist, to complete the mission. Since he has to have a child, he adopts a young girl from an orphanage. The adorable Anya turns out to be a telepath and can read minds. She desperately wants a family and reads Twilight's mind to try to be the perfect daughter to him. Twilight/Loid also requires a wife, and so enters into a marriage of convenience to Yor Briar, seemingly a timid office clerk. Unbeknownst to Twilight, Yor is also a skilled assassin, working under the code name "Thorn Princess". Only Anya knows about the secret identities of her adoptive parents, and neither of them knows she can read their minds. 

In the first volume, Twilight needs to create his Loid Forger persona and acquire the family necessary to pull off his mission. He adopts Anya, who he needs to tutor well enough to pass the entrance exam to Eden Academy. He marries Yor Briar, to have a suitable wife and stepmother to his "daughter". After a lot of shenanigans, they get through the family interview at Eden Academy, but it's unclear whether Anya will actually get accepted.

In volume 2, it becomes clear that Anya has in fact got a spot at the Academy. Twilight/Loid wants her to befriend Damien Desmond, the son of his target, but that really doesn't work out too well. The children pretty much become antagonists, but Anya befriends the wealthy Becky instead. Twilight/Loid is a bit despondent, but being a master spy, doesn't let small obstacles hinder him from achieving success. Yor's younger brother Yuri comes to visit the family and is deeply jealous of anyone taking away his sister's attention from him. Twilight/Loid discovers that Yuri works for the Secret Police.

At the beginning of volume 3, Yor and Twilight/Loid have to work together to convince Yor's brother Yuri that they are a happy couple, and have in fact been married for over a year. Yor asks her co-workers for help to be a better wife, and Twilight/Loid is reassured that despite her brother working for the Secret Police, his wife is not a threat to his mission. Anya manages to earn a Stella star, an important academic achievement at school and tells Twilight/Loid that she wants a dog as a reward.

In volume 4, the Forger family acquires a dog for Anya, the fluffy and courageous Bond, who can occasionally see the future. Bond is part of a gang of dogs trained by terrorists (who also kidnap Anya for a while), but Bond and Anya work together to foil the terrorists, with some assistance from both of Anya's parents.

In volume 5, Yor tries to become a better cook, since her cooking efforts hitherto have been dreadful. Anya manages to help Damian win an art prize at school but is terrified when she realises she will have to sit the midterm during the dark of the moon, the one time of the month when her telepathic powers don't work. Yuri, trying to impress his sister, offers to tutor Anya. Twilight/Loid is prepared to break into the school to alter her results, making sure she passes, but instead runs into another (much more inept spy) who is trying to alter the exam results of the Desmond brothers, making it seem that they would fail. Anya passes her exams, and Twilight/Loid makes sure that the Desmond brothers' results remain unaltered. In the final chapter of the story, we are introduced to Fiona Frost, one of Twilight/Loid's fellow spies. She secretly loves Twilight and wants to scare Yor away, so she (Fiona) can take her place in the mission as Twilight's wife. 

These manga adventures are ridiculously entertaining, and I've had a lot of fun reading them since I started this summer. I know there is also an anime series, but since it's a right faff making my VPN work properly so I can watch them, I haven't yet gotten around to watching the show (my BFF Lydia loves it, though). I would love for there to be more actual romance between Twilight/Loid and Yor (everyone knows that marriages of convenience eventually lead to actual love, right?), but these stories are so much fun and I can't wait to see where the story goes next. 

Judging the books by their covers: I really like the art style of this manga, and each volume features one of the characters on the cover. Volume 1 has Agent Twilight/Loid Forger on the cover, volume 2 has Anya, volume 3 has Lor (dressed in her elegant assassin costume), volume 4 has Bond (best doggo!) and volume 5 has Lor's extremely unhealthily attached brother Yuri. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 8: "A Good Girl's Guide to Murder" by Holly Jackson

Page count: 433 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR15 Passport Challenge - New to me author

Five years ago, blonde and beautiful high school girl Andie Bell was murdered, although no one ever found her body, despite careful searching. However, Andie's boyfriend Sal Singh confessed in a text message to his dad and then committed suicide before he could be arrested by the police. So everyone knows that he did it, and the case is closed. 

Pippa Fitz-Amobi remembers Sal Singh as a kind and considerate young man, with a promising university career ahead of him. She doesn't really believe he killed Andie, and as her senior project in high school, she claims to be focusing on how media bias might have affected the reports of the murder case, but in reality, she plans to re-investigate the whole case and hopefully clear Sal's name. After interviewing Sal's younger brother Ravi about his recollections about the case, he figures out what she's doing and insists on being allowed to help in the investigation. Ravi unsuccessfully tried to clear his brother's name a few years ago but got nowhere, in part because the police refused to even speak to him.

Pippa knows the police isn't going to be forthcoming with information about a case they consider solved and closed, and she plans to use more unconventional ways to figure out what actually happened when Andie disappeared and was most likely murdered. As she keeps contacting Andie and Sal's family members, friends, and acquaintances, she starts to discover that Andie Bell certainly wasn't as innocent and angelic as the public image of her would have it in the press and case documents. 

If Pippa is correct, and Sal Singh didn't kill Angie, and may in fact have been the victim of a crime himself, then there is a murderer (or several) out there, unhappy about her trying to uncover secrets. Pippa starts getting anonymous threats, and when they only spur her to investigate more thoroughly, the threats start getting a lot more vicious. Will Pippa and Ravi be able to solve the five-year-old murder and clear Sal's name? Or is Pippa going to end up being the unknown killer's next victim?

I've been seeing Holly Jackson's books all over the place for the last few years, including in the first season of Heartstopper on Netflix (this is one of the many books Isaac reads). I could do an internet search to check, but I'm guessing that one of the reasons I'm seeing her books in all the bookstores is because of Tik Tok, as pretty much all the authors who seem to be enjoying impressive sales have had them boosted by Tik Tok attention. Either way, as this fit, not one, but two of the keywords in my Monthly Keyword challenge for January, as well as into a whole host of my other reading challenges (I'm really trying to be good about reading books I already own this year). 

This was a quick read, but also kind of reminded me why I don't read a lot of crime and suspense novels anymore. It may be aimed at young adults, but there was more than enough unpleasant tension in this book as the threats to Pippa come more frequently and become more serious. Just as I don't really like being scared and tend to avoid the horror genre because of it, I'm not super fond of being on edge because of threats and tension toward the characters I'm reading about. The characters in this are all really well drawn and Pippa and her family especially are very likable. I didn't want bad things to happen to any of them.

There are two more books in this series, where Pippa keeps getting entangled in murder investigations. I probably will get round to reading them at some point, this was a really well-written book. I just think I need to be in a different emotional space when I do. 

Judging a Book by its Cover: Both the US and UK editions of this book have the red "murder board" thread on the cover, but on the whole, I much prefer the cleaner, brighter mostly white cover of the UK edition that I have to the primarily grey cover of the US edition, with the title on little torn-up pieces of paper. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 47: "Mister Impossible" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 340 pages

Rating: 4 stars

This is NOT the place to start if you're not caught up. Begin either with the start of this trilogy, Call Down the Hawk, or with the start of the previous series (in which Ronan is an essential character), The Raven Boys. 

This book kicks off a little while after the rather dramatic cliffhanger that the previous book left us with. Ronan and Hennessey are fugitives from the Moderators, learning new and helpful tricks to deal with their mysterious hunters from the enigmatic Bryde. According to him, something is blocking and diminishing the powers of the dreamers and it's up to Bryde, Ronan, and Hennessey to unblock things. They remain incommunicado with those who worry and care for them - Declan, Matthew, Adam, and Jordan are all left to figure out how to proceed, while their loved ones seem to be taking up eco-terrorism. 

Jordan, especially, who has never lived alone in her life, needs to discover who she is away from Hennessey and her dead dreamt sisters. The mysterious women-run organisation known as Boudicca certainly seems interested in her art. Through them, Jordan discovers the existence of sweetmetals, strange objects that can keep a dreamed object (or person) awake even if their dreamer dies. And since Ronan and Hennessey certainly seem to be risking their lives doing whatever it is they're doing - both Jordan and Declan have a vested interest in trying to get their hands on some powerful sweetmetals as soon as possible, preferably without ending up in lifetime servitude to Boudicca. 

Meanwhile, Carmen Farooq-Lane is getting more and more convinced that while some dreamers may be dangerous and provide a threat to society, the vast majority are just harmless people trying to live their lives, and murdering them without compunction make the Moderators just as bad, if not worse, than most dreamers.

This is a bridging book of sorts, and I can tell you it very much didn't go where I was expecting it. A central concept in all of these books, starting with The Raven Cycle, is the importance of ley lines. I don't think either the characters or Ms. Stiefvater's readers were really prepared for how the ley lines were going to play into everything. I can say that anyone who was hoping that this trilogy would be the thrilling romantic continuation of Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish are going to be very disappointed indeed. Of course, in place of the romance that I'm sure many wanted, we get the rather lovely romance of Declan Lynch (who I still can't believe I love and adore as much as I do) and Jordan, Hennessey's dreamed twin. 

There were certain things in the book that didn't really work so well for me. Bryde is far too mysterious and vague to really feel like a proper character. He keeps trying to force Ronan and Hennessey into learning to be better, more efficient dreamers with a lot of philosophical questions and platitudes, and I found him generally boring. I guess discovering where he came from was a bit interesting, but I'm still not entirely sure about the how and why of him. I was also generally not that interested in the ongoing moral qualms of Carmen and her visionary sidekick Liliana. Every time the plot focused too long on either Bryde or Carmen, I was tempted to skip ahead. 

Nevertheless, this was certainly an interesting ride, and I can't wait to see where Stiefvater is taking this next. She certainly excels at cliffhangers - and I'm so grateful that I waited until the trilogy was completed to catch up, so I don't have to wait an entire year to find out what happens to my fantastical babies next. 

Judging a book by its cover: It's obvious to anyone who has read the first book that the very cool individuals on the cover here are clearly Ronan and Hennessey. They have their dreamt swords and their careless attitudes and having now finished the book, I also know which car they're standing in front of. I still think the cover is a strange follow-up to the hawk on the cover of book 1, the image styles don't really go together. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR11 Book 61: "My Sister, the Serial Killer" by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Page count: 240 pages
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR11 Bingo: Pajiba (reviewed by Kayleigh here)

Official book description:

Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her "missing" boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.

A kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works, is the bright spot in her life. She dreams of the day when he will realize they're perfect for each other. But one day Ayoola shows up to the hospital uninvited and he takes notice. When he asks Korede for Ayoola's phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and what she will do about it.

This is not a mystery novel. It says right there in the title what the book is about. While Korede, our protagonist, tries to figure out the WHYs of the three men her young sister Ayoola has killed so far (until she calls Korede after the third time, Korede could at least pretend to herself that her sister just had very bad luck with men and had killed the first two in self defense), there is no question of WHO or HOW.

Korede may seem constantly frustrated by her younger sister, and at times rather jealous of her, but there is no doubt about the love the sisters share, or the harrowing upbringing that forged their relationship. Korede would clearly like a good man who loves her, but when the doctor she pines for falls for Ayoola after one brief meeting and becomes just as obsessed as the previous suitors, it becomes clear that he's really not looking for depth and personality and is no where near good enough a partner for Korede, really.

The novel is short and satirical and a lot of people a lot more clever than I have already talked about the way it challenges gender roles, beauty ideals and the like in modern day Nigeria. It's certainly very feminist, none of the men in the story come across particularly well, with the possible exception of Femi, but he's dead as the story begins. I thought this was an interesting portrayal of a very close, but complex sibling relationship. Korede keeps despairing that she needs to take care of her sister and (literally) clean up her messes, but for all her doubts, she keeps showing up and her loyalty to her sister trumps anything else in her life. She may feel frustrated that Ayoola have men falling for her and women clambering to be friends with her, just because of her looks and charm, while Korede works hard (even gets promoted to head nurse) and inhabits a lot of the virtues and skills a perfect wife should have, but keeps being ignored and overlooked. Nevertheless, she can't give up on her sister.The ending of the book, which almost seemed inevitable, made me rather sad.

This book has been reviewed by many Cannonballers already, and on the basis of several of those recommendations, I got the book in an e-book sale back in April. It seemed only suitable that I find a square for it somewhere on the Bingo card. I didn't love it as much as many have, but I thought it was funny and clever and it's such a very fast read.

Judging a book by its cover: I like the cover, with its contrast between the warm browns and the bright, almost neon green. I don't know if the rather elegant-looking woman on the cover is meant to be Korede or Ayoola, but she looks good.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 62: "Mr and Mr Smith" by HelenKay Dimon

Page count: 210 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

From Goodreads:
Fisher Braun knows how to keep a secret. As a covert paramilitary operative, his job - and his life - depends on it. He's at the top of his game, ready for action and always in control. No enemy has ever brought him to his knees, but one lover has: Zachary Allen, the man currently sharing his bed. The perfect package of brains and brawn, Zach is someone worth coming home to, and Fisher hates keeping him in the dark about what he does. But the lies keep Zach safe. Until the day Fisher loses everything...

Zachary Allen is no innocent civilian. Although he plays a tech geek, in reality he's deep undercover for the CIA. In a horrible twist of face, the criminal enterprise he's infiltrated has set its sights on the man whose touch drives him wild. Zach would do anything for Fisher - except blow his own cover. Now, in order to save him, Zach must betray him first. And he needs Fisher to trust him with all his heart if they want to make it out alive. 

This is the first book I've ever read by HelenKay Dimon, so I can't tell you if it's a typical book for her, or some new and exciting direction she's taking her fiction in. A quick glance at Goodreads shows me that she has written quite a lot of books that all seem to be romantic suspense, some with a m/f and others with m/m focus. In this series, Tough Love, we are introduced to a team of CIA agents, who have clearly worked together for many missions on various paramilitary missions all over the globe. They're a tight-knit and experienced unit, who clearly know each other very well, but Fisher has been hiding the fact that he's gay, and has had a boyfriend hidden away in an apartment for the las few months, from the rest of the group. He's been lying to his boyfriend, claiming to be an engineer, making up excuses every time he gets shipped off to do something insanely dangerous to keep the world safe.

Now his boyfriend appears to have been kidnapped, and Fisher is absolutely frantic. He believes his boyfriend Zach to be a nerdy computer technician and has always feared that his life of spying and covert ops will endanger Zach in some way. Finding him snatched from their home pretty much confirms this. Fisher's partner, Nathan, is rather amused at Fisher's admission that he's gay, as it seems to have been blatantly obvious to the entire team that Fisher had no interest in the ladies. He's more curious as to why Fisher's been lying both about where he's been living for the last three months, and whom he's been living with. He insists on coming with Fisher to confront the kidnappers, who turn out to be a pretty nasty bunch of individuals, and while captive with that organisation, they discover that Zach isn't so much a kidnapping victim as someone who's job it was to hit on Fisher and insinuate himself into his life so he could spy on him for the group.

Fisher is absolutely gutted, and it takes both Fisher and Nathan a long time to believe that Zach is telling the truth about being an undercover CIA agent tasked to infiltrate these high-level kidnappers. Even after Zach's identity has been verified both by the Fisher and Zach's respective supervisors, Fisher feels incredibly betrayed. He believed Zach to be an innocent civilian, and now can't trust anything they had together. Having already dealt with his fair share of betrayal and rejection when he came out to his family, Fisher has always kept himself slightly apart from others, not really daring to trust. Although he's not ready to admit it to himself, he's clearly fallen pretty hard for Zach (everyone else around him can see it) and now he doesn't know what to do with himself.

When helping Fisher and Nathan escape, Zach knows that he most likely broke his cover, but the ruthless organisation he's been infiltrating still needs to be stopped, and he has to return to them, even if it means risking his own life. While Fisher is furious with him, and claims he doesn't care what happens to Zach, he's clearly in denial and needs to be convinced that his superiors, and Zach, know what they're doing.

We are thrown straight into the action in this book, and it very rarely lets up at any point. I suppose in a book of just two hundred pages, you don't really have a lot of pages to spend on slowly building exposition, but it felt a bit jarring occasionally to have everything revealed in little flashbacks while the main story was going ahead at full tilt. I didn't really feel like I was able to get invested in Fisher and Zach's relationship before it was in danger of crumbling. Even with the tight plotting and low page count, Dimon manages to spend some time introducing sequel-bait, a German secret agent also working undercover with the kidnappers and the youngest, apparently less-criminally inclined than his siblings brother of the criminal enterprise. In many ways, their pairing seemed more interesting to me, so Ms. Dimon's tactics clearly worked, I'm very likely to track down the next book in the series as well.

All in all, I would have preferred a few more quiet scenes and a bit more exposition, where I felt like I really got to know Fisher and Zach and therefore could care more about their relationship. I also found at least one of the sex scenes in the book somewhat implausible, considering both the anger and trust issues on either side and the time constraints with regards to the guys' mission, but what do I know? It seemed like at least one of the scenes was in there so the readers got enough smexy times, without it really feeling organic to the plot.

This hasn't exactly been my favourite read of the season, but I am a fan of action movies, and they're not always very big on character development either. So since this is a big budget action movie in romance form, I guess I can't be too picky. Several of Fisher's team members provide excellent comic relief as supporting characters, and as I said, I am very intrigued by the pairing set up for the sequel, so this will clearly not be the last HelenKay Dimon book I read. If you like romantic suspense, and don't really want anything too time-consuming to read, I suspect this will do you nicely.

Judging a book by its cover: I really don't think much of this cover, where they've clearly just found some random male models and posed them casually. These men don't in any way look like convincing secret agents or former soldiers. They just look like they're fighting constipation or pondering how to turn left. While they're not both exactly doing Blue Steel, there are some heavy Zoolander vibes here.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 23: "A Study in Charlotte" by Brittany Cavallaro

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

English teenage boy James "Jamie" (although he really would prefer it if you didn't call him that, even if NO ONE seems to listen to him) Watson has been given a scholarship to a preppy boarding school in Connecticut, not far away from where his father lives with his new family. He's rather excited about the chance to meet another of the students there, though, the already famous Charlotte Holmes. James and Charlotte's great-great-great-grandfathers were one of the most famous pairings in history, after all, and even though their families don't exactly keep in touch much after all these years, James has always imagined what adventures he might have with Charlotte if he ever got a chance to meet her.

What he had not imagined was becoming a number one murder suspect right along with her, however. When a fellow student turns up dead in his dorm room, about two weeks after James beat said student up for saying some really unpleasant things about Charlotte, in a murder clearly inspired by some of Watson's great-great-great-grandfather's stories, being the new kid in school becomes about a million times worse than it normally is. While the prickly, troubled and volatile Charlotte previously showed no interest in making friends, she now enlists James in her quest to clear their names. The murderer has a powerful grudge against Charlotte Holmes, it seems, and appears quite happy to continue trying to ruin her life, and James Watson's along with her, if he keeps insisting that he wants to be her friend.

This book appeared on a lot of "Best of 2016 YA lists" and is one in a long line of current adaptations where authors/screen writers are reimagining the stories of Sherlock Holmes in new ways or taking inspiration from them to do their own thing. Off the top of my head, in addition to the Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes movies, the BBC Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, Elementary with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, there is also Colleen Gleason's Steampunk YA series, Stoker and Holmes, Ellie Marney's Every series (which I just finished) and Sherry Thomas' gender-bent historicals, Lady Sherlock. So it isn't like Britanny Cavallaro is doing something entirely new or wholly original, but rather taking advantage of an already popular trend.

Her take is a fun one, but I must admit, for a book called A Study in Charlotte, I felt like the character I got to know the best of the two was James, and Charlotte, for all that she's not exactly had an easy life of it, remained a cipher for much of the book and a fairly dislikable one at that. Obviously, being a Holmes, she's frankly supposed to be prickly, unpredictable, volatile and somewhat socially inept. And within a fictional framework where it's quite clear that the Holmes family for generations have expected nothing but brilliance and deductive reasoning from their children, it's no surprise that she's high-maintenance.

As Holmes are wont to do, she self-medicates with a number of substances. It's suggested that she may have an eating disorder and based on what is revealed, she has good reason to want the murder victim dead, as he harassed her for months and worse. I also know that it's important that female characters are allowed to be just as complex and dislikable as male ones, that there is this understanding that girl and women need to be agreeable and pleasant. So I respect Charlotte's right to be prickly, and Cavallaro's right to write her as such. I just think James deserves a better friend. For all that she claims to care for him, and has difficulties showing her emotions, I think she treats him abominably for much of the book and didn't really see why he kept wanting them to be friends.

James/Jamie is a great character. Smart (if nowhere near as brilliant as Charlotte), loyal, steadfast and quite brave, all the things a good Watson should be. He defends Charlotte's honour even before he really knows her, and due to the family legacy, he's always felt as if they belonged together as a team. He just accepts so much poor treatment from her without question and seems to feel guilty every time he asks her for things that it's perfectly ok to expect of friends. That makes me sad, because he really does seem like a pretty great guy, and grows a lot as a person and friend throughout the book.

The mystery in the book is an intricate one, and the villain is really very unpleasant. The lengths they are willing to go to completely ruin Charlotte's life (with Watson as bonus collateral damage) are quite staggering and if this is merely the first book in a planned trilogy, you've got to wonder what the author has planned for the rest of the series, considering these things frequently escalate with each book.

While I didn't really like Charlotte much in this book, she seems to be opening up to the idea of friendship and I liked James and the whole premise of generations of Holmes and Watsons being connected somehow and will probably read the next book in the series as well. I don't think there needs to be anything romantic between the two, though (my favourite thing about Elementary is that there is not even a hint of romantic/sexual tension between Sherlock and Joan), but it seems you can't get YA without a romantic subplot nowadays, so I suppose I shall have to accept it, since the author chose to introduce it.

Judging a book by its cover: While I wish it had a slightly different colour scheme (I think the orangey red and the turquoise is a bit garish), I really do like the cover for this book, with the stylised depictions of the characters, various locations and the continued focus on ivy leaves in all the various scenes. It's certainly a lot better than a lot of YA covers, and the girl with the magnifying glass and the handbag with a snake should clue the reader into the fact that this is a mystery, even if the cheesy tagline about Holmes and Watson hadn't already done it.

 Crossposted on Cannonball Read.