#CBR12 Book 54: "Take a Hint, Dani Brown" by Talia Hibbert

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 5 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Yellow

Official book description:

Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.

When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and ex-rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Now half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse?

Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf’s secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his... um, thighs.

Suddenly, the easy lay Dani dreamed of is more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint?

While this is the second book in the Brown Sisters series, you don't strictly speaking need to read Get a Life, Chloe Brown in order to understand or enjoy this one. It works perfectly well on its own, but the first book is also a very sweet and enjoyable romance, which I would also highly recommend. 

It's so much harder to review books that you really love, isn't it? I can't even put into words entirely why I adored this book, maybe it was just the right book at the right time for me? Nonetheless, I will try to put down some bullet points about why I am certain this book is going in my top 10 at the end of the year, and quite possibly in my top 3.

Things I loved:

• Zaf. Zafir "Zaf" Ansari used to be a professional rugby player (not like national level or anything, but he still had a promising career ahead of him). Then his father and beloved older brother died in a car accident, and Zaf's world imploded. The press got wind of the accident and the extra attention combined with his crippling grief caused him to spiral into anxiety and depression. Now, years later, Zaf is trying to use his knowledge both of mental health issues and athletics to teach young athletes to get in touch with their softer side and combat toxic masculinity. His sports charity isn't exactly going too well though, as Zaf could be better at social media than he is, and he's also deeply reluctant to advertise his past as a professional player, worried that his tragic back story is going to be brought up again. As well as being a super guy who volunteers to work with angry youths, Zaf is a loyal friend, great son, brother-in-law and uncle (I adored the relationship he had with all of them) and he reads romance novels in his spare time! He's also tall, and strong and fit and has a gorgeous beard. How can you not love a hero like that?
• Dani. While Danika "Dani" Brown is a much harder nut to crack, being super focused on her research, her Ph.D and her goal to becoming a professor. When she's focused on work, she can forget to sleep or eat, and certainly about things like a significant other's birthday or anniversaries and such. Due to a series of bad relationships, Dani has become convinced that she is utterly unlovable and that she has neither the time for or need of softer feelings like love and affection (despite the fact that she clearly loves and is deeply loved by her two sisters, her grandmother and her best friend Socha). She wants a no-strings-attached, purely sexual relationship with someone, but nothing involving mushy things like hand-holding, cuddling, spending the night together or the like.
• The various friend and family relationships in this book, both on Zaf's and Dani's side. There's an amazing cast of supporting characters here. With the exception of Sorcha, Dani's best friend, I'd "met" all of the ones on Dani's side before, in Get a Life, Chloe Brown. Dani's older sister Chloe; Red, Chloe's boyfriend; Eve, Dani's younger sister and their rather eccentric grandmother all appear to lend support at one point or another. On Zaf's side, there is his lovely mother, his best friend Jamal, his sister-in-law Kiran and his snarky niece Fatima (who is also one of Dani's students). These characters felt completely real to me. There's a tiny secondary romance happening behind the scenes between Jamal and Kiran, which I would also happily read a whole book about.
• The relationship between Dani and Zaf, even before they agree to 'fake date' and are just flirting and trading quips every morning. The way Dani is concerned about Zaf and his feelings, even when she claims not to care about anyone else. The way Zaf is utterly fascinated by all of Dani's knowledge and academic expertise and not at all threatened by the fact that she is brilliant and driven and has very clear career plans. The scenes where they are forced to play a 'newly-weds' type game on the radio, unexpected, and discover just how much they know about each other, even though they're only pretending to be a couple, is lovely and very funny.
• The grand gesture that Dani performs in order to prove to Zaf that she actually cares about him (and the secret she reveals that she's been working on in the epilogue - such squee!)
• Slightly spoilery - NO pregnancy epilogue, because for a lot of people, having babies is NOT the goal!

I love this book so much and while Eve, the youngest sister, sort of annoyed me in the first book (she has a tendency to use the wrong word for things and get annoyed when others try to correct her - it drove me mad), I am now really excited and hopeful about her book as well. Based on the first two books in the series, Talia Hibbert has my complete trust and I'm so glad I've discovered another contemporary romance author to enjoy.

Judging a book by its cover: While I'm normally not the greatest fan of the cartoon cover trend, for some reason I'm charmed silly by the ones on Talia Hibbert's books. The little cartoon Zaf carrying Dani, with her bright pink hair, and the little pile of books in the background, it all works for me. I also really like that while the first book in the series was a pretty boring white, this is a cheerful and distinctive bright yellow.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

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

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

#CBR12 Bingo: Debut

Official book description:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR12 Book 52: "Call Down the Hawk" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 480 pages
Audio book length: 13 hrs 45 mins
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Orange

This is the start of a new series, so it stands alone. You don't have to have read Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series, starting with The Raven Boys, but it gives a lot of useful background to Ronan and the other Lynch brothers. 

Official book description:

The dreamers walk among us . . . and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming – they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives – they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.

And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all.

Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.

Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.

Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer . . . and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed. . . . 

In this new Dreamer trilogy, Maggie Stiefvater takes some of the characters from her Raven Cycle, like the deeply spiky and hostile Ronan Lynch and his boyfriend Adam Parrish and writes a new story, which also gives more room and development to some who were very peripheral supporting cast, like Ronan's brothers Declan and Matthew. She also introduces a number of new characters, like the talented art forger Jordan Hennessey, who hides the fact that all the women she lives with, are in fact, copies of herself that she dreamed into being. Women who will become comatose shells if she ever dies - and with each dream where she brings forth a copy, she comes a little bit closer to that point. There's also Carmen Farooq-Lane, who works with a group of people determined to track down dreamers, and either make them stop dreaming (which is impossible, then they'll eventually die) or kill them. There is a dangerous prophecy, you see, that one or more dreamers will bring forth the end of the world. While she's unhappy about her assignment and haunted by the fact that she had to help bring down her own brother, she really doesn't feel she has a choice. She's helping to stop Armageddon. 

Ronan and Declan, always at odds, are both haunted by the legacy of their father, the charming, but dangerous Niall Lynch. He was killed very suddenly, and clearly didn't have the time, or possibly just didn't have the inclination, to teach his son the art of dreaming safely. Adam, Ronan's true love, has gone away to college, and due to the dangers that Ronan can manifest when he dreams, he cannot move from the family home, and unfortunate and difficult to explain away things happen when he goes to visit Adam at school, effectively banning him from campus. Now he basically starts having guest appearances in his dreams from another dreamer, who keeps setting him tasks and leading him on a merry chase, for reasons unknown. 

Declan, the eldest, left with the legal responsibility for his brothers when their father died, and their mother, a dream creation of his, drifted into sleep forever, tries desperately to appear as normal and inconspicuous as possible. He dresses to be non-descript, he makes sure to make himself invaluable to his employers in Washington D.C, but not so much so that he might get promoted into a position where people might take a good look at him or his family. Declan has trouble eating and sleeping and worries constantly, something neither of his brothers seem aware of at all. Declan comes to discover that there are more secrets in his past than even he suspected, and he and Ronan will need to find a way to work together to figure them out.

Sweet, good-natured Matthew Lynch has absolutely no idea that he isn't actually one of Niall's three sons, that he was dreamt into creation by Ronan as a child, and raised alongside the two young men he considers brother. If Ronan and Declan are united in anything, it's that Matthew is to be kept safe, and unaware of his own true nature. But something is up with Matthew. He keeps leaving his fancy prep school and running off to look at a particular river - and it may prove difficult to keep the truth from him for much longer.

As well as the Lynch brothers, we have Hennessey and her unfortunate dreamt sisters, whose doom is approaching all the quicker if Hennessey doesn't learn to control her dreams more. While Ronan learned little from his own father, Hennessey learned even less from her famous artist mother, who committed suicide in front of her. She sets a timer to keep herself from falling asleep for more than a few minutes at a time, knowing that each time she dreams properly, she brings out another copy of herself from the dreams, and comes one step closer to her own death.

There is also Carmen Farooq-Lane, who has to babysit a surly, German, teenage visionary, trying to figure out where the dreamer who is going to doom them all is located. She's dutiful, yet conflicted and frequently feels frustrated about her mission brief. 

I remember thinking that The Raven King, the fourth and concluding volume in the Raven Cycle wasn't everything I wanted it to be, and was a bit let down by the ending and pacing of the book. In October 2019, Maggie Stiefvater posted a lengthy, very honest blog post, explaining just how little of the book she actually remembers writing, because she was struggling with really debilitating health problems at the time, and nearly died before they figured out what was wrong with her. So it seems the fact that it works as well as it does is remarkable. 

Now that Stiefvater is healthy again, she writes as lyrically and vividly as always. She's hidden that Ronan is one of her favourite characters, and that there is a lot of her in him. He's a character who it's difficult to like, because he's so angry and defensive and sharp, but you can't help but love him. I really liked learning more about his brothers, and hope the family dynamics become something closer and healthier in the coming books, after some of the revelations in this one. 

I was glad to revisit characters I already knew, and it's always good to meet more of Stiefvater's creations. She writes so well, and I'm glad she's healthy and thriving and writing a new series of books for me to enjoy. Neither the title nor the release date for book 2 is out yet, so I shall just sit, impatiently waiting, for more about the Lynches, and Jordan and Hennessey and Farooq-Lane. I suspect they are all going interesting places. 

 

Judging a book by its cover: This is one of those books that I ended up owning both in paperback and audio format. The paperback I have is the UK edition, where the hawk on the cover (and of the title) looks a bit more stylised and the colour scheme is more peach than orange. Nevertheless, the audiobook cover is the US one, with a lot of orange both in the font used for the title and in the background for the swooping hawk. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR12 Book 51: "The Disasters" by M.K. England

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Violet

All Nax Hall has ever dreamed of is going Ellis Station Academy and qualifying as a pilot. Unfortunately, he fails his entrance exam and is sent packing after less than twenty-four hours. Sharing his fate are Rion, Case and Zee, and while they're all waiting for their one-way shuttle back to Earth, they are witness to a terrorist attack on the space station. The four teens manage to steal themselves a small shuttle and narrowly escape getting killed by the attackers. While they know that jumping their space ship into one of the new colony worlds means they can never return home, they have no other choice if they want to escape being exploded.

After crash-landing their shuttle on al-Rihla, one of Earth's earliest colony planets, the four runaways decide that they need to contact the authorities and warn them about the attack on the Academy. They quickly discover, however, that individuals on board the station were clearly working with the terrorists, have covered up the extent of the attack, and blamed what damages couldn't be hidden on Nax and his new crew, who after all, stole a space shuttle and did an unauthorised jump through space. All channels of communication to Earth are cut off, there is no way for our young fuck-ups to warn anyone about anything. They also only barely avoid getting arrested, helped by the mysterious Asra, who wants to help them, in return for some assistance with a heist - they need to steal another space shuttle and take her with them when they fly off-planet. 

The five young fugitives come to realise that the terrorists' plot is much wider-ranging than just taking over Ellis Station Academy. They only have a limited amount of time to track down help and try to save multiple colony planets from being destroyed. 

This was one of the four books selected for Cannonball Book Club's June meeting - The Future is Queer. There's a bunch of LGBTQIA-representation here, as well as representation of other kinds. Nax is bi, Rion is gay, Zee is trans. Nax and Asra (as well as their families) are Muslim. This was a fun book once it got going properly, but I'm not giving it more than 3.5 stars because I wish we'd had a bit more backstory and characterisation given to Rion, Case and Zee, and it took me quite a while to really get into the book (even with the action-packed start). I picked it up and put it down multiple times in the first few chapters. Once they all agree on their exciting space heist and the subsequent rescue mission, I read through the rest of the book quite quickly.

Nax has a complicated relationship with his parents and older brother. Asra's family situation is also very complicated. I wish I could tell you more about the others, but that wasn't really covered, which is one of the things I would have liked MORE of. 

Still, this is England's debut novel and I'm sure she's going to improve in time. It wasn't a bad book, it just could have been even better with a few improvements. 

Judging a book by its cover: Purple is my favourite colour, so I'm in no way complaining about the choice of background colour here. I just think that maybe the cover could have been a bit more elaborate than a space helmet with some spray paint on it. It's a bit too minimalist for my tastes. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 50: "Beach Read" by Emily Henry

Page count: 384 pages
Audio book length: 10 hrs 13 mins
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Pandemic (read what you want)

Official book description: 

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They're polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really. 

I suspect quite a few people who picked up this book, based on the bright, colourful cover and the light-hearted title were in for quite a surprise if they hadn't read up on the book in advance. This book is not a light, funny, frothy summer read. It doesn't feature anyone sitting or lying on towels on golden sand (despite living in actual beach houses, Gus and January spend remarkably little time on the actual beach). It is nevertheless a good romance, where the characters spend a lot of time reconnecting (they used to go to college together) and becoming fast friends before they realise that they've fallen for one another.

It just seems like it's important to address that our heroine, romance author January Andrews, starts the book in a pretty dark place. When her beloved father unexpectedly died, she discovered that he'd been having an affair. Not only that, but her mother knew about it, did nothing, and helped hide the fact from January. In the months after his funeral, when she was overcome with grief, January's handsome doctor boyfriend dumped her. Now she's pretty much homeless, broke, and needs to write a new book in a few months, or her publisher may drop her. Unfortunately, her belief in true love, meet-cutes, and happily-ever-afters has been completely obliterated. Because she has nowhere else to stay, she's forced to go stay in the beach house in Michigan where her father used to meet up with his mistress. Living in the town where said mistress still resides, in fact. Living in her father's love nest isn't exactly inspiring her creative juices.

To make matters possibly worse, she discovers that the surly neighbour who plays loud music at late-night parties is none other than her old college critique partner, now bestselling author, Augustus Everett. January is used to her writing being dismissed and assumes acclaimed literary darling Augustus will think the same as most others. She's rather relieved when she discovers he suffers from writing block too. The neighbours make a bet - Augustus will try to write a romantic comedy with a happy ending, while January will write something dark and serious that will please literary critics. The first one to get their book published wins. The loser will enthusiastically promote the other's work. January will teach Gus about all the popular romance tropes, he will help her do serious research and allow her to sit in on his interviews with survivors of a death cult.

Changing pace and genre seems to invigorate both of them, and soon both January and Gus are writing more than they have in months. They develop a fast friendship and start talking to each other about a lot of things, but both of them take time to share the emotional scars of their pasts with one another, which is one of the reasons the romance hits a few snags before they find their happy ending. Who wins their little contest? You'll have to read the book to find out.

As far as I'm aware, this is Emily Henry's first adult book, she's previously written a number of young adult novels with some form of paranormal element. I'd only read A Million Junes before this, but have now really liked two books of hers and will absolutely be checking out more in the future. 

Judging a book by its cover: Both the title and the cover of this novel are highly deceptive and frankly actively misleading to the reader. The cover and title promise a fluffy rom-com with people lounging around on beaches, reading, and relaxing. It promises a low-stress, effortless, well, beach read. As this book is about grief, and frustration and overcoming emotional abuse and generally have two characters that at least initially start out some pretty dark places, this cover feels like false advertising. You are not going to get the book promised on the cover.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR12 Book 49: "The Last Wish" by Andrzej Sapkowski

Page count: 360 pages

Audio book length: 10 hrs 27 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Repeat (since I've already covered the Adaptation square)

Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher. This means he roams about the countryside, travelling from place to place, killing monsters for profit. To become a Witcher, he was taken from his family as a child, and long training, magic and special potions make him a strong, fast and highly efficient killer. Based on the stories in this collection, it seems that once, there were a lot more Witchers, now they are rare and unusual, and Geralt is often feared and reviled by the villagers who hire him to help them. 

Geralt seems to have very few friends, with the exception of the bard Dandelion. He also seems to rest up at a convent, confiding his adventures to the Mother Superior every so often (this seemed to be the framing narrative of the stories).

I have very little knowledge of or experience with the popular series of games that were adapted from this. Nor have I yet started the Netflix series, despite the fine figure of Henry 'OMGHISGL' Cavill starring as Geralt. So I cannot tell you how accurate an adaptation of the source material the show is. I've heard good things, and while I found the frame narrative of this short story collection a bit confusing, I liked the way the author took various elements of folklore and established fairy tales and gave them his own twist. The original Polish books were written in the 1990s, and I wish the portrayal of women was a bit more nuanced. I've heard that the female characters of the TV show are quite varied, interesting and complex - so that's probably a good update.  

I listened to this in audio, and because it consisted of a series of short stories, it took me a few months to get through it. The narrator is generally fine, but I didn't much care for the way he does Geralt's voice, which becomes a bit of a problem when Geralt is the main character of the stories. I found the stories interesting enough that I'll probably get round to reading the rest in the future, but I'm not feeling any immediate need. 

Judging a book by its cover: Obviously, for something that has been out for as many years as this book, published in a number of countries and languages, there are also many different covers. After the Netflix series was produced, there are also several different tie-in covers available. On mine, Geralt is in the middle of fighting some legendary beastie, possibly a dragon. It looks dynamic and exciting. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

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

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

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

Offical book description:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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