#CBR7 Book 15: "The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy" by Julia Quinn

Page count: 385 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Sir Richard Kenworthy has less than a month to find a bride, and secure her hand in marriage. She can't really be an heiress or a diamond of the first water, because it's really quite imperative that she accept his proposal, no matter what. When he spots Miss Iris Smythe-Smith suffering behind her cello at her family's infamous annual musicale, he is intrigued. Very blond and pale-skinned, she should be unremarkable, but she's clearly good at playing her instrument, which can't be said for her other female relatives. He forces his friend Winston Bevelstoke to introduce him and becomes quite smitten, which wasn't really part of the plan.

Iris is surprised and not a little suspicious when Sir Richard seems so very taken with her. She's used to being overlooked and underestimated and spends most of her time out in society quietly observing others, quite content to rest among the chaperones and the wallflowers. Sir Richard flirts with her, he calls with flowers and insists on taking her for walks. He gives every impression of falling for her, but Iris can't help but wonder why his courtship seems so rushed. When he proposes after only a week's acquaintance, and compromises her with a kiss shortly after, she doesn't really have a choice but to accept him, but it's clear that he is hiding something and she's worried about discovering what it is.

Richard feels deeply guilty about forcing Iris into marriage, especially as after only a week, he has discovered that she is a much better wife than he could ever have dreamed of snaring with his whirlwind courtship. She's witty, clever, caring and loyal and clearly very forbearing of her family member's flaws and foibles, something he desperately hopes will mean that she might eventually forgive him, once she discovers the secrets that forced his hand in marrying her.

This is the fourth and final book in the Smythe-Smith quartet. It's by no means required that you've read any of the other books, although several previous Julia Quinn characters pop up for cameos or are mentioned, and your enjoyment might be increased if you know more about the extended romance universe in which Quinn sets her books. While I love most of her Bridgerton novels and her two latter Bevelstoke novels in particular (I also adore the running gag of the schlocky Gothic Sarah Gorely novels in her later books), her plots have seemed a bit on the overly melodramatic side in these last four books, and in The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy, I think it got almost too much for my disbelief to willingly suspend itself.

While I had my suspicions about some of the things Richard was hiding back on his estate in Yorkshire, I doubt that many would be expecting the full extent of his plans, because that was some soap opera level intrigue right there. There is a lot of the witty banter and light escapism that Quinn is so good at, but when the plot gets as ridiculous as this one did at times, it does spoil my enjoyment somewhat.

Iris was a lovely heroine, though and it's always nice to see romance protagonist who isn't stunningly gorgeous (although there is happily a lot more diversity in the shape and appearance of heroines nowadays). She's learned to be happy with being a wallflower and loves her large and boisterous family, for all their flaws. She's clever and quietly wry, and very much wants to be a good wife and sister-in-law, as well as a capable lady of her own estate. She's flattered by Richard's attentions, but because he's probably the first man to ever really notice her, she is suspicious and with good reason. She's deeply upset when she discovers why their courtship was so sudden, even more so because while Richard was underhanded and deceitful, they also find common ground and make a connection and when the truth comes out, Iris is worried that the affection she believed her husband felt for her is a lie as well. Since she is well on her way to falling in love with him, she feels doubly betrayed.

It's thanks to Iris' calm and quiet competence that the melodramatic plot doesn't spiral completely out of control, though, as once she gets over the initial hurt, she sets about to sort things out. It helps that Richard in no way is a bad man, and the secrets that he's concealing are not of his own doing. He's desperately trying to do the right thing in a difficult situation, but goes about it in a staggeringly foolish way. Unlike in Lady Windermere's Lover, which I read last month, where I thought the hero's actions were pretty much unforgivable and the heroine should have run off with her husband's best friend, I didn't think Richard was undeserving of Iris. The romance part of the plot was sweet and satisfying. I just wished the major complication of the plot hadn't been quite so overblown. I still enjoy Julia Quinn's books, but she may be slipping off my auto-buy list if this trend continues.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

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

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 13: "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" by Ann Brashares

Page count: 303 pages
Rating: 4 stars

 Four fifteen-year-old girls, life-long best friends, are about to spend their first summer apart. On the night before three of them go away, they discover a pair of second-hand jeans that Carmen, the original owner, was planning on getting rid of. They discover that despite their varying heights and body types, the jeans look awesome and super flattering on all four of them, and decide to use the jeans as a device to keep in contact throughout the summer. They make a pact that they need to make the jeans count for something, and have to send them on within one week of receiving them from the previous girl in line. Over the course of eight weeks, the girls will have all had the pants twice.

Beautiful, but very shy Lena is going with her younger sister to visit their grandparents in Greece for the first time. She's annoyed to discover that her grandmother is trying to set her up with Kostos, a very handsome young man from the village, and determines to avoid him just because her grandmother is so adamant that they are perfect for each other. She just wants to work on her painting and brood about being so far away from her friends. After a big misunderstanding, the Kostos' grandparents and her own have a massive falling out, and she spends much of the summer trying to work up the courage to tell everyone the truth and sort everything out again.

Carmen, whose mother is from Costa Rica, is spending the summer with her dad, who she's only had sporadic contact with since her parents got divorced years earlier. She's imagined a relaxed and carefree summer, where she will help her dad shop for bedlinens and kitchen items for his no-doubt sparse bachelor pad, while they eat take-out and discuss movies. Instead she discovers that her father is living with his new fiancee, who has two teenagers of her own, and that they are planning to get married by the end of the summer. Carmen is crushed that her father didn't so much as give her a hint at what to expect, and feels terribly out of place with her new step-family, where everyone is tall and blond and seem more like her father's biological kids than she is. Carmen deals very badly with her new situation and keeps acting more and more like a spoiled brat, until the disastrous visit culminates with her breaking a window and hopping on a bus back to her mother.

Bridget is spending the summer at a soccer camp in Baja, Mexico, where she makes a lot of new friends while still desperately missing her old ones. She falls in love with one of the assistant coaches, and despite extremely strict rules about the players and coaches fraternising in any way, throws herself into an attempt to win his affection. She also has to come to terms with the fact that the coaches won't always let her be the stand-out player on the field, frequently disappointed that the coaches order her to play in positions that limit her abilities.

Finally, Libby isn't going anywhere, facing the prospect of working a retail job at Wallman's pharmacy, jealous of her friends who are off experiencing things. She decides to make a documentary basically showing the sad existence of people around her, but the film making and her summer takes an unexpected turn when she unwittingly befriends twelve-year-old Bailey, who's sick with leukaemia, but refuses to let Libby treat her with any kind of pity. Bailey keeps meeting her at Wallman's after work and insists on helping her with the documentary. Also, since she has had to face up to the possibility of dying, she's a lot less self-pitying and annoying than Libby and her friends.

To begin with, I rolled my eyes a lot when reading this. All four of the girls really are such quintessential teenagers, with their narcissism and their complete lack of perspective, so focused on their own wants and feelings, with very little though for anyone else or the world in general. I work with teenage girls every day, they felt very real, but not necessarily in the most likable of ways. Each of the girls has her own issues and worries though, which tempers the annoyance I felt for them. Lena has always been judged by her looks, and no one really sees past her stunning beauty. Carmen refuses to admit how much her parents' divorce actually affected her. Bridget still mourns the loss of her mother, and is prone to the same depression that led her mother to eventually kill herself. Libby barely ever sees her dad because he's working all the time, while her mother is constantly busy raising her tiny and demanding siblings. Reading this book made me so intensely glad I never have to be a teenager again.

My favourite character was totally Bailey, the snarky twelve-year-old who because of her horrible illness has become wise beyond her years. Thanks to her, Libby is forced to snap out of her own self-pity and grow up a bit, and the wisdom she slowly gains slowly trickles on to her three other friends as well. Also, annoying as I found the four protagonists on occasion, they are teenagers, and teenagers are awful. It would have been more unrealistic if they were all great all the time. Their friendships were also a thing of beauty. Most of the time, there are too many Mean Girls in YA fiction. Here none of the girl is the bitchy friend, they're just all supportive and there for each other. For much of the book, I was pretty sure this was a three star read, but towards the last third of the book, especially after it made me cry, I had to upgrade it. Once a book makes me cry actual tears, it deserves a four star rating. I have not watched the movie, and suspect I don't want to. Just looking up the casting afterwards to remind myself of who Hollywood felt were good facsimiles of the protagonists convinced me that the movie is probably not for me. I'm also not sure I have a burning need to read the many sequels (where I'm assuming the jeans must get pretty threadbare), but I don't at all regret buying this book in an e-book sale.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 12: "Girl, Interrupted" by Susanna Kaysen

Page count: 192 pages
Rating: 4 stars

When Susanna Kaysen was 18, she went to see a new psychiatrist for a conversation after what appears to have been a suicide attempt. She swallowed a large amount of sleeping pills, then regretted her decision and wandered out into the street to get help. The psychiatrist claimed to have spoken to and evaluated Ms. Kaysen for more than three hours, Ms. Kaysen herself claims the meeting was barely half an hour. The end result was nonetheless that she ended up committed to McLean Hospital, a mental institution, for nearly 18 months, diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

The book doesn't follow a chronological narrative, but rather jumps around, in a series of vignettes and recollections from Ms. Kaysen's time in the mental institution and her thoughts about her own diagnose, treatment and the treatment of mental illness in the 1960s in general. She describes the ward where she stayed, the various girls who were in the institution with her, several of the doctors and nurses and a lot of the day to day life in the hospital. It is clear from some of what Ms. Kaysen relates that she was a troubled and conflicted young woman, she among other things had an affair with her English teacher, but whether she was so mentally ill that she needed to be institutionalised is unclear. From Ms. Kaysen's in-depth explorations of what actually lies behind the justification for "borderline personality disorder", quite a lot of young people just starting out in life fit into that profile and most do not end up heavily medicated and monitored in a mental hospital. Whether a confused and somewhat depressed young woman's situation was made a lot worse by incarcerating her and surrounding her with actually mentally ill women is also one of the questions the reader is left with.

I had only ever seen the film version of this, with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. I saw it many years ago, and can remember not being all that impressed with it. When I saw the book was on sale in e-book recently, I recalled various Cannonball reviews over the years speaking positively about it, and decided to give it a try. Especially as it fit into several of my reading challenges this month, like the Monthly Key Word (girl) and the Monthly Motif one (which was Books turned into Movies for January). It's a quick read. I actually read more than half of it on my Kindle app on my way to and from visiting a friend a bit outside Oslo. I finished the whole thing in less than four hours. The Hollywood film was mainly a showcase for Angelina Jolie's acting than an interesting exploration of mental illness and society's willingness to remove things that make it uncomfortable from sight. I would recommend anyone who has just dismissed the book because of a negative impression of the film (like I had) give the book a try. It's good, really.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 11: "Owl and the Japanese Circus" by Kirsti Charish

Page count: 432 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Alix "Owl" Hiboux is an archaeology grad student who was screwed over by her professors and turned to a life of art theft to support herself. After a job gone wrong, she ended up on some French vampires' hit list and has been hiding out in a Winnebago in the desert, playing online roleplaying games in her downtime. She's sworn off any kind of supernatural job ever again, but can't really refuse when a helicopter comes to pick her up to take her to Mr. Kurosawa, owner of the Japanese Circus Casino in Las Vegas. Owl is shocked to discover that Mr. Kurosawa is in fact a Japanese dragon, and refusing to work for him will probably result in him eating her. He arranges for the vampires to stop hunting Owl in return for her locating an ancient treasure for him.

As refusal will mean either that the vampires hunting her will track her down, or the dragon actually eating her, Owl reluctantly agrees. She finds the egg Mr. Kurosawa wants fairly easily, but is told that the real treasure the dragon wanted was the contents of the egg, a magic scroll, now missing. Owl's job just got a lot trickier. She enlists the help of her best friend, Nadya, a Russian hospitality waitress living in Tokyo and discovers, while fleeing for her life in a Balinese temple, that Rynn, the handsome bartender she's been flirting with on and off used to be a very skilled mercenary, and has been hired by Kurosawa's right hand man to keep her out of too much danger. Of course, Owl seems to be a danger magnet, constantly ending up in life-threatening scrapes.

As Owl and her two friends try to track the scroll, they have to contend with vampires, an ancient Balinese naga (part snake, part beautiful woman), near-impossible decryption, traps, double-crosses, vengeance spirits and more. Owl's supernatural detection is truly abominable, proven by the fact that most of the people she surrounds herself with turn out to be some kind of supernatural creature. She would probably be dead several times over if it wasn't for the assistance of Captain, her vampire-hating Mau cat, whose claws and teeth seem to be venomous to vampires.

This is the first book in a new series. I hadn't heard of Kristi Charish before, but the book was highlighted in January releases by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and come on, it's an art thief chased by vampires working for a dragon. For $1.99, I pretty much had to buy it, not matter how it turned out. The series and the characters show promise, but for all that there is a lot to like, there is also a lot that didn't entirely work for me.

What I liked:
- The unusual set-up. I love the fact that in this supernatural universe, shape-shifting dragons are totally a thing, and have no problem believing that they would be fearsome and successful business owners.
- The variety of supernatural creatures in the story. Over the course of the book, Owl, for all that she is rubbish at spotting them initially, comes into contact with a slew of supernatural creatures. There are Japanese spirits, luck demons, nymphs, nagas, incubi, vampires, even elves. Somewhat different from the shapeshifter/vampire fare of a lot of urban fantasy.
- The socially awkward aspect to our heroine. Owl is actually a bit of a disaster socially speaking. She has a tendency to mouth off every time she feels vaguely threatened, which often leads her into more dangerous situations than she started out in. She also spends most of her spare time playing computer games, engaging in witty banter with her online players, at least one of whom becomes an important secondary character in the book.

What I didn't like so much:
- The socially awkward aspect of our heroine. Unfortunately, while it's initially amusing that Owl isn't all that great with people, it also became exasperating that she kept getting into worse and worse scrapes because she would recklessly and blindly rush into situations that were clearly hella dangerous or even obvious traps, or mouth off to the people threatening her.
- The number of dangerous situations Owl escapes more or less unharmed. This book is a bit of a roller coaster of danger and escaping it. Considering she is just a normal, frankly surprisingly clueless human (it's made a joke out of, but seriously, after that many situations where your opponents turn out to be supernatural, it's just common sense to start researching them and their weaknesses), Owl survives a LOT of bad shit relatively unharmed. She's constantly rescued by someone, be it Rynn, Captain the vampire slayer or even her friend Nadya. Even when she is injured, she seems to heal unfeasibly quickly.
- The pacing. Considering I, on occasion, read 400 page paranormal fantasy books in one sitting, or at most, a day and a half, the fact that it took me 6 days to get through this book should speak for itself. There was only a niggling sense of duty that made me pick it up to keep reading when I put it down. I did have a heavy workload while reading the book, but in the past, with books that are more engrossing, I tend to neglect said work, at least until I've finished the compelling book.

The book has promise and as long as Owl keeps growing and evolving as a character, I will give the series a few more chances. A lot of paranormal series take two to three books to really get good, and I can think of more than one heroine who needed to grow smarter and less reckless to really become a likable protagonist. I am a sucker for dragons, and any book series who have them as part of the paranormal big bads is going make me take notice. I have problems with your first book, Ms. Charish, but will be keeping an eye out for the sequel, hoping that the writing improves as the series progresses.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 10: "Trade Me" by Courtney Milan

Page count: 291 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer! I was given an ARC of this through NetGalley in return for a fair and unbiased review. Of course, it being a Courtney Milan book, I had also already pre-ordered it, because I will buy anything she writes, even if said thing is a scientific treatise on spiders and cockroaches (the things that creep my out the most). If Ms. Milan ever reads this - please don't ever write a book like that. I will buy it, but I might not like it much. 

 Xingjuan "Tina" Chen is a mature student desperately struggling to make ends meet. Her goal is to become a doctor, so she'll make enough money that she and her family never need worry about paying the bills ever again. As it is, finding enough money to pay her own, and her parents' bills seems to be pretty much all Tina can think about. When she's not studying, she's working multiple jobs so she can send every spare penny home. Her father is unemployed and her mother is a cake decorator, proud every time a cake she makes turns up on "that website". She spends most of her spare time and whatever money she can find (including much of what Tina sends them) helping Chinese immigrants stay in the country and filing for citizenship. She's also a champion when it comes to emotional blackmail. Tina loves her mother dearly and admires her dedication on behalf of her community, but also feels exhausted constantly counting every penny in order to make sure her sister gets her medication and her parents' electricity isn't cut off.

So on the day when her ultra privileged classmate Blake Reynolds, trust fund billionaire and heir to Cyclone Technology (think Apple) first splashes her prized cashmere sweater with mud driving past in his sports car, and then tries to defend her in a class discussion about poverty, she pretty much loses it. She claims he wouldn't last two weeks living her life, let alone two months. Blake may not have known an hour of poverty in his life, but his cushy existence involves hard work and he feels crippled by the weight of expectation from his brilliant father. Having lived his life partly in the spotlight since he was a child, being the star of Cyclone's advertising, Blake is expected to take over the company. After his father's best friend and business partner died of a heart attack shortly before the launch of Cyclone's last big invention, his father, the legendary Adam Reynolds has just worked harder. He keeps hinting that he's ready for Blake to take over, though, and his son wouldn't dream of ever disappointing Adam. Even if it means keeping quit about the doubts and insecurities he's feeling.

So when Tina suggests trading lives, Blake is intrigued. While Tina may not think so, Blake has been admiring her from afar for a long time. He is also looking for a way to distract himself from the latest Cyclone launch and the serious conversation he's going to have to have with his father. He speaks to his financial advisors, and proposes that he and Tina actually swap places until the end of the semester. Tina will make enough money to put herself through college, and Blake will work and support her family while she works on the new Cyclone launch. Of course, to get access to the new Cyclone technology prototype, she has to sign a stack of non-disclosure agreements about as tall as herself and pretend to be Blake's girlfriend, convincing enough that Adam not hesitate to let her play with their expensive yet to be released toys.

Tina is adamant that the relationship be only pretend, and that she and Blake have no future together. Blake isn't going to push anything, allowing Tina her space, but the more time he spends with her, the more smitten he is. Yet while they're growing closer, and more attracted to each other, Blake isn't ready to share his secrets and fears with Tina either.

Anyone who has read my blog for any space of time, knows that Courtney Milan is one of my favourite authors. I consider her the best historical romance author writing at the moment and await each new release from her with bated breath. It was still a surprise when she revealed that she was taking a bit of a break from historicals to focus on contemporary romance, and New Adult at that. My experience with NA is that it tends to feature studious, often innocent and dissatisfied college women who fall for tattooed bad boys with dark pasts. There haven't really been all that many books slotted into the genre that impressed me. Of course Milan's book was one of the exceptions.

Milan's heroines are always awesome and deeply feminist role models living in a time when women had to fight to be seen or heard. Tina is a contemporary woman, but just as marginalised as many of her historical sisters in that she's an immigrant struggling to make ends meet. Seriously, Tina is dirt poor. There is a wonderful scene where Tina explains to Blake, who has a monthly allowance of 15 000 dollars just how long she can survive on a bag of rice and why it's necessary for her to do so. She can't afford to have her favourite sweater dry cleaned if her sister is to get her medication. The luxury she allows herself when she finally has Blake's income is mangoes. Nothing big, frivolous or flashy. Just fresh, ripe fruit.

Blake could have been unbearable. He's a young, charming billionaire, for God's sake. But Milan writes wonderful characters and Blake has real issues to handle, not just the fact that his father has used a public version of their relationship to advertise Cyclone since Blake was a small child. It's obvious early on that Blake has something big he's hiding from those close to him, and it's revealed every so gradually as the story progresses. I can't recall any other romances I've read where the hero deals with the same difficulties as Blake and it was an interesting take, just as I've come to expect from Ms. Milan.

In a lot of historical romances, the parents are either dead or awful. They aren't generally a feature in contemporary romances either, and if they are, the hero and heroine often have a strained relationship with them. Tina and Blake both struggle with the expectations their parents place on them, but there is never any doubt that Adam Reynolds or the Chens deeply love their children and want only good things for them. It was very refreshing to see such realistic and functional family relationships. Tina's family's good-natured teasing over Tina's obvious denials that she and Blake are a couple were great. Tina taking absolutely no crap from Adam (helped by the fact that when they meet, she's just pretending to date his son). So many good moments.

Then there is Maria, Tina's best friend, who is going to be the heroine of the next book in the Cyclone series. Maria and Tina met in college, where they were both the odd duck's out. The reasons why Maria didn't quite fit in with the rest of the girls and why she's had a lot of family drama is gradually and subtly revealed and I'm deeply impressed with the direction Milan is going. She keeps being a trail-blazer, and I was actually sorry to discover that I will have to wait until sometime late in 2015 for Maria's book, because I'm now super eager to find out more about her.

The only thing that kept this book from a full five stars is the ending, which was a bit too rushed and veered a bit too far into farcical melo-drama for me. I'm not going to deny that I laughed out loud during parts of it, but since the rest of the book was so plausibly done with such good pacing, the end just fell flat. Readers should also be aware that the book has more of a HFN (Happy for Now) ending than a HEA (Happily Ever After) and that Tina and Blake will get a second book later in the series. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 9: "The Darkest Part of the Forest" by Holly Black

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 4 stars

In the little town of Fairfold, people know that faeries are real. You need to be careful and not call too much attention to yourself, like the tourists frequently do, or the faeries may play dangerous or even deadly pranks on you. One of the things that lures tourists to Fairfold is the glass coffin, deep in the woods. In it, there is a horned boy, sleeping eternally. He is a thing of otherworldy beauty with the tips of his ears sharp as knives. He's been sleeping there for generations, undisturbed by gawkers, tourists, partying teenagers or those desperate to try to break the coffin. Bad things tend to happen to those who try to break the coffin by force.

Ben and Hazel's parents are artists, and their mother was one of the Fairfold residents who may have called a bit too much attention to herself. Having gifted a faerie woman with a painting, her eldest child, Ben, was gifted, or possibly cursed, with the ability to play faerie music. Whether he wanted to or not, he would be compelled to play, and so well that he could enchant others with it. Hazel, still in the womb, was granted no such favours, and being the perfectly normal child in a family of distracted and dedicated artists can be a curse all on its own.

Seeing early how dangerous the faeries could be, Hazel took it upon herself to fight the worst of them, appointing herself a knight, with her brother the enchanted bard who assists her. Though only children, Ben and Hazel risked their lives to avenge tourists and Fairfold residents alike, until Ben was given a scholarship to a prestigious music academy and the family had to move away for a few years. When they weren't playing at being heroes, the two would spend hours around the glass coffin, spinning tales about the enchanted prince who slept there, telling him all their heart's desires.

Now they are both in high school, barely speaking, despite the closeness they once shared. Hazel wakes up one morning, having dragged mud and glass splinters through her bedroom window. The coffin in the wood is empty and the sleeping boy has disappeared. There is danger lurking in the dark of the forest. Can Ben and Hazel unite once more to fight it?

The sibling relationships depicted in this story felt very real to me, and there are several that are important. Hazel and Ben are close in age and due to the frequent forgetfulness and neglect of their artistic parents, they have to rely on and take care of each other, because they can't rely on their parents to always do so. Great love and sacrifice caused the rift, lack of communication and wall of lies that is between them at the start of the book and Black slowly reveals how their erstwhile closeness ended up in near estrangement. Both infatuated with the "enchanted prince" in the forest, they are shaken when he suddenly wakes up. The object of their fantasies has suddenly become a real person, who they have to relate to in a completely different way.

There are the brothers Carter and Jack, similar enough to be twins, yet only Carter is actually human. Jack is Carter's changeling, who Carter's mother insisted on keeping after she tricked his faerie mother into giving her own baby back. They look very similar, but as they get older, it's quite clear that Jack isn't like his brother or their high school friends. He has another family as well, and while he loves his human family, he is torn between two worlds. Jack is Ben's best friend, but has secretly loved Hazel for as long as he can remember. Restless, flirty Hazel who kisses all the boys, and never seems to wants anything permanent with anyone. But the evening before the sleeping boy is awoken, she kisses Jack. Could he finally convince her to actually notice him?

Finally, there is Severin, the awoken prince and his sister Sorrow, whose sibling relationship forms an important core to the dangers facing Fairfold. Tragic events led to Severin being imprisoned in the glass coffin, whilst his sister became completely consumed by her own grief. Now their father wants his children back under his control, and he isn't afraid to use underhanded methods to achieve it.

This book is also great in terms of diversity. While Jack may be a faerie who fits into the European/Celtic mythology, he is the changeling of an American child, and as such is as dark-skinned and dark-haired as the rest of his human family. Ben is openly gay and his love for Severin is both inspiring and heart-breaking at times.

Hazel is not always easy to like, but no one can fault her for being extremely brave. Sometimes to the point of insanity. She's a girl with many secrets, even from herself, it becomes obvious fairly soon. Hazel lives a double life so complex that even she's not completely aware of all the aspects of it. Having grown up in the gifted Ben's shadow, she's so determined to make something of herself, even if it means risking her life fighting dangerous faeries. She loves her brother and would do anything for him, but also believes herself to be the reason he no longer practises music and won't speak to her anymore.

Ben adores his brave little sister and forced himself to fight along side her when she appointed herself a knight. He was terrified that she would get hurt and was so relieved when he got a scholarship that could take their family away from Fairfield, where Hazel kept risking herself to protect others. But his musical abilities are both terrible and beautiful and the things he can make music do scares him, to the point where he chose to break his own hand in order to give up the music. Now he knows Hazel is keeping important things from him, not just the reason she's suddenly acting so strange around Jack. Could she really be the one who woke the sleeping prince in the forest? And if so, will the enchanted prince prefer her to Ben?

Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, a wonderful vampire story, was one of my favourite books of 2013. If there weren't so many other shiny books constantly grabbing my attention, I would re-read it right now. Holly Black first came to my attention with her Modern Faerie Tales, where she also wrote extremely engaging YA paranormal/urban fantasy featuring faeries of the not so friendly persuasion. So when I first heard about this book, back in the middle of 2013, I was very excited. It didn't disappoint. It didn't grab hold of me, making me unable to think about anything else until I finished the book, which was the case with The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, but it did entertain and intrigue me and it once again reminds me that I still haven't completed her Curse Workers series, which can help pass the time until her next, hopefully awesome book, is out.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.