CBR2 Book 70: "Love Letters" by Katie Fforde

Publisher: Arrow Books
Page count: 464 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: July 21st, 2010
Date finished: July 21st, 2010

First of all, I have NO idea why this book is called Love Letters. There is not a single letter written in the entire book. There are phone conversations, the occasional e-mail and text message is mentioned, there are lots of books, but at no point does anyone sit down and write or read any form of letter, love or otherwise. I have absolutely no idea why this title was chosen for the book.

The book is about Laura Horsley. She's 26 years old, still a virgin, by her own account extremely dull, and does very little but work in a tiny bookshop and read. The bookshop she is working in is closing, and a pushy literary agent decides that Laura is the perfect person to help her niece set up at literary/music festival near the country house the niece lives in. Laura is initially very reluctant, but gets carried away. One of the possible sponsors for the event misunderstands her during a conversation and thinks she personally knows Dermot Flynn, a reclusive Irish author. He demands that Flynn come to the festival or he (the sponsor) won't provide any money.

Laura sets off to the Irish countryside to track down Dermot Flynn, her favourite author of all time (she even wrote her dissertation on his two novels). She doesn't realize that the reason he is known as a cranky recluse is that he's had writer's block for the past 15 years. When she arrives in the tiny village where he lives (where he's also appearing at a festival), she gets massively drunk to summon the courage to talk to him (as he is totally gorgeous and sexy and brilliant) and he promises to come to the festival if she sleeps with him.

Being dreadfully drunk, Laura does end up in bed with him, but passes out. When she returns to England, she learns that Dermot has decided to teach a writing course at a local university, and wants her to be his assistant for the course. She ends up reading a huge amount of manuscripts to help him, and continues to fall for him. One of the students at the writing course lets slip to the newspapers that Dermot is going to appear at the literary festival Laura is helping to organize, and Dermot is furious, as he wanted his appearance kept secret until the last minute. Everything seems to be going badly wrong.

Love Letters, despite not being about letters at all, is a perfectly fun summer read. It's nothing profound or brilliant, and Laura is a bit of a boring character to begin with. She also seems to come out of her shell and blossom surprisingly fast, all it took was getting riotously drunk in Ireland, apparently. For someone who starts out extremely shy and introverted at the opening of the book, she is very different at the end. There are some fun characters, but it drags a bit in places, and I would have liked to see how the romance developed a bit more.

CBR2 Book 69: "The Girl Who Chased the Moon" by Sarah Addison Allen

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 19th, 2010
Date finished: July 20th, 2010


Emily Benedict is 17, and comes to Mullaby, North Carolina to live with her grandfather after she is orphaned after the death of her mother, Dulcie. Her mother left Mullaby long ago, and has never told Emily anything about her past. While Emily knows Dulcie as a woman who founded schools, worked for human rights and every worthy social cause imaginable, in Mullaby it seems like everyone pretty much loathed her, and not everyone is happy to see the former prom queen's daughter settle in town.

Someone who does not hold the sins of the mother against the daughter, is Julia Winterson, who was bullied by Dulcie, and who had a pretty hard time growing out as an outcast in Mullaby. She has both internal and external scars to show for it. Now she is trying to pay off the mortgage on her father's barbecue restaurant, and is counting the months until she can sell the restaurant at a profit, take the money and leave town - to set up a bakery and forget all about Mullaby and her past. She tries to welcome Emily and take good care of her, as she knows others in town will not be as nice.

On her first day in town, Emily has a panic attack and is saved by a kind, young man named Win Coffey, but it quickly becomes apparent that neither her grandfather nor his father want them to have anything to do with each other, due to something that happened with her mother and his uncle in the past. Sleeping in a bedroom where the wallpaper changes depending on her mood, and puzzled by the glowing lights in the woods around her grandfather's house, Emily is determined to at least solve the mystery of what happened between her mother and Logan Coffey.

Julia has several painful issues to get over from her past in Mullaby, and bakes amazing cakes and pastries as a form of therapy. When the man she loved passionately as a teenager seems determined to charm his way back into her life, she is confused and troubled and does not know how to handle the situation.

The Girl who Chased the Moon is the third book by Sarah Addison Allen I've read and reviewed for my blog. All her books have certain similarities. They are set in small American towns, feature one or several female characters, a quirky supporting cast, magical realism, and some romance. All her books are easy, comfortable reads, but none have been quite as magical and delightful as her first one, Garden Spells. Still, well worth a read.

CBR2 Book 68: "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon

Publisher: Fourth Estate
Page count: 656 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars
Date begun: July 15th, 2010
Date finished: July 19th, 2010

Josef "Joe" Kavalier arrives in New York in 1939, and meets his cousin Samuel "Sammy" Klayman for the first time. Josef is a Czech refugee, sent to America to escape the Nazis, and all he wants is to make enough money to help the rest of his family escape as well. Sam promises to get Joe a job, and once he realizes what a talented artist his cousin is, he convinces his boss to let them try to create a superhero comic that can rival Superman. Sammy changes his name to Clay, and soon they have created the anti-fascist Escapist, as well as a large number of other popular and extremely lucrative comic book heroes.

Sammy writes the stories, and Joe creates the art for the comic books, but as their creations become more and more successful, it becomes clear that they are being exploited, and get a minuscule share in the profits from their work. Joe saves every penny he can, and spends most of his free time trying to get his family moved from Prague to New York, with very little luck. He falls in love with a lovely bohemian girl, but constantly feels guilty that his family used their last savings to have him sent to America, while they constantly suffer worse and worse conditions under the Nazi occupation. Sammy spends his money on his mother and grandmother, and tries to come to term with his sexual identity.

When it becomes clear that the ship of Jewish children that Joe has spent large amounts of money to help to America has been sunk, he abandons his cousin and his girlfriend to enlist in the navy. During his self-imposed exile, he learns that Rosa and Sammy have gotten married, and even after the war has ended, he stays away from them, until an unexpected event prompts him to try to reconcile with his loved ones.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay explore what is know as "The Golden Age of Comics", and as the wife of a man who is a huge Jack Kirby fan, I knew a little bit about this time period and how the writers and artists usually got horribly exploited by their publishers, making a pittance compared to their counterparts today. While the story is about comic book creators and superhero comics, I do not think you need to know or be interested in such things to enjoy the book. As well as an exploration of the rise of the comic book, and especially superhero comics, as a medium, it is so many other things.

The only bit I wished was shorter, and am not entirely sure what Chabon was trying to do with, is Joe's experiences in Antarctica during the Second World War. Here I thought the story lagged terribly, and while some of it was necessary for Joe's further development, it did not need to take up as big a part of the book as it did.

I had heard many great things about the book, and because of this, my expectations were high. I'm glad to say that the book lived up to my expectations, and that while it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2001, it is not in any way a difficult or heavy read. All the characters are well rounded and feel real, even minor supporting ones who you wouldn't think made that much of a difference. Both Joe and Sammy are extremely likable protagonists, and for the most part, the book is a joy to read.

CBR2 Book 67: "Early to Death, Early to Rise" by Kim Harrison

Publisher: Harper Collins
Page count: 240 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: July 14th, 2010
Date finished: July 15th, 2010

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ONCE DEAD, TWICE SHY, THE FIRST MADISON AVERY NOVEL!

Madison Avery may seem like a normal teenager going to high school, with her purple-tipped hair and her sneakers with skulls and crossbones on them. However, Madison is actually dead, and an important supernatural entity at that. Madison is the dark timekeeper, and her job is to control Reapers, dark angels sent to Earth to kill people who will turn out to do horrible things that will damn their souls, before said people are able to commit said actions. There is also a light timekeeper, who tries to protect the same people. Madison was killed by the previous dark timekeeper, who wanted to prevent her from succeeding him - even though she had no idea this was intended for her.

Now she has a fancy amulet she doesn't really know how to use, but means she has a human body. She also has a small entourage consisting of a dark Reaper meant to protect her, a former light Reaper who disagrees with the light timekeeper and is now neutral, both of whom are supposed to pass for foreign exchange students, a tiny former guardian angel who speaks mostly in limericks, and her best friend, who she seems to be developing feelings for.

Madison disagrees with her stated job description, and doesn't just want to send Reapers to kill people who are destined to commit horrible acts before giving said person a chance to change their mind. She doesn't believe in predestination, and when she finds out that Nakita, the Dark Reaper with her is supposed to kill a high school kid set to release a computer virus that ends up killing people, she insists that they go find him and try to talk him out of things before he needs to be killed. Since her new timekeeper powers aren't exactly under her control yet, she and her Reaper posse don't actually know precisely who the guy is - they have two suspects, and not very much time to figure out which of the boys is set to become a hacker with multiple deaths on his conscience, and which one is just the innocent friend.

I actually liked Early to Death, Early to Rise better than Kim Harrison's first young adult novel, Once Dead, Twice Shy, as the first novel was a bit confusing and mostly served as setup. Now that Madison and the supporting characters of the series, as well as most of the world-building has been established, the story flows better and is a much more entertaining read. I would not recommend picking up book 2 without first having read book 1, though.

"The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed" by Patrick Rothfuss

Publisher: Subterranean
Page count: 72 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 12th, 2010
Date finished: July 12th, 2010

The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed is a picture book, beautifully illustrated by Nate Taylor. It features a sort of fairy tale. It's definitely, absolutely NOT for kids. Unless those kids are slightly older and fond of darker stories. I saw this book described as Calvin and Hobbes meets Coraline, and that's a pretty good take on it.
The Princess lives in her marzipan castle with her best friend, the stuffed bear Mr. Whiffle. They have lots of fun and exciting adventures, but at night, in the dark, there is the thing under the bed. The book has three different endings, at three different points. It's not very scary, or terrifying, but it does get rather twisted towards the end.

I thought it was extremely entertaining, and am beyond happy that the copy of the book I have is a very early ARC printed up by Patrick Rothfuss himself, and signed by both the author and the very talented artist. I was lucky enough to win the ARC as part of Patrick Rothfuss' Worldbuilder's Raffle (for details, see: http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2009/12/worldbuilders-2009/) and was absolutely delighted with it as a prize.

CBR2 Book 66: "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

Publisher: Faber and Faber
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 2 stars
Date begun: July 5th, 2010
Date finished: July 7th, 2010

The book is narrated by Kathy H., who reminisces about her time growing up in a boarding school, Hailsham, in the English countryside with her friends Ruth and Tommy D. Kathy H. is a carer, and has been for a long time. She takes care of and helps donors, and make life and their donations (as the book progresses it becomes clear they are organ donors), and has been doing this for an unusually long time for a carer. Once she retires, she herself will become a donor.

As the novel progresses Kathy H. recounts more of her school days at Hailsham, and it is clear that there is something more going on with the way the children there are being entirely sheltered from the outside world. Every term the children have to produce various types of craft or art which if they are lucky gets taken away to a mysterious gallery. Once they are old enough, they spend two years acclimatizing to society before they become carers, and then donors.

Who the children of Hailsham (and other similar schools around the country) are, and what their "purpose" in the world is, is gradually revealed throughout the novel. The book is set in the early 1990s, and works as a coming of age novel, but is clearly also a science fiction story and a subtle exploration of racism. I read it mainly because I heard it is being turned into a film with Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan, and I was curious. I thought it was rather slow going, and while some of the ideas explored were quite though-provoking, it did very little for me.

CBR2 Book 65: "The Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: June 30th, 2010
Date finished: July 1st, 2010

CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS!

In The Sea of Monsters, Percy Jackson has almost managed to survive an entire school year without getting expelled. On the last day before the summer holidays, however, all hell breaks loose, and the gym ends up burning down because giant monsters are trying to kill him with fireballs. Maybe he can blame it on asbestos, as Buffy Summers tried to do when she arrived at Sunnydale High?

His mother doesn't want him returning to Camp Half-Blood, but he goes anyway, and takes Tyson, a mysterious homeless kid with him. At the camp, he discovers that Chiron has been sent away, and the tree that keeps the camp safe is dying, so everyone there is in danger. It's also revealed that Tyson is not only a mythological being, a cyclops, but that he shares a father with Percy. Percy keeps having dreams where his best friend, the satyr Grover, who went off on a quest at the end of the last book, is in grave danger, and he will die if Percy doesn't come save him. When it turns out that by saving Grover, Percy can also fetch the one thing that will help save the camp, the Golden Fleece, he takes Annabeth and Tyson with him, despite being told he will be risks being banned from the camp forever.

The Sea of Monsters is another fun adventure tale, featuring vicious chariot races, cyclopes, sirens, the Bermuda Triangle, the return of Percy's nemesis Luke, Circe the sorceress and Grover in a wedding dress. It was yet another fun read, and I am looking forward to the next one in the series.