Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance - Ruth Emmie Lang

When I saw the Book of the Month selections for October, I'm going to admit, I wasn't entirely thrilled.  There was nothing that really spoke to me, but I needed to get a book from this month so I could get my extras from previous months, so I finally picked Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance because it seemed to have a magical realism element to it that might be interesting.

I loved it.

This is the story of Weylyn Grey, but Weylyn himself isn't a perspective character until the second-to-last chapter.  Instead, his story is told through the perspectives of other people.  First is Mary Penlore, the girl who first encounters him living in the woods with a wolf pack and buying out every butcher in the area for enough meat for them to survive.  Mary is a recurring character throughout the book, drawn to Weylyn after their first encounters even across years.  Also included are Weylyn's foster sister and her son, his teacher and eventual foster mother, the mayor of a small Mississippi town, one of his coworkers, and a young boy who encounters Weylyn living in the woods years later.  This wide range of perspectives gives insight into Weylyn even though we don't ever hear from him in a first-person perspective--even his dedicated chapter is written in third person, rather than first-person like all of the other chapters.

Mary and Weylyn's relationship, fraught by Weylyn's strange abilities to control (or not control) the weather, is what's really at the heart of this book.  At some points, it seemed like a sweet relationship, like when Weylyn decides to do something for Mary's birthday.  However, I'm ultimately not convinced that it's a healthy one.  Weylyn is fascinated by Mary because she is normal, and he is not.  Mary is fascinated by Weylyn because he is not normal, and she is.  Ultimately, there's not much more to their relationship than that, which is kind of sad, because I wanted them to connect in spite of their differences, rather than because of them.  It just doesn't seem like enough to build a lasting relationship on, or else it would have happened sooner than it did.

There is some beautiful imagery in here; the magical realism certainly helps with that.  Taking fantastical elements in such a normal way means that things like fireflies that make honey that becomes light that becomes an energy source can be mentioned, and incorporated with breathtaking detail.  The wolves are wonderful, Weylyn's house is creepy, and Merlin the pig is adorable.  All of this seems to come to the page effortlessly, making it seem both real and strange at the same time.  Ultimately, this was a wonderful story for the magical realism, for the story, for the characters--but I wish there had been a bit more to the relationship at the heart of it.

4 stars out of 5.

Ruin and Rising - Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #3)

For the final volume of this series, I was hoping for something dazzling.  I found the series had gotten off to a lackluster start, and while the second book was stronger, it still wasn't what I'd been hoping for.  However, it left off in a promising place, and this book picks up shortly after.

Alina and the other survivors of the Darkling's attack on the Little Palace are sheltering in the underground White Cathedral with the Apparat, but they're more like prisoners than anything else.  Alina is wilting without access to the sun and her light powers, and she seems to have picked up a little bit of shadow power, as well, from her near-death encounter with the Darkling.  They need to escape, find the firebird that is the third amplifier Alina hopes will help defeat the Darkling, and then actually defeat him.

Again, this book is very surface-level with few characters or components with any depth.  Light is good.  Dark is evil.  Alina admits, eventually, that the Darkling loved Ravka and did what he thought was best for it, even if it sometimes had terrible consequences, but that's about as close as Bardugo gets to layering in complexity in this book.  She tries to integrate a quirk involving the firebird as the third amplifier, but I found that scattered and not entirely convincing, as if Bardugo had a different plan for this book and then, in the middle of writing it, decided to go in a different direction--but didn't make the rest of the book or the series match up to that new direction.  It also felt like a ploy to pull on the hearstrings of readers, but honestly, I couldn't bring myself to really care that much about it.  That's because Mal is involved (of course) and I've always found him to be an utterly bland character.

The most interesting parts of this book were 1) Baghra and the revelations regarding her, the Darkling, and the amplifiers, and 2) Nikolai.  Nikolai was awesome.  Bardugo clearly had to sideline him for so much of the book because he was too busy stealing the scenes from everyone else he interacted with, being so superior to every other character in every way.  The Spinning Wheel was also an awesome location, but that was tied up with Nikolai's character, so I count it in with him.

Ultimately, this was an okay book, but it just didn't have heart.  The ending was predictable and nonsensical at the same time--no one ever realizes who Alina is?  Really?  I find that unlikely.  Characters who were less than engaging took up most of the book, and there was a lack of depth on any facet that left me wanting more.  This was Bardugo's first trilogy, and she has another duology set in this world that I'm still willing to try in hopes that it shows some evolution in her work, but I'm going to have my hopes set lower from the beginning based on my experiences with this trilogy.

2 stars out of 5.

Turtles All the Way Down - John Green

"But you don't understand, sir.  It's turtles all the way down."

Turtles All the Way Down has probably been one of the most hotly-anticipated books of the season, because it answers the question, "What on earth has John Green been writing since The Fault In Our Stars came out five years ago?"  I didn't read TFIOS, because I refuse to read a book that's set up primarily to pull at readers' heartstrings.  But a few early reviews for Turtles came out from friends saying that it was different, so I gave it a go.

John Green specializes in teenaged narrators who are much "deeper" than most teenagers typically are.  #notallteenagers  In this case, the narrator is Aza, who has an anxiety disorder that's paired with compulsions--I wouldn't go so far as to say she has OCD, but she definitely has some compulsions that are centered around germs, particularly gut bacteria.  She suffers from invasive thoughts that she can't control and can't get away from, and gets stuck in what she calls "thought spirals" where the thoughts just chase each other around inescapably and completely take over her existence when they occur.  I think this happens to everyone occasionally, particularly when something is going wrong in life, but Aza suffers from it on pretty much a daily basis.  She has medication that she takes intermittently, because she wants to escape her mental illness, but also is weirded out by the idea that she needs to take medication in order to be herself.  It raises questions of who your "self" really is, and I think that digging into a character with a mental illness was an interesting take and one he hasn't really done before.  And also importantly, Aza doesn't have an experience in which she falls and love and is magically cured by some guy's awesomeness, which is kind of common for characters with mental illness in novels that feature a romantic interest.

The main plot here involves a missing billionaire, the father of a friend Aza had when she was younger.  Her best friend, Daisy, insists that Aza re-insinuate herself in Davis' life in hopes of finding something that will qualify them to win a hundred thousand dollar reward for information leading to his father being found--Davis Sr. having absconded in an attempt to avoid criminal charges involving a lot of money.  There isn't really a "search" that Aza gets involved with, though she picks away at a few weird things that Davis' younger brother brings up.  However, most of the story really revolves around Aza and her mental illness, which doesn't really seem to be mentioned in the book description.  I feel like some people might be disappointed by what they find in this book, but I think that the way it was structured and the way it ends perfectly suited a character like Aza.  The ending is one that might not be considered "happy," because Aza isn't magically cured of her illness, but it is a fitting one.

Writing about characters with mental illnesses is tricky, because you're just asking to be jumped on by a ton of people with similar mental illnesses who haven't had the same experience.  But I think Green did a good job here, and this was a very enjoyable read.  My only complaint is actually about Daisy.  Daisy is made out to be this great friend to Aza, except for one thing involving the Star Wars fanfiction she writes, with the point being made that Aza hasn't really been a great friend because she's so stuck in her own head.  But Daisy is kind of a terrible person.  She knows that Aza has a mental illness, but doesn't care.  She lashes out and ditches Aza and and doesn't give Aza credit for anything that she does, insinuating that Aza doesn't deserve credit for anything because she is more privileged than Daisy.  But we can see that Aza does know things about Daisy, that Daisy accuses her of not knowing because she doesn't pay attention.  Does it seem like, in Aza's more stable periods, she could have made more of an effort?  Yes.  But Daisy is utterly terrible to Aza when she's spiraling down into a pit, and Aza just lets her off the hook for it, which I can't quite forgive on either front.

Overall, though, a good read.

4 stars out of 5.

The Fires of Winter - Johanna Lindsey (Haadrad Viking Family #1)

I recently looked at my 2017 reading challenge in the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads and realized that if I didn't get moving, I was going to be in very, very big trouble.  Here's the thing: I was tearing through that challenge at the beginning of the year.  But in doing so, I kind of...read all of the categories I was looking forward to.   Which left me with the "dregs" of categories I don't have much interest in or have downright been dreading reading for the end of the year.  Sigh.  Nevertheless, I had to get to it, so I decided to go for the "Viking romance" category I still had pending.

Much like sheikh romance books, Viking romance books seem to have a theme of being very rapey.  This is somewhat because this is what Vikings did.  They pillaged and plundered and raped and ravaged.  Not amongst their own people, where rape was a very, very serious crime, but Viking romances typically involve a young woman from the British Isles being swept away by a marauder and then falling desperately in love with him after her "traitorous body" responds to his ravishments.

Ich.

But there didn't appear to be any escaping it, and so I took on Fires of Winter.  The heroine here is a Celtic woman named Brenna, who was basically allowed to act like a boy for much of her young life and goes around in boys' clothes and carrying a sword.  You would think Brenna would be all about the #gurlpower, but the book starts with her discovering a man raping a woman and deciding it's okay as long as the rapist marries his victim.  This pretty astutely sums up Brenna's outlook for the book.  She's supposed to be married to a Viking in order to cement some sort of peace treaty, but the Viking's father, Anselem--with whom the deal was struck--reneges and raids her home as a form of vengeance; the prospective groom, unaware that he even was a prospective groom, doesn't show up until later, when Brenna is already ensconced in his house as a slave gift from the aforementioned raiding father.  Brenna, unlike all of the other women in her town, manages to escaped being raped in the journey to Norway, because of course her virginity must be preserved so "hero" Garrick can divest her of it.

Garrick is awful.  He's known as the "Hardhearted" because he doesn't like women after a former lover scorned him, but we're supposed to see through his tough exterior to a warm and cushy center.  Not so much.  Repeatedly raping the heroine doesn't really get very far, and Lindsey doesn't even attempt to mitigate the act with any "traitorous body" nonsense (which is the traditional out in this type of book, the 1980s bodice-ripper--"she liked it and so it's okay in the end") until pretty far into the book.  And even then, Brenna returns to her philosophy of that it's not wrong that Garrick is raping her, it's wrong that he's raping her and refusing to marry her after.  Why does he refuse to marry her?  Because she's a slave, but he can't free her, because then he wouldn't be able to rape her!  Obviously.

BUT!  Here is the thing.  Horrible people doing horrible things does not necessarily a bad book make, as my recent reading experience of The Bronze Horseman goes to show.  What actually made this a bad book was the writing.  Brenna was not a heroine I could root for; her actions in the beginning of the book, excusing a rapist even though she protests to hate rape, set me against her from the start, and it wasn't an upward path from there.  Despite saying she will never be dominated by a Viking, she finds herself basting the hindquarters of animals pretty quickly and cleaning up a room she trashes because Garrick says he won't feed her until she does.  She is of the foot-stamping, hair-tossing variety of woman who everyone happens to love, or at least want, at first sight and who, despite being "the best" warrior, manages to get her ass handed to her at every turning point.  She screeches and flails and is just generally so annoying that I wouldn't have minded if she fell into a fjord and drowned.  Garrick, though a terrible person, actually fit the book better, because his actions were essentially what I expected of this variety of character in this time and place.  I actually kind of appreciated that Lindsey didn't make him the raider who had stolen Brenna away, because that was actually something a little different.  But despite having an intellectual acknowledgement of Garrick and his motivations, I still couldn't feel strongly for him in any direction because Lindsey's writing is just flat.  No emotion, no spark, no fury, no passion.  Nada.

Looking at other reviews of the book now, I see I probably could have spared myself the time if I had realized Nenia from Readasaurus Reviews (and also admin of the Unapologetic Romance Readers group) had already read and reviewed this.  But still, the library didn't have anything available on Kindle and this was relatively inexpensive, and I don't think most other Viking romances would have any better, so I'm just going to move on.

1.5 stars out of 5.

Pretty Face - Lucy Parker (London Celebrities #2)

While I'm picking my way through a few family-saga-romance-type books, kind of in the vein of The Thorn Birds, I found myself wanting to read something a bit faster, more contemporary, and with a more prominent and delicious romantic factor.  After reading Act Like It earlier this year, it seemed like Pretty Face was an obvious contender.

Set in the same theater-universe as Act Like It, this book follows theater director Luc Savage as he attempts to stage a production of a new play about Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.  He ends up reluctantly casting TV actress Lily Lamprey in the role of Elizabeth--reluctantly because, after seeing Lily's TV performances, he's convinced that she can't act and is probably as vapid as can be.  Oh, and she has the voice of a porn star.

Lily and Luc do not have instant chemistry--they pretty much hate each other at their first meeting.  However, their attraction grows quickly, partially on a physical basis and partially on an emotional one.  However, both are leery of entering any sort of relationship because of Luc's role as Lily's director.  Lily knows that having a relationship with her first stage director could tank her stage career, particularly because she's viewed a brainless slut by the media--a result of her TV role and a bad case of typecasting.  And Luc doesn't sleep with people who work for him.  Still, as the play gets closer and closer to opening night, they get closer and closer, drawn by all sorts of circumstances involving both of their families, and romance blossoms.

The writing here is just as good as in Act Like It.  The chemistry between the characters is palpable.  Is it a little dramatic?  Yes.  But I didn't find the ultimate conflict to be as overdone as the one in Act Like It was.  It was also nice to see Richard and Lainie in brief, though they certainly did not appear often or long enough to steal the book from Lucy and Luc.  The burn is slow, and that does make the book seem a little longer than it really is--it clocks in at only 222 pages according to Goodreads, but it seemed to take a disproportionately long time for me to read something of that length.  That said, it was a very enjoyable read nonetheless, and a great way to spend my Sunday afternoon

4.5 stars out of 5.

Scarlet - Marissa Meyer (Lunar Chronicles #2)

Scarlet is the second book in the Lunar Chronicles series and is the last book of the series I need to review' life's funny like that, innit?

This book both continues Cinder's story as rogue moon princess and introduces a new character, Scarlet.  The main setting here also shifts to France, where Scarlet lives and is looking for her recently-disappeared grandmother, who was also involved with Cinder's relocation from Luna to Earth, though Scarlet doesn't know it.  The new romantic interest for Scarlet, Wolf, also takes the scene, as does Carson Thorne, an American deserter with a stolen spaceship who falls into Cinder's company.  Kai is also still involved, dealing with the drama of Cinder's escape and rising tensions with Luna from the palace in New Beijing.

Cinder starts coming into her own as a moon-princess-badass here, and Scarlet quickly sets herself up as someone who is not to be messed with.  Scarlet is a typical "fiery redhead" character, which is a bit lacking in originality, but at least her hair is only mentioned twice instead of being harped on for the whole book.  Her "Little Red Riding Hood" story is queued up with her signature red hoodie and, of course, Wolf, as well as a brief encounter between Wolf and a street fighter named Hunter.  There's a bit of a twist in this book, one that I don't think was as evident as the "twist" in Cinder, but reading it through a second time it's pretty obvious where the story was going.  Still, I found the story to be enjoyable.  This is also more of a romance than Cinder was, with a strong bond between Scarlet and Wolf from the beginning, even though both admit that it doesn't make sense.

This isn't a very complex story, and I think that Scarlet's part of it actually moves more slowly than Cinder's story initially did.  Meanwhile, Cinder's story picks up pace as she and Thorne flee New Beijing and try to determine their next steps.  Thorne is a delightful character, someone who thinks that he's much more charming than he actually is and with a checkered past that he tries to spin in the best light possible.  This all sets him up wonderfully as a true hero in the next book, when he see him through a different pair of eyes.  Iko also makes a return to the page here, and she is just as wonderful as ever.  Cinder herself is also a stronger character than she was before, gaining a true determination and sense of self that she lacked in the first book.

Overall, this is a great book, a strong continuation of the series and, I think, better than Cinder itself was.  On the re-read, I'm not quite as dazzled with it as I was the first time I read it.  When I do my re-read of Cress, we'll have to see if Scarlet can retain its place as my favorite book in the series or if it will be overturned.

4.5 stars out of 5.

Fierce Kingdom - Gin Phillips

There is a lesson to be learned in this book: don't have children, or they're likely to get you killed in a mass shooting because they don't know when to shut up and behave themselves.

Yup, I said it.

With that out of the way, let's get into it.  Fierce Kingdom is the story of Joan, who takes her son Lincoln to the zoo one day and, as they're leaving, realizes that the zoo is now the site of a mass shooting.  With at least one shooter between her and the exit, she takes her four-year-old and flees back into the zoo, looking for a place to hide.  But of course, running and hiding with a four-year-old isn't exactly the easiest task in the world, and Joan is (understandably) not willing to let her son go, and so the chase is on.

What's cool about this is that it's essentially the 24 of books.  If you're a moderately fast reader, you can probably finish this book in between three and four hours, which is about the timespan in which the entire story takes place.  You could definitely do it if you cut out the chapters about the other characters in the zoo, but I guess those were at least somewhat necessary.  But with that said, the pacing here is somewhat off.  There's a wonderful build of suspense in the beginning, because everything seems so happy and idyllic and yet we, as readers, know that something is about to go horribly wrong.  But beyond that, other than a few bursts of Joan hauling Lincoln from one hiding spot to another--just two of them, really--there's a lot of sitting and hoping that they won't be found, and that does not exactly make for riveting reading.  Phillips jazzes up those periods by throwing in a couple of instances of near-discovery, but it's not enough to fix the lagging pace, or to prevent me from wanting to whallop Joan alongside the head.

Yes, let's talk about Joan for a minute.  Lincoln I am willing to let go, because children are notoriously horrible characters.  But Joan.  I understand her not wanting to leave Lincoln, not being willing to do it--I understand that 100% and do not fault her for it.  But she acts so stupidly in other respects.  She hides them in a deserted exhibit behind some rocks; the entire time they were going there, I was mentally screaming, "THE OTTERS!  GO TO THE OTTERS!" because Phillips had blatantly painted the otter exhibit as a wonderful place to hide, with concealing waterfalls and ledges and caves, and then never utilized it.  And they're otters; what are they going to do, frolic you to death?  And then there's Joan and her phone.  She has her phone, but instead of trying to reach out to police and give them some information about what's happening inside the zoo, some clue as to her location so help can be sent in (I don't know, through the back, maybe?), or doing anything else useful with it, she just texts her husband, looks at news headlines, and then throws it at the shooters.  And while I respect her love for Lincoln, let me tell you, if my child (*shudder*) had been about to get us killed because he couldn't keep his mouth shut over a dearth of crackers in the middle of an active shooter situation, that kid would have been gagged so fast his head would have spun around.  Kailynn also deserved a good slap, but Joan was the main character, and so my frustrations are mainly confined to her.

I know, I know--people act strangely in situations like this.  But here's the thing: fiction still needs to make sense, and Joan acted like a complete idiot.  And she sat and thought about each move so much, and then still proceeded to do things in exact opposition of what was clearly the best course of action.  So no, she doesn't get a pass because she suddenly found herself in a terrible situation with no clear way out of it.

What is done very well here is that the length of the book matches its timeline, as I mentioned before, and Phillips really does manage to capture the atmosphere.  The setting of a zoo going into the Halloween season was wonderfully done, and while this is no zoo in particular, that also means it can be anyone's zoo.  I definitely found myself hunting through my childhood zoo in my head, looking for a good place to hide, and then moved on to the National Zoo, which I don't know as well--yikes!  Whatever will I do???  Constance vigilance next time I'm there, apparently.

Overall, I enjoyed this, but it's a book in which atmosphere perseveres over plot and logic.  The suspense ebbs and wanes and not always exactly where it should, but I would still be open to reading more from Phillips based on this offering.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett- Chelsea Sedoti

This was the Big Library Read for October 12-26.  The Big Library Read is a initiative where they work with libraries using Overdrive to make a book available (via ebook or audiobook) to everyone who wants to read it without any holds or waitlisting.  The DC Public Library was featuring it pretty heavily on their site, so I picked it up.

My firs thought regarding this book is that it's terribly misnamed.  Lizzie Lovett doesn't tell any lies in this book.  In fact, she only has about three lines of dialogue at all.  I'm guessing that her "lies" were that she acted different ways in different situations and sometimes appeared to be contrary, but guess what?  People are allowed to be contrary and to act differently in different situations!  They're allowed to change over time!  Figuring that out takes the main character a ridiculous amount of time, which was a bit sad.

So, the story here is about narrator Hawthorn, a seventeen-year-old girl who is a bit of an outcast at her high school, and whose world is turned upside down by the disappearance of the titular Lizzie Lovett, who Hawthorn adored upon meeting and then later despised for most of the one year they were at the same school--Lizzie as a senior and Hawthorn as a freshman.  Now Hawthorn is a senior, and she only has one friend.  The book description says that Hawthorn inserts herself into a missing persons case, but that's not entirely accurate either, because she never gets involved with the investigation itself--just with Lizzie's boyfriend, rambling around in the woods looking for Lizzie, who Hawthorn actually believes is a werewolf.  Now you might get some idea as to why Hawthorn doesn't have many friends and is considered weird.

This had a lot of potential, but ultimately it lacked depth and nuance and character growth.  Hawthorn does get some leeway for her hard-headedness and self-absorption, because she is a teenager, and that's what teenagers are.  But in some ways, she acts much younger; her dream is to go out on an adventure and discover that werewolves are real and be able to tell everyone, "I told you so," which seemed like something more suited to a middle- or elementary school student than a high school student who, while still being able to enjoy fantasy, make up stories, etc., should still have a better sense of fiction and reality.  She wants to make her point so much that she involves herself with Lizzie's boyfriend, who might have killed Lizzie.  What?  How is this mental stability?  Yes, innocent until proven guilty--but still, exercise a little caution, Hawthorn!  Her instability (yes, I'm calling it instability) is depicted as something cute and quirky and even romantic, but I just couldn't find it to be so because of the utterly stupid things it drove her to do.

Hawthorn's main "nemesis" in this book is Mychelle, a stereotypical popular bitchy girl who bullies Hawthorn.  There's never anything that's gone into with her own motivations, insecurities, etc.  Hawthorn's family, her best friend, and all the other supporting characters, including Lizzie's boyfriend who Hawthorn becomes involved with over the course of her "investigation," are all equally flat and undeveloped.  The one person I thought showed promise was Connor, but ultimately he never got enough page time to develop into the true, warm character I thought he could become.

One thing that I do think this book really had going for it: the setting.  The story takes place in the fictional (I believe) town of Griffin Mills, Ohio, which is a slowly-dying steel town.  I could perfectly picture the atmosphere in the town, which Sedoti captures in a one-page essay that Hawthorn turns in after forgetting to do the real assignment.  It was the perfect atmosphere for a story like this, and I could see why Hawthorn used fantasy to escape her mundane life--but I was still concerned for how deeply she seemed to believe the things she made up.

This was a quick read, and it was mildly entertaining, but Hawthorn's delusions left me side-eyeing her.  She showed a bit of growth by the end, but I'm still concerned for her mental status, and the rest of the book left something to be desired.

2.5 stars out of 5.

The Bronze Horseman - Paullina Simons (The Bronze Simons #1)

The Bronze Horseman was a group read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers group in September, but I just got around to it this month.  I'm also slotting it in for the "military romance" category in the group's 2017 reading challenge.  Let me tell you, this book is a whopper of a romance--over 800 pages, and it looks like the two sequels are even longer!

What I have to give Simons credit for in this is her sense of time and place.  Set during the time leading up to and during the siege of Leningrad in World War II, the main characters are swept up in all of the hardship that the siege entails.  Starvation, freezing, bombings, deaths en masse--they suffer through it all.

But then, they're also infuriating people.  So not so much credit there.

The main characters are Tatiana Metanova and Alexander Belov.  They spy each other across the street one day during the white nights in a Leningrad summer, just as the war really moves into Russia, and fall in love immediately.  Problem: Alexander is dating Tatiana's older sister, Dasha.  This is the conflict that will fuel the first half of the book, as Tatiana is so scared to lose her sister's love and affection that she insists that Alexander keep dating her despite all of the trouble it causes everyone involved.  Tatiana's love for Dasha also apparently doesn't seem to go both ways, as Dasha uses Tatiana mercilessly and is fine with writing her off at the first available opportunity.  Of course, there's only one way a conflict like this can end, and the book then moves onto what's an incredibly slow start to a second half, where Tatiana and Alexander are reunited and proceed to have sex for about a hundred straight pages before diving back into the war and the siege.

The story is definitely much weaker in the time that Simons moved it away from Leningrad.  The siege provided such structure to the story, a time and place that people might not act as they otherwise would.  In Leningrad, Alexander's controlling behavior comes across as protective, especially because Tatiana is not only naive but possesses feathers for brains for much of the book--yes, she's seventeen, but in a time when "adolescence" wasn't really a thing (I mean, this is Soviet Russia, for crying out loud) she doesn't really have an excuse to continue being as dumb as she is for as long as she is, and miraculously still alive.  In other circumstances, though, Alexander's behavior strikes me as downright abusive, and doesn't bode well for the future.  He's also ruthless with using Tatiana for his own gains, especially because he knows what's likely to happen to her down the road because of his own background.  And then there's Alexander's "best friend" Dimitri, who is vile in his own special way.  Tatiana doesn't mean to be vile--in fact, I firmly believe she has a good heart, and that's the only thing that saves her character from being absolutely death-worthy--but ultimately, this is a book about terrible people doing terrible things to each other, and basically getting away with it because of the war pressing in on them from literally all sides.

There are two more books to this series, and geeze, I have no idea how much more wringing Simons can put these people through, especially given how the book ended.  It's like a train wreck--absolutely terrible, not in writing but in happenings, and yet it's so impossible to look away.  I do intend to continue reading this series, but oh man, I just don't know where it's gonna go.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Emma In the Night - Wendy Walker

Emma In the Night was another Book of the Month selection this month, and looking at it, I was definitely intrigued.  The story is about Cassandra, who vanished with her older sister, Emma, three years ago, and has just reappeared--but without Emma.  As an FBI forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Abby Winter, becomes involved, it becomes increasingly apparent that something is deeply wrong in Cass' family.  Cass is clearly orchestrating something, but what?  And where is Emma?

I pegged a lot of the general twists in this book pretty early on.  It's relatively easy to figure out where the holes in Cass' story are, if you're paying even a semblance of attention.  She pretty much admits in the first chapter that she is an unreliable narrator, telling a story that she has rehearsed, and therefore you can't believe anything she says--so when the "big reveals" come along later in the story, they're not really as shocking, because we as readers know that something was off the entire time.  The way that Cass talks about certain things also lays out a lot of what's happened far before she comes out and says what she wants to say outright; the foreshadowing is pretty clumsy in that regard.

But this was still an interesting story; even though I figured out most of what had happened, I still wanted to know why, and that's something that's not as clear throughout most of the book.  It was definitely what kept me reading.  I also wanted to read more from Dr. Winter, because I love forensic psychology-type stuff.  However, Dr. Winter ultimately disappointed me; the daughter of a narcissist, she specializes in narcissistic personality disorder and quickly pegs Cass' mother as someone else with the disorder, leading her to want more deeply into the family to figure out what happened and why it did.  Seeing all of this unravel from Cass' perspective is interesting; from Winter's, less so.  Dr. Winter also puts forth that people are essentially formed by the time that they're three, and she has research into whether or not daughters of mothers with narcissistic personality disorder can break free of the cycle.  Ultimately, she concludes that Cass has--but it's pretty clear that Cass hasn't.  She might not be a narcissist, but there are still things deeply wrong with Cassandra Tanner.  She ruthlessly manipulated everyone around her, ruined the lives of several people to various degrees, led the FBI on what was, essentially, a wild goose chase, and contributed strongly to the tearing apart of her family--all because she wanted to feel powerful.  That doesn't really seem like someone who's mentally healthy to me.  She also blatantly manipulates a psychological evaluation, which should be a red flag in and of itself, and is something that Dr. Winter notices--but dismisses.

So, while the story itself was interesting here, I felt like Walker kind of fell down on the psychological aspects of it.  There is no happy ending here, only something looming in the distance as I worry about what Cass will do next, because she is clearly not as well as we are supposed to believe.  An interesting unraveling, but one that, in the end, wasn't done as well as it was made out to be.

3 stars out of 5.

The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris - Jenny Colgan

What a quaint book.  With a simple plot and colorful characters, it was a nice and light weekend read.  The story is about Anna, a chocolate taster at a factory in England, who loses two of her toes when a chocolate vat falls on top of her.  While she's recovering, she shares a hospital room with Claire, her former French teacher who once again endeavors to teach her the language.  Claire hooks Anna up with a past acquaintance--or more--of hers who owns a chocolate shop in Paris, and off Anna goes (once she recovers) on a new adventure.

Anna's adventure in Paris working in the chocolate shop of Thierry Girard, which is nothing like the industrial chocolate operation she interacted with in England, is charming.  She repeatedly crosses paths with Thierry's estranged son, Laurent, who is also in the chocolate business.  She deals with her over-the-top coworkers and Thierry's nasty wife.  And interspersed with this story is Claire's story, of going to France for a summer as an au pair when she was a teenager to have some freedom from her overbearing father and meeting Thierry herself.  Claire's story also has a contemporary component, as she fights cancer and ponders returning to Paris one last time before she dies.

The story was quaint and will, of course, make you want to eat chocolates.  However, it is very surface-level.  The cover sports a Sophie Kinsella quote, and this is definitely similar to Kinsella books.  Anna has a newly-deformed foot but, despite admitting that she knows nothing about actually making chocolate--machines did all of that at her previous workplace--she comes to the rescue of the chocolate shop and, while she's not a master, surpasses her two more experienced coworkers very quickly.  She has a romance with Laurent that doesn't seem like it is insta-love, but then at the end it apparently was, even though it wasn't?  Either way, it's still only based on a handful of encounters, only one of which has any real emotion tied to it.  Claire and Thierry seem to have a sizzling romance, but nothing ultimately comes of it and, in the end, it's a bit disappointing.  And of course, Claire's terminal illness means that this book isn't quite as fluffy as one would think from the cover of the book.

There are a handful of recipes included in the back of the book, mostly for different kinds of chocolate cake; I didn't try any of them, but they seemed fine at a quick glance.

Overall, Paris is lovely, the story is quaint, but it's very surface-level and lacks any sort of deep emotion or resonance.  I liked it, but it was nothing extraordinary and won't have me rushing out to buy Colgan's other books.

3 stars out of 5.

Trickster's Queen - Tamora Pierce (Daughter of the Lioness #2)

I wasn't actually planning on reading Trickster's Queen so soon after reading Trickster's Choice, but after a few books that were just "meh," I found myself in a bit of a reading slump.  And when I'm in a reading slump, I like to go back to books that I know I enjoy to get me out of it.

What struck me immediately upon re-reading Trickster's Queen is its great disconnect from the first book.  It picks up several months and much character development after Choice, which Pierce tries to bridge with a couple pages of prologue that is essentially all info-dump about what the characters have been doing in the interim.  However, the effect of this is that it feels like this is the third book in a trilogy in which the second book is missing.  Most of the development of Aly's relationship with Nawat, which was so sweet and charming in the first book, is just skipped over; so is Aly's building of her position as spymaster for the growing rebellion.

On the whole, however, this book has less infodumping than the first one.  The prologue is the vast majority of it, and the narrative itself is less interrupted with intermittent infodumps than Choice was.  Additionally, I think this one does a better job of building the environment, culture, and overall feel of the Copper Isles.  Aly also really has room to come into her own and show off her skills in this book, rather than scampering to use them while also hiding them as she had to in the first book.  Tensions come to a head regarding Sarai, and the twist that's hinted at all along finally actually happens.  Dove continues to be an excellent character, far wiser than her years, and the integration of many of the side characters is done very well.  The other minor flaw that comes to mind is that the end does feel a bit rushed; Pierce lists off a list of casualties, one of which was a major-minor character (if that makes sense) in the first book and then was just brushed aside in the second and then written off as a sacrifice of the rebellion.  With all of the build-up to the rebellion, it just seems to be over in remarkably few pages, and then the epilogue just feels a bit off as well, though I can't quite put my finger on why.

Overall, this is a good book; I definitely enjoyed re-reading it.  However, I don't think that it's as good as the first book in the duology.  It feels disconnected from the first part of the story, and the ending also feels rushed and off-kilter with the rest of the book.  The body has a good feel and good characters and a good plot, but without a strong beginning or end, I don't think it can be stronger than the first book.

4 stars out of 5.

V for Vendetta - Alan Moore

I slotted in V for Vendetta as my "book set around a holiday other than Christmas" for the 2017 Popsugar Reading Challenge, with the holiday here being Guy Fawkes Day aka Bonfire Night aka the 5th of November.  Most of the book does not take place on November 5th; however, the pivotal parts of the story do, and the characters' actions draw their influence and strength from that day.

I'm not a big graphic novel person, finding that they lack some of the depth and substance of prose books; a picture is not, necessarily, worth a thousand words.  And, following in this vein, I was not a huge fan of V.  Not necessarily because it was a graphic novel, though I wasn't terribly impressed by its art or flow in that respect, but because V is a pivotal character who just doesn't make sense.

The story is about Britain, following a war, which has become a totalitarian state under the control of a far-right party whose policies have included killing homosexuals, non-whites, and other groups that don't match their perfect idea.  There's an early panel which contains the words "Make Britain Great Again."  Hm...  In this world, Evey is a teenage girl who, desperately in need of money, tries to turn to prostitution, only to find herself caught by a sting targeted at sex workers.  On the verge of being raped and killed, she's rescued by the mysterious, masked, preternaturally strong and fast caped crusader, V, who takes her back to his home in "the Shadow Gallery" and begins to tell her of his plans to free Britain, and eventually to integrate her into them.

But V as a character never made sense to me.  He is an anarchist, wanting people to be able to live in "the land of do-as-you-please," but with an order instilled by the masses.  He evidently became this person after being the subject of a medical experiment in a "resettlement," aka concentration, camp, where he received an injection that damaged his mind.  This part was one that made me go, "What?"  Because the injection apparently killed everyone else who received it in horrible ways, and yet it just makes V into an anarchist with superhuman strength and computer skills...?  What?  And apparently a criminal mastermind to boot.  I think Moore was going for some sort of superhero origin story here (and V's mysterious identity contributes to this, too, and that worked) but I'm not convinced he truly pulled it off.  He's also a brutal, unnecessarily cruel character; what he did to Evey is absolutely unforgivable, unconscionable, and it was certainly not the only way to persuade Evey to his way of thinking.  She was halfway there already.  Yes, V is supposed to be an anti-hero instead of your typical mainstream hero...but I was never convinced of his heroism in any regard.

As for the art, I found it very bland, very washed out--which I at first thought might be an artistic choice, maybe saving splashes of color for particular points that would need emphasizing, but not--and with some of the characters being very hard to distinguish from each other.  There's also a shift in it at one point, probably because the original serialization of V was paused, and then resumed for the compilation later, but it means that some of the characters look quite different in later parts of the book than they did in the earlier parts, despite only about a year passing in the course of the book.

The end of the story is striking, and I commend Moore for going the way he did with it--however, Evey is not V, and I remain skeptical that she could pull off many of the things that V wanted her to, considering she didn't have any of the "abilities" that his background apparently gave him.  The strength of this book is clearly in its nature as a cautionary tale, and that is more important now than ever; its clear demonstration of the "slippery slope" is particularly noteworthy.  But I'm not sure that its message and ending can carry a story that was, ultimately, only so-so.  Overall, an okay read, but nothing I would go back to in the future.

2 stars out of 5.

Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman

It takes a certain knack to write short stories, an entirely different knack from writing long-form fiction, and it's one that I think Gaiman possesses.  I've read some of his short stories before, in Trigger Warning, and was glad to read some more.  As with his other story collections, these are fantasy stories.  Gaiman breaks down why he wrote each of them in the foreword of the book, and also includes a little bonus story that you'd  miss if you just skipped straight to the first listed story.  But as with any collection, not everything here can be a total hit.

I don't plan on breaking down every bit of this book; that would take forever.  But here were the high points: "Troll Bridge," about a young man who repeatedly encounters a troll who wants to eat his life; "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories," bits of which are apparently true (which bits?) and takes place on a surreal trip to Los Angeles; "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar," which is Lovecraft-inspired; "Bay Wolf," which is Beowulf told as if it's an episode of Baywatch; and "Snow, Glass, Apples," which is a creepy retelling of Snow White.  For low points, I would say that the poetry isn't my favorite; "Vampire Sestina" is nice but the rest I could pretty much take or leave.

The stories here are pretty diverse in scope and include some racier things than I've seen in Gaiman's long-form work.  But while most of them were enjoyable, they weren't dazzling, and I can't see myself reaching for this again and again like I can with his novels.  Neverwhere, American Gods, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane in particular are so wonderful and magical, and I just didn't feel like any of the things in this could quite build up to the precedents that those had set for me.  But "Snow, Glass, Apples" is very good, and really reinforces that I love Gaiman's fairy tale-type stories.  He's written another one since this, which I actually read first, called "The Sleeper and the Spindle," which is also wonderful, and of course Stardust is delightful as well and The Ocean at the End of the Lane has a whimsy to it that's similar.

Overall, a nice collection but not something I can see myself reading again.  But it was nice to pick up and put down; I read some big chunks of it at once, but did find this was a better book to pick at rather than to just read.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The Fall Guy - James Lasdun

Hmm.... An interesting book, though I'm not sure it was necessarily a good one.  The plot is pretty simple: main character Matthew goes on vacation with his wealthy cousin Charlie and Charlie's wife, Chloe, serving as designated chef as a way of justifying his presence in their guest house.  But as the summer goes on, Matthew finds out something that begins to put increasing pressure on his relationships with both Charlie and Chloe, and which makes them uneasy with him in return.  Another person entering the picture leads to catastrophe.

This is a book that's slow to unfold.  Matthew is not a sympathetic character to begin with, and gets progressively less sympathetic as the book goes on.  Really, the characters in general are meant to be unlikable, but Matthew seemed particularly egregious.  Why?  Because he was dumb, that's why.  He wasn't nasty to hiding things or devious, he was just dumb.  He had all of these very naive visions about the world, despite having apparently lived through a lot, and it made a lot of his actions unbelievable.  It's obvious to us, as the readers, that his relationship with Charlie and Chloe really isn't on good ground to begin with, but Matthew keeps bopping along without picking up on any of the blatantly obvious social clues that float around him, letting him know that he is not, in fact, welcome with them.  Charlie is possibly equally unlikable, but that's just because he's a dick.  (And are seriously supposed to believe Charlie wasn't up to something all summer, too?)  Chloe I actually had more sympathy for, despite her bad behavior.  She seemed more "real" than the other ones and at least some of her actions made sense.

The catastrophic event that occurs near the middle of the book and occupies Matthew for its duration seemed to come out of nowhere, and didn't really fit in with the tone of the rest of the book.  Lasdun makes a genre jump here, and I'm not convinced that it really worked.  Also, there's not really much possibility that this would have gone on for as long as it did, because as I noted above, Matthew just isn't that sharp.  I am glad he got what was coming to him in the end, though it might have been more suitable if the car had run him over instead of having police in it.  Sigh.  Maybe if the book had been told from all three character perspectives and laid more of a chance for someone--or everyone--to be an unreliable narrator, this whole book would have been better, but I don't know.

Overall, a quick read, and not a bad one, but definitely not one that was as good as I thought it would be, and one I don't think I'll return to in the future.

2 stars out of 5.

Slightly Dangerous - Mary Balogh (Bedwyn Saga #6)

At last, we have arrived: the final book in Mary Balogh's Bedwyn Saga.  Getting around to the eldest sibling in the family, Wulfric, the Duke of Bewcastle, Balogh puts forth a time jump--while the first five books in the series happened in quick succession, this one takes place more than two years after the fifth book, and all the other siblings are well settled into married life by the time Wulfric gets around to falling in love.

The heroine here is Christine, a widowed woman who is living with her mother and sister after a split with her husband's family over the circumstances surrounding his death.  Christine is clumsy and speaks her mind, and seems to be entirely unsuitable for "civilized" society, except that everyone likes her anyway.  She's dragged into attending a house party to even out the numbers, and of course Wulfric is attending as well.  Their paths continuously cross, and the two grow closer but don't seem to realize it because they're continually fighting.  After the party is over, they go their separate ways, only to reunite months later...

I liked the second part of this book, at Lindsey Hall, much better than the first part at the house party.  However, as much as I liked this pairing in concept, I felt like Balogh didn't really succeed with chemistry between the characters.  She was apparently going for a "kiss you or kill you" sort of vibe, but I never felt any romantic or sexual tension underlying the sniping between Christine and Wulfric.  The sniping was amusing, to be sure, but there didn't appear to be any actual "burn" involved with it.  And while I loved the concept of Wulfric falling in love with someone who was evidently completely unsuitable for him, and loved the incidents of him coming to Christine's rescue when she landed herself in embarrassing scrapes, I didn't really see the relationship evolving on Christine's side.  Additionally, the subplot involving Christine's reputation as a flirt and her friend Justin seemed overplayed to me, given how little of an impact it had on the book.  It was supposed to deal with Christine's Tragic Past, but honestly it wasn't even that tragic and seemed to have been thrown in for melodrama more than for any true tension or plot propulsion.

Overall, this was an okay book, but it certainly wasn't worth plugging through all of the other okay books of the series for.  This wasn't the best historical romance series to me, and I'm not sure if I'll pursue Balogh again in the future.

3 stars out of 5.

Reading Challenge Updates

I kind of fell off reading my challenge books for a while; there are just too many good books out there!  However, I'm back on track with this update, and should have one more to finish the batch before doing my final overview for the year!


Completed
-A book with a month or day of the week in the title.  I picked A June of Ordinary Murders for this after seeing it as a Book of the Month pick a while back, even though I eventually bought it from Amazon.  While I think its setting and premise had promise, it ultimately left me a little glaze-eyed.  There was just too much info-dumping and a side plot that didn't tie into the main one well.  It was Conor Brady's first book, so he probably should get a bit of leeway there, but it didn't leave me wanting more.

-A book set around a holiday other than Christmas.  It is surprisingly hard to find a book for this category.  I started reading a Thanksgiving suspense romance but it was absolutely terrible, so I ditched it and, after some list-perusing, settled on V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, since it revolves around Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night, aka the 5th of November.  This is the graphic novel that the movie was based off of.  Overall, I wasn't actually a huge fan of this book.  While I appreciate a good dystopia, I don't like V as a character because his background and motivations don't make sense, and found the art to be a bit bland as well; the colors are very washed out, which might have been a stylistic choice, but didn't really make anything eye-grabbing, and I found some of the characters hard to tell apart.  Also, copious use of a phonetic accent.  Meh.

-A book with an unreliable narrator.  I swapped out The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer in favor of Good Morning, Midnight for this category, and I'm so glad I did.  Mara Dyer made the list primarily because nothing was striking me, but Good Morning, Midnight had an unexpectedly unreliable narrator, and whole book was just so beautiful and lovely and wonderful!  I highly recommend it, especially if you liked Station Eleven.

-A book that takes place over a character's life span.  While I had The Kitchen God's Wife picked out for this (it looked like it would fit) one of my Book of the Month selections ended up suiting it perfectly: The Heart's Invisible Furies.  While I liked the year-skip setup and some of the excellent characters that were included, the book fell into the category of works that seem to revel in the "tragedy" of a character being gay and just being slapped down by the world again and again.  This is a classic example of the "Bury Your Gays" trope and I expected more from this author than that.

-A book by an author from a country you've never visited.  After much finangling with the library system, I did get Mornings in Jenin for this one, which by Susan Abulhawa.  Abulhawa herself was born in Jordan, but her family is Palestinian, refugees from the 1967 war in Israel.  As a book, I felt like this had heart and a good story, but was very heavy-handed with the author's message that Israel and Israelis are evil, evil, evil.  It's important to not buy into false equivalencies, but this book left a bad taste in my mouth because it often read more like a piece of propaganda than a piece of literature.  It definitely has an important place in its category, but I often felt like I was being whalloped over the head with Abulhawa's point, which was not a pleasant reading experience.

-A book by a person of color.  I waited all year for The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin to come out to fit this category; while there are clearly tons of amazing books to fit here and I've read some of them this year anyway, I really wanted to use Jemisin's book for this.  The conclusion of a trilogy, it was stronger than the second book in the series and featured some good, raw characterization, but seemed to fall prey to final volume info-dumping and I found some of the story and structure familiar to Jemisin's first novel, which meant this one didn't come off as fresh as it otherwise might have.

-A book involving a mythical creature.  I stuck to my plan and read Nice Dragons Finish Last for this, and was pleasantly surprised!  I'm not sure why, but I wasn't expecting to like it much.  However, Aaron's worldbuilding, particularly the Detroit Free Zone, sucked me in (though I'm still skeptical about the "magical drought ended by magical comet" thing) and the Heartstriker family was awesome, even its sometimes less-than-savory members.  Remember, Mother might be in the mountain, but Chelsie's right behind you...


Still to Come
-A book of letters.  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

-A book that's becoming a movie in 2017. Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie

-A book set in the wilderness.  Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

-A book with multiple authors.  Mutiny on the Bounty, Charles Nordhoff and James Hall

-A bestseller from a genre you don't normally read.  Carrie, Steven King

-A book recommended by an author you love.  The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry (rec'd by Tamora Pierce)

-A book based on mythology.  Olympos, Dan Simmons

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #4)

Oh, Harry Potter.  So wonderful and yet so full of flaws.  Continuing my re-read of this series, a book at a time when I need something a little different, I've finally gotten to the fourth volume, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

The third book was somewhat of a break from the direct Harry vs. Voldemort conflict, but Rowling doesn't waste any time getting back to things here, diving right in with a foreboding scene hinting at Voldemort's actual return and his direct targeting of Harry.  But then things recede for a while as Harry returns to school and finds himself inadvertently entered into the Triwizard Tournament, possibly because they want him dead.  The book is padded out with the Quidditch World Cup (to make up for a lack of quidditch as a whole) and a house elf rights campaign by Hermoine.  Oh, and a vicious stream of gossip by Daily Prophet reporter Rita Skeeter.

Overall, this is a fun book.  It's the first "long" Harry Potter book, but before the series takes a darker turn starting in Order of the Phoenix.  The Triwizard Tournament is of course a highlight, particularly because it brings in other schools in the wizarding world, which we didn't know about before this point.  The tasks are new and interesting, and there are a new cast of supporting characters to match them, like Mad-Eye Moody, Viktor Krum, and Fleur Delacoeur, in addition to some of the Weasleys we haven't seen before.  But while Rowling has a fun book and one that works to get the plot back on track after the detour it took in the third book, there are still so many questions that, reading it years after the first (and second, and third) times through, I couldn't dislodge.

Like why is Harry allowed to just run around all year?  If the antagonist lurking in this book wanted to save Harry for Voldy to kill himself, why not just nab him, curse him, whatever, and keep him stashed until the appropriate time?  This is the main thing that dogs me throughout the entire book.  There are so many opportunities for Harry to be "taken care of" that don't require him being in the Tournament at all, and so the Tournament clearly is meant to serve purely as fan service for readers.  In addition, I am baffled by how easily Harry's concerns and stories about Voldemort are dismissed by everyone except his core handful of supporters, namely  Ron, Hermoine, Sirius,and Dumbledore.  Harry has repeatedly been proven to be a reliable source, and yet every gossip column that Rita Skeeter puts out seems to destroy his credibility, even among students at Hogwarts, who should know better.

And why are Slytherins (other than Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle) repeatedly characterized as evil?  There doesn't seem to be a point...?  Slytherins are supposed to be cunning, but making them into the "evil" house whereas the others are all "good" really seems to be a very shallow characterization and one that does not fit in with Rowling's other layered pieces of worldbuilding.

However, this is still a good book.  The Harry Potter books are known for delving into issues that resonate strongly in our own world, and this is no exception.  Voldemort is not Hitler, but his policies and actions sometimes bear a close resemblance; racism is a key part of politics in this world, and we can see that even Ron, who is one of the heroes and is a good person, dismisses Hermoine's claims that house elves should have rights just like humans should, and that he views Hagrid and Madame Maxine differently after finding out about their giant heritage.  This is also where we really start to see the consequences of Voldemort's reign that we haven't seen before, like what happened to Neville's parents.  It's a hint at what's to come, but still a rollicking story in and of itself.

I'm rather dreading moving on to Order of the Phoenix, which was always been my least-favorite of the books, but I have it lined up and ready to go.

4 stars out of 5.

Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng

Lydia is dead.  But they don't know this yet.

What a beginning.  It sets the tone for this story perfectly: one of a family slowly unraveling in the wake of the favorite daughter's disappearance and, as we readers know is coming, death.  Lydia is the center of the Lee family, a Chinese-American teenager whose life appears to be perfect until, after her death, the cracks begin to appear.  And with those cracks spread the cracks in the other family members' lives.

The bulk of this book is actually set before Lydia's disappearance and death, showing how the Lee family got to where they are.  And in the present of the book--actually set in the 1970s--the family is slowly crumbling in the wake of their unforeseen disaster.  The alternation isn't exactly a new technique, but it really works in this case.

The story itself is really heartbreaking, and struck me for one big reason.  My edition has a cover quote saying, "If we know this story, we haven't seen it yet in American fiction, not until now..."  But we do know this story, don't we?  The story of people wanting to stand out, and to fit in, and of parents putting pressure on their children to live the lives the parents themselves wanted to live, instead of letting the children follow their own dreams.  And of families falling apart under the pressure.  Ng sets this story in the 70s, with a mother who dreamed of being a doctor but gave up on her dream when she began a family and a father whose parents immigrated from China, who has always stood out because of his ethnicity, and wants more than anything to be popular and fit in.  When both parents are unable to achieve their dreams, they focus on their daughter, Lydia, trying to make her into what they'd always dreamed of.  Lydia goes along with it, what she sees as the price for her mother remaining with her.  Meanwhile, her older brother Nath is pushed aside, despite his dreams more closely aligning with his mother's, and Lydia's younger sister Hannah is just forgotten.

I don't think there's anything particularly riveting or revolutionary about the story, the writing, or the structure of the book, but it all comes together to make a lovely whole.  There's enough uncertainty surrounding Lydia's death and Lydia herself to keep us guessing at what, exactly, happened to lead to her death.  And while readers eventually find out the answer to that mystery, there's still a deep sadness surrounding the Lee family, because we know that they will never have the same sense of closure that we do.  I think that's what really makes this book striking--it's just a combo that works, and the ending makes that "working" resonate even more.  The characters are diverse enough that I think there's someone that everyone can empathize with, in one way or another, which also helps to lend this book a sense of deep emotion that books sometimes lack.

4 stars out of 5.

Women of the Silk - Gail Tsukiyama

I remember my stepsister reading Women of the Silk when she was in middle school or early high school and loving it, and while I creeped on her bookshelf many times, this was never a book that I actually picked up.  Having read The Samurai's Garden within the past few years, however, this seemed like a good book to read when I came across it in a used bookstore.

The story follows Pei from her girlhood to young adulthood in rural China, where she first lives with her family on a farm for mulberry leaves and fish ponds, and then--for most of the book--inside a silk factory, where her father takes her when the family encounters financial difficulties.  As Pei grows older, she clings to relationships she's built in the factory and her dormitory-style home outside of it as surrogates for her birth family and comes to terms with an independence that most women in this time period in China were not able to gain for themselves.

The writing in this book is very simplistic, and while sometimes I felt like the style fit the narrative, at other times it felt like Tsukiyama was info-dumping, just pouring out information about side characters because she wanted them to be more important than they ultimately were to Pei's own narrative.  Pei herself was a strong-minded character but one who was still adrift, which worked well for the story.  What I was never entirely sure of was her exact relationship with Lin; sometimes it seemed completely platonic, then Tsukiyama would throw in something about desire, and then it would go back to being platonic, so it was a bit baffling in that way.

The setting was perfect for this place and time period; starting during the Great Depression and going forward into World War II, Pei is relatively sheltered from global events, but we as readers can still see the world's wider influence bearing down upon the silk factory and the girls who work there.  The slow encroachment of the Japanese, the conflicts involving communists, all of it kind of swirls around Pei without touching her, until it finally slams into the silk factory.  It was a good method of setting the story, but there was one problem with it: because none of this ever really touches Pei, I never felt like she actually matured as a character.  At the end of the book, she felt just as young as she did at the beginning of the book, almost two decades before.

Overall, though, this was a lovely book.  It appears there's a sequel, though this hasn't been formally slotted into a series, and I might check that out at some point if I can get it from the library, though it's not something I feel a need to rush out and buy.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Trickster's Choice - Tamora Pierce (Daughter of the Lioness #1)

Tamora Pierce is undeniably one of my favorite authors.  Whenever I need a reading reset or get into a book slump, I turn back to her books to get me going again.  When I feel sick or nostalgic I reach for them, too, because they make me feel good.  They have strong female characters, plots that are delightful without being too convoluted or simplistic, and they always interlock in wonderful ways.  On the strong female characters front--the very first thing in this book is not a paragraph-long excerpt, a laudatory review, or a list of Pierce's other books.  Instead, it's a list of other books with strong female characters; how awesome is that?

Trickster's Choice is the first in a duology following Aly, daughter of Pierce's first main character Alanna the Lioness.  Aly longs for adventure, hopefully working as a spy for her father.  She ends up with more adventure than she bargained for when, on a trip down the coast, she's captured by pirates and sold as a slave in the Copper Isles, and then sucked in a wager with a god to keep a family safe from a mad king and his feuding family over the course of the summer.

I've always liked Aly as a character.  She's smart and independent, just like all of Pierce's heroines, but she has a dry wit and a keen sense of sarcasm that most of them lack--in fact, the character whose sense of humor most closely matches Aly's would probably be Neal, a supporting character in Pierce's Protector of the Small series (and who Aly knows).  Additionally, I find the setting here fascinating; while the different regions of Pierce's Tortall universe are all based on different real-world cultures, the Copper Isles are definitely the most lush setting we've seen from her, and the culture probably the most different from the typical European-influenced fantasy settings that dominate her other works. She builds on prior story lines, throwing in little cameos of her other characters from previous series but without making this book feel like it exists only as fan service.

Additionally, the character of Nawat has really grown on me.  I didn't really like Nawat in prior readings, at least not as a romantic interest; I preferred Aly with a character who shows up in the second book.  But his innocent charm and utter devotion to Aly has won me over after some time away from this book.  All of the characters here are actually excellent, with no one feeling superfluous or developed only at a superficial level.  I remember having a feeling about who the One Who Is Promised was the first time I read this book, and it's even more blatant reading it through again, and that's because Pierce does such a good job of the characterization here.

The one weakness that I think is here is that, in trying to loop in readers who aren't already familiar with Tortall, its characters, and its mythos, Pierce engages in a bit of infodumping.  Information about the Copper Isles actually seemed to be worked in pretty well as Aly discovered it, but info about Aly's homeland wasn't worked in very artfully.  This might have been a necessary tactic, since not all readers would have read the entirety of the Tortall books before getting to this one, but it still made the reading experience a bit jarring at points.

Overall, rereading this was an absolute delight, and I can't wait to dive into the second book once again.

4.5 stars out of 5.

While the Duke Was Sleeping - Sophie Jordan (Rogue Files #1)

This was my third Sophie Jordan book and my second of her historical romances--it does interest me that she doesn't use another pseudonym for writing adult romance than the name she uses for her young adult books, but that's besides the point--and I think it might be my last.  See, recently, the Washington Post published an article called "How Trump killed off my romantic lead" by romance author Sarah McLean, which focused on toxic masculinity in romance novels.  McLean herself cops to being guilty of having this problem in past novels and the article addresses how she strove to steer away from it in the book she was writing at the time of the election.  I haven't read the book in question, but the article was heavy in my mind as I read While the Duke Was Sleeping, because if there's an absolutely toxic hero I've encountered recently, it's Struan Mackenzie.

The plot here follows heroine Poppy Fairchurch, a shopgirl with an infatuation for the Duke of Autenberry who routinely buys flowers from her for his various lovers.  When a fight in the street snowballs into Poppy pushing him out of the way of an oncoming carriage and the duke ending up in a coma, Poppy accidentally makes herself out to be his fiancee--and finds herself welcomed into his family with open arms.  Or at least his family that doesn't include his bastard half-brother Struan, the guy Autenberry was fighting with to begin with, and who came to London to get revenge on Autenberry for the sins of his father.  Ah, the drama.  And how does Struan decide to get revenge?  Why, by taking Poppy, Autenberry's fiancee or possible mistress, of course.

I liked Poppy as a character, I really did, other than her absolute inability to say, "Oh, hey, this is a misunderstanding" and peace out.  Clearly her perpetuating the misunderstanding had higher stakes than her saying "no" to Strickland, the duke's best friend, when he tells her to go along with it in the first place.  But besides that, I did like her.  She's struggling to raise her fifteen-year-old sister, who is prettier and flightier than is probably good for her.  She dreams of true love, even though I'm not convinced she really thought that she was ever going to marry the duke, not even at the height of her infatuation.  But Struan was another matter.  He and Poppy had chemistry, undeniably--but Poppy didn't want him.  She told him no, repeatedly, because even though they had chemistry, she thought she deserved better, or at least different.  And yet Struan repeatedly sexually assaults Poppy, ignores that she says no, and is absolutely horrible to her in the process.  This isn't sight unseen in romance novels, of course--but most recent ones have been better about this, and Struan belongs firmly in the era of bodice rippers rather than in our modern one.  Our modern age of historical romance, that is.

There were some promising side characters here and the sequel to this, The Scandal of It All, seems to have a promising main couple--but after finding the other romance I've read by Jordan weird and this one just outright uncomfortable due to the absolute toxicity of the hero, I'm just not convinced I can go for it.

2 stars out of 5.

Funny in Farsi - Firoozeh Dumas

A lighthearted memoir, Funny in Farsi was the Deliberate Reader Book Club title for October's month-long discussion.  The author, Firoozeh Dumas (her father specifically told her not to mention her maiden name in the book, and then wondered why she hadn't used it once it was published) first came to the United States when she was seven, when her father had a two-year work assignment for the Iranian oil industry in California.  After returning to Iran, her family later came back to the United States to liver permanently.

Despite the cover claim that this is "A memoir of growing up Iranian in America," I felt like much of the book wasn't really about Dumas so much as it was about her larger family, with her serving kind of as an observer in the background.  Each "chapter" is really more like a little vignette focusing on a different incident, and there's also a pretty big jump from when Dumas was a child to when she was adult, with only one real chapter on her adolescence--one minute she's trying to get her mother to bake American snacks for her elementary school, and the next she's getting married.  Many of the stories focus explicitly on Dumas' father, something that she admits in the afterword of the book.  Her parents are definitely the center of this narrative; despite having brothers and an extended family, most of the stories involve her parents in the central role, whether it's her mother's accent and learning of English consisting mainly of watching The Price is Right or her father wanting to compete on a bowling game show, "fixing" up the house on his own, or trying on her engagement ring when her boyfriend asked her father's permission to marry her.

Obviously, the humor here is in the clash of cultures that comprises Dumas' life.  While her family is eager to embrace much of American culture, they're still baffled by other parts of it--such as why Americans like turkey.  And then, once Dumas marries a Frenchman, yet another aspect of culture clash enters her life.  To some degree, Dumas presents herself as better than the others around her--better at adjusting, better at understanding, just better, which is a little self-centered, even more so than writing a memoir about your experiences.  (And she is correct that you don't need to have done something amazing to write a memoir about your life.)  Maybe it's that she's more pragmatic than other people in her life, maybe it's a skewed viewpoint; it's hard to say.  However, it's still an amusing read, though one that, like many memoirs, you probably need to take with a grain of salt.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read, but it's one that lacks a lot of depth.  Rather than really digging into any issue, light or heavy, Dumas instead skims over pretty much everything, keeping the focus away from herself.  I would have liked to see a little more depth here in some respect; depth doesn't mean that something has to be depressing, but it would have made the book seem a little more whole-hearted; as it was, it just felt a bit shallow.

3 stars out of 5.