Happily Ever Ninja - Penny Reid (Knitting in the City #5)

This is the worst romance book I'v read in quite some time, and that pains me because I typically really, really like Penny Reid.  She's written some of my favorite contemporary romances.  This one?  No.  Not so much.

The fifth book in the Knitting in the City series, this focuses on Fiona, the only member of the knitting group who was married before the series began.  Her husband, an ex-Marine, is a consultant of some type in the oil business, working to try to make oil drilling more environmentally friendly and ethical (or something--it's kind of vague).  Fiona is an ex-CIA agent (you can kind of intuit this from former books in the series) turned stay-at-home mom and part-time consultant.  Their relationship is under some strain because of Greg's long absences from home for work, but they're trucking along, as they have been doing for fourteen years...until Greg gets kidnapped, and Fiona goes to save him.

First let's talk about this hare-brained plot.  This is nothing like the other books.  Reid mentions that, other than Neanderthal Seeks Human, this was the book she was most looking forward to in the series.  It's basically a spy novel, though, and it does't fit in with the rest of the books at all.  There is no character or emotional depth here.  There is a novella about Fiona and Greg's origin story floating about somewhere, but that does not excuse shoddy plotting and characterization in the main book.  We know that Greg was a Marine and something happened to his parents; but what?  We know that Fiona was apparently a child gymnast and spent six to eight hours a day training, but beyond Greg throwing that out in an argument, there's nothing else about it or how it might have formed her as a character and influenced her decisions.  And, by the way, you can want your kids to have a normal childhood even if you weren't a child gymnast, so it wasn't even a good point for the argument.  Fiona's rescue mission was the most half-thought-out thing I've ever seen, and Greg's improvisations on it were even worse.

But the real problem with this book is Greg.  Greg is the worst romantic hero ever.  You know who I didn't say that about?  Gray Eagle, the "hero" of Savage Ecstasy, which was terrible.  Greg is worse.  Why?  Because Gray Eagle isn't supposed to be a good guy, and Greg is.  Let me discuss some of why Greg is terrible with you.  Ultimately, what much of it boils down to is that while he purports to love Fiona, he does not trust or respect her, which are, you know, kind of important factors of love.  The examples of this are numerous and infuriating, such as...

-Greg's job takes him away from home for long periods of time; okay, that happens.  However, while he's gone, he expects Fiona to live and parent by ridiculous decrees that he leaves behind, such as their five-year-old daughter is not allowed to have a princess costume, or their son can't play soccer unless their daughter does too, and their daughter doesn't want to play soccer.  Greg pushes this as not molding their children to gender norms, but it doesn't work, because the daughter has lots of other interests that are not typically keyed to women, she just doesn't want to play soccer and she happens to like princesses.  When it comes out that Fiona is letting her children have a bit of freedom--the daughter gets her costume, the son gets to play soccer--Greg pretty much flips and blames Fiona for making decisions without him.

-On the note of making decisions without him: Greg and Fiona do talk while he's gone, via Skype.  However, Greg doesn't seem to want to be involved with making decisions, he just wants Fiona to follow his rules while he's gone and have phone sex with him.  The book opens with Fiona trying to talk to Greg about their retirement, which he argues about why they basically shouldn't have a retirement investment because all corporations are evil, and then says he'll sign the papers if she has Skype sex with him, shows him her boobs, sends him dirty pictures, etc.  He never does sign the papers, and his demands for sexual favors in return for acting like a Goddamn adult are ridiculous in the extreme.

-Even when Fiona basically single-handedly saves him from Nigerian kidnappers using her elite CIA training, he does not trust her planning or skills enough to get them out of Nigeria.  Instead, he chooses to drug her against her will and haul her off into an even bigger mess of his own creation, which involves him getting re-kidnapped and almost killed in a gunfight and Fiona almost being arrested for treason.

-He has no respect for the work Fiona does or the hard decisions she has to make as a functionally single parent; he comes home, trashes the apartment, gets upset at Fiona for having a male neighbor/friend, and then mocks her when she expresses her anger and frustration at his behavior, before saying he loves her and leaving, as if saying that you love someone fixes everything you've done to hurt them.

-He was furious at her for keeping her CIA status from him earlier in their relationship and made her promise not to do anything dangerous beyond her abilities, but he doesn't have the respect for courtesy to act the same in his own career.  Per a promise he made, he never brings up the CIA thing in arguments, at least vocally--however, he makes his resentment known, even a decade and a half later, through his actions towards her.

-He makes rape jokes that he actually thinks are funny.

Fiona eventually addresses Greg's behavior, demanding that he value and respect her.  And poof!  He suddenly does!  But I don't for one secton believe that, if he clearly has not valued or respected her for the first fourteen years of their marriage (and eighteen or nineteen years of their total relationship; I forget the exact number), that he is about to start now, harrowing near-death experiences or no.  Yes, marriages have problems; but this is beyond reasonable.  Greg seems to have really loved Fiona when they were younger, and I don't blame her for marrying him.  However, I do blame her for not divorcing him in a hot second by the end of this book, and I have to wonder where her spine has been for the past fourteen years if she's supposedly such a kick-ass person.

There are other problems with this book, too; Marie is apparently suddenly a lawyer though she never went to law school because she decided to take the bar exam one day, when this isn't actually possible--you can take the bar without going to law school, but you have to spend an extended period studying under an attorney or judge to do so.  This might be addressed in the next book, Dating-ish, which focuses on Marie as the main character, but is an illustrated point that while Reid seems to have done some research on Nigeria for this book, she skimped in other areas.  It's also not as well-edited, with misspelled, misused, misplaced, or just plain missing words in several places.  It kind of feels like Reid was so eager to write Fiona's book that she just did it and never looked back to see if it was actually any good.

Let me wrap it up this way: if Happily Ever Ninja was the first Penny Reid book I read, I would never read another.  That is not the case, however.  I've read many of Reid's other books and like them quite a bit, so I will read more...but knowing that this is what Reid sees as one of her favorite stories and implied favorite heroes has made me lose quite a bit of respect for her as an author.

1 star out of 5.

An Extraordinary Union - Alyssa Cole (Loyal League #1)

Rushing to finish my reading challenges by the end of the year means more weekend book reviews!  Oh boy.  After several attempts at fulfilling the category for a Civil War or Reconstruction romance for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' challenge, I stumbled upon An Extraordinary Union, which had high reviews, the right setting, and an interracial romance.  I don't end up reading a lot of interracial romances because I heavily favor historical romances, primarily Regency-era ones set in London society, which was not exactly brimming with interracial couples, but I'm not at all opposed to them as a concept, so this was a pleasant discovery.  (I do have to read an interracial romance for another category and have a different book picked out for it; I just had too much trouble finding a good Civil War romance to slot this one into another category.)

The story here follows Elle(n) Burns, a free woman of color who was born a slave before being freed with her family as a child.  Now, Elle has returned to the South to spy for the Loyalty League, a group of blacks working for the North, the Union, and Lincoln.  Her disguise necessitates her posing as a mute slavery and subjecting her to humiliations that she'd thought she'd escaped.  It also puts her in the path of Malcolm McCall, a Pinkerton detective who is also spying on the South, though he has the privilege of being a man and white and so gets to pose as a soldier instead of a slave.  Upon their first encounter, Elle and Malcolm are both attracted to each other--at least after they establish that Malcolm hasn't shown up to rape Elle.  But despite their attraction, Elle is leery of Malcolm for very good reasons.  You know, like the fact that she's black and he's white and there can never be an equal power dynamic between them, society will never accept them, and she's not really sure if he really likes her or if he just wants a taste of something taboo.  So there are a few obstacles in the way of their romance.

Cole does such a great job bringing Elle and Malcolm together.  There's a keen awareness of unequal power dynamics in the very nature of their relationship and Cole (and Malcolm, by extension) does everything possible to even the playing field, making sure that Elle's consent is highly visible at every step of the way and that Malcolm backs off every time she seems like she's about to say no.  After he saves her twice, she makes a request that she save him the next time--and then she does, in spectacular fashion.  And of course, Elle is the one who puts together the pieces to figure out what is going on with a ship that could threaten the the outcome of the blockade and the war itself.  Elle is a strong, remarkable woman even when she's being humiliated and put down, in direct contrast to her "mistress" who is a downright bitch and petty and vindictive even when she already has everything she could ever want.

The writing here is excellent, the pacing is on-spot, and the chemistry between Elle and Malcolm absolutely sizzles.  However, I do have two issues.  My first complaint is that not a lot is done to show Elle and Malcolm's backgrounds; a few things are stated, like the reason for Malcolm's family's immigration to the United States and how Elle came to be free and lost her best friend and former lover, but there's not a lot of insight into how that made them the people that they are.  And second, while I think the individual plots of the spy mission and romance are done well, they're not necessarily woven together well.  I liked how Elle and Malcolm teamed up to pool information and find out about the ship, but the spying aspects and romance aspects seemed to seesaw from one extreme to the other without much in-between.  Still, this was highly enjoyable and I'm definitely interested in reading more books in this series and by this author.

4 stars out of 5.

Palace of Treason - Jason Matthews (Red Sparrow #2)

I read the first book in this trilogy, Red Sparrow, a few years ago while in school.  I was taking a class called "Cold War and the Spy Novel" and RS was a recent spy novel that had come out, and Barack Obama had put it on his to-read list, so it ended up on the syllabus.  I remember liking RS overall, but now reading Palace of Treason (which was, by the way, my pick for an espionage thriller for my reading challenge) I remember some of the issues I had with the first book.

POT takes place about nine months after RS, with Dominika working in counterintelligence in Russia and Nate being positioned in Athens.  There are two main storylines that start to draw closer as the book progresses.  First, Nate gets a new recruit: a Russian who feels he has lost everything and wants to make Russia pay for it.  Meanwhile Dominika recruits an Iranian nuclear scientist, which in a roundabout way brings her back into contact with Nate.  But the main plotline here is that a spurned CIA employee decides he's going to betray the agency by selling secrets to the Russians and making lots of money off them, and reveals that there are not one but two Russians working for the agency, putting both Dominika and the new recruit at risk.

As far as the spy elements go, this was fine.  The plots intertwine in sensible ways and Matthews of course has the US being the "good guys," (ha, Good Guys) who want information but not at any sort of risk to their agents.  Dominika continues to be the stubborn Russian who is willing to do whatever it takes to bring down the corruption she sees as poisoning her mother country, even if means she might be discovered, tortured, and killed.  And really, that's one of my big complaints here.  The characters are all completely one-dimensional.  Nate is sort of a sweeter version of James Bond, who seems to feel the need to sleep with every woman who comes his way (they are all, of course, attractive) and puts them in serious danger in the course of their relationships and keeps fucking up because of it.  Newcomer to the scene Hannah is constantly referred to as a "nature girl," which clearly defines her entire character and being.  Dominika is...well, I've already said, but she's a woman, which means that, when he's not talking about the "colors" she can see around people describing all of their thoughts and motivations (which removes any real sense of mystery here) the main things Matthews is concerned about are her breasts.

Yes, you read that right.  For some reason, Matthews seems absolutely incapable of writing about women without speculating on how their nipples look at any given point in time, even when they're in the process of trying to garrotte each other.  I feel like I couldn't get more than a few paragraphs in this book without reading about some woman's boobs.  Even when a character is in the process of trying to evade capture, and is having a heart attack at the same time, Matthews feels it's necessary to talk about how her dress is wet and is clinging to her "ample bosom."  And of course Dominika, despite being one of the best spies ever, as we are repeatedly told, can't ever actually seem to accomplish anything without using sex to get it.  Hmmm.... The male spies in this book don't ever seem to be sleeping with people to get information.  I had so much side-eying going on here with this.

Another thing here that irked me was Matthews' details.  I live and work in Washington, DC, and so many of the small details he throws in, trying to make everything more "realistic" are just so blatantly wrong.  From the façade of the Good Guys strip club (which is in my neighborhood, right next to a Whole Foods, and which sponsors things like recreational baseball teams--they have a very good neighborhood relations team, evidently) which doesn't have a brick front and neon sign at all but rather a wood façade, to the directions the streets run, to how much rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a certain neighborhood is... All of this is so easily available, and yet Matthews got it wrong again and again, managing to completely yank me out of the story every time.  Sometimes less is more when it comes to details.  If you must include them, get it right.  Otherwise, you risk looking silly.

I don't remember having this with RS.  I remember we talked in class about how it's kind of a ridiculous premise, the whole "sexpionage" thing, but I don't remember it being that bad.  Here, Matthews comes back and hits with a hammer until it's absolutely dead.  I'm interested in seeing how this ends but honestly I don't think I can stand another book of hearing about what color every woman's nipples are.  I'm a woman, and take it from me: boobs are not actually that interesting and bear absolutely zero being on 99% of the things I do in everyday life.

2 stars out of 5.

Enchanted Islands - Allison Amend

Enchanted Islands was my selection for June from Book of the Month, but it took me a while to actually start reading it.  The story follows Frances Frank(owski) from her childhood through her old age, in the form of her writing down a memoir of sorts in order to record the rather extraordinary events of her life.  The book starts with Frances in an old folk' home with her long-time friend Rosalie.  Rosalie is receiving an award from a Jewish society for the work she did during the war, which mostly consisted of fund-raising.  Frances is a bit jealous, because she was doing other work during the war that she can't talk about--which launches her into her recollections.  Frances is from Duluth, Minnesota, and has a plethora of siblings and parents who haven't adjusted well to life as immigrants from Poland.  While at the library one day, she meets Rosalie, and the two become fast friends.  Following the revelation of some rather horrid things that happened to Rosalie, the two run away to Chicago, and after some time there and Rosalie being a really crappy friend, Frances runs away again, and eventually ends up in California.  The real part of the story that Frances wants to talk about doesn't start until she's in her fifties, when she's working as a secretary for the intelligence portion of the navy and agrees to marry a man, Ainslie, who is eleven years her junior, so that they can go be spies in the Galapagos Islands.

Frances and Ainslie's relationship is off from the very beginning, and while I think most readers can easily determine why, it takes Frances quite a while to pin it down--understandably, given her background and knowledge.  But it's sad to watch Frances pine for Ainslie's love when it's apparent that it's not really ever going to go anywhere, at least not in the way that she wants.  The Galapagos Islands themselves are a beautiful backdrop to this drama as it plays out, though this isn't really a "spy story," as I thought it would be, except for one or two chapters.  Beyond that, Frances is just a cover, and doesn't have much to do with the work that Ainslie is presumably off doing.  Becuase this is a first-person story, it means it's mostly about her just living in the islands.  But she loves them, loves how living there means that everything is focused on survival and has a visible impact, and also finds comfort in knowing that nothing they do will ultimately affect the state of the universe--though it might, just might, impact the world.

One thing I didn't like was Rosalie, and how Frances kept going back to her.  I really hated Rosalie.  I didn't mind her at the beginning--and she had some really terrible things happen to her when she was young.  You could make the argument, and it would be a good one, that these events are what shaped Rosalie and her actions for the rest of her life.  I even believe that.  But Rosalie was still a really shitty friend at multiple points, and was an extremely selfish person, and I hated how Frances just let Rosalie walk all over her and forgave her for everything she did.  You can have terrible things happen to you and not be a selfish, terrible person; Rosalie chose to take that path anyway, and then she had the audacity to try to tear down Frances at multiple points.  I couldn't bring myself to like her, not even a little bit, and I think that tainted the book as a whole for me because I knew Rosalie was there and never really got what I consider her "just deserts."  Sure, that doesn't always happen in real life, but I still wanted it to.

Overall, the part of this book that actually took place on the islands was the best.  There were some beautiful descriptions and I think Frances really came into her own there--something she herself acknowledged at multiple points.  But this is only a portion of the book, and the rest of it didn't have a ton of appeal to me.  I wish there were more books with settings like this; it did make me want to read some things like Swiss Family Robinson, which I've never read before.  But I don't think this is something I'll return to again and again.

3 stars out of 5.

The Salzburg Connection - Helen MacInnes

Helen MacInnes has been labeled "the queen of suspense" by some, and I think I would probably agree with that based on my impressions of The Salzburg Connection.  The plot revolves around a box hidden in an Austrian lake, and all of the people who are trying to find it or prevent it from being found.  This results in there being a lot of moving parts, but MacInnes handles it well.  She's also rather unique in the world of cold war spy novelists in that she actually has strong female characters.  Lynn adapts remarkably well to the adverse conditions she finds in Zurich and proves to be a good person to have on hand.  And Elissa... Oh, what to say about Elissa without ruining anything?  Well, she's definitely a clever character, and she does not in any way fall into the trope of the "Bond girl" that is so common throughout spy novels.

This is a somewhat dated book, having been published in 1968, but that doesn't diminish its reading quality.  It is devoid of the slick gadgets found in so many spy novels, probably because the primary characters are not spies themselves, and this makes it a much more believable narrative.  Mathison, a lawyer who is also the main character of the novel--he is the main character, despite his relatively late appearance--is just trying to figure out what he's gotten himself into and help someone out.  He doesn't want to be a spy, and he doesn't really engage in that much spy-like activity.  That's all left to other characters, making Mathison extremely engaging.  Because we experience the story mostly through his perspective, we get the real experience of what he's going through, rather than jumping right into the shocking doings of the underworld.

MacInnes also has a wonderful layering effect going on throughout the novel.  As said before, there are a lot of moving parts, and just when you think you have all of their paths figured out, she adds another dimension--some of which aren't revealed until the very end.  They aren't huge twists that will completely change the plot for you, but they do add a lot of "oomph" to the experience and make it seem a much more "full" narrative.  I didn't really buy into the romance subplot, because I felt it wasn't worked enough to be really engaging, but that wasn't the main point of the book so I can let it go.  Overall, I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes spy stories, mysteries, Nazis, or novels about the complicated relations of the cold war.

4 out of 5 stars.

The Winter Palace - Eva Stachniak (Catherine #1)

Having taken a course on Russian history last fall, I spent most of this book trying to match up historical fact to the happenings in the book.  That said, it was a futile effort because my course focused on Russian history, not Russian intrigue.  The plot follows a Polish woman who moved to Russia when she was young in the company of her parents.  When she is orphaned at the age of fifteen, almost sixteen, she finds a place serving in the palace Empress Elizabeth.  She becomes a "tongue," a palace spy for the Empress, and befriends Princess Sophie when the German girl arrives to marry the Grand Duke.  Intrique follows.

This was a book full of much drama, and it was a good read.  There isn't a ton of history in it; large historic events are only mentioned in the background, and the story mostly takes place within the walls of various Russian palaces.  The Winter Palace, while giving its name to the book, is only one of the locations, and spends a large portion of the book uninhabited as it is renovated.  There are plenty of descriptions of sumptuous dresses to please those enamored with royal life.  There are lovers and affairs and forced marriages and plenty of backstabbing among the palace inhabitants.  It has all the elements of a good historical fiction, with plenty of description of Russian foods to add a little cultural flavor (ha ha, flavor, get it?).

The main complaint I have about this book is that none of the characters ever seem to grow up.  Varvara acts like she's sixteen and Catherine acts like she's fourteen throughout the entire book, which spans several decades.  Varvara's daughter acts at age eight exactly the way she acted at age three.  When Catherine and Varvara have a falling out, it's over something that a pair of high school students would quarrel over, not an issue that would sever a long bond of friendship between two mature women.  Presumably these characters, who are playing at revolution and ruling an empire, should have a bit more maturity than that, especially after everything they've gone through.  The characters are completely stagnant.  Maybe there's supposed to be a message in that, something about history repeating itself to those who have not learned from it, but it comes across more as poor character management.  Perhaps it would have been better if the scope had been limited to a smaller period of time, when less character change would be expected, but as it was, it just seemed strange to find adults running around pretending to be children while planning a revolution in their free time.

I also found Varvara's relationship with Egor unrealistic.  I didn't know if she was supposed to hate him or love him or tolerate him, and I really hoped that there would be some other love interest somewhere along the way.  There seemed to be a lot of potential people to fill that role, but nothing ever came of it. Kind of disappointing.  It didn't entirely kill the story; far from it, but it would have been a good side-plot.

2 stars out of 5.