The Broken Girls - Simone St. James

The Broken Girls was my February Book of the Month pick.  Part suspense and part thriller and part ghost story, it was intriguing from the start, following a disappearance, a murder, and a creepy boarding school for unwanted girls in two different time periods.

In the 1950s, four teenage girls share a room at Idlewild, a school for delinquent, disturbed, and just plain unwanted girls.  Katie, CeCe, Roberta, and Sonia all have different backgrounds and different reasons for being at Idlewild, but their shared experience there bonds them and they help each other through the troubles that Idlewild presents, including the specter of Mary Hand who haunts the school and terrorizes its occupants.  In 2014, Fiona is a journalist living in the wake of the murder of her older sister 20 years before.  While visiting the abandoned Idlewild campus, where her sister's body was discovered, she finds out that someone is planning on renovating and reopening the school--plans that go along fine until a body of a former student, missing for decades, appears in a well on the grounds.  Fiona starts digging into the girl and what happened to her, and find some dark secrets lurking in the town and in the past as she does.

This was a properly creepy book.  It's a ghost story, a true one, and while we know all along that the ghost is called "Mary Hand," she's just unknown and distant enough to be truly scary.  After all, the monsters that are the most frightening are the ones we never actually see.  For the less supernatural parts of the story, Sonia's disappearance (because you can figure out pretty quickly that it's Sonia, and so does everyone else) is fraught with horrors of its own variety, the kind that are tied to Nazi death camps, though the strengths of the girls' friendships brings hope--until it doesn't.

As for Fiona and her story line, I really liked it.  She's a reporter who mostly writes fluff pieces but wants to do more, and has the pedigree for it, and takes her chance--both to write a "hard" story and to investigate fuzzy parts regarding her sister's murder--when she gets it.  She doesn't do anything stupid (like charging into dangerous situations) and when trouble finds her, she does her best to deal with it.  I also liked her relationship with Jamie; while they have their issues and the cop/reporter divide is a strong one, they work together and work things out, and I liked how it all unfolded.

Overall, I really enjoyed this.  It is creepy and thrilling all at once, and I was very pleased with it.  The last book I read with a creepy vibe like this was The Night Sister, but that one kind of lost it at the end when the monster became too real on the page.  This one definitely did a better job, and while I think the resolution with Mary Hand was a bit too neat, the rest of it I really, really liked.

4 stars out of 5.

Burn for Me - Ilona Andrews (Hidden Legacy #1)

I picked up Burn for Me while it was on sale a while back because another member of the Unapologetic Romance Readers group had given it a really good rating.  And Ilona Andrews does really good paranormal fantasy with romance elements, which is right up my alley, so it was perfect.  But it sat on my Kindle, unread, until I slotted it into my reading challenge for "A book by two authors," because "Ilona Andrews" is actually a pen name for a husband-wife writing team, Ilona and Andrew Gordon.  This isn't actually hard to find--they're very open with it--but it's not apparent by just looking at the book cover.

The best-known books by these two are the Kate Daniels books.  Burn for Me and the other Hidden Legacy books take place in a different world from Kate's story.  In this world, a substance called the Osiris Serum was discovered in the nineteenth century and unlocked magic in many people; the unlocked magic became genetic, and in our current time, despite the serum no longer being in use, magic is still rampant.  Heroine Nevada has magic that allows her to tell when someone is lying, though she hides it because she doesn't want to be forced to become a human lie detector for the government, military, etc.  Instead, she runs a private investigation business that brings in money for her family.  But when bad boy Adam Pierce starts burning things down in Houston, Nevada is put on the case of bringing him back to his family against her will by the man who "owns" her family for various reasons.  And to make things worse, she ends up falling with bad man Connor Rogan, aka Mad Rogan, aka the Scourge of Mexico, who can literally level cities with just the power of his mind.  Yikes.

I really, really enjoyed this.  I stayed up too late reading it, which I haven't done in a long time, and immediately bought the second volume, White Hot.  Nevada is an imminently likable character.  She is smart and gorgeous and can kick butt, which is all par for the course in this genre, but her devotion to her family is something new, because most people in this genre tend to be orphans or estranged from their families, for some reason.  Her sad and quiet mother, her kooky grandmother, and her annoying-but-helpful younger siblings and cousins were all so charming and really added a lot to this book.  I have mixed feelings about Rogan--and I actually wasn't sure if he was going to be the love interest for a while (I thought maybe something would end up happening with Adam) because he and Nevada don't meet until so far into the book.  But he's a little psycho.  Nevada is keenly aware of this herself, and purposefully keeps distance between herself and Rogan because of it.  But Rogan is the very typical paranormal romance alpha male, and he is determined to have Nevada.  Which really makes her resistance of her, her shutting him down and backtalking, even though she is definitely attracted to him, even more admirable. 

Of course, the fact that this is a three-book series and this is only the first book probably helps, too.  But what's best about this is that Rogan is fucked up and brutal, yes--and Nevada doesn't let him use that as an excuse.  It's not "Oh, he's broken, he will be so sweet and perfect once I fix him!"  Instead, it's "Yes, he's sexy, but he is dangerous and probably doesn't want me for more than sex and I really cannot deal with that now, so I'm going to nope out of here as fast as I can."  This is the type of stuff that strong heroines are made of, and I really liked it.

This is a great, fun, sexy paranormal fantasy/mystery--there's no sex here (though Nevada is interested, somewhat despite herself) and the tension is really drawn out, so don't expect a resolution in that department.  But White Hot is already shaping up pretty well, so I have hopes there!

5 stars out of 5.

Silver Borne - Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson #5)

Clocking in another book for my 2017 Reading Challenge, I've tackled my third Mercy Thompson novel for the year and the fifth in the series, Silver Borne.  This is a book that was a bestseller the year I graduated high school (2010).  I was actually pretty excited to see this, because books in this vein seem to rarely hit bestseller lists and so seeing it there was very refreshing.

One thing about the Mercy Thompson books is that they seem to pile one right after another.  One book picks up exactly after another one lets off, or at least within a few days of it.  Let me tell you, it must be absolutely exhausting to be Mercy, because she never seems to get a break.  Someone or something is always trying to kill her, and despite her protests that she does nothing to deserve it, she does seem to always be poking her nose in places it probably doesn't belong.  Keeping her head down is not something she excels at.  In this volume we find Mercy, just after the events of Bone Crossed.  Mercy is still settling into her role as Adam's mate in the face of a lot of opposition from the pack, dealing with an increasingly-depressed Samuel, and is also sucked into a missing persons case involving the magical book she's been toting around for several volumes.

I liked this a lot more than Bone Crossed.  BC felt like a lot of politicking and hemming and hawing without much happening.  While this one wasn't full of fight scenes, it still felt like things moved.  Mercy developed in her relationship with Adam and with the pack; there were some pack intrigues, but they didn't take over the book; Samuel started to come into his own and we found out more about his past and his potential future; and the characters overall just seemed more integrated into both the story and the world than wandering around trying to resolve events that really should have been left a few books behind.  All of this was a definite improvement over BC, which was tired in comparison.

This book breathed some fresh air into the series, which I think it really needed.  Fifth books are tricky; by this time, it's either clear that the series should have ended a few volumes ago or that it's good for the long haul.  After Bone Crossed, I wasn't very hopeful, but Silver Borne really brought it back up and gives me hope for a series that doesn't really seem to have an end in sight.

4 stars out of 5.

The Far Pavilions - M. M. Kaye

The Far Pavilions is a doorstop of a book.  Massive.  To the point that, when I got it from the library on my Kindle and saw it was going to take 20-some hours to read, I immediately returned it and got in hard copy instead. Why?  Because even though it's a whopper of a book to haul around, it feels like I'm making more progress when I read a book in hard copy and can see the pages go by and the ones waiting diminish.  Even then, it took a long while to get through this book--though that was partially because the pacing is somewhat uneven and I had to read a few other, lighter books in the meantime just to keep myself going.

The book follows its main character, Ash, from childhood into his mid-to-late twenties.  Ash, though born to two English citizens, was raised by a Hindu woman following the death of both of his parents, and doesn't know that he's actually English until early adolescence, when he has to flee to England for fear of his life.  Ultimately, he returns to India in the service of the Corps of Guides and finds himself re-enmeshed in many of the dramas that he had previously left behind, as well as some new ones.  Though there is action in this book, the crux of the conflict comes from Ash's identity crisis, feeling as if he is torn between two worlds: the Indian "Ashok" work of his childhood, and the English "Ashton" world of his adulthood.  All of the action ties into this to some degree.

Overall, I really liked this book.  Ash, though he can be hardheaded and a jerk at times, is overall a sympathetic character.  He is English by birth but was raised Indian, and has a deep-seated dislike of most of the elements of colonialism--which is kind of the opposite of what I had expected here.  He also has a strong sense of fairness and right and wrong, which makes him likable--he always tries to do the right thing--but also gets him into trouble with many other characters who think in more shades of gray.  This is a flaw that's admitted by Ash himself as well as several other characters in the book, showing that Kaye was clearly and keenly aware of it.

However, the pacing on this book is somewhat uneven.  It's divided into eight different parts; the first had a few slow spots but were overall good, with a balance of character and action that I quite liked, and ultimately revolving around Ash being drawn to his childhood friend Juli, a princess of a small Indian kingdom.  However, the last two parts, "My Brother Jonathan" and "The Land of Cain," take an abrupt turn.  Instead of focusing on Ash, Kaye (for some reason) veers into the political and military shambles that was the Second Anglo-Afghan War and the ill-fated English mission that followed it.  Though Ash is the main character of the rest of the book, in these two parts he's abruptly shoved aside in favor of a handful of other Corps of Guides officers who, while familiar, seem to rise to main character status out of pretty much nowhere.  Ash is still involved in these conflicts, but in a very secondary role, and while the climactic events are important to his ultimate character development, it just felt strange because our main character was mostly absent.

Overall, I really enjoyed this.  I think Kaye has a great sense for atmosphere and character, and clearly has a love for India of her own--though, as a quick note, this being pre-partition India, much of the action actually takes place in what we would presently think of as Pakistan.  There are definite flaws here--the pacing for certain, and while I liked Ash overall, he had a few distasteful moments that made me shy away from fawning over him.  But this is definitely an "epic" sort of book, and I'm definitely interested in reading the few other ones like this Kaye put forward.

4 stars out of 5.

From Lukov with Love - Mariana Zapata

I have a new favorite Mariana Zapata book, and this is it.  Why?  Because I have a total weakness for figuring skating romances.  The Cutting Edge movies are my absolute favorites in this.  This book is basically one of those, but in book form.  And considering that figure skating events just wrapped at the 2018 Winter Olympics, this book was a particularly timely read--something that Zapata probably took into consideration when she put it out.

Jasmine is a twenty-six-year-old figure skater who's been forced into an off season because she doesn't have a pairs skating partner, and her singles career crashed and burned when she was younger--though we're never really given the exact sequence of events that led her to switching into pairs.  It might be the end of her career entirely, until Ivan Lukov and his coach approach Jasmine and ask her to partner with him for one year while his regular partner takes a season off.  Jasmine and Ivan have "known" each other for years--his sister is Jasmine's best friend.  But they don't exactly get along.  In fact, they spend every opportunity they get sniping at each other, and it doesn't help their relationship that while Jasmine has struggled professionally, Ivan has flourished, winning multiple national and world championships and even two Olympic gold medals--though one of those, Jasmine points out, is a team medal.  But despite their rocky relations, Jasmine agrees to partner up because she's keenly aware this is her best chance to finally win.  And so they set out, with a grudging agreement to be nice to each other, at least at practice and in public.

Ivan and Jasmine's relationship might have a bad past and a rocky start, but it starts warming up, at least to "liking," rather quicker than in some of Zapata's other books, which I enjoyed.  Ivan dropped being a total jerk pretty quickly, though Jasmine hung onto it for a while longer.  Seeing her trust in him slowly grow was good, and he definitely didn't do anything to betray that.  Honestly, Ivan clearly cares for Jasmine pretty much from the beginning, and not just because she's his partner.  This is one of those things that is obvious to us as readers, but isn't so obvious to Jasmine because of everything going on around her.  But he let her into his room, guys!  He's also a departure from heroines of the past in Zapata's work.  Ivan is much more outgoing and bright and charming than her quiet, brooding, sulky types in other books, and this was a welcome change.  I think Jasmine needed someone bright and outgoing and charming.  Had both she and Ivan remained all surly, it doesn't seem like it would have worked out.

One thing that Zapata excels is the slow build, the anticipation--but she normally falls flat on the actual sex, which is a disappointment.  Luckily for us, she seems to be getting better on that front, too!  I've gotta say that the final "hooking up" here was greatly superior to scenes in Kulti, for example, or even The Wall of Winnipeg and Me.  Additionally, she continues to tie the books together in little ways.  Clearly Jasmine's brother-in-law was the title character of Dear Aaron (which I have not read) and the "familiar football player" mentioned at one point had to be Aiden.  That said, this definitely isn't a "sequel" book and you can comfortably read it without any of her other books being on your "read" shelf.

Overall, I absolutely loved this.  I was very happy that my boyfriend had class for almost six hours straight so I could read it completely uninterrupted.  It was wonderful.  So go read it and watch Youtube videos of triple Lutzes and Salchows and pairs skating and dream up ships for everyone you see and then just watch The Cutting Edge, all of them, to top it off.  That's what I'll be doing.

5 stars out of 5.

Not Quite a Husband - Sherry Thomas (Marsdens #2)

Having read Sherry Thomas' YA fantasy trilogy, the logical next step was to try one of her historical romances.  I picked Not Quite a Husband because I'd seen it on a few friends' reading lists, and it was also available from the library.  It was a quick read, only about two and a half hours, which made it a perfect book for a Saturday afternoon.

Heroine Bryony fell immediately and madly in love with Leo Marsden when he appeared in London one Season, reappearing from a past in which she knew him as a child.  Despite being focused on her career and having no plans to marry, she proposes to him in quick order, he accepts, they marry--and the marriage falls apart almost before it has even begun.  Time jump after the prologue to Bryony living in a remote area of India, serving as a doctor to a missionary community and hiding from the scandal that the annulment of her marriage caused.  Until Leo shows up, having been sent by Bryony's sister to find her based on a claim that her father--from whom Bryony is estranged--is dying.  And so begins a trip back across India while a rebellion brews in the background.

This struck me because I was simultaneously finishing up The Far Pavilions, which also takes place (mostly) in India, though in both books it's an India pre-partition, which means that the geography also includes modern-day Pakistan, so keep that in mind while you're trying to keep things straight in your head.

Watching the initial relationship here was, to me, more interesting than watching Bryony and Leo come back together.  Seeing those little snippets of them growing up, encountering each other again in London, and then the dissolution of that relationship...that was the fascinating part.  I do think their reunion could have been fascinating, however, I wasn't entirely convinced by it.  The sex was definitely of the "dubious consent" variety, which kind of squicked me out (and so was a lot of the sex during their marriage, which, what?  THAT IS SO CREEPY, LEO), and rapey heroes are so not my thing.  Just because someone gets physical pleasure from sex doesn't mean they want it, let's remember.  Then, the entire impetus of the relationship is basically adrenaline in the face of near-death experiences, which is fun, except that's basically the entire thing, no other supporting emotional incidents.

Overall, I was disappointed by this.  The initial premise and the setting had such promise, but the relationship really soured to me because of Leo's actions.  If he wasn't so rapey I think I would have liked him--I think I even could have forgiven him the discretion, maybe--but the combination was just too much to me.  I didn't hate Leo with a fiery passion (a la Greg from Happily Ever Ninja) but he creeped me out and I found myself wondering why it too Bryony so long to get away from him in the first place.  (Yes, yes, Victorian norms.  I know.  But that can totally be skirted in a modern book.)

Additionally, this is marked as the second book in a series, so I've denoted that, but looking at the so-called first book, I'm not sure what the connection actually is.

2 stars out of 5--for the setting and premise, and also for Bryony, because female doctors in historical fictions are awesome.

The Immortal Heights - Sherry Thomas (Elemental Trilogy #3)

So, I've finally come to the end of this trilogy.  Though perhaps "finally" isn't the best word for it, because it didn't actually take me that long and it's not like I had to wait for any of the book to come out or anything.  The second book had left me somewhat disappointed; the world-building and timeline seemed scattered and there seemed to be a lot of contradictions embedded in the story that were not addressed.  Fortunately, most of those are dealt with here in one way or another.  Unfortunately, the way that most of them were resolved was just by making the main characters too short-sighted to see most of the things I had picked up on a long time ago.

The story itself picks up right where The Perilous Sea left off: with Iolanthe, Titus, Kashkari, and a bunch of rebels facing down the Bane's forces in the Sahara.  The battle and subsequent flight takes up a bit of the book and then it's a scramble on to Atlantis with a couple of very foreboding prophecies hanging in the near future, including several deaths.

I'm not sure there's really a lot to say about this one.  I liked it better than the second, because it didn't feel quite so trite; there was no "let's give everyone amnesia to drag things out!" here.  Instead, it actually felt like there was a lot of motion and not a lot of dithering, which was good.  Also, the Crucible makes a larger appearance in this book than it did in the second.  Considering that one of the things that I disliked about the second book was the lack of Crucible, and it was also one of the strongest parts of the first book, seeing its return was great.  The supporting characters were also great, Kashkari in particular.  He is definitely deserving of being a main character in his own right, and it's kind of a pity that he got shoved to the role of sidekick here.

However, a few gaps really remained here.  One of the biggest ones was the portals associated with the Crucible.  Before, it had been put out that the exit portals to the Crucible were in different places, but in this case, the characters re-traced an earlier path and came out somewhere different; shouldn't the final portal have been in that really dangerous canyon that they encountered briefly in the second book?  Did I miss something here?  Some of the timelines, such as Iolanthe's birth, also seem like they remained scattered and then were just disregarded because they seemed like they were too complicated or inconvenient.  While this did tie things up, it didn't seem like it really worked and felt more lazy than anything else.

The ending was ultimately satisfactory, but had a few weird bits to it, as well.  I'm not entirely sure that I agree with how Thomas went about it, because it seems like more difficulties would be encountered for Iolanthe, and it read kind of like a "where are they now" ending, which I hate, but it was still okay.  I think the rest of the book basically made up for it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this trilogy.  It was a fun fantasy, making use of a lot of elements that I really enjoyed and a time period that, while increasingly common, is still underutilized in fantasy.  I'd definitely be interested in more of Thomas' fantasy in the future, though I'd like see some of her minority characters in main roles instead of just being stuck as sidekicks!

4 stars out of 5.