Flight into Fantasy

I’m not sure that I would have picked up The Sunday Wife by Cassandra King had it not been for the fact that a book club I’m involved with is reading it. It’s women’s fiction, the only experience of which I have involves the works of Robyn Carr. But I don’t regret having read the book, and I’m eager to discuss it with my book club.

Dean Lynch is a preacher’s wife. Her husband is an ambitious pastor in the Methodist church, and Dean has always chafed under the restrictions his duties place upon her. When she and Ben move to Crystal Springs, Florida, though, her life changes when she meets and is befriended by Augusta Holderfield. From a distance, these two women have nothing in common. Augusta was raised with wealth and privilege. Dean, in the meantime, was raised by backwoods drunk rednecks. Augusta is wild and vivacious, while Dean is thoughtful and careful. But the two develop a bond. But when a tragedy strikes, Dean will have to reevaluate all her priorities and beliefs in order to figure out her place in life.

The thing that pleasantly surprised me about this book was how flawed the characters were. Dean is by no means a poor put upon woman whose life sucks due to her martyrdom. She does martyr herself a lot, but she’s also kind of judgmental and passive aggressive. In this way, she and her husband, Ben, are perfect for each other, because Ben is also great at being passive aggressive as well as a complete douchebag. At the beginning of the book, I was afraid that I couldn’t stomach 500 pages of Dean and Ben being horrible people to each other. But Dean grew on me. I found mmyself empathizing with the struggles she went through, and as the book went on, I kept encouraging her to leave the life she was leading, which clearly didn’t suit her, and get a new start.

This isn’t going to be an easy book for some readers of this blog to get through, and that’s another of the book’s surprises. We have adultery, some of which Dean disapproves of, some of which she justifies. The paragons of loving relationships that are most obvious are a gay couple. And King doesn’t seem to be saying verry positive things about organized religion, especially things involving church politics. If those things bother you, then you ought to skip this book. But for the most part, all those things worked for me. The gay couple is adorable, the adultery gave the book a dash of realism that I appreciated even if I didn’t always approve, and I can well imagine there being some truth to what Dean thinks about church politics.

If I have any quibbles with this book, it’s that I thought Dean took a long time to finally manage a new start for herself. She didn’t take the steps necessary to get to a happier place on her own initiative. She was reacting to the circumstances around her, and she basically had to wait until she had no other choice. I also hated the final treatment of Ben. Dean’s last encounter with her husband is ludicrous and anticlimactic. I wanted a bit more oomph there, and I’m still a bit angry that I never got it.

Overall though, I really did enjoy this book, and I would read more Cassandra King if given the opportunity. I’d recommend it to fans of women’s fiction who like a bit of darkness in their books, and who are open-minded to flawed characters. This one gets a B+ from me.
Note: I read this book via Bookshare. Also, I could not find other reviews. If you’ve read this book, let me know what you think of it in the comments!

Hi, Internets,

I know, I know. I haven’t been blogging for a while, and now I’m going to post a book review like I expect you to just be OK with my flakiness and forgive me. What can I say? Flakiness is part of my charm.

Anyway, lately I have been absorbed in what I lovingly refer to as werewolf pr0n. (And won’t that make for some fun search results?) I plan to talk about two of my werewolf pr0n reads in this post, and if you come back later, you could win a fabulous prize, which should, in itself, be insentive for you to put up with my blather.

Anyway, the Red Rock Pass series by Moira Rogers is far more than just werewolf pr0n. And I’m not just saying that because I think Bree and Donna are the bee’s knees. There is plenty of smut to be found in the books, but there’s also political intrigue, werewolf politics, and witty banter, and if you don’t like any of those things, then I really don’t know why you’re here.

I had read the first book in the series a couple of years ago, and so when I went to catch up on the series I’d found that I’d forgotten a lot. And this isn’t good, since the second book picks the action right up.

Sanctuary Lost is the second book in the series. Brynn Adler and her sister Abby have been living in Red Rock Pass for a few weeks now. Red Rock Pass is basically a safe place for newly turned werewolves, because their pack alphas aren’t overbearing, power-hungry jerks. But that’s not quite enough for Brynn. She hates that the events of the first book have made her afraid, and she hates that her humanity leaves her vulnerable. She is also inexorably drawn to Joe, one of the stronger members of the pack, and the feelings are mutual. Brynn wants Joe to help her through the transition into becoming a werewolf, but Joe’s been down that road, and it wasn’t very pretty. Plus, if that weren’t enough, the werewolves who were after Brynn and Abby in the first book are back. And soon the pack is dealing with another complication in the form of Sasha, an apprentice witch whose mentor was savagely attacked and killed and who now seeks sanctuary in Red Rock.

A lot is going on in this book, and if you wait a year and a half like I did in between reading the first and second book, it will take some getting used to. I eventually pieced together who everyone was, and found myself devouring the book in a matter of hours. The werewolf politics were absolutely gripping stuff, and I liked the addition of witches into the mix.

That being said, the romance was kind of weak. It’s not that Brynn and Joe were bad characters, because they’re not. And they did have chemistry, and I wasn’t unsatisfied by the way they got together. But there wasn’t really anything unique or fresh about them as a couple. Having read the book a few weeks ago, I’m hard pressed to remember any particular scenes between the two of them that stood out.

That being said, one of the things I did enjoy was Brynn’s relationship with her sister. It is complicated. Brynn is kind of a rebel, and Abby has always been there to mother her. Brynn chafes at this, but her love for her sister is very obvious. In short, it was a very realistic sister dynamic. As someone who is close to my own sister, I love reading about other close sister bonds.

One last thing. I also appreciated that long-lasting romance doesn’t make couples invulnerable. There was a heartbreaking scene featuring Abby and Keith from the first book that surprised me, because I hadn’t been expecting any further complications in their relationship.

While I enjoyed Sanctuary :Lost , I loved Sanctuary’s Price. And I can express my love in two words: beta hero.

You see, Internets, I am that rare breed of romance reader that would rather read about vulnerable men than men who always kick ass with no difficulty. And Dylan Gennaro is that man. He came from the evil pack that’s been bothering Brynn and Abby, and now in Red Rock he’s something of a local hero, having had a shining moment of badassery at the end of Sanctuary Lost. This is a first for him. In his old pack, he was pretty much beaten into submission, having to always hide his wolfish instincts, so he’s got a lot of scars.

Sasha, the witch we met in the previous book, also has scars. She’s been thrust into this world without her mentor, and the wolves need her magic. When the pack alphas ask Sasha and Dylan to work together to study some pack lore, they find themselves fighting their attraction. Then, a wolf pack in Maine finds itself in trouble, and there are vampires causing havoc, so it’s road trip time, during which time Sasha and Dylan must evaluate their feelings and make some difficult choices.

Right. So I’ve talked about Dylan, and he really made this book for me. And while I did not love Sasha, I did like her a lot. I liked that they were both two very wounded people who needed each other to recover from their various emotional scars. That kept the power balance in the romance on an even keel, which made me believe in the romance arc.

There’s a lot going on, plot-wise. Again, I don’t think this is a standalone book, and yet again, Rogers doesn’t insult the reader’s intelligence. We’re expected to keep up with the twists and turns and the nonstop action. And some of that action makes certain events feel a bit rushed. But I didn’t mind. These books are quick reads, and the fourth book, Sanctuary Unbound, comes out tomorrow, so I won’t have to wait a year to catch up with the Red Rock crew.

A note to my blind readers: Samhain Publishing offers romance ebooks of all genres that are DRM-free and reasonably priced. If werewolf politics are not your thing, explore the site. You will find something there you like, if you’re into romance at all!

In the meantime, for everyone, stay tuned. You could win a copy of Sanctuary Unbound if you come back in a few hours. And you know you want some free books.

I love fantasy, and I love Gothic novels, and I’ve recently discovered that I love Juliet Marillier. So, of course, when I realized she had written a historical fantasy with Gothic undertones, I was all over it like white on rice. And with Heart’s Blood, which I bought when it first came out, she has succeeded in becoming one of my favorite fantasy authors.

This novel resembles the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale in several crucial aspects, but I wouldn’t call it a straightforward retelling. Marillier takes the story and makes it her own, and it works well. I loved it, and except for one quibble which is spoilerific and which I’ll talk about below, I’d recommend this wholeheartedly.

Caitrin is running away from home. Her father has recently died, and her scheming, opportunistic distant relations have moved in and taken charge. Cillian and his mother Ita are downright abusive, and eventually Caitrin just snaps and runs away. She travels west, eventually reaching the settlement of Whistling Tor. It turns out that Whistling Tor is cursed, but its chieftain has need of a scribe, and since that’s actually what Caitrin is trained for, she offers her services, since the alternative is continuing to run from Cillian and Ita. Whistling Tor is cursed, and even though she doesn’t really believe in the curse, she figures Cillian wouldn’t be foolish enough to risk it. Of course, Whistling Tor is cursed, and Caitrin is soon embroiled in trying to figure out how to break the curse and deal with the magic of the keep. She’s also drawn to Whistling Tor’s chieftain, Anluan, a complex man who has always felt that he was a prisoner at the Tor.

As with the other Marillier books I’ve read, I loved the characters. Caitrin is timid, and good at underestimating herself. But she’s stronger than she realizes, and it’s that strength that stands her in good stead. I liked how she takes her own advice to Anluan to heart about being brave in small steps.

Anluan is also wonderful. He’s basically a good man, trapped by the curse that afflicts his home. He’s given up hope that things will ever be any different, and he’s never really had to grow up and accept adult responsibilities. At least, not until Caitrin shows up and makes him think about what his duties are and makes him feel hope. The romance between Caitrin and Anluan is sweet. It develops gradually, and at a satisfying pace, and I definitely felt the chemistry between them. There’s no explicit sex, although there are sexual references throughout.

The rest of the cast was varied. I loved the various inhabitants of Whistling Tor, with one exception, and they certainly added color to the story. Some of them could very well have had their own books, and I liked that Caitrin came to care for all of them as much as she did Anluan.

The atmosphere is very Gothic. There are some downright spooky moments, and Whistling Tor certainly is exemplary of a Gothic castle. There are also lots of elements that the heroine must fight against, from Anluan’s initial hostility to the very real supernatural forces surrounding the castle.

The story is set in Ireland, during the time of the Norman conquest. It’s clear Marillier has done her homework, and she made the setting come alive for me. Now I’m even more anxious to read her much more famous Sevenwaters books, also set in the British isles.

So, with all that going for it, why doesn’t this rate an A? I’ll tell you why, but it involves a major spoiler, so please stop reading if you don’t want to know.

I hated Muirne, the eventual villain of the piece. She was the only character who doesn’t get even a bit of a sympathetic portrayal. She was basically an ambitious, power-hungry bitch who enjoyed making people miserable but remaining completely unnoticed. And of course, she doesn’t like Caitrin, and makes no bones about it. Given that both Caitrin and I distrusted her from the beginning, I found it irritating that no one else anywhere had ever suspected her of being so eeevil, especially since she doesn’t bother to hide her true motivations from Caitrin.

I guess I’m just tired of reading about shrill ambitious bitches who turn out to be the villain. Why can’t a woman be both ambitious and a decent person? It’s a cliche that bothers me, but might not disturb other readers.

The villain aside, I very much enjoyed this book. I love Marillier’s writing style, and I love the atmosphere and the sense of wonder she evinces in her books. This one rates a B+, and I can’t wait to read her Sevenwaters books!

Other Opinions

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I like fairy tale retellings, especially when they’re done in interesting ways I hadn’t ever considered, so I knew I would enjoy reading Alex Flyn’s Beastly. This is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast from the beast’s perspective.

Unlike Crazy Beautiful I find that I have a lot more positive things to say about Beastly now that I’ve given it time to settle. Flyn manages to successfully present the fairy tale in a modern setting, and Kyle/Adrian, the main character, is drawn very well.

Kyle Kingsbury is basically a little snot at the beginning of the book. He’s hot, he knows it, and he takes the opportunity to treat everyone like crap. Eventually, though, he picks the wrong person to humiliate when he snubs Kendra, a new girl who turns out to be a witch. She transforms him into a hideous beast, and, well, we all know where this is going. He’s got two years to make a girl fall in love with him. He convinces his father, a prominent newscaster, to move him into a brownstone in Brooklyn. His dad basically gives him an Amex card to do with as he will, hires a blind tutor, and he lives a pretty idyllic life, comparatively speaking, except for the beast thing. He eventually ends up changing his name to Adrian as well. And, of course, there is a girl for him. She’s nerdy, bookish Lindy, a scholarship student at his posh private high school. Unlike the traditional tale, Lindy isn’t pretty. And Lindy’s relationship with her father is much more complicated than it’s generally presented.

It’s hard not to like Kyle/Adrian, despite the fact that he’s such a brat at the beginning. His brattiness is explained–his father is too self-involved to pay much attention to his son, and anyway his dad is pretty much a grown-up version of his son. But Kyle/Adrian grows up over the course of the novel and realizes just how shallow and awful he has been. He learns to care about people–not just Lindy but Will, his tutor and Magda, his maid–seeing them for who they are and loving them for themselves and not what they can give him. And the message is delivered in a matter-of-fact manner that didn’t feel overly forced or preachy.

The other characters are also interesting. None of them are quite as well-drawn, in my opinion, as Kyle/Adrian, but I did have to mention Will, the tutor. He’s blind, and for the most part, Flyn got the blindness right. I didn’t even mind the end of Will’s story arc, which was hokey, because at the very least he was allowed to be a competent character who wasn’t a walking stereotype. I also loved Kendra, the witch, who takes an active part in the story beyond her initial curse. And Lindy was, of course, excellent. I could understand her motivations, and though I would have liked to glimpse the inside of her head, it wasn’t necessary and Flyn did a good job of portraying her evolving feelings for Kyle/Adrian.

There were also random intervals in which Kyle/Adrian talks with other transformed characters from other fairy tales in an online chat room. This was my favorite aspect of the book, as Flyn used these chats to subtly poke fun at fairy tale tropes. They were also quite funny, and, in at least one instance, surprisingly poignant. And I liked how Kyle tried to use the modern age to foil his curse. He creates a fake myspace profile and tries to meet girls online, only for them to turn out to be either too young, cops, or hideous old hags. Well, at least he tried, and I liked that Flyn went there.

I did have a few quibbles. The pacing starts out strong, but the middle dragged. For the most part I thought Flyn handled the fairy tales well, but I thought a few things were handled better than others. I didn’t really buy Kyle/Adrian’s obsession with his roses, for instance. And I also didn’t quite buy that Kyle’s dad would just hand over his Amex and say, “Sure, kid, go live by yourself with only a maid and a tutor for company as long as you’re out of my hair.” Maybe I could buy one of those, but not the other.

Overall, I was quite charmed by this book, and I felt that Flyn did the fairy tale justice. Apparently, Sleeping Beauty is the next fairy tale Flyn will tackle, and I look forward to reading it. As for this book, it rates a B-.

Other Opinions

Persnickity Snark
• Steph Su Reads
• The Ya Ya Yas
• YA Fabulous

P.S. I got this one from Bookshare.

Y’all know that I love some cheese with my romance. It’s why books featuring snard make me happy, despite the fact that nutella and male excreta should never go together. It’s also why, despite the fact that her books couldn’t possibly be more derivitive if they tried, I am in love with Bianca D’arc’s Dragon Knights series. I gulped down the first of these ebooks last year, one after the other, and only recently picked up the sixth, Fire Drake, because I’d heard there was a seventh. (Note that, yes, I did buy the book in e-format, but I’m linking you directly to the info page for the print because I’m just that awesome!)

Basically, the premise of this series is the Dragonriders of Pern, only with lots more on-screen sexing and an excuse for menage a trois scenes between two hot specimens of beefcake and one lucky lady. Because, you see, dragons form telepathic bonds with male knights, only when the dragons find their mates, the men have to have a woman in the picture so that they don’t need to get their boy cooties all over each other.

Fire Drake is not an acception to this premise. Drake of the Five Lands returns to Draconia, which as you might surmise is the home of all these dragons and their partners. He’s come to deliver a message that the royal princes are in danger. He plans on making his pronouncement and getting the hell out of there, because he left Draconia under less than ideal circumstances, but of course that doesn’t happen. Drake must come to grips with his father, a man who never approved of him, and face the young dragon he left pining for him years ago. Complicating matters is Krysta, a guardswoman who intrigues him, but who also seems to intrigue his best friend and rival, Mace. Of course, the threat to the princes is soon realized, and Drake, Krysta and Mace must go on a quest to find the abducted prince, a quest that will ultimately bring them closer together and change all of their destinies.

What I especially like about these books is that they are pure wish fulfillment, escapist fun. D’Arc’s worldbuilding, while nowhere near original, is still good enough that I’d love to visit Draconia, hang out in the dragons’ lairs, fly on dragonback, and yes, find two studly men to make me feel really, really good. It would just be cool, and I would much rather read fantasy where the author has an attitude of, “Wow, this would be awesome!” than fantasy that tries to be so freaking serious all the time. And while, if I think about Draconian society and how it would actually work out in the real world, I find myself not buying the concept that two men absolutely must find their one true soulmate woman, while I am immersed in the story I don’t care, and, in fact, I find D’Arc’s handling of the menage a trois, where the two men have no interest in each other, to be better than most and so I buy it.

As for this book in particular, it’s really Drake’s story. Drake could be an obnoxious Marty Stu under different circumstances, but he suffers from enough self-doubt to make him relatable, though I did wonder why none of the other characters didn’t bonk him upside the head for being so whiny about how he didn’t deserve to be a dragon knight. Mace and Krysta were also fun to read about. Mace was a shade underdeveloped, but he was basically a nice beta hero, and I liked the rivalry that characterized his friendship with Drake, as it gave them more depth. And Krysta, being a warrior woman, embodies one of my favorite heroine archetypes. I wouldn’t quite go so far as to call her a kick-ass heroine, but I liked that she held her own and wasn’t in constant need of being rescued.

As for the plot, it wasn’t quite as tight as some of the others in the series. I got the impression D’Arc was making things up as she went along, and sometimes this worked, but sometimes I was left wondering where she was going with any of her plotting. There’s a pretty major story arc throughout the series that is no closer to being resolved, but I hope there will be more progress in the next book. The author’s influences are patently obvious, but her world is just a cool place, and I enjoy my time there. This story was no exception, and it rates a B.

Other Opinions

If any of you have read this series, let me know what you think of it!

I should start out this review with a disclaimer. I don’t work with kids. I’m not a parent. I once was a kid my very own self, but so were we all. So I am not really qualified to talk about what it’s actually like to raise kids.

Nonetheless, I find the process of child-rearing fascinating in a detached, I-don’t-really-know-if-I-really-want-to-do-that kind of way. Which was what led me to pick up Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s fascinating Nurture Shock: New Thinking about Children. The authors basically assert that much of the thinking parents have had about children in the last few decades might be more harmful than helpful. They back these assertions up by talking to lots of scholars, and there’s quite an extended section at the back on notes and resources.

Some of their premises are fairly counterintuitive. They say that praising kids for being smart actually encourages them to do less well than they might already. I found this a bit hard to swallow until I thought about it. I remember a teacher telling me once that I was good at math. This seemed like a patently false statement to my fourteen-year-old self. I was not good at math. I hated math! Math was hard! So maybe I understood the core concepts, but they didn’t come easily to me, so how could I be good at math? At the time I would have much rather done something I did excel at, like an English assignment. The result was that I hated classes where I actually had to study when I was in high school, because I felt I shouldn’t have to study. I was, after all, smart. This proved detrimental to me when I first attended college, and it’s only been in recent years, having returned to school, that I’ve picked up on better study habits. Maybe if someone had tried Bronson and Merryman’s suggestion, that of praising kids for specific things they did well and praising their effort at doing them, I would have been more successful.

Some of their other assertions made more sense to me. The authors talk about how teens release melatonin later at night than do adults and younger children, and that they would benefit from having school start an hour later. I know that I certainly would have. I also thought the section on the Tools preschool program was fascinating in its approach.

I found this to be a fascinating book and a surprisingly quick read. I’m not sure it will work for many parents, and I don’t know if I’d feel differently about what I’ve read if I had kids, but I think it provides lots of food for thought.

Final Grade: B.

P.S. The authors have a website, which looks very interesting!

P.P.S. I got this from Bookshare.

Other Opinions

• Five Minutes for Books

I have to hand it to John Green. If anyone else were to write a book about some guy who dated girls with the same name and then pined and sulked for the whole book about how they kept dumping him, I think I probably would laugh and give it a pass. But this is exactly the premise of An Abundance of Katherines, and I really enjoyed it! It wasn’t the awesome, life-changing book that Looking for Alaska was, but, since it effectively got me out of a reading slump, I won’t hold that against the book.

Colin Singleton, our narrator, is a child prodigy. He has a talent for anagrams, and a propensity for dating girls named Katherine. After Katherine Xix breaks up with him, he mopes around for a while until his best friend, Hassan, convinces him they should take a road trip. This lands them in Gutshot, Tennessee, where they stumble into jobs recording the town’s history.

By all rights, I should have found Colin annoying. He spends much of the book focused on Katherine, and on how it is just his destiny to be dumped by girls, yada yada yada. But I couldn’t dislike him, because his mind was fascinating. I liked how he just randomly spewed forth trivia, and had to constantly be pulled back on task. He’s so obviously a dork, but as a girl with a definite love for geeky men, I wanted to hug him at the same time that I wanted to shake him.

While Colin was fascinating, I loved Hassan. Hassan provides a nice foil, and I appreciated that he read like a real teenage guy. I also liked that he regularly called Colin on his bullshit, and that his word for when it was time to close a subject was ‘dingleberries’. He definitely reminded me of some of the guys I knew growing up, and I really want to know what happened to him.

The rest of the characters generally worked for me. I thought Colin’s eventual love interest was an interesting character in her own right, and not the manic pixie dream girl type I’d been sort of afraid would show up after having read Looking for Alaska. I also liked that the major landowner in Gutshot wasn’t a heartless villain. The only sour note was the meathead jock, who was predictably a jerk in predictable ways.

The plot is fairly character-driven, so not a whole lot happens aside from the initial road trip and a few episodic events that happen once Colin and Hassan get to Gutshot. The focus is pretty explicitly on Colin coming to terms with his relationships and growing up, and I loved it. By the end of the book, I was happy and satisfied.

I also have to mention the setting. John Green writes about the South with obvious affection, and I liked that he chose not to populate Gutshot with stereotypical rednecks. The place came alive for me, and while I’m not sure Tennessee in summer is the kind of place I actually want to visit, I enjoyed seeing it with the obvious love that Green has for the South.

John Green writes young adult fiction that transcends stereotypes about the genre. His characters are smart and they feel authentic. Their issues may not be the subjects of Lifetime movies of the week, but they are real. The books are ultimately about hope and self-realization, and, even for this reader, who is retreating further and further from her teenage years with every passing day, they are relevant. Not to mention they are excellent reads. If you haven’t tried John Green, you really should.

Final Grade: B+

P.S. I actually plunked down cash for this book.

Other Opinions:

Lots of people have read and reviewed this book, so I refer you to the most excellent Book Blogger’s Search Engine!

A couple of notes: This review contains a few spoilers, and it’s necessary for me to use some gender-neutral pronouns throughout. I’ve chosen a set that I prefer, but if you’re using a screenreader and notice the slight mispronunciation, I swear I actually mean the spellings I use.

What motivates people to acts of compassion? Why do people stand idly by while atrocities are committed? These are some of the questions that Gilles Rozier tackles in The Mercy Room. He doesn’t offer answers to any of these questions, which makes for a compelling, albeit quite dark, read that I still haven’t entirely processed.

A German teacher living in Nazi-occupied France is compelled to translate documents for the Germans. The teacher’s gender is never identified, which is a bit of a distracting storytelling device, but nonetheless an effective one. The teacher doesn’t resist hir orders, and one day, while s/he is waiting for the German officer to give hir more documents to translate, s/he stumbles across Herman, a Jewish former soldier. Compelled by his handsome looks, the teacher spirits Herman to hir home, hiding him for two years in a cellar.

The teacher is not a likeable character. Y’all know that I have to have likeable characters to root for in my fiction, but nonetheless I found hir compelling. Maybe it was just that I couldn’t believe any person with even an ounce of compassion could say or think the things that go through hir head. The teacher is obsessed with the fact that hir sister is sleeping with an SS officer. S/he has a loveless marriage which in the end results in hir spouse committing suicide, to which hir only response is along the lines of, “Wow, that was tacky.” And s/he humiliates Herman, by giving him a pair of hir underwear as well as a pair of hir spouses, so that he has to alternate between wearing men’s and women’s undergarments, and then justifies hir behavior by telling us s/he could have behaved worse.

I came away from this book with the sense that I wasn’t supposed to like these characters and that the story was really a vehicle for Rozier to explore some complex issues. The Hollocaust is a fascinating time in history, because it’s a time when people were both horrifyingly, monstrously cruel, and yet so many people showed great compassion. Yet, Rozier argues that even in compassion, people can be cruel, and it’s made me wonder about all the other stories I have read about people who helped the Jews and resisted the Nazis. What motivated them to do so? How did they react to having such absolute power over another human being? Those are chilling questions, and ones I won’t easily forget. I also appreciated the fact that Rozier delves into what it was like to be a random citizen of Nazi-occupied Europe. The motivations for the characters not doing more to resist made sense to me, and again I was left wondering what I would be willing to do if I ever found myself in such a situation. Sadly, the answer is that I don’t know.

I’m not sure how to grade this book. The writing was lovely and accessible in a way that I never seem to figure translations will be, and there were lots of exdellent ideas. But I’m not sure I’m inclined to reread it, because I don’t know if I can endure another period of time in the teacher’s head. So I think I’ll give this a B+.

P.S. I validated this for Bookshare

Warning: This review contains a few spoilers. Feel free to skip if this isn’t your thing.

When people talk about category romances, there are names that keep coming up over and over again of authors whose books are awesome. One name I keep hearing is Kathleen O’Reilly. I’d heard that she writes good characters with real problems. And so, when the motherlode of Harlequins got submitted to Bookshare, I opted to proofread one of Ms. O’Reilly’s books, Courting Disaster. From this experience, I’ve decided that Ms. O’Reilly is an author to watch out for, since I enjoyed this book.

Demetri Lucas is a racecar driver with a penchant for fast cars and faster women. One day, while visiting his friend, Hugh Preston, whose horseracing business is in jeopardy, Elizabeth Innis literally runs into him. Elizabeth is a successful country singer, who has built her reputation on being squeaky-clean and above reproach. Sparks immediately fly, but they are both drawn to each other by a common goal, namely keeping Quest Stables, the company Hugh Preston owns, in the black.

I really liked Elizabeth in particular. Her voice was unique, something I can’t always say for the heroines of romance novels. Elizabeth, though, I could imagine perfectly. It’s obvious that Ms. O’Reilly enjoyed writing her, because I had a lot of fun in her POV. For someone so famous, she has a down-to-earth way of looking at the world that I found endearing.

Demetri was also interesting, though I didn’t connect with him as well as I did Elizabeth. I liked that, though he had good reason to angst, he tended to be a bit of an adrenaline junkie, because God save me from yet another whiny romance hero. I also appreciated that there were people aside from Elizabeth who found his playboy behavior problematic. Further, I liked that Ms. O’Reilly didn’t actually focus on how skanktastic all the other women in Demetri’s life were. Because from the moment he meets Elizabeth, his focus is entirely on her, and I believed that persistance. The two of them had some great chemistry even though the sex scenes, while present, were of the non-explicit variety.

I also liked the way Ms. O’Reilly handled the issues the couple faced. Elizabeth and Demetri both have fathers with whom they have horrible relationships, and those relationships aren’t mended at book’s end. I also liked that it was Demetri who had to make sacrifices for Elizabeth, and that those sacrifices made sense and weren’t just tacked on for the sake of an HEA. Demetri really is getting too old to race, and his motivations for doing so aren’t exactly the best, so I thought his choosing to retire was a sign that he’d grown up.

I did have a couple of minor quibbles which are entirely subjective. I rolled my eyes at Demetri being Greek, since category romances seem to be enamored with Greeks for whatever reason. And I wasn’t really sure what Elizabeth did exactly to preserve her squeaky-lean reputation except talk about it a lot.

That all being said, this is a simple romance with no extraneous plots and no extraneous POV switches. Reading the rest of the Thoroughbred Legacy miniseries, of which this is a part, is unnecessary. I’ll definitely be reading more from Ms. O’Reilly, and this book rates a B.

Other Opinions

• Dear Author (It’s the second review)

Whenever I tell people they shouldn’t paint romance novels with the same brush, I inevitably end up recommending Marjorie M Liu. I’ve been a huge fan of her Dirk and Steele series of paranormal romantic thrillers since I first read them a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I’m not caught up with the series. I tend to hoarde books from my favorite authors, which is why it’s taken me this long to read Eye of Heaven, the fifth book in the Dirk and Steele series.

The premise: The members of Dirk and Steele are all people with special abilities. Blue Perreneau, an electrokenetic, is no exception. He’s been tracking Santoso, a human flesh peddler, but is injured before he can affect a capture. After he recovers, he is summoned to the bedside of his dying father, who wants Blue to recover the half-brother he didn’t know about. If Blue, who has always had an adversarial relationship with his father, to put it mildly, doesn’t do this, then his father will make sure that Dirk and Steele’s dealings are compromised. So Blue tracks his brother to Las Vegas, where he’s working for a small circus. Blue joins the circus as an electrician, and almost immediately meets Iris McGillis, a leopard shapeshifter. But it’s not all glitz and glamor, as there are people who very badly want to use Blue and Iris for their own ends.

What I appreciate about Ms. Liu’s writing is that there’s always stuff happening. I’m never bored when I read her books, and this one was no exception. There’s a lot going on in this book, and I found the mystery and thriller elements quite riveting for the most part. I honestly didn’t know how Ms. Liu was going to resolve the plot threads she put into place, and there were a few twists I really enjoyed. For the most part, everything is resolved satisfactorily, although not every thread worked for me. There was, for example, an element of tension having to do with a couple from a previous book that I thought would make for some interesting moral quandries, but that plot thread was literally solved with a deus ex machina. And there were a few times where I rolled my eyes as yet another set of goons attempted to kidnap Iris. It seemed like she was either about to be kidnapped, in danger of being kidnapped, kidnapped, or recovering from being kidnapped throughout the book.

The romance element also works well for me. It’s not very explicit–at least compared to other books I’ve read–but I bought the chemistry between Iris and Blue. It didn’t even bother me that they declared their love within a few days of knowing each other, because those were some action-packed days, what with all the kidnapping going on.

I haven’t talked much about the characters. Iris is awesome. Being a leopard shape-shifter, she has an affinity for the big cats she performs with. But, aside from the cats, all she’s known in life is her mother, who disappeared two years ago with little explanation. That combination of toughness and vulnerability always works for me, and this time was no exception. I also appreciated that, while Iris does get kidnapped an awful lot, she never brings it on herself by doing something mind-numbingly stupid.

Blue is also great. He’s not my favorite Dirk and Steele hero–that title goes to the very bookish gargoyle hero of The Wild Road , but Blue is interesting in his own right. I liked reading about his struggles to come to terms with his relationship with his father. By the end of the book, he understands the man a little better, though he’s still got a few issues. And the relationship between Blue and his brother, Daniel, works very well and comes about quite naturally.

The secondary characters are also, for the most part, very interesting. I found Iris’s mother fascinating for reasons that would involve spoilers, and even Blue’s father isn’t a complete villain. Daniel also has a lot to deal with, and I hope we’re not done seeing the last of him. Former Dirk and Steele heroes also make brief appearances–not enough to disrupt the flow of the story but their presence definitely provides something to the plot.

If you’re interested in this series, each book stands perfectly well on its own. They don’t need to be read in order, though, series purist that I am, I always feel that books are better enjoyed if you read them in order.

This isn’t my favorite entry into the series. But it’s great for those who like thrills in addition to their romances. The leads are likeable, there’s a lot of action, and the world-building is excellent. I rate this one a strong B.

Other Opinions

• All About Romance

Dear Internet,

I know I haven’t really been around much, and I feel that my poor blog, with all five of its regular readers, is missing out on the joy that is me waxing poetic–or not so poetic, as the case may be–on what I’ve been reading. There are a number of reasons for this. School has been… an interesting challenge, to say the least. And I haven’t been reading very much.

I have finished a few books, though, and am woefully behind on reviewing them, so I’m hoping that if I take a less structured approach, the reviews will get written and might even be a little better than some of the very blah stuff I’ve been cranking out lately.

Anyway, the recent read that I wanted to talk to you about is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. This book won the Newberry medal this year, which is not why I picked it up. I picked it up because in other reviews I’d read, mention was made of the fact that Miranda, our main character, loves A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. As it happens, I do, too. So the fact that this book won the Newberry was just a bonus.

Our story is about a twelve-year-old girl named Miranda, who lives in New York in the 1970′s. It’s told in a very stream-of-conscious style. It starts out with Miranda’s mother finding out that she will be a contestant on the $10000 pyramid. This news compells Miranda to contemplate whether she should write a note to the person who has been leaving her mysterious messages, because she thinks these messages may come from the future. In the meantime, Miranda is dealing with normal kid issues–changing friendships, trying to figure out who she is, and experimenting with boys.

I’m a character-driven reader, as long-time followers of this blog are no doubt tired of hearing. I need relatable characters or a story won’t work. And I loved Miranda. She’s smart, she’s spunky, and she felt real. I liked that her viewpoint was very childish in places, but that she was perceptive. (There’s a touching bit that sticks out in which, after she’s complained to her mom about the shabbiness of their apartment, she is suddenly made aware that her mom knows this and is embarrassed, too.)

That was another thing I really appreciated. Miranda’s family isn’t traditional, and she’s, gasp, close to her mom. She also doesn’t view her mom’s boyfriend as an interloper, and thinks that her mom should just give him a key and let him move in. After so many melodramatic stories about dealing with a parent’s new boyfriend, it was nice to read a protagonist that didn’t care.

But, you may be asking yourself, what does A Wrinkle In Time have to do with this story? Quite a lot, actually. For one thing, it is the only book that Miranda reads, and so she makes lots of references to it. I particularly liked the fact that she acknowledges what a universally relatable character Meg is. Miranda thinks of Meg as twelve, and I had to double check my copy of A Wrinkle in Time before concluding that Miranda’s right. L’Engle never outright states Meg’s age.

I wouldn’t really classify this book as a science fiction novel, though, so if you go into the book thinking there is more than just an abundance of references to < A Wrinkle in Time you’ll be disappointed. It is a mystery, first and foremost, and the science fiction elements are like a nice powdered sugar glazing on top of everything else.

Obvbviously, I liked this book a lot, and am glad it won the Newberry. The writing style was absorbing, and I read it in pretty much one sitting. My only real quibble was that I thought Miranda was a little too young to be making out with boys, but this might not bother an actual reader in the target age range, so you can take that as a sign that I am turning into a fuddy-duddy.

I’d rate this one a very strong B.

Other Opinions

• Booking Mama

• A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy
• S. Krishna’s Books

P.S. If you’re from the FTC, hi! I got this from Bookshare, which I have access to because I am considered print-disabled. So there.

I have to start this post by warning y’all that it’s not my usual style. It’s kind of rambly and stream-of-conscious, and is also spoilertastic. You have been warned.

One of the series I discovered last year, when I was in the middle of a blogging slump was the Virgin River series by Robyn Carr. I have read the first three books in the series, which are as follows:

• Virgin River

• Shelter Mountain
• Whispering Rock

The premise is this. Virgin River is a small, idyllic town in the mountains of Northern California, which seems to attract the lonely, the hurting, and the broken-hearted. We begin the series with Mel, who needs a new start in life after the death of her husband and comes to Virgin River to practice midwifery and gets involved with Jack, the owner of the town bar. The second book features Paige, a battered wife on the run from an abusive ex, who ends up with Jack’s partner at the bar, a big teddy bear of a guy named Preacher. (Preacher, incidentally, is my absolute favorite Virgin River man so far. He’s big and burly, but also extremely awkward and shy, and he was a virgin, which is enough of a rarity in romance fiction that I still find it awesome when it happens.) In the third book, Jack’s sister, Brie, ends up brutally attacked and ends up finding love with Mike, an ex-cop friend of Jack’s who’s also turned up in Virgin River.

What I like about these books is that, in addition to the rather strong romance storylines, there’s a real sense of the town. I get the feeling that there really are people with lives that don’t intersect often with the main cast of characters. I appreciate it when authors do this, as it lends verisimilitude to their settings, and Virgin River, in Ms. Carr’s hands, is a place I’d like to visit.

I do have to admit that I went into the books not really expecting straight-up romance. I enjoy the books all the more for that fact, though, because I genuinely like the setting and the characters. I also think that the romantic aspects of the books, while important, aren’t really Ms. Carr’s strong point, because, at least in the books I’ve read, they’re fairly repetitive. After all, how many Marines with deep personal pain can there be for every hapless damsel who’s just suffered personal tragedy to stumble upon? Honestly, I’d much rather read about the couples after their courtship. Mel and Jack’s wedded bliss, for example, is far from the treacle you’d get in most traditional romances, and I think the scene where Preacher informs a whole barful of Marines that he’s closing early on account of its being ovulation day cracks me up.

The books have tackled lots of relevant issues as well, everything from the ethics of dealing with local marijuana growers to the need for contraception to teenage drug use. Sometimes Ms. Carr handles these issues better than others–like, there’s one particular marijuana grower who is quite interesting and who I know from reading spoilers becomes more important in the series later. Then again, there was the bombshell in the thirdd book where one woman, after finally getting a mammogram, finds out she’s got breast cancer and is dead by a few dozen pages later. That whole subplot was just a bit too precious for words.

And then there’s the Rick/Liz subplot. See, Rick’s a randy 17-year-old boy who sometimes helps Jack at the bar. And he met a new girl, Liz, who was 15 and basically tarting it up. They ended up having sex, and Liz became pregnant. Afterwords, a whole mess of slut-shaming ensued. Liz basically becomes weepy and distraught, and presumably quits wearing skirts that hike up to her crotch. And Rick whines and emoes about how he’s totally ruined Liz’s life and he’ll never, never, never have sex with her again until she grows up. He worries about Liz but in kind of a self-absorbed way that, while I’m sure it’s authentic, grated on my nerves, especially since, as readers, we never saw Liz’s POV. We just know that Rick thinks she’s too young, her aunt thinks she was being a little tart but loves her anyway, and Mel just wants to do the best she can by her as her midwife. And then, after Liz loses the baby–a karmic death if ever there was one–Rick decides he needs to up and join the Marines. Because he decides for Liz that Liz is too young and needs to grow up. So, you know, instead of actually, truly making sure she’s OK, he’s like, “See you after basic.” And, as I understand it, he gets his own book in the series in which he has PTSD, which means former slut Liz will probably selflessly stand by and wipe his emo tears.

…Wow. I really didn’t think I had that much animosity toward that one particular subplot.

There is also a whole lot of “Ra ra ra, yay Marines!” talk in this series. You know a male character is supposed to be good and honorable if he is either planning to serve in the Marines or has served in the Marines or some other branch of the military. That aspect of the series isn’t one I can speak about, because the people in my family who are uber-military types aren’t generally people I talk to enough to ask, “Is it really like that? Do you feel extremely close to all your Marine brothers and would you do anything for any of them?”

That being said, the Marines stuff balances out well with Mel’s character, who is generally a positive example of a strong feminist who isn’t a hard-ass. She’s dedicated to midwifery and women’s health issues, and I appreciate that she doesn’t poo-poo the idea of abortion outright, since there are characters for whom that comes up. (Thankfully, in Virgin River, if you don’t want a baby, you will lose it due to miscarriage or stillbirth, so actually having Mel hold someone’s hand during an abortion isn’t ever likely to come up.)

In conclusion, despite some of the snarky things I’ve said, I find these books comforting. It’s fun to slip back into a familliar world with familliar characters. I generally know where the plots are going, and the sequel-baiting is pretty unsubtle–in the same way that an anvil to the back of the head is pretty unsubtle–but I think that’s part of their charm. You know what you’re going to get, and when you get it, it makes you feel good. I wouldn’t call these keepers, but they are strong, b-grade comfort reads.

I’ve been resisting the urge to read The Hunger games by Suzanne Collins for a long time, mostly because of the hype. I’ve been burned too many times by overhyped books that did nothing for me at all, and I can be a picky reader.

However, last year, Maree, Memory and I decided that we should get it over with and read the book together. That way, if it sucked, we could console each other by, I don’t know, maybe pasting horrible lines of the book into Twitter. (OK, maybe I’m the only person of the three of us who would do that.)

Anyway, we all emailed each other questions that we answered about the book. So go over to Memory’s blog and read what we thought of it.

For the record, I’m not sure this was quite an A book for me, but it really was quite good and I hope to read the second book soon.

Title: Hate List
Author: Jennifer Brown
Genre: Contemporary YA fiction
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: I am apparently much more interested in contemporary issues books when they’re YA. And this book got hyped all over the place, so I decided I’d give it a go.

Synopsis:

Five months ago, Valerie Leftman’s boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.

Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.

My Thoughts: First off, I didn’t know that Jennifer Brown is a somewhat local author. Apparently, she writes a column for the Kansas City Star. And, having learned this about her, I will probably spend more time than is healthy browsing the Star’s online archives to read her work. That’s neither here nor there, though, since this is a review of her novel.

To be honest, Hate List was a bit of a slow starter for me. I was intrigued by the idea of reading about a character as complex as Valerie Leftman, but I wasn’t actually sure I could manage it. What if I didn’t like her? What if, like her family and most of the people around her, I thought she was pretty much guilty by association?

Thankfully, after the first couple of chapters, I got quite into Valerie’s story. She’s one of the more complex characters I’ve read about recently, and, after some time to warm up to her, I realized she worked for me. She’s very confused about what happened that May day when her boyfriend shot up the school. She blames herself for what happened, and she’s pretty much starting the book just wanting to finish out the school year as quietly as possible. Of course, that’s not what happens, because she just can’t. Not with an event like a school shooting.

Because she’s such a complex character, and because the issues she goes through aren’t pat and easily solved, Ms. Brown doesn’t provide Valerie with easy answers. Even at the end, it’s clear that she still has to come to terms with her future, but the experiences of the novel have made her stronger. I appreciated that Brown chose to go that route, since otherwise I don’t think I’d have found Valerie’s story as believable.

In addition to Valerie, the rest of the characters are multi-demensional as well. Valerie’s parents, in particular, are drawn with a depth I don’t often see in young adult fiction. Nick, too, though he did shoot several people in Valerie’s high school, is also portrayed with enough sympathy that the reader can see what Valerie saw in him.

The emotions in this book felt very genuine. Each person deals with what happened the day Nick shot up the school commons in different ways. There were moments I was cheering for Valerie as she dealt with the minefields of other people’s experiences with the tragedy. There were other moments, particularly a few harrowing scenes between Valerie and her dad, where I wanted to hug her. There were also bits where I was angry with her. The fact that Ms. Brown successfully played with my emotions and I never felt manipulated is definitely a point in the book’s favor.

This book also reminded me of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, what with both stories featuring deeply troubled heroines in difficult situations who cope with life through art. I read Speak with clenched teeth, wondering why I was supposed to empathize with such a self-absorbed brat. (I’m aware I’m the only person in the history of the Internet who felt that way. Please don’t stone me.) Obviously, I liked The Hate List much better. The book also reminds me of Lionel Schriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is a book I never did review but which I read last year, which also discusses school shootings. Brown’s story isn’t as intense as Schriver’s, but at least I walked away from Hate List thinking the heroine would be OK, something I couldn’t say for Schriver’s heroine.

Final Thoughts: Ms. Brown’s debut was complex and dark and fascinating. I didn’t love it, because it didn’t speak to me on a completely visceral level, but I definitely appreciated the solid writing, and the complexity of the characters and the situation. If you, like me, like your contemporary YA complex and gritty, this is definitely a must-read.

Final Grade: B

Other Opinions

• Presenting Lenore

• Karen’s Book Nook
• YA Book Central
• My Friend Amy
• Galley Smith
  

Title: Into the Wild Nerd Yonder
Author: Julie Halpern
Genre: Contemporary young adult fiction
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: The synopsis caught my attention. I figured it would either be very good or train-wreckily awful. (Yes, I’m aware I just made up a word there. Feel free to use it whenever you want.)

Synopsis:

It’s Jessie’s sophomore year of high school. A self-professed mathelete, she isn’t sure where she belongs. Her two best friends have transformed themselves into punks and one of them is going after her longtime crush. Her beloved older brother will soon leave for college (and in the meantime has shaved his mohawk and started dating… the prom princess!)… Things are changing fast. Jessie needs new friends. And her quest is a hilarious tour through high-school clique-dom, with a surprising stop along the way — the Dungeons and Dragons crowd, who out-nerd everyone. Will hanging out with them make her a nerd, too? And could she really be crushing on a guy with too-short pants and too-white gym shoes? If you go into the wild nerd yonder, can you ever come back?

My Thoughts: Confession time: I was a gamer in high school. I started out being the typical dungeon master’s girlfriend, then I really got into it. I don’t play RPG’s face to face these days, mostly because I haven’t found a group that’s local that I click with, and also because I am far, far better at playing RPG games online, where I don’t have to struggle to think on my feet. Also, online games have a tendency to emphasize good writing and go deeper into characterization, which appeal to me more.

And but so anyway, when I started Into the Wild Nerd Yonder I steeled myself for Halpern using it as a vehicle to either make fun of the nerds in Jessie’s school or teach Jessie a valuable lesson about not being such a snot. So, expectations firmly grounded in very low territory, I was pleasantly surprised by how awesome this book was, and by the fact that it didn’t wander into annoying cliche territory.

Jessie herself is a wonderful lead character. She’s smart and funny and I related to her. I liked that she was a reader, and she was reading books that I really have to get around to reading myself. (She mentions Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer and Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevon, both of which I have TBR.) I also envied Jessie her mad sewing skills. I wish I were that crafty, and it made me happy that one of the reasons she was accepted by the D&D crew was her sewing ability, which her former friends thought was a bit lame.

Jessie’s struggle is authentic, and I never felt that the story got bogged down by unnecessary angst. There were also some very poignant moments, especially between Jessie and her older brother, that made me smile. And, of course, there is the romance angle, which was exactly right and very sweet. To make this shorter, I felt for Jessie and rooted for her as she tried to figure out where her place was. In fact, with its intensely likeable protagonist, I thought Into the Wild Nerd Yonder was reminiscent of the one Sarah Dessen book I’ve read.

Final Thoughts: A great protagonist and an excellent round-up of secondary characters makes this book a fun and highly recommended read. I hope Julie Halpern has more where this came from.

Final Grade: B+

Other Opinions

• Serene Hours

• The Book Muncher

Title: Tough Tiffany
Author: Belinda Hurmence
Genre: Children’s fiction
Source: Bookshare
Challenges: Flashback Challenge
Reason for Reading: I had read this book as a child, and I was curious to see if it would hold up at all.

Synopsis: This book tells the story of a year in the life of Tiffany Cox, a black girl living in North Carolina. Tiffany wants to be thought of as tough, but she’s not sure that she actually is. Still, when her family has to deal with the repossession of their furniture, their grandmother’s missing money, and Tiffany’s sister’s pregnancy, Tiffany rises to the challenge and proves herself.

My thoughts: I can’t speak to the cultural relevance of this book, as I am as white a girl as they come, and I live in the midwest, not the south. That being said, I really enjoyed rereading this book. I liked that it dealt with poverty as a fact of life. Nobody bemoans their lack of money, they just move on and deal with it the best they can. I imagine there are a lot of kids out there in a similar situation to the Cox family, but they just aren’t talked about as much.

The characters are wonderful. Tiffany is spunky, in the best possible way. It’s obvious that she loves her family, foibles and all, and I believed her as an eleven-year-old girl. I also loved Tiff’s family, from her sometimes shrill, spendthrift mother to her crotchetty old grandmother to her pregnant sister. They’ve all got their flaws, and they aren’t idolized, which again makes them seem like people I could actually meet.

I also enjoyed the factthat this wasn’t an issue book. It’s about Tiffany growing up a little, but it’s not as bleak as the subject matter–a sister’s pregnancy at the age of fifteen–might suggest.

I don’t think I’m likely to reread this in the future, but I do recommend it as a not-very-dated book for middle grade readers.

Final Grade: B+

Other Opinions

Have you read this book? Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.

I am several reviews behind, and I wanted to jstart fresh and review books I’d read in 2010. With that in mind, I thought I’d steal an idea from Kailana. She does a feature occasionally called Six-sentence Saturday, in which she talks about recent reads in reviews of only six sentences. Here, then, is my attempt at the same kind of thing.

• Hard Candy by Andrew Vachss: This is the fourth in Vachss’s Burke novels, and is largely a transition book. The case Burke works on is incidental except that it allows him to deal with some of the demons he’s been fighting since the last book. As such, I didn’t think it was as strong as some of the others I’ve read. Still, Burke is one of my favorite characters in all of literature, and I can’t wait to dive into the next adventure in his life. This book works fine as a stand-alone, though I think you’d get more out of the series by starting from the beginning. This book rates a B.

• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel: This classic Mexican novel of romance and cooking had an interesting premise–a woman is thwarted from marrying her true love because she has to take care of her mother, so she throws herself into life in the kitchen. Sadly, as awesome as this idea was, and as much as it’s a modern classic, it didn’t work for me very well. I found the novel quite readable, but the main character, Elena, struck me as a Mary Sue. I also thought a few of the magic realism bits were just random, and that took me out of the story. I’m sure this makes me a plebe of the lowest order. I have to give this one a C.
• I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want To Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb: The premise is pretty much right there in the title. I thought this book was quite fun, and enjoyed it while I was reading it, but it wasn’t perfect. Mr. Lieb tried too hard to make this book appeal to both kids and adults, and I’m not sure how well it would appeal to either. It did make me laugh out loud in places, though, so it succeeded somewhere. I’d read more by Josh Lieb in the future. This book gets a B-.
• His Ordinary Life by Linda Winfree: I officiallhy love the Hearts of the South series. Each book is an intimate glimpse into the life of two small-town Georgia residents and their friends. In this installment, the romantic conflict–a marriage in trouble due to poor communication–is expertly handled, and I was invested in Dell and Barbara’s making things work. The suspense plot was also quite well-handled, with a villain I didn’t see coming. I’ve got to stop waiting months between reading these books. My grade is a strong B+.
• A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotsen: What a fun, delightfully fluffy confection of a book! This is a romance in the best sense of the word, with an impoverished Russian countess charming everyone she meets in the house of an earl where she is working as a housemaid. I smiled all the way through this book, and eagerly look forward to reading more Ibbotsen. I suspect that fans of more realism in their romances will find this book hard to deal with, but to them I say “Thppppt.” I loved it anyway, and the book neatly avoids any romance tropes that make me cringe. I rate this another B+.
• The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things and How to Do Them by Peter Sagal: I like books like this, which are deeply personal encounters journalists have with whatever they’re studying. Sagal, who hosts the NPR show, Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me goes on a personal journey through several vices. Ultimately, he decides he’s better off sticking to his vanilla lifestyle. Mostly, I thought this book was quite funny and I definitely couldn’t put it down. Still, there was a certain prissiness to Sagal’s writing that kept me from really taking him seriously. Despite that, though, I’d rate it a B.

And there you have it, the last of the books of 2009. There is one more review forthcoming of a book I read last year, but I’ll let it speak for itself when the time comes.

Thank God for WordPress and its scheduling feature. As you read this, I am Internetless, hanging out for a few days with my family and enjoying the holiday. I hope that you are doing the same, and that you are having an excellent Christmas. Or, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope your day is spectacular.

On with the review!

Title: Wishin’ and Hopin’
Author: Wally Lamb
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: I bought it.
Reason for Reading: I forget which blogger first brought this book to my attention, but after reading that it was a lot like one of my favorite Christmas movies, “A ChristmasStory”, I knew I had to read it, so I bought it.

Synopsis:

It’s 1964 and ten-year-old Felix is sure of a few things: the birds and the bees are puzzling, television is magical, and this is one Christmas he’ll never forget. LBJ and Lady Bird are in the White House, Meet the Beatles is on everyone’s turntable, and Felix Funicello (distant cousin of the iconic Annette!) is doing his best to navigate fifth grade–easier said than done when scary movies still give you nightmares and you bear a striking resemblance to a certain adorable cartoon boy.

Back in his beloved fictional town of Three Rivers, Connecticut, with a new cast of endearing characters, Wally Lamb takes his readers straight into the halls of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School–where Mother Filomina’s word is law and goody-two-shoes Rosalie Twerski is sure to be minding everyone’s business. But grammar and arithmetic move to the back burner this holiday season with the sudden arrivals of substitute teacher Madame Frechette, straight from Québec, and feisty Russian student Zhenya Kabakova. While Felix learns the meaning of French kissing, cultural misunderstanding, and tableaux vivants, Wishin’ and Hopin’ barrels toward one outrageous Christmas.

From the Funicello family’s bus-station lunch counter to the elementary school playground (with an uproarious stop at the Pillsbury Bake-Off), Wishin’ and Hopin’ is a vivid slice of 1960s life, a wise and witty holiday tale that celebrates where we’ve been–and how far we’ve come.

My Thoughts: I didn’t join any Christmas reading challenges this year. I thought about it, but ultimately decided that I just didn’t have enough holiday spirit to commit to full participation. But I have been trying to review a Christmas book every Friday, and since Wishin’ and Hopin’ was a recent purchase, I figured that I’d read it and make it one less book I cart around on my book reader for another year.

I’m so glad I ended my unofficial Christmas reading challenge with this book. It was exactly the sort of thing I enjoy in a Christmas read; it was funny, it was heartwarming, and it left me feeling good about the world. I may even feel charitable enough toward Mr. Lamb to give some of his other, longer works a try, even though I couldn’t get into I Know This Much is True.

There are similarities between this book and “A Christmas Story.” No one shoots their eye out, but both pieces are steeped in the experiences of a boy of a certain age. Both Ralph and Felix are often flummoxed by the adults in their lives, and their peers confuse them, and both look back with nostalgia on their childhoods.

I found a couple of things surprising. First of all, though this book is steeped in nostalgia, it’s not really something I’d recommend for children. Some of the humor is quite adult, and it works well because Felix doesn’t really get it, which creates interesting complications. I suppose this only makes the book more true to life, and I’m not complaining. I’m just pointing out that if I had a ten-year-old I probably wouldn’t pick this book for bedtime reading.

I loved that the book was grounded in the 1960′s in a way that I don’t think it’s possible for a book to be unless the author happened to have experienced that decade himself. I loved the bits about the Pilsbury Bake-off, and I enjoyed the cameos by Ronald Reagan and Annette Funicello. The parochial school bits were also excellent and highly hillarious.

Final Thoughts: I don’t really have much in the way of quibbles. I would definitely read this again next year, and I’m glad I bought it. It’s not quite an A book, because I don’t think it’s going to stick with me very long, but it is satisfying.

Final Grade: B+

Other Opinions:

• Bermuda Onion

• Booking Mama
• Sassymonkey

Title: Beth’s Acceptance
Author: Teal Ceagh
Genre: Paranormal erotic romance
Source: I bought it.
Reason for Reading: I actually heard about this book from the incomparable Katiebabs on Twitter. Since I am constitutionally incapable of resisting the lure of what promises to be bad porn, I bought this.
Synopsis:

For weeks, the darkly sinful Zachariah, her favorite customer at McGinty’s, has been raising NYC student Beth Siegel’s pulse, driving her crazy with need.

Neither can she keep the tall, blue-eyed mysterious Luke, who haunts the library stacks at her day job, out of her mind or her sweaty, desperate fantasies.

Fate hands Beth a startling destiny, a chance to bond with both of them—a bond formed via sex. Sex with either one of them would have been fabulous. Together? Irresistible.

Reader Advisory: This book contains hot, sexy scenes of M/M interaction.

My thoughts: Despite my initial impression of this book as crackaliscious porn, I enjoyed it quite a lot. It was a fast, fun story with characters I liked and, more important, found sexy. (I so want a sexy elf man of my very own, particularly one who reads. Mrrrow!) There was an external plot that, while I wouldn’t have minded reading more, was a better pretext for three people engaging in hot sexoring than many others I’ve read. And I liked the relationship dynamics. The two men form a bond with each other as well as the titular Beth. And the two men are actually interesting characters in their own right.

I did have a few quibbles that kept this book from being as awesome as it could have been. First of all, there’s the infamous scene that I bought the book for. Let’s just say that this scene features the two erstwhile gentlemen both inserting their Tab A’s into the heroine’s Slot B. At the same time. My own particular ladybits still shudder and clench up in horror at the mere thought, and I just didn’t buy, “Well, moms stretch down there all the time when they give birth” as a valid enough excuse for that kind of shenannigan. It was a hot scene, I’ll grant you, but after I’d read past it and processed what I’d read, well, the phrase “WTF?” seemed a propo.

The other thing that didn’t work for me was the editing. There were a few glaring bits that an editor really should have pointed out. For example, in one sentence, the heroine is on the table, and the next she’s in a bed. How’d she get there? Teleportation? I had to go back and reread to make sure I hadn’t missed something somewhere. No, I hadn’t.

Final Thoughts: I would be interested in reading more of Ms. Ceagh’s books. Though this wasn’t perfect, it was quite enjoyable.

Final Grade: B

Other Opinions

• The Geeky Bookworm

• Smexy Books
• Babbling About Books and More

Title: A Great and Terrible Beauty
Author: Libba Bray
Genre: Young adult historic fantasy
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: I’ve had this book on my TBR pile for ages, and I was finally inspired to read it, thanks to a random whim.

Synopsis:

It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma’s reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence’s most powerful girls–and their foray into the spiritual world–lead to?

My Thoughts: I was surprised by this book. I mean, it had garnered a lot of hype everywhere, and so I was relatively certain I’d enjoy it, but I wasn’t really expecting very much. A rollicking fantasy adventure, maybe some backstabbing girl rivalries, maybe a climax at the end which would lead nicely into the sequel. In short, I was expecting a slightly more advanced Harry Potter. What I got was so much more than that, though.

First, the characters. Gemma and her friends are all very flawed people. Gemma, our first-person narrator, does not try to sugar coat any of these flaws, not even her own. Secondly, they don’t quite behave in the ways I was expecting. If this had been another book, Gemma and Ann Bradshaw, the girl she gets as a roommate, would have been bullied and abused by the more popular Felicity and Pippa. Instead, Gemma and Felicity, after a rocky start, become best friends, and through that friendship, Gemma lets Ann into the popular clique. I really like that choice of Bray’s, because it seemed more realistic, and it was a nice departure from the usual tropes.

I also liked that none of the characters had all the answers. Gemma learns that she has some unusual powers, but she has to make missteps before she learns how to control them, and she doesn’t always make the right or the best choice. This made for uncomfortable reading at times, because there were moments when I was practically shouting at the book, “Oh, Gemma, don’t do that!” And then she did, and bad things would happen, but I’d never quite know when or how.

Obviously, I came to love these girls. I liked unconventional, snarky Gemma, pathetic, plain Ann, romantic, flighty Pippa, and confident, power-hungry Felicity. I want to read more about them, because they have stuck in my head as interesting characters even several days after I finished the book.

As for the plot, it’s quite twisty as well. I don’t want to go into great detail, but again, there were surprises for me, an the story turned out to be quite a bit darker than I was expecting. There was also a satisfying ending, so I didn’t feel I was manipulated into reading the next two books in the series. I will, because I love the characters, but not having to deal with a cliffhanger is awesome.

It should also be noted that this is the first book in quite a while where my days in fandom have reared their heads. I am now a die-hard Gemma/Felicity shipper, even though I am fairly certain my hopes will be dashed.

One last note. I’ve begun to try and take note of the writing in the books I’m reading, and I have to say that Ms. Bray is a wondefrful storyteller. Normally, present tense narratives aren’t my thing, but in this book, I didn’t even notice because it all flowed so naturally.

Final Thoughts: This is an engaging start to a trilogy that I can’t wait to read further. It comes very close to being a keeper book for me, and the only reason it isn’t is because at the time I was reading, I didn’t want something quite as dark as I got.

Final Grade: A strong B+.

P.S. Clearly, I am either not as picky a reader as I like to tell myself or I was drinking the Kool-Aid as I was reading. See below for less squeeful reactions to this book.

Other Opinions:

• Tiny Little Reading Room

• Things Mean a Lot
• The Zen Leaf
• Books I Done Read
• Bookshelves of Doom
• The Written World
• Reading Adventures
• Shelf Love

Title: The Westing Game
Author: Ellen Raskin
Genre: Children’s mystery
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: It’s another childhood reread which happens to fit the Shelf Discovery Challenge
Synopsis: Sixteen people, all residents of Sunset Towers, are invited to the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. They are an odd assortment of people, including a crippled birdwatcher, a secretary, a judge, a podiatrist, a dressmaker, and a girl who likes to play the stock market, among others. There’s also a bookie, a thief, a bomber, and a mistake. Forced to work in pairs to solve Westing’s murder, the residents of Sunset Towers soon find out that their fellow residents may hold the biggest mysteries of all.

My Thoughts: I have to hand it to Ellen Raskin. I’m not sure many authors could write a book that was essentially one long logic puzzle without breaking their brains, but Ms. Raskin did so admirably. Not only that, but there’s a surprising amount of depth to the characters. I mean, I am a character reader, and one of the reasons I don’t read much middle grade fiction is that I don’t often find very sophisticated characterization. But there were things in this book that I didn’t pick up on when I was actually a middle-grade reader. I understood, for example, what drove Angela Wexler to seek attention for herself, and not simply because she was a beautiful woman. I understood Flora Baumbach’s grief, and even if I did want to smack Sydelle Pullaski around, she stood out as a favorite character for me.

As I said above, this was a reread. I think mysteries don’t lend themselves to rereads, especially if you have a stupidly accurate memory for pointless minutia like I do. For example, I remembered a lot of plot elements from this book as they happened, and I remember the solution clearly. This took a bit away from my enjoyment of the story as a whole, but of course the fault there lies with me, not the author.

Final Thoughts: Sunset Towers is full of eccentric characters who are well worth following. I recommend this book to any budding mystery lovers.

Final Grade: B+

Other Opinions

• The Book Zombie

• The Bluestocking Society
• It’s All About Books

Title: Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Author: Mark Harris
Genre: Nonfiction
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: Several months ago, My Friend Amy organized the Books for our Times reading project. The idea was for book bloggers to read the books Newsweek had named the Fifty books for our times. I hadn’t intended to participate, because I normally ignore that kind of thing, but Amy called for an emergency pinch hitter to read this book, so I offered, because I want to be one of Amy’s minions when I grow up.
Synopsis: This book chronicles the histories of the five films that were nominated for the 1967 Best Picture Academy Award. 1967 was the turning point for Hollywood, which was dealing with both an overly strict decency code and the fact that the studios weren’t making any long-lasting or important films. The five nominees for Best Picture in 1967 changed all that. The movies–”Bonnie and Clyde”, “The Graduate”, “In the Heat of the Night”, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, and “Dr. Dolittle”–represented a shift into what would become more modern Hollywood.

My Thoughts: I was exactly the wrong person to review this book. My blindness does not mean that I don’t enjoy movies. It just means that I’d much rather read. To this end, my roommate owns two TV’s. I own none. So I couldn’t be less interested in a history of five movies that, of course, I haven’t seen.

This is what’s amazing about this book. I was the wrong type of reader for this book, but I had a hard time putting it down. Rather than confront us with pages and pages of dry facts, Mark Harris brings to life the various producers, directors, scriptwriters, actors and movie editors that brought us those five movies. They felt like real people to me, rather than so many Hollywood icons, and I was caught up in their stories.

Harris has obviously done his homework, and he has an impressive bibliography and set of endnotes for people who want to do further reading. He obviously interviewed many of the key people who brought the world these movies, and his love for and interest in the subject shine through. The result, for me, is that I now want to watch all five of these movies, particularly “In the Heat of the Night”, which looks like something that would still be enjoyable and interesting today.

Does this book qualify as a “book for our times”, though? That’s hard for me to judge. I am inclined to point out that Mr. Harris wrote for Newsweek, which makes his inclusion on the list a bit suspect. But, whether it is a classic representation of “our times”, whatever that means, I think it’s amazing that Harris was able to weave a nonfiction narrative about movies so compelling that even someone so actively apathetic as I am found it a fascinating read.

Final Thoughts: If you’re a movie buff, or if you find film history at all intriguing, this is a good book. It is quite easy to read, and very absorbing.

Final Grade: B+

Other Opinions

• Killin’ Time Reading

Title: Heartsick
Author: Chelsea Cain
Genre: Mystery
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: Two of my favorite book bloggers, Wendy and Katiebabs have both praised Ms. Cain. And since I do sometimes enjoy reading about violent bloodbaths, I figured I’d give this book a try.

Synopsis:

Damaged Portland detective Archie Sheridan spent ten years tracking Gretchen Lowell, a beautiful serial killer, but in the end she was the one who caught him. Two years ago, Gretchen kidnapped Archie and tortured him for ten days, but instead of killing him, she mysteriously decided to let him go. She turned herself in, and now Gretchen has been locked away for the rest of her life, while Archie is in a prison of another kind–addicted to pain pills, unable to return to his old life, powerless to get those ten horrific days off his mind. Archie’s a different person, his estranged wife says, and he knows she’s right. He continues to visit Gretchen in prison once a week, saying that only he can get her to confess as to the whereabouts of more of her victims, but even he knows the truth–he can’t stay away. When another killer begins snatching teenage girls off the streets of Portland, Archie has to pull himself together enough to lead the new task force investigating the murders. A hungry young newspaper reporter, Susan Ward, begins profiling Archie and the investigation, which sparks a deadly game between Archie, Susan, the new killer, and even Gretchen. They need to catch a killer, and maybe somehow then Archie can free himself from Gretchen, once and for all. Either way, Heartsick makes for one of the most extraordinary suspense debuts in recent memory.

My Thoughts: This book lived up to much of the hype I’d been exposed to. Chelsea Cain has created some memorable characters in the three principals in this story, Archie Sherridan, Gretchen Lowell, and Susan Ward. It says something about this book that I went out and bought Sweetheart , the second book in the series, as soon as I’d finished.

There is a lot of drama between the characters, and it all makes for compelling reading. Archie’s flashbacks of his treatment at the hands of Gretchen are gruesome, and he’s really become a wreck. I found myself sympathizing with him for the most part, even though sometimes he drove me nuts. I kept drawing comparisons in my head between Archie and another deeply troubled pill popper, Dr. Gregory House. Thing is, I liked Archie better. He seemed to be a much more pleasant person to deal with, even if he wasn’t exactly the most moral and decent human being ever, and he wasn’t a know-it-all, insufferable genius. (Can you tell I am one of about 3 people in the world who is not a House fan?)

I found Archie’s relationship with Gretchen to be one of the most interesting things about the book. I’m not sure I would want to read about a similar character dynamic if, say, Gretchen had been a man and Archie a woman, but as it was, I found their strange symbiosis quite compelling and am hoping for more of it in the sequels.

More than that, though, I was fascinated by Susan Ward, the reporter Archie specifically requests report on their new task force. Susan was a great character, a combination of strong and brittle that I find fascinating to read about. I liked that she was deeply flawed, and I liked that there’s no chance, at least so far, of a romance between her and Archie, which was where I assumed the story was headed. It’s Susan I want to stick around and read more about, and it’s her story I care more about than I do Archie’s. I’m not sure why this is, because it seems to be a minority opinion among the rest of the book blogosphere. But I’m chalking it up to my tendency to want to root for a female character, and my irritation with characters who don’t really do anything proactive to get over their issues.

That all being said, there were a few missteps that kept this book off of my keeper shelf. Gretchen, for one, remains a bit too mysterious throughout. Her big scene, looking back, read a bit too much like a Deus Ex Machina to me, and I hate those. And then there’s the fact that Susan is inevitably captured by the bad guy and left alone with him. The scene felt very cliched, and when it happened, I was taken out of the story, because the setup was definitely the sort of thing the reader knows will be bad in advance, and yet the heroine walks calmly right into a trap.

Final Thoughts: Aside from a few cliches, I found this book quite compelling. There is lots of graphic violence, and one scene in particular made me a bit nauseous, but if you like your serial killer mysteries, this is a good example of the genre.

My Grade: B

Other Opinions

• Wendy’s review, which convinced me to pick the book up.

• Avidbookreader
• Fantasy Book Critic
• Melody’s Reading Corner

Title: A Little House Sampler
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane
Genre: Nonfiction
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: My interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books having been rekindled, I thought I would check out this collection of essays that she and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, wrote for various publications, so that I could get a better sense of her life.
Synopsis: This is, as I mentioned, a collection of essays by the author of the Little House series and her daughter. There are reminiscences here about both Laura and Rose’s childhood, and there are short stories and essays about farm living.
My Thoughts: I’m never really sure how to review a book like this. I’m not normally much of an essay reader, and I don’t want to write about each piece in the book.

What I will say is that I enjoyed this collection quite a bit. In fact, I stayed up with it late into the night, which is something I never thought I would say about a collection of essays.

Having read this collection, I do have to admit to curiosity about Rose Wilder Lane’s writing. I found her fiction in particular quite memorable, from the slightly Gothic “Innocence”, which describes a little girl’s family’s brief but disastrous move to the South, to the melancholy “Autumn”, about a woman returning to her hometown only to discover that she’s changed far too much, to the mysterious “Object Matrimony”, about a mail order bride and her reasons for coming out West to seek a husband. I have Free Land by Ms. Lane on the TBR, and I definitely think I’m going to read it after I finish my reread of the Little House books.

Final Thoughts: This is an interesting collection of pieces which provides a fascinating look into the lives of two iconic writers of the 20th century. I enjoyed it and intend to make a closer study of the authors’ works.

Final Grade: B

Other Opinions

If you’ve read this book, let me know in the comments and I’ll link to your review.

Title: Little House in the Big Woods
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Genre: Children’s historical fiction
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: Childhood reread. Also, it counts for the Shelf Discovery challenge.
Synopsis: This is the first in Mrs. Wilder’s series of autobiographical novels about her childhood. It recounts a year in the life of the Ingalls family as they live in the woods of Wisconsin.

My Thoughts: I’d been thinking I might like to reread the Little House books for some time, because they bring back all kinds of childhood memories. I was surprised by how much I remembered as I read, particularly the bits about Pa’s fiddle. I also remembered some of the food, in particular the maple sugar and what a treat it was. And, as people who know me in real life can attest, music and food are two great tastes that taste great together in my book.

There’s not a lot that happens in this book. I seem to remember other books in the series having larger amounts of plot, but this story is fairly episodic. This isn’t a bad thing, because the story is all about the experience of Laura’s life, so I think it’s more important to read about, say, the family having a hog roast, or about the maple sugar being made, or about the family’s first trip to town. All of these are described in vivid detail, so much so that I spent the entire book hungry for something extremely fattening and sweet. There were things I’d forgotten, though. I can’t imagine actually wanting to play with a pig’s bladder the way Laura and Mary did, and I don’t think anyone would be nearly as cavalleer about hunting as the Ingalls family is.

Final Thoughts: This isn’t my favorite in the series. That honor goes to Little Town on the Prairie which I read over and over and over so that I memorized whole passages of the book when I was eight or nine. But this is a quick read. If you’ve never read any of Mrs. Wilder’s books, this is, obviously, the best place to start.

Final Grade: B+

Other Opinions

• Becky’s Book Reviews

• The Well-Read Child
• You’ve Gotta Read This!: who is also doing the Shelf Discovery challenge
• It’s All About Me