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This is a Good Book Thursday, October 3, 2024

This week I read Naomi Novik’s Scholomance Trilogy again. (I’m a big Novik fan.) Originally, I loved the first book, really liked the second which was much more complex, and got so lost in the third one that I sort of skimmed until I got to the end. This time I loved the first book, thought the second was terrific, and actually gave the third one a fair read. It’s still the one I like the least, but it was a lot better this time around, and it made me think about trilogies in particular, the idea that you can’t just keep repeating the same story, you have to arc a trilogy like a novel. So the first Scholomance was about El, a loaner with a terrible future who forms alliances, and it was very personal and so much fun to read (I love an angry heroine). The second one was about El again, and she had support now, but she was still fighting prejudice and still trying to do the right thing within the confines of her murderous school, and it was still fun. But she graduates at the end of that one, so the third one takes place in the big wide world with El at the height of her powers; she can pretty much do anything at this point. So a new setting, new problems, new antagonists . . . I think it was just too different from the first two when I first read it. And it was much more complex, and that made it difficult, too. Mostly, I think, I just missed the confined setting of the school, within which Novik had built a fabulous but self-contained world.

Anyway it made me think a lot about trilogies which is good because I’m finishing up one with Bob now, and we’ll be starting a new one after this. I like trilogies, we can do so much more with character over three books. I just have to think about them more.

So what did you read this week?

183 Responses

  1. Yep, I love trilogies too, both to read and to write. You can do so much more with characters in a trilogy, and it’s fun trying to find that overall arc as well as the individual arcs for each book.

    As far as reading is concerned, I just discovered that Kelley Armstrong has started a new post-Rockton series. I read the second one, The Boy Who Cried Bear, kind of accidentally, so now I’m going back to reread all of Rockton, to remind myself of what came before, before reading the first book in a new series. The premise of the whole thing is fun, and it’s a pretty light read with a bit of tension and lots of biffo. I’m enjoying the reread.

    1. I think the Rockton series are fun to read although I do find myself having to hold onto my suspension of disbelief rather tightly, lol.

  2. Coincidentally, I just finished a short story collection by Novik, Buried Deep, and it is excellent. She also introduces a short slice from her new world which will be upcoming soon.

  3. I’m almost done with my reread of CS Poe’s Memento Mori books. So far there are only three, but hopefully there will be more. Trilogies are good. Sometimes a longer commitment to a whole series of books is off-putting to me, plus, if the author wasn’t planning on it, they can suffer from the saggy middle or bad ending problem. Trilogies are like a mini series. There is a much higher chance of success when you go in knowing where the story is going to end.

    Speaking of TV, we finished Jinny’s Kitchen and No Gain, No Love. We are somewhere in the middle of Coffee Prince, so I am going to need to find a new K Drama soon.

    And it’s October, so once I finish my ‘two guys solve crimes and fall in love’ book, it will be time for Maybe This Time. And I want to read a bunch of short, cheap seasonal smut and schmaltz, but I don’t have time yet. Hopefully after this weekend.

    1. By seasonal, I mean fall/Halloween, preferably with monsters. Christmas doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving, thank you very much.

      1. Which is not helpful when you’re Canadian and Thanksgiving is the second weekend in October which leaves a LOT of runway to Christmas and, believe me up here people take that runway.

        1. They are putting Christmas up in all the stores, thrift included and IT IS NOT OK. HALLOWEEN DESERVES TWO FULL MONTHS.

          Also, I think that I will name me future used book store Smut and Schmaltz. There will be at least on shop cat and absolutely no literary fiction.

          4. Same here in Munich: the first christmas things / cake-like baked goods (Lebkuchen, Stollen etc) appeared in late August!! Before our summer holidays were even over. But in December, when you really want to get these things, they’re usually already sold out. It didn’t use to be that bad back when I was a teen…

          8. It is a pity we live in so many different places because I can picture all of us hanging out at your store and finally meeting each other IRL. Heaven!

            Would you have a small cooking section to honor the other definition of schmaltz?

          9. Oh yes, And crafts. Maybe some poetry and tarot cards. Basically everything except Lit Fic. Because I hate it.

          11. Lupe, you’re fictional bookstore gets more and more appealing if I can take my knitting needles to your shop, too 🙂
            I had enough of Literary fiction after 2 years of advanced LF for my A-Levels – thankfully with a strong focus on the classics and bearable amounts of the modern classics – I really don’t fancy the German approach to “Literature” (the less fun the higher appreciated by critics it seems to me).

          13. Tammy, not to get thrown out prematurely, there should be a good mix of regency (bridgerton), contemporary (e.g. Sex Efucation), lgbtq+ (heartstopper) bonge watching events. Plus what else would we watch ?

          14. Will there be comfy chairs in your shop ? I totally want to browse there. Also, can we bring craft projects along (knitting, needlepoint, etc.) to do in those comfy chairs — in addition to the reading that we’d do there, of course…

  4. I read an advance copy of Nan Reinhardt’s new book, Made for Mistletoe. It’s a sweet romance set in her extended River’s Edge town series, and I love every book in it. Believable romance (and also believable thing that keeps the protagonists apart, which is hard to find). Lots of great adult friendships, both female and male. If you need a comfort read, this one should suit.

  5. Now onto ‘Polo the third of Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles, still rich handsome men, still got lots of strong women, lots of shenanigans and of course, lots of ponies, after all, it is based around Polo players lol. Proper get your teeth stuck into it book this is, in fact all but one of the Rutshire Chronicles is awesome, I personally wasnt keen on ‘Pandora’s Box’ which is surprising because I love art, maybe it was the ponies I was missing……

    1. One of my favourite ones is the one where they put together a bid to run a television because there is a lovely middle aged romance within it. I think the female character in that romance is a thinly disguised version of the author herself.
      Not many ponies in that one or any.

  6. This week I read Simply Love by Mary Balogh. It is a gentle romance with two very damaged MCs finding each other, and working on healing each other. There are obstacles – mostly self-imposed – but not only do they talk to each other, they listen to each other. The ending made me glad they found each other.

    And now for something completely different, I’m dipping my toe into the Bridgerton world with the Duke and I. So far so good!

    1. I love Julia Quinn’s books, although Bridgerton TV series didn’t work for me. None of their cast conformed to my ideas of the characters. Did you read her earlier book How to Marry a Marquis? It is hilarious.

    3. Back in the day, I read all the Bridgerton novels. I think I quite liked the second one but the others not so much..

  7. I’m still making my way through Manna Francis’ Administration series. It’s taken six books and five years for the sociopathic Toreth to acknowledge he has an actual relationship with technology genius/entrepreneur Warrick but hey, good things take time. Onto book seven.

    I also listened to Peter Heller’s Burn, a somewhat dystopian novel set in the near future where the Maine secessionists have dragged New England into a civil battle while the protagonist and his best friend have been in radio silence on a hunting trip in the woods. They emerge into a confusing and unsafe world where road travel isn’t possible and they are trying to make their way back home through a dangerous landscape. Despite two male characters, this is not MM and not romance. I’ve always liked post apocalyptic fiction and I liked this one but…I would have liked it more if it had: 1) been more focussed on the post apocalyptic part and the themes of the certainty and chaos of life, 2) with fewer flashbacks to their childhood and teens, and 3) not turned into journey to return a child they encounter to her family. Why is it in post apocalyptic journeys that the travellers always pick up either a stray child or a dog? Why aren’t they picking up some homeless person? Seems far more likely.

  8. A lot of us seem to be suffering from stress lately, and seeking out undemanding reading to soothe us. One of my go-tos is light sf, often from indie writers.  Lately this includes David Collins,  an author of multiple series that generally start when someone discovers an alien artifact of some sort on Earth that one way or another puts them in touch with an interstellar civilization.

    The Artifact, 2024, depicts a US minor indie sf writer, who is a college student on the verge of graduation, and who invests in a weird-looking gadget that he finds on eBay and that he wants as a model for a book cover.  Once accidentally powered up from his phone charger, it proves to be a link to the self-aware AI aboard a hidden ancient alien spaceship.  The Ai is looking for a human crew because reasons.  Our hero prudently first graduates from college, but also has recruited from among his classmates and family, and, after graduation, off into the black they go.  We do get a resolution of a sort, but in large measure this novel is the set-up for a forthcoming series.

    In Carbon Copy, 2024, in the start of an unrelated series, an AI has hidden on Earth, on the run from her alien makers who have turned anti-AI.  Although her electronic brain remains in a concealed spaceship, she experiences life through an avatar that she has grown, in part by using cells from the corpse of a murder victim that she located and whose background she used to establish a fake identity.  Years later, other identifiable bits of the murderer victim turn up and the duplicate identities come to the attention of the FBI.  By an amazing coincidence, at about this point a spaceship from the AI’s makers turns up in Earth orbit, and complications ensue. This volume actually has a fair degree of resolution, but with room for sequels.

    Both of these editions have notes indicating that they have been revised to fix grammatical errors.  A lot of problems remain. (Random shifts between first and third person, quote marks in the wrong place, etc.)  Collins seems not to have found competent editing assistance.  Still, both novels are readable if lightweight, and I will look for more.

    (Later added)  More David Collins:  The Unexpected Isekai (2023, 2024), reportedly an extensive revision of The Resurrection Crystal.  Wikipedia says, “Isekai (Japanese: transl. ’different world’, ‘another world’, or ‘other world’) is a sub-genre of fiction. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, anime, and video games that revolve around a displaced person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world such as a fantasy world, game world, or parallel universe with or without the possibility of returning to their original world. Isekai is one of the most popular genres of anime, and isekai stories share many common tropes – for example, a powerful protagonist who is able to beat most people in the other world by fighting.” 

    Collins’s novel comes close to meeting that definition.   A few centuries hence, certain private foundations on Earth have decided to spread human culture to the stars, even absent any means of transporting humans or, evidently, even human DNA. They use dubiously ethical means:  they encode human personalities onto crystals that somehow, under certain circumstances, can upload the personalities to any alien being that come into close and prolonged contact with them.  One such circumstance is if the alien dies of some cause that the crystal can reverse.  The crystal then repairs the host body and uploads the human mind into the alien brain, pretty much replacing the original but inheriting its language and muscle memory.  These crystals are then loaded into probes and aimed at likely stars at sublight speeds, programmed to soft-land in batches.  Presumably they will take at least hundreds or thousands of years to arrive, but the crystals and delivery systems will survive where life or DNA would not.  Not a remarkably plausible rationalization for a novel, but it does apply a thin sfnal veneer to what otherwise is a fantasy trope.  Our hero has the memories of a college student who, without giving it much thought, allowed his brain to be scanned in return for a very useful cash payment.  His copy wakes up in the body of a powerfully built humanoid warrior who had died of a snake bite, and our hero then goes through adventures typical of the isekai genre in a preindustrial society.  (The alien society first used the crystals as jewelry, and, once a few cases of revival had happened, subsequently regarded the rebooting with a human mind as a sort of resurrection, so that henceforth some of the aliens wore the crystals deliberately.)  Once past this fairly original setup, we have simply an entertaining novel of a pretty standard type.  This may have been just Collins seeing if he could do something different from his earlier novels.  Still it’s a superior novel of its type (not a particularly high bar to clear), and I will likely read any sequels if I’m in the mood for light fiction.

    I finished other stuff, but will have to hold it over since it isn’t yet written up and I’m currently busy.

  9. The last two books I’ve read were just painful! I had to skip ahead to the ending to try to find some happiness for a palate cleanser. You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle started off VERY funny/snarky. Naomi is trying to get her fiancé to break the engagement so that she won’t be stuck paying for the wedding deposits. But Naomi is a very Unreliable Narrator. Fortunately the author sneaks in actions that the fiancé does that aren’t horrible so I began to suspect he wasn’t that bad. I actually got creeped out—Naomi acts very badly, crossing the line. And the fiancé does things that she interprets as retaliation but aren’t that bad. Ugh. I skipped to the end and the couple gets together on the same wavelength and it seems all will be well (except I wonder if she’s mentally ill and he’s going to be in for the same crazy treatment again and again). So not a happy ending, IMO.

    Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez started off very light-heartedly. A guy posts a question on Am I the Asshole in Reddit. Basically, after he dates someone, the next person they date is The One. His post goes viral and he gets a DM from a female who has the exact same situation. So they text and talk and decide to “date” each other hoping to break the curse and maybe find their own HEA. They end up really liking each other and start to date for real. Very, very cute up to this point. Then her absentee mother shows up and things eventually break down. The mother is sooo emotionally abusive (with secrets, too) and the daughter is quite damaged emotionally. There’s a big breakdown but with therapy the daughter comes to realize she can change her thinking /reactions so there’s a sweet happy ending. But be warned, it’s not sweetness and light for quite a bit of the book. It’s well written with several plot twists and the author definitely makes you care about most of the characters–and the premise is clever so I would give the author a thumbs up.

    I have a question about the character Simon in Faking It. He also showed up in Maybe This Time where he refers to North Archer having kept him out of an Ohio jail. Was this from a third book I have missed, or was it a reference to the (unpublished) aftermath of Faking It?

    1. My opinion is that this is a convenient post-Faking It arrest. The detective from Fast Women, Gabe, also shows up. In What the Lady Wants and Strange Bedpersons, there is some crossover of characters, too. For Cruise fans, this saves time and explaining, and makes it more cozy. For the rest, they just don’t know any better.

    3. I’ve not checked this, but I’m pretty sure one reason that Davy doesn’t want Simon to come to Ohio in Faking It is because if he gets caught doing something illegal, the authorities will throw away the keys to a jail cell. So I think there’s an un-narrated back story on Simon in which Gabe keeps him out of jail.

      1. Yep, that, too. Simon’s not supposed to come back to Columbus because North got him off on a technicality and the people involved there have long memories. But he comes north in Faking It because Davy’s having more fun than he is. I really just needed a contact that North might have in England, and there was Simon, just twiddling his thumbs.

    4. Jenny answered this when you asked it last week (although she answered after a delay):

      “It was just a throwaway line about another time Simon had been in Ohio, mainly to explain why North knew him.”

  10. I had an emotionally rough week last week, so spent the weekend and this week reading Grace Burrowes’ Lord Julian mysteries. They’re pretty good, on the cozy mystery spectrum. You sure do pick up on Burrowes’ linguistic quirks and propensity to protect children. I’m on the last published one and pre-ordered the Christmas one that’s coming soon.

    1. I just had a look at the first Lord Julian, which opens with Lord Julian translating Sumerian long before this could be done circa 1860. Come on, writers! Wikipedia and other reference works are now within absurdly easy reach! Slightly later, a character uses the modern affectation of pretending that “good morning” means “it is a good morning,” not what it obviously does mean, namely “I wish you a good morning.” I have never encountered this modern piece of idiocy in anything actually written in the Regency or for probably 150 years thereafter. I may continue for the story, but Burrows needs a lot of forgiveness to read.

    2. I’m enjoying the latest in the Lord Julian series as well. Low angst cozy that is hitting the spot right now.

    3. I love that series. Although Patrick is right: historical accuracy isn’t its strong suit. But I don’t read fiction for historical accuracy. I read it for fun, and this series delivers.

    5. I love the Lord Julian stories. I just got the one that came out this week, but most likely my daughter will get to it before I do. I don’t know how Burrowes writes them (as well as other books) so quickly, but it’s great for us readers. I remember the Moonlight and Magnolias conference years ago where she won a Maggie award and also got a contract for seven romances…

      1. Burrowes is (was?) a lawyer that focused on children’s rights. And lawyers have to read and write so very quickly!

  11. Slow readind thanks to too much work.

    Coming from the Game Changer series, I read the 7th installment of the puckboy series and maybe because of that I was SOOOO disappointed. I liked the early installments, but didn’t love any of the books starting from book 3. This one was the most disappointing. So much potential for a good story (young star player and referee), but did NOT deliver. No depth, no interesting personalities, no layers, sooo much thinking/doubting instead of talkkng, sex instead of development, yuk. Angray reader here. So glad for KU.

    I fear my reaction doesn’t only have to do with having a great last read to compare it to (The Long Game). I can accept/believe it’s easier to produce good books faster as a collab thanks to ping ponging ideas etc, but those 2 authors produce at an incredible pace and here it SHOWS imho! Will NOT get the next one since the characters were introduced here and I don’t care for haters/bullies to lovers at all.

    So I followed this up with re-listening Time to Shine which is very different to The Long Game but I soo love it, too. Also very fine narrator!

    Now I’m listening to Sarina Bowen’s Rookie Move. I really like her female characters, so that was a safe choice.

    And Heartstopper season 3 dropped today, my dh informed me. Will watch – hopefully with him, though as a family we got into Brookly 99 lately after I shocked my men with first the episode 1 of Letterkenny, then Shoresy. I fear our English is not up to the speed of either.

    1. What did you think of S2 Heartstopper? I loved the first season so much I didn’t dare watch the second season for fear they’d spoil it.

      1. I loved both seasons but must confess that I hadn’t read the books first.
        All the characters AND actors are fantastic.
        Will report back about season 3 if you like.

        1. Thank-you that would be lovely. I’ll be interested in what you think.

          I started to read the books and stopped as I realized it was spoiling my view of the story. They’re probably quite good but I don’t want another version in my head. 🙂

    2. LOl – I think it’s funny that you shocked your men with Letterkenny then Shoresy. Yep, very unCanadian with all that filthy talk. And hey, it’s not just your English – it’s sometimes so fast paced with a lot of slang and references that I had a hard time keeping up with it too. Planning to rewatch Shoresy soon.

      1. I guess I’ll watch Shoresy on my own when none of my ladies can get distressed by rude language and speakingcto their mates whole sitting on the loo LoL.
        But thanks for reassuring me that it’s difficult to understand!! I got through the Derry Girls (understanding what was being said by ca. the 2nd try) so it’s a challenge to be taken up!

    3. Ha! The episodes of Shoresy I watched were hilarious (and so filthy!) but very hard to understand because they were speaking so fast. I needed the closed captioning and even then I missed stuff.

      1. We need an online rewatch party for Shoresy. All hockey, filthy talk and Canadian fans/allies welcome.

        1. Yeah, count me in LOL. the time difference would make it hard for me to join, but I’d try!!

          1. It’s only seven hour time zone difference to Germany isn’t it? So we start on a Saturday or Sunday morning, episodes are three hours each and six in a season. We include an hour for chit chat and it’s four hours total. Easy peasy.

          2. Tammy, yes, I guess it’s 7 hours difference between Munich and Toronto, 9 between us and kid 2 near Vancouver.
            It can be done, hurray 🙂

          1. Until we manage to meet up for a Shoresy-marathon, I plan to give in to my urge for escapism by watching the new hockey documentary on amazon…

    4. Addendum: have finished listening to Rookie Move in record time. I liked both characters from previous and later books and now I like them even more. Good read and probably a re-listen as I use audiobooks to fall asleep these days.

    5. I felt the same about 7th Puckboy book. The doubting was too repetitive and was getting to be annoying.
      Watched all of Heartstopper 3 and really enjoyed it. I frequently watch British TV so I usually know most of the different terminology but subtitles still help ( especially for Derry Girls!)
      I’ve seen some Letterkenny/Shoresy as my DH & DS watch it. Subtitles are helpful even for me and I live in Northern Ontario. I think regional slang shifts about every 8 hours of drive time so even I have to translate some of the dialogue.

      1. Julie, that’s really reassuring – both regarding slang, Heartstopper and Puckboy 7!
        I didn’t come round yet – all members of the fam were okay with watching the NHL docu but only 2 of us 3 opted for Heartstopper. So I’ll have to wait a bit longer.

  12. I read remarkably bright creatures and adored it. Sent a copy to my aunt for her birthday. I’m now back reading Tom Lake, which is good but I don’t feel I have to pick it up. Remarkably bright creatures I couldn’t put down.

  13. I finished The Bullet That Missed and enjoyed it. I read Ally Carter’s new one, The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year. I really liked it but didn’t love it quite as much as The Blonde Identity. But it did make me want to read Blonde again. They’ll both be on my keeper shelf.

    Right now I’m in the middle of Bad Liar by Tami Hoag and enjoying it too. Her dialogue is so rich and so spot on. I can hear all these characters in my head when they speak.

    I’m on the fence about buying We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida. Has anyone read it? It’s a collection of short stories.

    1. I was blown away by Blonde Identity. The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year should be dropping into my library hold list very soon. I’m sooo close. Looking forward to some fun after a long slog through a medieval quest that just didn’t grab me.

  14. I’ve been reading Novik as well, “Spinning Silver”. Solid fantasy in an alt-Russia, makes me curious about the Jewish and Russian fairy-tales she’s using as the foundation. I almost like that her protagonists are sometimes unlikable, although I found some of the perspective shifts abrupt. All up very good, although the Scholomance trilogy is still my favorite!

    “The Cricketer’s Arms” by Garrick Jones is a solid mystery set in 1956 Sydney – I liked the MC, the way the author was playing with the hard-boiled detective tropes except queer. Just don’t get attached to any of the romantic interests until #5 (or was it #6?). Enjoyable. Thanks Lian and Chacha1 for the recc.

    A good reading week was topped by “Our Darkest Night” by Jennifer Robson, historical fiction set in WWII Italy, with a Jewish protagonist. It’s not romance but there’s a sweet m/f love story at the center of it, and its a corner of the war I don’t usually see covered. The author stretched the narrative a little in order to give a wider perspective but I thought it worked for the most part, and people make happy endings even after the darkest events. Its good to remember that sometimes.

    1. I love Spinning Silver! I prefer both that and Uprooted (also loved it) to Scholomance (I read the first one and wasn’t really called to read further, though I might sometime).

      1. I loved them both too! Haven’t read Scholomance yet but do plan to try them. I love a good trilogy but it’s harder to commit to the time and emotional bandwidth required when it’s not a tidy standalone.

  15. I read A Girl Called Samson by Amy Harmon. It’s been on my kindle forever and I finally got to it. Historical fiction which isn’t usually my jam, but it’s so well written I binge read it. Halfway through I think to look up one of the characters and that’s when I find out that the whole thing is based on truth. Deborah was a real woman who disguised herself as a man and fought in the American Revolution.
    The author takes some liberties with the facts to make it a wonderful gripping love story.
    I highly recommend it. And I’ve purchased two more of her books to try.

    1. A girl called Samson is on KU so I am definitely going to give it a try. Historical novels are not my cup of tea either but once in a while I like one very much so you’ve got me interested 🙂

  16. I’m in the middle of several books, not a good practice. The first is The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (apparently one of Obama’s favourite summer reads). So far so good, but not great. MC (Cambodian female British civil servant) acts as a “bridge” to help an officer brought forward from the past (from Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic) adapt to the present. Oddly believable (and I prefer her writing to Willis’s).
    The second is John Le Carre’s The Secret Pilgrim, first time read. The world of spies (1935-1950) has long been of fascination to me, not only because of my father’s part in it (OSS, CIA) but also because Le Carré, Furst, Kerr, Kanon etc. are all pretty good writers. This one hasn’t grabbed me yet, but I’m giving it time.
    And finally I’m listening to Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible. Older British widow inherits a house in Ibitha (sp?) and goes to check it out. Joanna Lumley is one of the readers. All three are neck and neck, one will pull forward for sure by tomorrow.
    I’d love to know if anyone else has read any of these and what her thoughts are.

      1. Yes, presumably Ibiza with the th pronunciation that many Spaniards give to c and z. Mexicans give them an s sound, which is how most Americans (but not Brits) are taught to say them. (That’s the quick and dirty. I understand that the ground truth on who pronounces what where is far more complicated.

      1. Thanks for the correction. I’m partially deaf [to most consonants] and make this kind of mistake frequently.

        1. No, you spelled it correctly by English rules. Anyone would have done the same who hadn’t seen it on print and didn’t know European Spanish pronunciation rules.

    3. The Secret Pilgrim is one of my favorite of Le Carre’s Smiley series (the Honorable Schoolboy being another.) I think it is one of the ones I actually reread even though I knew the outcome.

        1. That is often the reaction to The Honorable Schoolboy. I loved it for the very satisfying plot twists and turns. I found it so satisfying. Sort of like finishing an acrostic puzzle successfully.

  17. With one exception, this week was all Hockey and Heyer.
    I felt the irresistible urge to reread Arabella and as always,
    it provided the comfort read I needed. I followed that up with another reread of The Masqueraders, another one that never disappoints.

    I then moved on to hockey:

    Breakaway by Avon Gale. This was a reread. Its a teammates M/M hockey romance. Really enjoyed it again.

    I ended up DNFing Good Boy by Serena Bowen and Elle Kennedy. I’m not sure if I just was in the wrong frame of mind for it or if it is in fact as disappointing as I thought. I just couldn’t take the loud bro MMC.
    It’s the story of the sister of Jamie (of Wesmie fame— Him/Us) and the character we see in Him and Us hockey player Blake. That whole story felt forced and unlikely, and I just couldn’t care about it. But again it could have been me cause my real issue was the MMC who just was intolerable to me.

    I then reread some Catherine Cloud who is without a doubt near the top of my 5 favorite hockey authors. I can’t wait for her new book to come out next month!
    – Three is the Luckiest Number, M/M hockey romance between two players on separate teams. Pretty angsty but not overwhelmingly so. It’s a HFN story, I’ll reread it again for sure.
    – Love and Other Inconveniences. M/M hockey romance between two players.
    Also a touching lovely story.

    Finally, I read/listened to “Goalie Interference” by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn. It’s a M/M hockey romance between the two goalies on the same team. They are competing with each other for the starter position. I really enjoyed it. It was interesting to have two goalies as MCs and both of them were good guys and their backgrounds weren’t too tragic (though of course they have “issues”…) I think listening to it made it a different – and better – experience. This is book 2 in the Gale/Vaughn Hat Trick series. I didn’t care for the 1st at all. Book 2 is way better and I’d just skip book one. They stand alone.

    Finally I read “Summer Romance” by Annabel Monaghan and agree with other arghers that it’s the best of hers so far. I loved it. It’s the story of an FMC, a professional organizer who is getting out of her marriage and her friend’s younger brother whom she sort of knew in high school who has escaped town and the perception of all who knew him that he was unreliable. I really enjoyed this one — it was light and fun and provided lots of laughs and feels.

    1. I don’t think that I cared for any of the Bowen/Kennedy M/F hockey male leads. I did not finish that series and haven’t revisited them. I liked the Man Card, Man Hands books, but that was a while ago and they may not have held up.

      2. I like Blake a lot actually but I skip the whole wedding thing and start when she starts her studies, the story works well for me.

          2. He grew on me. Basically the book makes the case that sometimes a shallow but caring and good hearted guy is better than a deep angsty guy. Which… was worth thinking about .

          3. I don’t think he is shallow and it definitely comes out later in the book. He is a good guy.

    2. I liked Stay by Bowen/Kennedy just fine, but the MCs are far from the loud Blake type. Haven’t read Good Boy yet ay it got re-issued and the prize raised just when I’d read Him/Us.

    3. I’m with Lupe on not loving Sarina Bowen’s hockey books. The most recent Guy series is okay but none of them are on my reread list. Whereas Avon Gale – absolutely. Just reread Power Play. Avon Gale with Piper Vaughn not my favourite – although I’d say read the first book and skip the rest – but both of us have the same point which is that the entire series is not up to the Avon Gale stand-alone standard.

      1. It’s good for authors and the book market that tastes vary 😉
        I liked Avon Gale’s solo books a lot, couldn’t get into the collab titles, but otoh like and occasionally love Bowen’s Ivy and hockey books – mainly because I mostly really like her FMCs as much as the MMCs which is increasingly rarely the case with other authors.
        Maybe because I’m not a teenager or 20 or 30something anymore but I just find it hard to step into the shoes of the FMCs of more contemporary books (best example: the FMC in Kennedy’s Dixon Rule).

  18. Hi folks–just an FYI that Cat Sebastian’s We Could Be So Good is on sale on Kobo for $1.99 today. Such a great read.

  19. Several of us have already commented on The Ministry of Time. I’m not sure if anyone here has actually taken my suggestion of following up with Brenda Clough’s Revise the World, an earlier book that starts off in a very similar place but ends up somewhere completely different.
    It seems no longer to be on Kindle, but it looks to be in e-print at bookviewcafe.

    https://bookviewcafe.com/book/revise-the-world/

    Le Carré has the reputation of writing very disillusioned and downer novels about espionage. Perhaps that’s reality, but it’s not what I look for in fiction. I have read a little of him, but crossed him off my list and haven’t read this one. Your mileage (or liters per 100 km in metric Canada) of course may vary.

  20. I just finished Murder at King’s Crossing by Andrea Penrose. It’s the second book of hers I’ve read, and while I’ve come into the series late, I’m enjoying the found family they’ve formed as well as the scientific advancements that are at the basis of her mysteries. Love the Weasels, too.

  21. It’s been another ‘Ring of Fire’ week, starting with Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce’s 1634: THE RAM REBELLION. I finished it to start the week – I mentioned it last week.

    The followup to TRB was 1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS. It parallels TRB. In our timeline, Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, was married off to her uncle, Duke Maximillian of Bavaria. In this alternate, she decides not to and leaves Munich for parts unknown (Basil). Max loses his mind, beheading or hanging anyone he suspects had anything to do with her elopement.It has a happier ending.

    Now I have open 1634: THE GALILEO AFFAIR by Flint and Andrew Dennis. Early in the book there’s a scene: “Opening a window wasn’t an option. The autumn night that Don Francisco Nasi was musing on was a filthy one, slapping its rain and wind against the glass. It was the kind of night on which bad novels began.” Or in other words, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

    I have the second Olivia Lively mystery open in the Kindle ap. Burbank’s NIGHT MOVES (An Olivia Lively Mystery Book 2). Liv need a relationship coach, or possibly a career counselor.

    Gotta mention the continuing serial word opera, VARIATION ON A THEME Book 5. This week’s chapters were Chapter 91: Ticking Clocks and Chapter 92: A Prom-inent Statement. I’m still reading.

  22. I like trilogies, too. The end isn’t the end for a long time, and the characters become like family.

    I’m reading Fast Women, and hadn’t for a long time, partly because it contains some violence and scary stuff. I have to be in a good place to tolerate that. The characterization is so well done that some of the really weird stuff is actually believable. Three of the women are/were married to three brothers. Each of the brothers are/were unethical and unfaithful, and the wives have been deeply marked by their behavior. I’m noticing the character development more, this time. There are some seriously screwed-up men in this world, and murder seems to be a favorite solution to their problems. There are also several decent, moral men who follow their compass and treat women fairly. The three main female characters support each other faithfully. The freezers that figure prominently in this book are literally bone-chilling. My favorite part is when Nell and her friends meet her ex and his wife at a restaurant, and end up talking about Nell’s active sex life, post-divorce. It’s hilarious.

    1. The beauty of re-reading is I know which chapters or sections to skip. I always skip the freezer scene at the end. But I do love the book and appreciate the slow romance between Suze and Riley.

    2. I loved that scene too Jan. Really loved the whole book and like your description of it. Can say it is probably one of my favourite Jenny Crusie (but I have a lot of favourite Jenny Crusie’s!!)

    3. Yup, that scene at the restaurant is one of the very top Crusie scenes of all time. Hilarious AND emotionally satisfying. 🙂

  23. I listened to “I’m Glad My Mom Died” and it certainly made me feel better about *my* mother not being that bad. Good lord, that poor girl. Good storyteller, though. I’m glad she’s out of all of that.

    I’m reading Small Town Big Magic, which started out strong and now I’m kind of a little confused. I’m reading Astronaut Wives, which has fun snark for the situations the wives were in.

    1. Thanks for the feedback about I’m Glad My Mom Died. I plan to read that too! I listened to a podcast We Can Do Hard Things episode with her. I thankfully had a pretty great mom so it’s less triggering and more inspiring when I read train wreck mom stories.

  24. This was a week for me to finish a couple of things I’d been working on over time.

    1. ‘The Collected Plays of Paul Rudnick.’ All are funny, all are truly about something, all are (in their way) heartbreaking. 5 stars for the collection.

    2. ‘On Christopher Street: Life, Sex, and Death After Stonewall’ by Michael Denneny, a longtime St. Martin’s Press editor who also worked on the gay literary magazine Christopher Street for a while. A collection of essays, speeches, reviews, interviews, meditations, and memorials, centered on the NYC gay writing community that lost about 80% of its members, many of them the author’s friends & colleagues, to HIV/AIDS. 🙁

    2.5 ‘Salt & Vinegar’ by Clare London, a new M/M short story / novelette set in Brighton featuring a last-year art history student and a guy who turns out to be still entangled with an abuser. High angst, hopeful-for-now ending.

    3. [re-read] ‘One Enchanted Evening,’ my own M/M book about 15 years in the lives of a ballroom professional and an accountant who meet in their 40s. Every time I re-read this I concede that it’s more a family-saga type of thing with the MCs interacting with their community over time than a romance novel, but these are two of my anchor characters and I had to get their story on the page so I could do other things. 🙂

    4. ‘Glass Girl’ by Dorothy A. Winsor. YA F/M fantasy feat 17 yr old alt-medieval glass artist, her family/community, some metaphorical *and* non-metaphorical dragons, a handsome stranger, mayhem & intrigue & magical artifacts. Starts with the FMC’s mother being brutally killed, so that’s a thing. I rounded up to 5 and promptly bought the sequel.

    5. ‘The Red Dragon of Oxford’ by Joy Lynn Fielding. M/M urban fantasy set at Oxford University where one MC is a new doctoral student, the other is the librarian of MC1’s college, and both have inferiority complexes for Reasons that are actually dealt with as part of the plot. Realistic academic trials, a very nice romance, some mayhem & intrigue. Series starter, but this one wraps up its internal story very nicely so I bought the next.

    6. ‘Dragoncraft’ by Dorothy A. Winsor, follow-up to no. 4, which was a disappointment. Stifled, going-nowhere storyline (the MCs are on the margins of the Real Story); conflict and distrust-filled relationship carrying over from book 1, and non-explanation for the the precipitating difficulty involving dragons. Good thoughts throughout about how to be a good ruler in trying times, but the conclusion really whiffed it. Had the book been in the POV of the actual ruler and his chief guard / lover, it would have worked much better IMO and (based on other YA stuff I’m reading) wouldn’t have been out of bounds for the target age group of readers.

    7. ‘In the Dragon’s Lair’ by Joy Lynn Fielding, another M/M, which didn’t quite live up to no. 5 though I did pre-order the next in series. Should’ve felt dangerous and suspenseful, and didn’t. The romance in this one starts with insta-lust and doesn’t get past that (plus many ‘keeping up their cover’ explorations of Bath) until quite late in the book. Not at all bad, but didn’t deliver the emotional momentum or high stakes of book 1.

      1. Hahaha it’s completely coincidental, the Oxford book came to my attention in one place and the YA book in another, then I thought ‘might as well read these dragon things together’

        1. It happens that way for me, sometimes. Or characters in multiple books in a row will have the same name… I don’t read descriptions much anymore, just pick off of my lists, so that adds some serendipity.

          Although I would be all for a book about a figure skating dragon who is trying to hide his nature and keep his inner fire from outing him and melting the ice. All the double meanings intended. Wink, wink, smirk.

  25. Jayne Davis’s latest, An Improper Correspondence, was a low-key F/M regency romance. Despite the slow pace and the lack of excitement, I enjoyed this gentle story.
    Grace Burrowes’s A Gentleman of Unreliable Honor was the latest – #6 – installment of the author’s Lord Julian Mysteries series. I loved it: the mystery, the characters, the relationships. I can’t wait for the next book – about Christmas – which Burrowes promises in November.
    Mary Lancaster’s Mysterious Lover was an enjoyable mystery romance, F/M, from one of my go-to writers, whenever I need a dose of good cheer. The time of the story is the middle of the 19th century. The hero is a Hungarian, a penniless refugee from their failed revolution against Austria. Now he is working as a physician assistant in London. The heroine is an unconventional daughter of a duke: smart, resourceful, and compassionate. You can imagine the shenanigans inherent in the situation. Add to it a murder investigation, and a wonderful tale of love and mayhem ensues.
    Warning: don’t read it if you’re a history purist. Historical accuracy doesn’t apply here But if you love a light, fluffy romance and sympathetic, three-dimensional characters then you should definitely read this book.
    The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen was a marvelous novel. It is a fantasy romance, F/M, with a wonderfully original world and complex, sympathetic characters. It was also a re-read. I read it first a couple years ago and loved it. Now, when its sequel, The Undermining of Twyla and Frank, was released, I wanted to refresh my memory before my turn for the sequel comes up at the library.

    1. I enjoyed that Mary Lancaster with the Hungarian hero. IIRC, that whole series has a lot of exciting action in it. I’m trying the Pleasure Garden series at the moment. The first one is pretty good, although there was a lot of angst at first, which I found hard to take when there’s so much angst here and in the world nowadays.

      I’m still working my way through System Collapse. I’m taking my time, but this doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying it. I’m liking it more and more as I read on.

      I’m also in the middle of a mediocre historical — too unbelievable, and the writing isn’t the best, but it’s easy to fall asleep to.

      Hmm. Plenty of romances are insanely unbelievable but they really WORK, perhaps because the characters are so captivating, so emotionally believable that their unlikely behavior makes sense.

      1. I consider romance as a genre as subset of fantasy. I have never met a man like you read in romances in real life. Unless they’re bounders. 🙂

        1. That’s a good way to look at it. I gave up on Lancaster because I found her writing too modern for the setting. Maybe I should give her a try again. I often like what you like Olga!

    2. Love the Undertaking of Hart and Mercy! So emotionally satisfying and wonderfully creative. The sequel is very good although not quite as intensely emotional. Just as charming, though.

  26. Found it interesting that I totally agree with you about the Novik trilogy. I just read The Women by Kristin Hannah, excellent book. And now I’m rereading some of Mary Balogh’s earlier novels which I love.

  27. I read the KD Casey spooky short stories (2 stories in Unwritten Runes, KU) and enjoyed them both very much (characters from her Unwritten rules series, but no baseball in these. One was a reread, there are subtle refs to the main stores but your woulnd’t need to have read those to enjoy these so they are a good taster for her work. Then I reread the Ari Baran spooky short ‘Despair Has Its Own Calms’ (vampires) which I enjoyed all over again. None of those is too scary for me and I don’t do horror so they would be fine for the most sensitive, I think.

    I finished The Deal (Elle Kennedy). I liked the beginning but it really didn’t do much for me after that though I made myself finish it. I thought there was too much plot, and it could have been shorter. It also made ‘interfering parent’ shoot right to the top of my least favourite trope list.

    Most of my focus was on ‘Always in Tandem’ (youcouldmakealife/Taylor Fitzpatrick on AO3) which is mostly pretty heartbreaking but fab (Robbie and Georgie’s story). It is incomplete so I’ll be hanging on for new episodes and reading them instantly.

    Then I started ‘Impaired Judgement’ (same author and source) which I know is a bad idea as it is completely addictive and very long but I couldn’t refrain. Loving it so far but at 460k words and 175 episodes it is either going to take a while or take over my life…

    Still reading Dorothy Dunnet ‘Pawn in Frankincense’’ (Lymond Chronicles 4). It is going to take a while if I keep getting distracted by AO3, but I am still enjoying it and savouring it in small doses.

    On audio I have nearly finished The Affair of the Mysterious Letter (Alexis Hall). Once I got used to the idea that it was episodic, and didn’t have much narrative drive, and was useful for falling asleep to, I started to enjoy it more (or else it just got better). Almost finished anyway, and it was nearly a DNF.

    1. I have been “hoarding” Always in Tandem” and keep checking back to see if it’s finished yet. So glad to hear it is good. I’m almost tempted to start it anyway but I remember when I innocently read the Between the Teeth series and book 3 wasn’t even on the horizon yet. When I realized this — at the end of book 2 – I had serious withdrawal. I’ll follow your progress. I’m tempted to being it anyway…

    2. Always in Tandem is going to take FOREVER. A new chapter comes out about every week, mostly alternating pov’s between Robbie and Georgie, and it’s heartbreaking and going nowhere quickly. Yet completely addictive. Jen B and I have a post release support group going on.

      1. I think Always in tandem is never going to be finished, it advanced in such minute increments.

      2. Every OTHER week, alternating with Cards on the Table! It’s torture. But I love both series so much right now.

        I have high hopes for Always in Tandem, but it’s definitely going to go down even further before it goes up.

        1. Okay, I have started downloading Always in Tandem. You are very persuasive… But warning: Once I’ve caught up, I will no doubt share my anguish and suffering as we wait for installments. 🙂

    3. I follow Always in Tandem and Cards on the table as they come out, one one week the other the next.
      I am finding Always in tandem very depressing but I love Cards on the table, those two are so so adorable, I keep checking for the next instalment several times a week.

      1. I love Cards on the Table too! From a hate-sex premise that she never fulfilled on, Taylor has created the two most romantic MC’s in her entire canon.

        1. Do NOT tempt me to read it before it’s finished or you will have to add me to your support group!

          1. All are welcome. We start by intoning: “We realized we were powerless over our Taylor addiction…”

  28. I’m in a nonfiction period, partly because of book club, with the assignment to read a book about a historical event. Galveston, TX came up in a Katherine Center novel I was reading, so I decided to read Al Roker’s account of the 1900 hurricane, The Storm of the Century. Turned out to be distressingly timely. Roker is a good writer and did his research; he tells the story using people who were in the hurricane, as well as making meteorology comprehensible. Much of the loss of life could have been prevented, but the head guy at the weather bureau in D.C. forbade the use of the words hurricane, tornado, and cyclone in reports. He also refused to use reports that came from Cuba.
    The other nonfiction I’ve read is Orwell’s Roses, an unconventional biography by Rebecca Solnit. Her work is always worth reading.

  29. I’m sticking to known authors at the moment – don’t want the stress of reading something and not knowing it is going to be good.

    Faking it by Ms Crusie was just the ticket – what a joy of a novel. A confusing chaotic art gallery, forgers, thieves, blackmailers, and grifters – who knew it could be so much fun. Loved the art, the music, the “masks” that some of the characters wore. Just a total blast of fun. Back on the keeper shelf

    The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman. Another stonking good murder mystery from RO. A really twisty story with a cracking ending (or two). Am totally in love with Bodgan! What wonderful characters RO has created that I want to spend time with. Third book that might not be good as a stand alone though.

    Gulfside Girls by Rebecca Regnier was a wonderful start to a whole new trilogy. (And yes, I love a trilogy when the stories really do have continuity and not just story adjacent). A beach resort in need of rehabbing, secrets, lies and sisters. Want to go sit on the beach and watch the sunset with them.

    Vanishing Hour by Laura Griffin was a great story about a small town next to a National Park. Missing women, a lawyer who volunteers as a search and rescue with her wonderful dog, a tired cop. Really great murder mystery thriller I could read knowing that it may get a little tough but there would be a HEA.

  30. Read We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. I love the Thursday Murder Club books and hoped I would like this too. I did. And I think this will be another series that I must read every book. At least I hope so. Love RO’s writing.

  31. Something else I read this week:

    “I wondered why there was no bedroom in Clue, then it struck me that it avoids such juvenilely entertaining results as Miss Scarlett or Mrs. Peacock doing it in the bedroom with the candlestick.”

  32. I’ve been enjoying my reread of Heyer’s detective novels. Took a break by rereading His Official Fiancee by Berta Ruck, published in 1914. There’s snobbery and casual antisemitism (it’s of its time), but it’s an engaging tale. I first read it forty years ago, when I was working as a secretary in London (like the heroine), and living about a mile from where she does. As with Heyer, I also enjoy the social history. Unfortunately, all the other novels of hers I’ve tried have been unreadably dated: this was her first, but she churned them out from then on.

    1. I just downloaded His Official Fiancee – I like all the social stuff surrounding that Edwardian era (though often it runs so counter to all I believe in, etc.) When they are contemporaneous they are always interesting. Totally different flavor, but Elinor Glyn is another one I return to occasionally for a dip into a different era.

  33. I’m reading The Inheritance by Joanna Goodman and while the plot is engrossing — especially since I recently was mired in an inheritance-related legal battle — as someone who grew up in, attended university and began my career in Toronto I keep getting rudely bounced out of the story by egregious inaccuracies about the city.

    The latest was reading that the heroine met her lawyer at a restaurant on Harbord Street, a short distance from his hotel, but then as she walks him to his hotel they pass the prostitutes on Jarvis Street. Yikes. Harbord is on the west edge of downtown west of the U of T and Jarvis on the far eastern edge. Sure you could walk there but it’s not remotely close.

    So, I’m curious to know. Does this happen in books set in NYC, LA, Chicago and do natives of those cities just consider it artistic licence?

    1. Yes! It happens in other towns too! I read one where the MCs in London walk from St. Paul’s to Kensington in about 5 minutes! Very distracting. 😂
      And it’s not just in books! I stopped watching the show “Bones” which is based in Washington, D.C. for a number of reasons but I remember being outraged at the lack of research they’d done when at one point the MCs were going to go to Arlington Cemetery and the car drove up to the Capitol (the exact opposite direction they should have been going in) and beyond.

    2. I love those authors who do proper research – e.g. Dorothy Dunnett seems to have walked up Istanbus to get the distances right in Pawn in Francincense. I visited a number of places of the Lymond series and remember that it was really good in Malta/Gozo.
      Vicky Bliss in the series by Elizabeth Peters is based in Munich, working for the Nationalmuseum. Peters took a lot of licenses but it was great to see one of our lesser known but beautiful museums in the books. The atmosphere in the books is like looking into the past – the city has changed A LOT since Peters wrote them, but I can remember that it felt like that when I was in e.g. elementary school.
      There’s another film based on a Young Adult trilogy my hubby loved (Mara) taking place in my city and in one scene the MCs go on a bus ride and it’s ridiculous what route they take cause it’s all over the place. Rather funny.

    3. My pet peeve is when the series set in Chicago play fast and loose with both the geography and public transportation. At the rate they are tinkering with the layout of the city, it won’t be long before they try to move Lake Michigan so they don’t have to shoot any new exterior footage.

    4. Just recalled now that aunt snack has brought up TV, although I may have mentioned this months ago: When I finally saw where the NCIS building in DC was (in the Navy Yard), I realized that any investigators tearing out of there during most hours of a workday were going to sit in traffic for an hour or so before they got to the scene of a crime or to the workplace of a suspect they want to interview.

  34. I’m reading The Inheritance by Joanna Goodman and while the plot is engrossing — especially since I recently was mired in an inheritance-related legal battle — as someone who grew up in, attended university and began my career in Toronto I keep getting rudely bounced out of the story by inaccuracies about the city.

    The latest was reading that the heroine met her lawyer at a restaurant on Harbord Street, a short distance from his hotel, but then as she walks him to his hotel they pass the prostitutes on Jarvis Street. Yikes. Harbord is on the west edge of downtown, west of the U of T, and Jarvis is on the far eastern edge. Sure you could walk there but it’s not remotely close.

    So, I’m curious to know. Do natives of NYC, LA, Chicago etc., see similar whoppers in books set in those cities and do you just consider it artistic licence?

    1. That’s why I can never read a novel set in Paris written by someone who has never lived there properly.

    2. I’ve lived most of my life in various suburbs or smallish towns, but when younger I did spend years in Chicago and about a year each in two other cities. I noticed significant mistakes in one novel set in Cincinnati (in sf, not from our host’s or her coauthor’s work set there). It helped to throw me out of the story, but I wasn’t that into it anyhow (it was one I was reading for a book club). The biggest mistake about Moscow that I remember was a novel that had St. Basil’s on Red Square as a functioning Orthodox church under Stalin, no less! It’s been a museum since early in the Communist era. That sure didn’t help me to suspend disbelief. (The same author [himself a known Catholic!] confused Westminster Abbey in London with the Catholic Westminster Cathedral, the latter not even built at the time of the setting of the novel. Not someone good with church details, it seems.)

      Since I haven’t lived in Chicago for many years, a lot of stuff probably goes past me, and I think I’m more annoyed by the vague generalities coming from authors who have at best only visited there. I mostly like Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series, but he does this a lot. Not, so far as I can tell, getting things wrong, just being extremely vague in description.

      I’ve only been a tourist in London. I’ve nonetheless noticed mistakes, or more often, references to made-up streets and buildings there, but I’m more willing to tolerate that as artistic license. After all, even Arthur Conan Doyle was doing that.

      1. I agree with you, Patrick, that references to made up streets and buildings for the purpose of a story are fine. I also like travelling along streets or places I’ve visited in Chicago, NY, LA, when an author names them. And Ivé discovered places I want to see by reading books set in real places.

        It’s so baffling why an author would name real streets — in a city she apparently lives in now, no less — and then not get the facts right. There are some other minor things she botches, too, and of course that makes me wonder if her central premise, which is about a change in New York state law that makes an old inheritance claim suddenly viable again, is accurate.

        But no biggie. It’s an interesting enough plot. And one of the deaths appears to be inspired by the death of one of my high school classmates, who grew up to be very rich and died in mysterious circumstances. So kudos to her for grabbing that plot point before I could write it into fiction, lol.

    3. I don’t spend a lot of time researching the details of books of fiction. Our hostess has pointed out that many settings – restaurants, especially – are fictionalized versions of actual settings. That many of the small towns are based on her Ohio home town.

      The key is fiction. I don’t expect a one-for-one correspondence with the factual world. Okay, some fictions are truthier than others. One wouldn’t place Chicago in Virginia. But one could sink it in a much-expanded great lake and talk about the mage kings that sank it and became blight boggles.

  35. New book, new author, The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl. Very satisfying and lovely read. Stella, (mc), a shy, workaholic, early thirties, flies to Paris on a one way ticket which her mother leaves as her inheritance. If you like art history, couture fashion history, books, poets, artists, delicious food descriptions, family; chosen and found, you may appreciate this author. Ruth was the former editor in chief of Gourmet, restaurant critic LA and NY, and is a memoir author. I’m now reading her first novel, Delicious! The Paris Novel is her second.

    The book sounded like something I may like when reading the blurb. It is excellent. Easy read. Gobbled up the book. The historical portions were well integrated in the prose. Cheered Stella on as she becomes the woman she was always meant to be. Lovely secondary characters. Paris, ohh la la. I would like to have been in the city of lights in the 80s. Stella tries on a vintage Dior dress, the scent of cinnamon and apricots envelopes her as the dress embraces her body and the shop keeper tells her the places she must go if she buys the dress. Thus begins the adventures and struggles as she discovers the possibilities of who she could be if she is brave.

    Not many novels have a reference to Madame Vionnet. She was best known for the bias cut dress which always takes me to the scene with Min and Cal in the dressing room in Bet Me.

    My first trip to Paris with a friend and her daughter, we found a little perfume shop. I bought Madame Vionnet eau de cologne. The bottle had a little gold thimble stopper. The scent was gorgeous. So sad when it was empty. If ever I get back to Paris…I’m going to the Shakespeare and Company book store and search for little perfume shops and I’ll make myself a fabulous black dress to wear for going out to dinner.

      1. Classic haute couture maybe but some of the crazy stuff no thanks. Probably faint at the price or throw up in the corner and they kick me out of the store.

        1. The expensive clothes and haute couture (sort of) adds an additional layer of nonsense to that silly show “Emily in Paris” — she’s not rich and has a relatively junior position at the advertising agency and yet she has a different “high Paris fashion” outfit in every scene. I’m not sure quite why we keep watching it but we have developed a game (sort of like a drinking game without the drinks – cause adults here) for every ultra crazy expensive outfit Emily shows up in. And we speculate how she could afford it…

        2. In the words of my best friend’s mother “always walk in like you own the place” she was a true English Lady, not rude, but firm

  36. I love Novik’s work too — it’s so interesting to hear how the Scholomance trilogy hit you differently! Trying not to spoiler anything, I read (and reread) it as El fighting and taking down broken systems, with a subplot of finding her place in her widening community. So, the first book is narrow and personal, about group dynamics and her first few friends. The second is school systems and the broader school community. And the third is the world outside that created the environment and people in the first two books.

    I feel like that kind of widening scope is more common in SFF (I see it in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy, for instance, or the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews.) Maybe because it’s similar to how SFF tv shows have been doing it too, as opposed to the old episodic style? I know some readers feel the later Ancillary books get too abstract/disconnected for their taste too, but I love how that strong character connection keeps me grounded when the scope gets wider and the issues are broader than a mustache-twirling villain. I found it super-satisfying to see things El railed against in the first book completely destroyed by the end, and how thoroughly everything changed for her in every way.

    For anyone looking for a lighter story about puzzling things out, I really enjoyed SFF mystery The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C. M. Waggoner. It follows a 60-something Jessica Fletcher-like librarian in a small town with an absurd death count as she puzzles out why that might be and what to do about it. (I really loved the worldbuilding and characters in her earlier two fantasy books also, but they’re quite different.)

    1. Good point re the expansion of trilogies – its a variation on the continually raising the stakes. I think expansion is more sustainable than making each new big bad more and more dangerous (although if its a trilogy that’s less of a problem than for a saga).

      My personal pet peeve is when the resolution of the previous book gets broken in order to set up the conflict in the next book – particularly when its the romantic plot-line. Breaks my trust in the author.

    2. I know that there’s a sort of feedback loop between written sf and screen sf (generally with the screen stuff lagging by a decade or more), so I don’t discount screen influence on written sf. But written sf series were playing the raising-the-stakes game before there even was broadcast TV (except in Britain as a cover for their radar antennas). E.E. Smith’s Lensman series is a classic example. Sherlock Holmes in mystery is a little less clear, since I’m not sure that Moriarty the Napoleon of Crime had actually appeared before “The Final Problem,” when Doyle attempted finish off Holmes with a bang—before being enticed into bringing him back from the grave. But if one looks at the stories in internal order (after Doyle wrote more Moriarty stories and placed them earlier by internal chronology), you get the same raising of stakes. Both Smith and Doyle later faced the problem of what to do after the huge climax and tried to solve it by battling successors, respectively the Spawn of Boskone and Colonel Sebastian Moran.

  37. I have several thumbs ups to share. Liz Ireland’s latest cozy murder mystery: Mrs. Claus and the Nightmare Before New Year’s. And yes, it’s about THAT Mrs. Claus, and there are elves and talking snowmen and flying reindeer. Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood, about a witch who hasn’t done very much with her magic until she turns thirty and finds out it’ll be taken away. The book is about her mission to save her magic. Perfectly Wicked by Lindsay Lovise, which is about a family of magical beings living on their farm Wicked Good Apples and trying to save their farm and avoid exposure by a reality ghosthunting tv show. A Grave in the Woods by Martin Walker, featuring Bruno, Chief of Police for St. Denis, and, yes, a grave in the woods. Not a strong mystery plot this time around, but still a nice gentle visit to the Perigord, and some delicious local cuisine to drool over.

  38. Thanks to poor planning/possibly premature battery draining, I suffered through the effects of a COVID shot without an e-reader or paperback copy of Bet Me. So I reread an older Loretta Chase (Don’t Tempt Me) and it was just what I was looking for–an excellent comfort reread.

  39. I’ve been on the long road trip from hell. It was a good opportunity to listen to a book.

    First Wing is the first in a series by Rebecca Yarros. It’s set in a world where there are dragons.

    The book centers around a school of sorts where there are challenges that result in death or the opportunity to learn what you need to know for a dragon to choose you as it’s rider.

    She does plot & characters well.

    Unfortunately for me at least half the book is fights and battle porn which I don’t like.

    Her characters are written so well that I was tempted to continue in the series. But Libby doesn’t have it so no.

    1. Opinions here have been very much divided on First Wing. Some liked it, others didn’t even finish it.

    2. I officially really dislike Rebecca Yarros as a writer. My daughter gave me the 2nd ebook in the series. And I read it – skipping over most of the battle stuff. And the ending is horrible.
      This is why I frequently reread as opposed to reading new authors. The ending is not just unhappy – it’s a horrible, horrible thing to do to characters I really liked.
      No more.
      I am going to imagine my own HEA for them.

  40. Daughters of Gentlemen by Linda Stratmann, Victorian Murder Mystery with female detective, I was impressed by her servant/sidekick and wishing there had been more on her own case. Solid historical story touching on Women’s Suffrage, 2nd in series, so will have to hunt up 1st

  41. This week I read Miss Butterworth and the mad baron by Julia Quinn. It’s a graphic novel with a strange art style. The humans look older than described, lumpy and like wax statues. Almost scary.The animals on the other hand are amazing and detailed.

    It was an entertaining read but I was surprised by how many terrible things happened to the FMC. The falling in love but was too quick to be convincing.

    I also reread Maybe this time by Jenny and it’s one of my favourite books by her. Does anybody know any books similar to this? Where the story has romance, ghosts and humour?

    I read another set of graphic novels by John Patrick green called Investigators. It is about two crocodile investigators who fight crime and always have time for a music montage. The art is incredible. The story has villain animals like a rhino who is an escape artist and a nemesis with a secret.
    It also has a brain surgeon cursed to turn into a news helicopter and a science lab where things go wrong on a daily basis
    I’m gushing because these were so much fun and I’ve already finished the first 3 books in the series.

    1. Alice Bell’s “Grave Expectations” has humor and ghosts. Jordan Castillo Price’s PsyCop M/M series has romance, ghosts and humor. Michelle West’s Silence series has romance and ghosts. Melanie Card’s Chronicles of a Reluctant Neuromancer has romance, ghosts and humor. Jonathon Stroud’s Lockwood and Co. series has humor, ghosts and romance.

      Of all these series, I liked the Lockwood and Company the best.

    2. Sarah Wynde – who comments here sometimes – wrote a series of books with romance, ghosts & humor. And I love them.

      Gift of Ghosts
      Gift of Thought
      Spirits of Christmas
      Gift of Time
      Gift of Grace

      All of them are good.

      1. I haven’t yet tried these, but the first one is free on Kindle (in the US at least) and the rest are in KU.

  42. I read Martha Wells’s Witch King. I liked it but not as much as I liked the Murder Bot books. I started Botanical Daughter by Noad Medlock. So far, so good.

    I got my husband hooked on the tv series White Collar. We have been binge watching that and are up to season 4. I read they are doing a reboot of the show with the original stars and they promised a nice tribute to Mozzie.

About the Author

Jennifer Crusie is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author and co-author of twenty-three novels, one book of literary criticism, miscellaneous articles, essays, novellas, and short stories, and the editor of three essay anthologies. She lives in a cottage in Pennsylvania, where she often stares at the ceiling and counts her blessings.

Find out more about Jenny’s published works by visiting JennyCrusie.com

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