Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating

Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating 

By Christina Lauren

Hazel Camille Bradford knows she’s a lot to take—and frankly, most men aren’t up to the challenge. If her army of pets and thrill for the absurd don’t send them running, her lack of filter means she’ll say exactly the wrong thing in a delicate moment. Their loss. She’s a good soul in search of honest fun.

Josh Im has known Hazel since college, where her zany playfulness proved completely incompatible with his mellow restraint. From the first night they met—when she gracelessly threw up on his shoes—to when she sent him an unintelligible email while in a post-surgical haze, Josh has always thought of Hazel more as a spectacle than a peer. But now, ten years later, after a cheating girlfriend has turned his life upside down, going out with Hazel is a breath of fresh air.

Not that Josh and Hazel date. At least, not each other. Because setting each other up on progressively terrible double blind dates means there’s nothing between them...right?

 

It's interesting to see how much slower I read when I get into a slump. I had a good head of steam built up, and now I'm basically a week out, just limping my way through books.  Alas, this one was not the one to get me back in the game.  I really just did not get along with this book, and it was really disappointing, too, since I'd enjoyed The Unhoneymooners so much last year, and I was not expecting to like that as much as I did. I thought reading a good author's backlist would net me some good reading, and I was WRONG.  I'd already reserved another one by them though (Holidaze), and I'll keep that hold, so when I do get to read it we'll see which one is the fluke - the good or the bad.

Anyway, I didn't like Hazel, I found nothing interesting about Josh, and I felt the book ended in a really weird place, literally, in the car on the way to the doctor, to see if Hazel was having a miscarriage (there's an epilogue, like seven years later though, so we do find out what happened, but seriously, way to just skip over a hugely emotional revelation).  

Hazel bugged because she was so determined that she was "wacky" and "embarrassing".  Honestly, the things she did? Weren't all that wacky or embarrassing (but definitely annoying in some cases, and in other cases, hard to believe this girl has a full time adult job!), so hearing that it was THIS BIG THING hanging over her head just got grating and annoying. Let's count them up: 

• Moving in with Josh when her apartment floods: not super wacky, mostly discourteous, especially when she breaks his lock and leaves a mess. I mean, he could have told her no, but he's pretty much an area rug for this book, so.
• Having multiple "unusual" pets - well, they disappeared for most of the book, so that's not really wacky. Plus, who in the city hasn't dreamed of chickens? Actually having chickens is a whole 'nother story, but she didn't have chickens, she just asked about having them. Not wacky.
• Uh, dancing at a music festival. Not that wacky, even if she was the only one dancing in that spot. Sounded more like mid-twenties self-absorption than wackiness.
• Telling her best friend she banged her brother in front of said bangee and best friend's husband. DUMB, and again, pretty self-absorbed, but not "wacky" so much as, socially inept.
• Getting artsy craftsy and making messes in the kitchen. She's a third grade teacher, come on, not wacky.
• Wearing knee high socks and a golf hat to mini-golf. Uh, different, I guess, but whatever. People really care a lot less about you than you do yourself. If you're out there wearing suspenders and clown shoes playing mini-golf, no one really cares, unless you're taking too long to play through because you can't walk in your oversized shoes.

Anyway, all this about Hazel being SO DIFFERENT AND EXUBERANT really felt forced, and like if Hazel just got over her own hangups for one minute, she wouldn't have any trouble finding a guy who liked her regardless. Mostly I was like, "once Hazel isn't in her twenties anymore, she won't have the energy for all this performance".  Josh didn't feel "special" it just felt like he was there at the right time. Part of the problem may be that our only outside view of Hazel is from Josh's perspective, and he really doesn't seem to think she's that wacky either, so her whole complex feels really overblown.

And let's talk about Josh! I mean, he had no personality, aside from "hot" and "not an asshole" (hey, I mean, that's a great standard to have, but also: low). Hazel decides he's her new best friend because... why? He seems like he has it together? I mean, everyone does, in comparison.  Also, he saw her getting fucked on the couch by his roommate in college? Uh, that's weird.  I guess we're just... glossing over that, then.  And not to say that you can only have sex with the designated hero/ine of the book, but if hero or heroine sees the other having sex with person C, then I think it would behoove the authors to at least get that from the watcher's perspective, at least to do the bare minimum of "it was so hot it made me uncomfortable and I had to force myself not to think about it anymore" or something.  Instead, Josh's participation in this was pretty much: "drunk, slutty girl from college turns up years later as my sister's friend, insists I am her best friend, then we drunk-bang when I'm getting over my cheating ex, even though we have been setting each other up with other people and continue to do so after banging." Josh is basically Passive McPassiveson. I never get the sense that he actually really likes her, just that she's there and she won't go away and she's not a complete dick (again, low standard).

And finally, the storyline! First of all, what a weird, asshole-y thing to do, keep going on blind dates with people even though you're banging the other guy at the table secretly.  That's gross to the people you're setting up.  And this whole, "we had sex twice and now Hazel is pregnant even though she said she had it covered, except now she might be miscarrying" was particularly unpleasant to me. I already mentioned how abrupt the ending scene was; the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth though: you don't have your shit together enough to just TELL this person you're fucking that you like him, but now you're pregnant, so a baby will solve everything!  Great plan! You've known each other all of three months, and he just got out of a long term relationship, why not have a child together! All of this just seems like 24 year old antics and I am way too tired for that BS.  As ouch as it would have been, I would have preferred to have seen her miscarry, talk with Josh, then decide yeah, we're in it for the long haul.

Anyway, change of pace coming up! Let's hope I get out of this rut and stop being so grumpy about books.

Wicked Saints

Wicked Saints

By Emily Duncan

A girl who can speak to gods must save her people without destroying herself.

A prince in danger must decide who to trust.

A boy with a monstrous secret waits in the wings.

Together, they must assassinate the king and stop the war.

In a centuries-long war where beauty and brutality meet, their three paths entwine in a shadowy world of spilled blood and mysterious saints, where a forbidden romance threatens to tip the scales between dark and light.

 

 So, partway into this book, I was like, "This is boring." A most grievous sin!  It did pick up a bit when the various people made it into Tranavia, but honestly, the book did not live up to that spectacular cover, which, ah, is obviously not supposed to be the reason you judge books, but by golly, that's a good looking cover.  

Anyway, we get introduced to three main characters: "the cleric" - a young woman who is apparently the only magic person in Kalyana, "the prince" - who is the crown prince of Tranavia and trying to kill the cleric to end the war between the two countries, except that only lasts for about one chapter and then he's called home to be a human sacrifice for his father, and "the monster" who isn't given any POV narrative, so we know he's hiding something, which is that he's apparently the leader of the magical cult in Tranavia which gave the king the idea to kill his son to win god-like powers in the first place and then... felt bad about it? Except it was all a fake-out so he could leave and come back, cleric in tow, and then ended up using the cleric to kill the king so he could take the king's powers... I don't know, it was kind of a mish-mash by that point.

Look, I know it's the start of a trilogy, and you gotta save something in the tank for the next two books, but this didn't entice me to keep going, even though it had more action than Black Sun (one of my bigger complaints about Black Sun).  I never really cared about the characters, there was no real oomph to it.  So it opens with the cleric's monastery getting attacked by the prince, and then she flees, and that part was all great, but then the prince gets called back home and she meets up with a conveniently placed band of travelers, who happen to include people going over to kill the king, and she just, trusts them immediately, tells them who she is, and goes along with the plan.  Well, okay, then. 

The most we get to know about the prince (even though he narrates a good chunk of the book) is that he likes to drink and his father wants to kill him, which makes him sad.  That revelation means absolutely nothing, since we're barely given any other insight as to their relationship - was it always bad, is he mad about this, will this upset his mother, etc., etc. He doesn't even visit his mother when he gets back, just a witch who does prophecies (for plot reasons, I assume).  There's no familial feeling, so I'm not getting any anguish when he decides he needs to kill (rather than be killed by) his own father.  None of these characters had any personalities! The prince came the closest, and his main character trait was "drunk".  

And the cleric's voices in her head/gods thing is confusing.  I assume that will be explained later in the additional books, but you've got to have more background than: "this country thinks gods run everything,  this other country does it's own magic, both think the other are awful, and there's some random "god" people forgot about who is also doing...something and also the gods are actually demons." And the cleric uses the power the gods send her to do magic, but apparently she doesn't need them and can just do it on her own, soooo.... they're just chatter boxes? Then how come they don't whisper in everyone's ears? Seems really inefficient, if they're trying to take over another country to rely on just like, one lady.  Are we to assume that there's other people who also believe they are the hands of the gods, but are just, you know, chilling? If the god/demons have some agenda, they're certainly not doing much to move it forward.

This just didn't grab me, and that's not even about all the reviews that are comparing it a knock-off of the Grisha-verse, because I didn't like that series either.  I did read the whole Grisha thing though (albeit in chunks so it felt very disjointed).  This one, I think I'm calling it a day.

Ten Second Reviews

Romancing the Duke

By Tessa Dare

As the daughter of a famed author, Isolde Ophelia Goodnight grew up on tales of brave knights and fair maidens. She never doubted romance would be in her future, too. The storybooks offered endless possibilities.

And as she grew older, Izzy crossed them off. One by one by one.

• Ugly duckling turned swan?
• Abducted by handsome highwayman?
• Rescued from drudgery by charming prince?

No, no, and . . . Heh.

Now Izzy's given up yearning for romance. She'll settle for a roof over her head. What fairy tales are left over for an impoverished twenty-six year-old woman who's never even been kissed?

This one.

 

This one grew on me, as I don't really like "zany" romances, and this one started out that way, with a bedraggled destitute lady camping out at an abandoned castle with a blind duke with some type of wolf -dog mix and a ferret.  Oh, yes, very likely (don't you know that realism is required in all romance novels?).  I was getting close to DNFing, but since I'd actually used up a legitimate hold for it, I figured I should at least finish, and it got better as it went on.  Companions showed up, things settled down some, though the tone was still very much "Disney-fied historical romance", but by the end of it, I wasn't mad.  Was it really my jam? Absolutely not, I will not be re-reading it.  But it did feel "mostly harmless".   Basically, a bunch of kooky people find each other, decide that friendship is more important than proving sanity, catch a lucky break because one of the sanity-hearing officers likes some books the woman's father published, and they all live happily ever after. 

 

 

 

The Further Observations of Lady Whistledown

By Suzanne Enoch, Karen Hawkins, Mia Ryan, and Julia Quinn

 

Lady Whistledown Tells All!

When the scandalous actions of his beautiful fiancée are recorded in Lady Whistledown's column, a concerned groom-to-be rushes back to London to win his lady's heart once and forever, in Suzanne Enoch's enchanting romantic gem.

Karen Hawkins captivates with an enduring story of a handsome rogue whose lifelong friendship — and his heart — are tested when the lovely lady in question sets her cap for someone else.

A dazzling and delightful tale by Mia Ryan has a young woman cast out of her home by an insufferable yet charming marquis — who intends to take possession not only of the house ... but its former occupant as well!

Society is abuzz when the Season's most promising debutante is jilted by her intended — only to be swept away by the deceitful rogue's dashing older brother — in New York Times bestseller Julia Quinn's witty, charming, and heartfelt tale.

 

Did I check this out because Bridgerton is all the rage, and The Viscount Who Loved Me is totally unavailable at the library? Yes, there are 14 people for each of the 21 copies my library has, meaning that if I checked it out, I could expect it in mmm, perhaps seven months, and even that is a workaround, because they aren't stocking the second book solo, it's only available in a set of the first three in the series.  I like Bridgerton okay, certainly not as much as some people (and not as much as my mother, who appears to be using it as a method of mood-stabilizers during COVID) but the second's plotline was the only one that appealed to me to read.  Anyway, so this was a distant second choice!

Although all the stories are interlinked (and take place at the same activities, set in London from about January 26th to February 15th, 1814, serendipitously), with the different authors, there's some definite changes in quality from story to story.  For example, Quinn's is obviously the best (due to both her authorly experience and it being her characters, so I would have assumed it), then Enoch, Hawkins, and finally Ryan is a -very- distant fourth.  I think I skipped most of that one, it was so scattershot and nonsensical.  Some of them would have been more satisfying as stand-alone novels - I think Quinn's in particular could have withstood longer treatment, and Hawkins had a great premise, but the character seemed to realize they loved each other in a very all-of-a-sudden! way that felt rushed and necessary for Moving the Story Along reasons than a natural pace.  And although it felt clever at first, by the fourth time we've revisited the same two "group" scenes from various characters' perspectives - one at the theater and one with several characters falling over in a snowbank while ice-skating, it mostly felt tedious.  Overall, not a terrible waste of an afternoon, but not really all that exciting either.  

What I really need is a good author who is NOT ON HOLD FOR SEVEN MONTHS.  Unfortunately, I found like, two that I like consistently, and I read all theirs and now it's even harder to get books because of the Bridgerton phenomenon, so I'm reduced to trawling recommendation lists and reading the zany ones or my second choices. God forbid I actually have to buy my romance novels as opposed to getting them free a the library or second hand at a used booksale behind my mother's back and then smuggled home illicitly. 

Everything I Never Told You

Everything I Never Told You

By Celeste Ng

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

I've been reading so much genre fiction, getting into this was a bit of a shock to the system. And I wouldn't say that it was even that enjoyable - Lydia, the sixteen-year-old center of her family, is found drowned in a nearby lake, and the book is basically about the shattering of the family both after she is found and the cracks that led to the event in the first place.  What's weird though, is that for all I didn't want to be drawn into it, I pretty much ended up sobbing through the last fourth of of the book, from when the officer finds Nath (what a horrible nickname, if your name is Nathan, then Nath should sound like the first syllable of that, right? But everytime I read Nath, it sounded like "Nash" in my head with the short "a" and it drove me crazy) passed out in the car and picks him up and takes him home.  Ng basically writes about a family that bottles up every anxiety, and hurt, and microagresssion, and this is the section that releases them, along with the reader, each character having their own catharsis in sync.

This is definitely not an "action-driven" book, once the initial tempest is done with the vanishing and discovery of Lydia's body, we basically spend the rest of book flipping backwards and forwards through time, hitting seminal moments in the family life, although the point Ng drives home (REPEATEDLY) is that oftentimes, what is seminal to one character may make a much different, even fleeting impression on another.  I mean, we're not left wondering what the title "Everything I Never Told You" is supposed to mean - every couple of pages, we hit another memory or incident that carves out the hearts of one or more characters, who then never air their grievances and just let it fester. Apparently this family never talks to each other. "Everything I never told you" is interchangeable for "everything". 

What's somewhat interesting is how my own family mimics or echoes many of the characteristics in this book - in 1977 my grandparents had three children between the ages of 8 and 15, one of whom, ironically (at least in this context, it's not ironic in our family) went on to marry a person from Hong Kong, so that I have several half-Chinese cousins - though there isn't any hullabaloo about blue eyes as they don't run on that side of the family), all of this taking place in small midwestern towns, and yet how little of any of those coincidences struck me as I was reading Everything, perhaps because for all their sins, my family doesn't resemble the Lees in anyway.  Not that we don't have our own problems - as Tolstoy famously wrote, "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." What does that have to do with the book? Nothing much, except to lead me to believe that we (and the characters) have brought our own miseries upon our heads, and that it may not be that life is hard - which it is - but that you become so rubbed raw by your own peculiar sympathies that you become your own worst enemy.  

In my edition of the book, Ng says that she started the book sympathizing with the children, but once she had her own children, felt greater empathy for James and Marilyn.  The book does almost give us a real twist, as we begin to assume, after all these flashbacks, that Lydia committed suicide because of the immense pressure Marilyn put on her to live out those dreams that Marilyn couldn't herself.  Ironically, it's actually James' fault for not teaching her how to swim - but they'll never know that, so Marilyn's erroneous realization that she put too much on Lydia is two wrongs making a right, I guess.  

There's also quite a bit of discussion on how things have or haven't changed since the setting of the book, i.e., would James' great regret of being Chinese and Marilyn's great regret of being a woman, which regrets they basically put onto their children, thus messing them up for life, still be the kiss of death today? Honestly, I would say...not. I mean, I'm not an expert by any means, but Marilyn and James are two people who see the world only from the prism of their failures, not their successes, and they didn't have to be that way.  Wouldn't be much of a story if they weren't, though, I guess!

Perhaps it's all just hubris, to think that we won't repeat the mistakes of our own parents, but hopefully I won't have to cope through an accidental drowning in order to ensure that I don't get so far up my own butt that I never realize my own progeny are just that - separate and individual beings who will develop their own traumas, no need to pile mine on them. 

The Work of Art

The Work of Art 

By Mimi Matthews

Hidden away in rural Devonshire, Phyllida Satterthwaite has always been considered more odd than beautiful. But in London, her oddity has made her a sensation. Far worse, it's caught the eye of the sinister Duke of Moreland—a notorious art collector obsessed with acquiring one-of-a-kind treasures. To escape the duke's clutches, she's going to need a little help.

Captain Arthur Heywood's days of heroism are long past. Grievously injured in the Peninsular War, he can no longer walk unaided, let alone shoot a pistol. What use can he possibly be to a damsel in distress? He has nothing left to offer except his good name.

Can a marriage of convenience save Philly from the vengeful duke? Or will life with Arthur put her—and her heart—in more danger than ever?

Mimi Matthews has done a bunch of early Victorian romance-mysteries (like REAL GENTLE on the mystery) and I am not ashamed to say I've read and enjoyed them all.  Some are better than others, definitely, but  - and especially after that LAST book - they're nice palate cleansers about decent people, no bombast, with a bit pining, some marriage of convenience tropes, a little gothic undertone, and a happy ending. I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, but honestly it's not.  For some reason her other books were mostly available but I had to wait like four months for this one, so I'm happy to say it was worth the wait! 

This is a pretty laid back romance; it's whatever it is when all the sex happens off the page - I can never remember if that's "closed door" or "open door" although thinking on it now, it would have to be closed door, right? Open door is like, peering into the room.  Unless they mean "closed door" like, this is what happens behind closed doors, and open doors is like, "Make sure you teenagers keep your doors open when your boyfriend is over!"  I think I just talked myself back into doubt.  Of course, no amount of logic can get me past "on the wagon" and "off the wagon" - I know what they mean, but no idea why.  

Anyway, I'm trying to think of nice ways to describe this that don't sound dismissive - basically a young woman with several large dogs gets pushed into an unwelcome marriage proposal and ends up with a lamed ex-soldier who is also a bit of a country mouse.  They basically elope and then spend the rest of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop.  And yes, there is a villain or two, but the story is mostly about two very lonely people who have found someone else who just gets them. And sometimes that's all you need.  I've found it a hallmark of Matthews' books that there isn't all this Sturm und Drang that you see in so many romances, Big Misunderstandings! Love Triangles! Jealousy! Despite the Victorian setting and the supposedly dastardly villains, these are really soothing stories. 

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill (a New Hercule Poirot Mystery)

By Sophie Hannah

Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but there is one strange condition attached: he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.

The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached . . .

Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving the mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And if Helen is innocent, can Poirot find the true culprit in time to save her from the gallows?

 

I started reserving these at the library because I was out of new Agatha Christie novels and these had good reviews.  Unfortunately, now I've read the first and fourth ones and I will not be reading anymore.  Hannah just doesn't capture the wit and tight plotting of the originals.  And frankly, her choice of  narrators is baffling.  While, yes, I may accept that Poirot needs a sidekick, to be awed and amazed (and also do some legwork), the originals used Captain Hastings, a genial man and former soldier who had no especial detecting skills other than an ability to rush in where angels feared to tread, and a weakness for hot dames.  

As perhaps an ill-advised attempt to distance herself from similarities, Hannah's narrator, Edward Catchpool, is a constantly griping inspector from Scotland Yard - but his greatest sin is being as shitty a detective as Hastings was, even though he's ostensibly an elite detective himself.  I mean, at one point in Kingfisher he complains about having to question witnesses in his role as chief detective, and would rather Poirot just take over the whole thing in both name and spirit.  I don't want to read any books this guy narrates.  He's awful.  Poirot "twinkles" at him, but I honestly cannot see why Poirot has any affection for this guy, he's dumb and mean, a killing combination.

The plot also suffers from an excessive of red herrings and dropped mysteries, and a fatal dose of "yeah, right" coincidences.  Maybe I'm looking at this through rose-colored glasses, but I feel like Christie's genius was in making each "clue" either integral to the mystery or integral to the characters.  Here, we're just adding shit to add it.  For example, much is made of the fact that Helen, the confessed murderer, sent her engagement ring back to her fiance, and then it pops up on the finger of her fiance's sister.  And? It's just dropped - not a clue, not a relevant answer to a character's beating heart, just one more thing meant to confuse us.  Or how about the changing of the house name from "Kingfisher BlahBlah" to "Little Key" - apparently the dead son did it.  OKAY.  Way to add to that word count!  And there's much made about the fact that Frank and Helen met alone with his parents for several hours while everyone else was banished.  The answer to this mystery? Well, because that's just how his parents wanted things arranged!  How satisfying!  So glad we spent so much time dissecting that one in minute detail! Now let's talk about the rest of the plot!

So Poirot and Catchpool are called to a house where the oldest son died, and his fiance confessed to pushing him.  And on the way there, they JUST HAPPEN to be on the same bus as another daughter of the family is traveling along with her friend and maid.  Apparently, on the spur of the moment, the daughter JUST HAPPENS to decide to confess to pushing her brother, first to her maid (why?) and then concocts a HIGHLY complex scheme to sit next to Poirot in order to confess to him too, but gets alarmed when she realizes he's actually going to her house.  So she's brilliant enough to trump up some mishegas about a fake warning of death depending on what seat her maid is sitting in (don't ask) and then convolute herself through TWO different versions of why she'd want to kill her brother and a fake murder on the bus, but is too dumb to realize that Poirot and she are traveling in the same direction and perhaps, JUST MAYBE he is on his way to solve the recent murder that occurred at her house? And don't get me started on the "Midnight Gathering" book nonsense.  The bus journey, by the way, takes up like a third of the book, but feels endless.  

So THEN, having made it through, hmm, two-thirds of an evening at the house before their cover is blown, Poirot and Catchpool then have to go back and re-investigate now that the sisters made her own confession.  Then the maid turns up dead, and I swear this is the real reason: because the sister's fiance thought that the sister's confession to the maid was more convincing than her confession to Poirot so he killed the maid to shut her up, EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE BASICALLY THE SAME CONFESSION.  The difference was essentially quibbling about word choices, like her confession to Poirot was that she fell for her parents' BS about her brother being no good for the family, and her confession to her maid was that she wanted revenge against her parents for their BS about her brother being no good for the family.  

BUT it doesn't matter, since both her confessions were just made up (she's also a secret author, so it's okay that she's ZANY! *jazz hands* and no one takes this as the serious cry for psychiatric help that they should) and the actual killer is Helen, the person who confessed before the book began.  And the reason Helen killed her own fiance, whom she loved deeply is....drumroll please! Because she once helped the sister's fiance Kevorkian her dying student and she panicked that the sister's fiance would tell her fiance, so she...pushed her fiance off the balcony.  Wow.  Where do I start? With the AMAZING coincidence that both killers JUST HAPPENED to be engaged to two members of the same family without knowing it? Or perhaps that the answer to this whole thing comes WAY out of left field from information we're not privy to as readers (Poirot questions a doctor who refused to assist in the assisted suicide off-page, as a result from a clue that sister's fiance felt bad about some lady who he blamed for his problems).  Or that after she (rightfully) confessed to killing her fiance, she lies and tells people it's because she fell in love with his brother even though she met his brother like, an hour ago, and then his brother proposes to her and she accepts.  It's like that scene in Zoolander where Mugatu screams, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" Just tell people you had a fight about his awful parents. 

I can't even with this book.  I mean, there's so much GUFF in it.  Apparently Frank's parents moved into a house sold by their business partners and the business partners hate them and it's treated as THIS BIG REVEAL when really, it's like a side note to a side note to the main murder.  We just waste all this time on stupid shit like that, and then the real mystery is solved without any clues to the readers, so we're not given the chance.  I suppose, that if we were given the clues, it would be too simple though.  I know I've mentioned that I'm not the greatest mystery solver in the world, but even I figured out that the sister and the maid knew each other on the bus and colluded together, but apparently Inspector "Not Even Sure Why They Pay Me" Catchpool doesn't catch on until Poirot gathers them all together for the Big Reveal.  I suppose I could make a list like Catchpool does, of all the things that bother me about this, but I will leave it at: no more "New Hercule Poirot Mysteries" for me.  Unlike the wacky confessing sister, I don't have a brain injury.

 

Black Sun

Black Sun

By Rebecca Roanhorse

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

I am trying to balance the necessity of getting down in writing my thoughts on a book, before it (or more likely, its plot points and characters names) is erased from my memory, against the beneficial impact of letting a story percolate for a time before deciding on the impression it's made.  In this case, I literally just put Black Sun down, its spine not yet cold, and have taken up the keyboard.  Of course, it's also 4:30 in the morning, and I'm not able to sleep, so I have time to kill.  

The real tragedy of Black Sun is that it's the first in a trilogy, and reads that way: we spend the entire book (with the exception of several Serapio flashback chapters) in the three weeks leading up to the Convergence, a day when the moon eclipses the sun on the winter solstice, paving the way for a tool of the Carrion Crow tribe to return to the city to kill the Sun Priest (now a young outsider named Naranpa who is also not beloved by various factions within the priesthood), and reclaim power for the Crows as vengeance for a semi long-ago Night of Knives, in which Crow tribe members were murdered to prevent their ascendancy in power.

We follow Serapio, the blinded vessel for the Crow god, Xiala, a "Teek" sailing captain who has to get him back to the city in time and who is also a mermaid/selkie mix, and Naranpa, who came from the slums and was escalated to the position of Sun Priest to the dissatisfaction of the current ruling tribes and is in the midst of being deposed (even before all the Crow stuff).   We also get a couple chapters from the perspective of Okoa, the warrior trainee son of a recently murdered Crow tribe leader. It's a 450 page book, and the climax is the last thirty pages.   Like this review, the blood is still warm on the ground when the book ends, setting everything up for a much faster paced second installment.  

 The two storylines also have a very different pace - the journey of Serapio and Xiala to the city feels very leisurely (although they do encounter a storm which leads to a mutiny on the boat), since they're basically out on the water for two whole weeks, whereas the internal politics and betrayal within the priesthood moves a lot faster, what with the Crow leader's death, several assassination attempts, the usurpation of the sun priest position, traveling back down to ask her gangster brother for help, and then getting kidnapped (and another assassination attempt).  You have to have them both for part of the climax to make sense (SPOILER: Serapio is supposed to kill the sun priest, but she's not there in the end because she's jumped off a bridge in order to avoid being murdered) but other than that, the two have very little to do with each other, and I'm not sure how to fix that problem.  That's how you get this first in a trilogy problem: yes, you have to prep the scene, but this feels like all prep, no payoff.

However, the other benefit to a long lead in is the opportunity to spend getting used to the world that Roanhorse has created, although Roanhorse makes clear in the book (and the author's note) that she's really just ganked much of the culture from Pre-Colombian America, as opposed to medieval/renaissance Europe, which is where most fantasy epics have been set to date. I like the change of scenery!  It's vivid and because I (and I hope other readers) am somewhat familiar with meso-American cultures, allows the author to springboard off that familiarity when adding her own elements, without making the world so foreign that it's a headache to try to comprehend.  I don't know if that came out the way I meant it, but basically: because the basics are familiar, Roanhorse can spend more time on the fantastical portions without losing the readers.  It also allows Roanhorse to set up the various factions and power struggles from a different perspective than the usual "the king/queen is in danger!" trope.

There's still too much machinations going on though.  None of them are resolved, either, so we have a bunch of dangling ends and I don't know if that's really ideal.  Take the Star Wars movies (the original trilogy, at least): we set up people and places, yes, but there's also the scene at the end where they get medals for blowing up the death star (I assume this is not a spoiler, assuming you've been on the internet for more than half an hour) so it feels like a complete storyline, or chapter in the saga.  They left the cliffhangers for the second movie, when people are invested and 2/3rds of the way in.  I don't know if that's an objectively better way to do trilogies, but I think that's more common than this method, which really relies on the patience of the readers to see this through without having the emotional release from the first book to keep them on the hook for the next two. 

All I will say is that Roanhorse's earlier series, starting with Trail of Lightning, has been on my reading list for some time, but Black Sun might bump it up the list.  Definitely talent, but unsure whether it can be sustained for the series.

 

One By One

One by One

By Ruth Ware

 

Getting snowed in at a luxurious, rustic ski chalet high in the French Alps doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world. Especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a full-service chef and housekeeper, a cozy fire to keep you warm, and others to keep you company. Unless that company happens to be eight coworkers…each with something to gain, something to lose, and something to hide.

When the cofounder of Snoop, a trendy London-based tech startup, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other: PowerPoint presentations and strategy sessions broken up by mandatory bonding on the slopes. But as soon as one shareholder upends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. The storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, however, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hadn’t made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit.

As each hour passes without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further…one by one.

I've read a few Ruth Ware books now, and not been incredibly impressed (The Woman in Cabin 10 was okay, although had a weird anti-climax ending, and the last one, The Turn of the Key, I really didn't like the ending just because I thought it boggled all rational thought that a person would go to jail and get the death penalty rather than simply admit the death was an accident caused by a young child) but they're so popular, I can't resist checking them out.  And this one I really had a good time with!

We get two perspectives, Liz, the reluctant minority shareholder, dragged along on a corporate "retreat" that's actually a week-long presentation about whether or not to accept a buyout, and Erin, the ski chalet Girl Friday, who has a secret of her own.  The book moves at a pretty good clip, I think I finished it in about two hours or so, and there really isn't any slow point.  Yes, we find out who the murderer is about two-thirds of the way in, and yes, it's pretty clear who it is even before that, but the last third is basically a cat and mouse game which is thrilling in and of itself.  Ha, I was just going back over reviews for another of Ware's books, In a Dark, Dark Wood, and all the reviews on the first page of Amazon are all about how ridiculous that this woman drinks tea with a murderer - I wonder if the tea drinking scene in One by One is a reaction to that, which would be amusing. 

It was certainly surprising to me how much of the crime(s) were planned - since at lot of it depended on circumstances/opportunities the murderer wouldn't have been able to predict.  I guess if the first go-round wouldn't have worked, they'd have just kept (SPOILER ALERT) carrying around a red jacket and faking their skiing the bunny slopes while hoping to run into their victim on the black trails, while other people are conveniently posted in the ski-lift to witness the faux Eva go by?? Hmmm, that seems... complicated.

Are the characters in One by One more than just two-dimensional? Eh, not really.  I mean, it's a thriller? A lot of people have secrets (although really, just our two main characters are hiding anything particular) and people start dying and there's not a lot of time to take stock and think about your hopes and dreams. I did think the little sections before each chapter about Liz and Erin's "Snoop" followers was dumb though, we get all that information from the narrative itself, we don't really need it there, plus it barely changes throughout the book. 

I will say that it was compulsively readable, and probably my favorite of all Ware's books (though again, not as high a compliment as it might be) and just the kind of thing you want to read when curled up with a warm blanket on a cold winter day. 

Winter Counts

Winter Counts

By David Heska Wanbli Weiden

 

Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.

They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.

I think I've said this before but the hardest books to review are not the bad ones, or the good ones, but the average ones.  What can you say about a book that does a reasonably decent job, but offers neither easy critiques nor glowing commendations? I suppose this scenario is what sets an excellent reviewer from a middling one (like me) - if I were a pro, could I pierce the heart of the book? Well, I'm not, but I'd like to set things down, so here goes:

The setting is the most unique part of the story, which is otherwise a fairly generic "enforcer type goes after hardened criminals to protect/defend his family and winds up uncovering corruption and doling out justice".  It's a good thing, then, that the setting can carry so much of the story.  It influences everything from the circumstances of the crime, to the lack of justice*, and the particular methods of deus ex machina that are used (i.e., the Lakota yuwipi which gives Virgil the insight to discover where the next location is).  

Because the book hangs so heavily on that frame, I think the plot doesn't stand on its own as much as it ought to: both Virgil's initial meeting of cop Dennis at the Colorado bar, and Virgil tracking Rick Crow to the abandoned museum were coincidences that don't make sense on closer inspection.  Dennis just happens to be undercover at the only bar we know Rick frequents in Denver? And Rick is hanging out at the museum after everyone else left... why? Why did they go to the museum in the first place, since it seems like the heroin crew has their own hide-hole? I mean, I assume Rick wasn't just sitting there because he was waiting for Virgil (and then Ben) to drive up and beat the shit out of him.    And I guess we're not going to find out how the heroin crew knew Nathan's cousin was wearing a wire (aside from "it was obvious")? Lol, well, sure, I'll accept that one, I guess.

I liked the main character, Virgil, and I liked Chef Lack, and the way Virgil initially thought he was full of it (uh, yeah, let's forage for turnips) but eventually came around to someone who genuinely wanted better for the reservations and was doing good.  There's nothing I would really point to as being bad or ridiculous, or dumb, or unbelievable, just you know, an okay kind of crime thriller. 

*If all the book does is get more people aware of the shitty and messed up legal system that governs the reservations, then it's been worth it to me.  This country systematically took rights away from native people and destroyed their culture as much as possible, deliberately, and THEN, in an effort to correct the awful mess it made, made even more laws that fucked people over.  The fact that the reservations are basically governed like the Wild West, and criminal prosecutions are subject to the federal whims is not, as the author points out in the afterward, a secret.  After basically undercutting every cultural method of resolving disputes internally, the U.S. government then turned around and said, "Guess we fucked up before, so to make it up to you, we're going to leave you on your own, just like you wanted, albeit two hundred years ago, before we sacked your nations and salted the ground." It's like that saying, "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas." Is bringing the nations under state law the answer? Probably not, but man, is the current system not working.  American Indian/Indigenous Peoples law is a hideous hodge-podge of papered over inequities, and we're apparently not going to do anything about it except feel bad.  That money, sitting in an account for taking the Black Hills? That's true.  Anyway, what am I doing about it, except writing angry screeds on book reviews that no one reads? Yeah, I know.