Mystery – TwoNightStands

literary fiction, Mystery, romance, Uncategorized

Book Review: Some Of It Was Real by Nan Fischer

31 Oct 2022 twonightstands

“It’s important you understand that I don’t have a clear definition for what I do. Psychics use their intuition or spiritual guides to gain information about the past, present, or future. Mediums are channels that deliver messages from those who have passed over. I’ve been called a psychic-medium, and that’s as good a definition as any. But the truth is that I’m not sure why I hear voices, see images, sing at times, or scribble notes—it just happens and I can’t tell you how because I truly don’t understand it.”

Psychic medium, Sylvie Young, starts every show talking about how she discovered her powers but she leaves out a lot. Like the fact that she isn’t actually sure that she’s a psychic, she’s estranged from her birth parents who think she’s a scammer and her publicist insists that she research some of her guests before every show. Journalist, Thomas Holmes, has it out for people he sees as “grief predators”. After a catastrophic reporting error, he’s anxious to get a great story and prove himself to his editor. So he pitches a story about psychics, he’s determined to prove that Sylvie is a crook. He plants some decoys in the audience and Sylvie falls for it having researched them beforehand. He approaches her and asks her to let him shadow her for the full week before her next big show, make sure she doesn’t research anyone, so that he can either expose her as fake or tell his LA Times audience that her powers are real. He insists that if she is indeed real then she should have no problem with his request.

This book is not your typical rom-com. You can feel them connecting but the romance takes a backstage for most of this book. Sylvie and Thomas play a game of cat and mouse trying to out maneuver each other. I personally found myself rooting for Sylvie even though a part of me wasn’t sure if she was actually a scammer or not. Sylvie takes Thomas through a journey to her past to get him to understand the origin of her powers. She goes back to her adoptive parents’ house and tries to trace who her biological parents were and why her adoptive parents lied to her for so long about where she’s from. All the stories about her parents’ death is starting to sound fake to Sylvie and she decides to trust Thomas to figure it out with her. Thomas thinks this is another fact that proves she’s a liar because if she really has the power to speak to the dead, why has she never spoken to her mother?

Thomas is also hiding a lot of family secrets. Grief vampires feel very personal to him because after his father and brother died, his mother completely lost herself to psychics. Spending all her money trying to contact her late husband and son, trying to find closure and neglecting her actual living son. Both Thomas and Sylvie are struggling with their past and there was something so wholesome about watching two broken but very good people try to fix themselves. They spend so much time together in the book that you can actually see them slowly liking each other. There’s a twist near the end of the book that the author didn’t make a big deal of. She dropped it like the readers weren’t going to go “DANG!” but I actually think that is the beauty of this book. It grabs you in a really surprising way and the plot keeps moving at an alarming pace and doesn’t stop till the very end.

Thomas forces Sylvie to reexamine the way she makes a living while she encourages him to confront his demons and let go of the past. Thomas also struggles with the ethics of writing an expose about someone he is now attracted to. This book is told in alternating point of view chapters, both in first person. It allows you to get into the head of what each character is thinking as they play this game with each other. I will say that if you really are primarily looking for romance with this one, then skip it. I would never recommend this book as a rom com. Even though I bought the fact that Thomas and Sylvie would fall in love after spending so much time together, I didn’t quite buy how it was presented on the page.

I think this is one of the most surprisingly good books I’ve read this year. It really took me unawares. I started it and couldn’t put it down till the very end. I absolutely recommend it. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? What did you think?

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, thriller, Uncategorized

Book Review: Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

10 Oct 2022 twonightstands

“Banter can hide the worst sins. Some people laugh to hide their shame, they laugh instead of saying I feel embarrassed and small.”

One late October, Jen is waiting up for her son, Todd, to come home after midnight when she witnesses a murder. As she watches from a window, Todd approaches but he’s not alone, he’s walking towards a man, armed. As Jen watches in horror, her son stabs the man fatally for no apparent reason and refuses to talk about why he did it. Todd is now in custody and the police won’t let his parents see him or talk to him plus he’s refusing a lawyer. Jen goes home and falls asleep in deep despair only to wake up in the morning and it’s the day before the murder. Jen keeps sleeping and waking up days before the murder with another chance to try and stop it. Somewhere in the past is the trigger for this murder and Jen has to spot it, catch it in time, to avoid her son’s future being ruined.

“How sinister it is to relive your life backward. To see things you hadn’t at the time. To realize the horrible significance of events you had no idea were playing out around you.”

I’m a fan of people being stuck in a time warp. Living your life backwards? Living an alternative reality? Sign me up. This book was very well written and the time warp very well plotted with the main character actually doing things that I would have done from the start. I enjoyed how fast she understood the predicament she was in and started acting fast. I knew from the start the main person she should be taking a look at so I wasn’t that surprised by the twists and turns the author came up with. But I enjoyed the ride even though I knew where the author was taking us. It did not at all diminish my enjoyment of this book.

This book makes you consider if you really know anything about the life you’re living. There’s something about reliving your life and looking at past scenes with a critical eye as you search your son for the period he became a murderer. Your sweet, funny, nerdy son who cried when his first girlfriend dumped him. What did you miss about his behavior lately? Who is this girl he’s seeing who he doesn’t really let you get to know fully?

At the 75% mark of this book, I became exhausted reading about Jen waking up further and further into the past. The constant past loop of her life made me so tired even though I kept trudging through it. If I was that tired reading Jen’s constant turmoil of spending so long in the past, I can’t even imagine what it was like for her to live it. Even when she thinks, “Okay, I’ve solved it, this is it”- there’s still yet another revelation and even further into the past the thread leads. After a while, I just wanted it to end. I was rooting for Jen all through to save her boy.

I totally recommend this book. If you’re looking for a thriller that makes sense and isn’t trying to be the next Gone Girl, pick up this book. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers in this review and I would recommend just skipping the blurb and diving in. It’s really good writing and she really does make the pay off worth your while. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments what you thought of it. If you haven’t read it, will you be picking this one up? Let me know as well!

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery

Book Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

11 Oct 2021 twonightstands

“Every time she fell out of love with him, he saw it happen and waited it out. He never stopped loving her, even those times when he felt deeply hurt and betrayed by her, even in that bad year when they talked about separating, he’d just gone along with it, waiting for her to come back to him, thanking God and his dad up above each time she did.”

The Delaneys are a tennis fixture in their community. They ran a successful tennis academy for years. The parents, Stan and Joy, have such great chemistry and still beat all their friends in tennis even though they’re retired. After selling their academy, they’re bored and miserable. They’re not the type of couple to have fun doing nothing or to have fun traveling so they’re still trying to discover what getting old means for them.

Their adult children – Logan, Amy, Brooke and Troy, are also trying to figure out what life after tennis looks like for them as well, as they never quite made it to being professional. They’re all deeply affected in one way or another by their lives as tennis young stars and are trying to process their feelings towards the sport and having their parents as coaches.

“That was the secret of a happy marriage: step away from the rage.”

One night, a stranger who introduces herself as Savannah, comes knocking on their door completely bruised up and bleeding claiming her boyfriend hit her. Joy and Stan let her in and let her stay with them believing she is escaping a domestic violence situation to the complete dismay of their children.

Later, when Joy disappears out of the blue, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the only other person left in the house – Stan. His kids are divided on if he did it or not. Every single detail in their past is being called into question and reexamined in the light of their mother’s disappearance. Moriarty takes us through the history of this family, alternating between flashbacks and the present as we try to figure out what happened to Joy.

“Once you’ve hit a ball there’s no point watching to see where it’s going. You can’t change its flight path now. You have to think about your next move. Not what you should have done. What you do now.”

My first foray into Moriarty was What Alice Forgot – a book I absolutely loved and adored. Since then though, all her other insanely popular books have missed the mark for me, especially the last two. I wasn’t going to read anymore Moriarty because I was tired of chasing the high I got from What Alice Forgot and never finding it. But, I decided to pick this one up because the person who recommended it said they didn’t like her two previous books either. I think she was right. This book is funny, and even though it’s suspenseful it never feels heavy or overdone. It’s just plain good.

“There was nothing worse than having to feel sorry for people who had wronged you. You don’t want lottery wins for your enemies, but you don’t want tragedies for them either. Then they got the upper hand”

If you’re not a fan of alternating timelines then this book is not for you as Moriarty alternates the chapters between flashbacks and the present. I really enjoy stories about dysfunctional families where there’s no abuse or intent to do actual harm exists. I think sometimes just being a family filled with very different personalities and interpretations of your childhood, leads to dysfunction. It’s a fascinating premise to look back at your life and all the little events that shaped it, with a new eye because now you’re looking for if your father could have murdered your mother. Suddenly every single action or mistake they’ve ever made is suddenly seen in a sinister light.

Moriarty’s straightforward writing style serves this book well. The way she makes these astute observations about the Delaneys while peeling back the layers of their relationships to each other and injecting the right dose of humor is impeccable and sometimes makes you forget that you’re actually reading a murder suspense book.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I don’t know if I rated this highly because I was surprised that I was enjoying a Moriarty book after swearing off reading her, but I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? Let us know in the comments!

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, thriller

Book Review: Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane

31 May 2021 twonightstands

“People thought silence meant the absence of noise, and sometimes it did, but other times it screamed so loudly she had to fight not to cover her ears.”

In the middle of an investigation for a missing girl, Lila’s husband, Aaron vanishes. The police are desperate to start looking for him even before 24 hours passes. The town is in an uproar. Aaron is a beloved school teacher who has never missed school. Everyone knows he doesn’t need the money because of a payout he received when his mum died. He is teaching because he loves kids and loves the job.

No one is more worried about Aaron’s whereabouts than Lila because, the last time she saw him, he was dead. Killed by her. And now, the body she set up perfectly to be found and ruled as a suicide, has vanished.

Pretty Little Wife is a domestic thriller and like most domestic thrillers you know exactly what you’re getting. This book wasn’t ground breaking or different. You’re not getting anything new but it was still a fun read. It was a fast read with every new information seeming even more outrageous than the last. Kane takes us through the days leading up to the disappearance. Going through Aaron’s belongings, Lila comes across a cell phone with videos that show her husband in a very compromising position. This is when the illusion of her marriage shatters. All the excuses she had made for her husband’s demands and behaviours over the years now seemed stupid.

This book started off really strong. We’re told upfront that Lila is guilty of murder or at the very least attempted murder since now that the body has disappeared she’s unsure if she was actually successful in her attempt. The first 100 pages flew by, and then half way it veered into very unrealistic territory. I wish the author had taken the time to craft a smarter thriller and not just tried to fit every horrible crime she can think of into one person’s portfolio. It felt like Kane was trying to create the most outrageous and gross villain she could think of.

Overall, there really isn’t much to say about this one without spoiling it. Even though I thought it was just an okay book, I still enjoyed reading it. It’s a very fast paced book and I finished it in one sitting. It was also super predictable, as I figured out who the real villain was very early on in the book. I recommend this one if you’re looking for something quick to get through pretty quickly and I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? If you have let me know what you think in the comments!

Leggy

Book Review: The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

22 Mar 2021 twonightstands

“Healing by way of vengeance … no such thing existed; it never had. Hurting others had only injured me further.”

A female Apothecary, Nella, dispenses poisons in secret, to women who have been wronged by men. She only has two rules – none of her poisons can ever be used to harm a woman and she must record the name of the procurer and the person they intend to kill in her book, for safekeeping and insurance. On a cold February evening, a young 12 year old, Eliza comes to Nella to procure a poison to kill her master courtesy of her beloved mistress. The relationship between Eliza and Nella sets them on a dangerous path. In present day London, Caroline finds a vial near the Thames river as she tries to forget the recent reveal of her husband’s infidelity. This ancient vial leads her down a path of discovery and investigation into the lives of these women that lived 200 years before her.

Sounds like an amazing and intriguing premise for a book right? So why was a book about an apothecary killer so freaking dull?! This book started out with such great promise. I was instantly grabbed by the blurb. This was my Book of the Month pick for March and because of the number of people who picked this particular book there was a delay in delivery as they tried to procure more. I chose this book on the first of March and it only just arrived this week which even made me more excited to crack it open. To say that this story is slow is an understatement. I kept waiting for something to happen but nothing really happens. This book is written in dual timelines. One in the 1700s and the other in present day London. None of these stories intrigued me and frankly, the connection between the women in different timelines was forced at best.

Caroline comes to London to escape, after finding out her husband had an affair. She stumbles across a group of people mud larking and decides to participate. She finds an apothecary bottle inscribed with a picture of a bear and decides to investigate the bottle and I just didn’t understand why she even had the urge to do it. It just seemed so ridiculous. All the ‘conflicts’ in this book were tenuous at best and were always those conflicts arising from misunderstandings and which could have been fixed with a single sentence and I just found that to be lazy writing. I found Caroline’s story entirely pointless and would have preferred if this book focused entirely on Eliza and Nella. Caroline was entirely a caricature of a one dimensional character who put all her dreams on hold in order to get married and cater to a cheating, manipulative husband.

I expected magical realism and a deep look into the lives of women in the 1700s but this book offers nothing of the sort. I also expected mystery and more of a plot and I am so tired of all women’s back stories being about men. The author never even explored the moral ambiguity of making a career out of murdering men just because a man betrayed you in the past. There wasn’t enough character development in this book for me to even justify the lack of a juicy plot by saying it was character driven. The women in this book were all bland and one dimensional. I found it hard to like anyone even when given their back story.

I did not enjoy this book. It was filled with implausible situations, unrealistic emotions and characters that were contrived. The author did a terrible job connecting the present to the past, probably because there was literally nothing connecting the women and her trying to create a connection was unsuccessful. Caroline was boring, one dimensional and frankly, I don’t see how she could have had even a prayer of getting into Cambridge. What kind of history major does not know how to search a library’s historical archives?

Anyways, I gave this 2 stars on Goodreads because I really do think the premise is fantastic. The cover art is gorgeous and it had so much potential. I’m off to apply to Cambridge since everyone can apparently get in!

Leggy

Book Review: The Push by Ashley Audrain

8 Mar 2021 twonightstands

“You used to care about me as a person—my happiness, the things that made me thrive. Now I was a service provider. You didn’t see me as a woman. I was just the mother of your child.”

Blythe is determined to be a better mother than her own mother was to her and her grandmother was to her mother. Her and her husband, Fox, have had a fairytale romance from college to real life, gotten married and are now ready to start their family. But when baby Violet comes Blythe is convinced that there is something wrong with her but only her can see it. She finds it very hard to bond with Violet and doesn’t think she is as sweet as everyone seems to think she is. Her husband thinks she’s imagining things and the unspoken thought in his head is that she doesn’t have a maternal instinct because of her situation with her mother. Is it all in Blythe’s head? Are the women in her family just not cut out for motherhood?

“Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.”

This book is written in the first person narrative. This is Blythe’s version of the story. This story she’s telling us is tense and mysterious and had me at the edge of my seat. Is she a reliable narrative? Are we supposed to believe this insane story she’s telling us? Why is she the only person who feels this way? Even though we’re fully prepped for the tragedy that unfolds in the book, waiting for it felt like torture and when it finally happened my heart absolutely broke for this family. Blythe’s version of events sounds outrageous and insane and after awhile just like her audience, she too starts doubting her memories too.

“Before we were conceived, we existed in part as an egg in our mother’s ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. “

Even though this is a psychological thriller, at its core, this book is about motherhood and all the stress that comes with it but don’t go gifting this book to your friends who are mothers! It’s a raw look at how our society views mothers and how mothers come to see themselves. The way we view women’s bodies as vessels to bring forth life, the way women are rendered invisible still by this amazing and dangerous process and then the way we expect them to perform motherhood for us.

This book is also a multigenerational story. We read about Blythe’s mother, Cecilia and her grandmother, Etta. We read about the different women who have brought her to this point. At some point in the book, Blythe’s mother, Cecilia, tells her that the women in their family aren’t cut out for motherhood but Blythe is determined to forge her own path. This is a very complex portrait of a woman presented to us in her own words and we are asked over and over to judge her sanity. Is she just a product of her childhood, unable to bond with her child? Is she so deep in postpartum depression that she becomes an unreliable narrator in the relationship between her and her daughter? Or are we dismissing her as hysterical because she’s a woman and we don’t trust women in our society?

“we had both morphed into a version of ourselves that didn’t feel as good as had been advertised.”

This book is amazing because it doesn’t matter if you figure out which question is correct. It doesn’t matter if you can decide who to believe. Every possible path available to us is heartbreaking and devastating and the end will knock your wind out regardless. This book is so well written, the author writes with such a clarity that a lot of people will not expect from a thriller. Every character is well explored and never a caricature. Even though the entire book is in first person we see a full picture of everybody involved and somehow know exactly who they are. Audrain writes a riveting and tense drama that documents the terrors of a family disintegrating in the most horrific way possible and this story is going to stay with me for a very long time. There are so many trigger worthy issues in this book, so be warned! I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads. Please read this one and talk to me about it! I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Leggy

Book Review: The Survivors by Jane Harper

22 Feb 2021 twonightstands

Kieran comes home to help his mother pack up his childhood home when his father’s dementia gets really bad. He returns home with his girlfriend and their new child, 12 years after an accident changed the community forever. He still has a lot of guilt around what occurred on the day his brother and his best friend died. During his visit, a body washes up on the beach and a can of worms is opened all over again. What connection could this have, to what happened 12 years ago?

Harper is known for her well written atmospheric mysteries. If you’ve read The Dry, then you’d know exactly what to expect. Survivors is set in a small coastal community that is losing its industries. The tourists aren’t coming as they used to, shops are closing up earlier and during the summer, more people are heading up for greener pastures. When Harper describes the caves in the book and how they behave at high tide, it’s incredibly eerie to imagine.

Ultimately though, this book fell completely flat to me. The mystery was not gripping at all because, the only person the book made me care about was Kieran and I knew it was also not him who committed the murder so I was not at all invested in the mystery. It took me a long time to get into this book, there was a lot of padding and a lot of insinuations before the author finally revealed what happened 12 years ago and it was underwhelming. Also, the more the author tried to plant red herrings to lead us away from the actual murderer, the more I didn’t care. I’m usually really on the alert when reading mystery books and always trying to guess who did it but I just didn’t care with this book.

Harper is usually great with slow burns but this one just seemed so repetitive. I don’t think this book is an accurate representation of how good her mysteries usually are. The end fell flat for me. The murderer is revealed and then the book just abruptly ends. We don’t get an epilogue talking about the community’s reaction to who it was. The book just ends! In fact, it really just fizzled out like the author suddenly got tired of the characters and just couldn’t bear to write another word about these people ever again.

Anyway, even though this review doesn’t sound like it, I read this book in one sitting and thought it was okay. I think you should give her other books a try (The Dry, The Lost Man) though before you get to this one because this is definitely not her best work. Maybe if you read it with a lower expectation than I did, then you’d like it better. Also, I recognize that I’m in the minority with how I felt about this book but that’s okay. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads mainly because it is well written even if the story fell flat.

Leggy

literary fiction, Mystery, romance, thriller, Uncategorized

Book Review : The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

24 Aug 2020 twonightstands

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“When school kids are shot by a random shooter, nobody asks whether the victims should have taken more precautions. Nobody suggests that maybe the victims should have skipped school that day. Nobody ever blames the victims. So why is it that when women are attacked, the onus is on them?”

Rachel Krall has become an overnight sensation and household name after her true crime podcast freed a man accused of killing his wife on honeymoon from prison. She is determined to keep topping herself so she chooses a rape case as her next subject. She knows rape is a very divisive topic where everybody sees a shade of gray and is determined to exploit it. Even if she doesn’t free anybody from jail this time at least her show is going to trend.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town’s golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student. Rachel moves to Neapolis for the case and throws herself into investigating and prepping for the trial, until notes start showing up in strange places for her.

“Yes, I have been a victim of a sexual assault. Well, probably several really. Funny how we were conditioned to accept these situations as unpleasant instead of outrageous.”

By all accounts, Jenny Stills died by drowning in Neapolis 25 years ago but the notes insist that she was murdered. Rachel Krall might be a household name but her face isn’t. She is scared when the notes start to turn up in even more private places including her hotel room. But, she is intrigued by how much people do not want to talk about Jenny. Against her producer’s advice, Krall starts digging into Jenny Stills’ murder and starts finding connections between her case 25 years ago and the rape case currently in court in Neapolis. Everybody might be all grown up and 25 years older but they’re all still holding on to the same secrets and lies that seem to be manifesting in the younger generation.

I enjoyed this book. I thought it was very well written and a fast read. I read this book in one sit down session for 4 hours because I just wanted to know how it would end. I found the characters compelling and I also liked how the author made Krall’s motivations for investigating this case as simply to get her podcast to trend. There was no airs to make it seem like she was trying to help people. On the flip, the way the court case was being handled really annoyed me. Hearing the rape victim being cross examined in court and humiliated utterly made my blood boil.

What I had a problem with is the marketing of this book. I expected it to be more plot twist-y and mind blowing than it was. I kept waiting for the plot twist because all the people who I thought were guilty at the beginning were really guilty. I figured out everything way too early and finished it in a hurry to confirm my suspicions. While I personally don’t have a problem with straight to the point mystery books, the marketing made me feel like I was going to be reading a very different book than I ended up reading.

All in all, I would recommend this book. It’s such a fast paced book and you’ll be done in no time. If you’re a sensitive reader, you might want to skip this one especially those who are triggered by rape. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fantasy, Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, race, thriller, Uncategorized

Book Review: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

10 Aug 2020 twonightstands

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“He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside: nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something…there’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.”

Patricia Campbell is a housewife in Charleston who can’t catch a break. She gave up a career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor who’s never home. She doesn’t have any help, her kids are ungrateful and on top of that, her mother-in-law just moved in with her. The only thing Patricia looks forward to during the week is her true crime book club. They read the filthiest of murders and discuss them in great detail even though their husbands believe that their group is a church group getting together to discuss the Bible.

A mysterious and handsome stranger moves into the neighborhood and the women spend a lot of time during their meetings speculating about him. Patricia finds him very attractive at first and invites him over to her house for dinner often. Until a few children over on the black side of town go missing and the car seen around the neighborhood looks exactly like his. Patricia starts having doubts about him and starts investigating what is really going on in their town.

“A no-good man will tell you he’s going to change,” she said. “He’ll tell you whatever you want to hear, but you’re the fool if you don’t believe what you see.”

I had a very different idea of what this book would be before I went in. I thought it would be funny and heartwarming. I mean the premise is ridiculous and I thought the author was going to run with it but he didn’t. I found this book to be way more serious than it needed to be, given the subject matter – for crying out loud, middle class women fighting a vampire .

It started out that way and I personally think it took a turn for the worse. I found this book to be both gory and gross. It’s very, very gory so, if you are a sensitive reader, I don’t think this book is for you. For example, there is an entire scene with rats eating someone alive. I found that terrifying and I don’t know why I kept reading it.

I also found this book to be over written. There were so many details that the author included that didn’t need to be in the book. This book is 400 pages when it didn’t need to be more than 300 with the dumbest characters I’ve read about in so long. All the men are super sexist while all the women are housewives and demure except the black woman who is a – I’ll wait for you to guess – housekeeper!

The main character presented enough evidence proving that their new neighbor wasn’t who he claimed to be and everyone just turned a blind eye at it. Sure, if it was real life and someone told me that my new neighbor is a vampire, I’d be skeptical too, but what is the fun in a book where a couple dead kids mean nothing.

One part of this book that rang true and mirrored real life to me was the fact that the vampire started out killing and sucking on black kids. It was easier for the white characters to ignore because it wasn’t happening to their kids and Patricia told them that bluntly. As long as it wasn’t happening on their side of town, they were content to do nothing. They only acted when he started coming after them and their kids and they were appropriately called out and the subject was well addressed in the book.

This book just did way too much. It has vampires, housewives, abusive husbands, sexist men, Nazis (yes, Nazis!), racism, book clubs, raccoons, rats and the list keeps going. I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads. You can read it if it checks out to you on your library app on a day you’re bored and have nothing else to read.

Leggy

Fantasy, Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, thriller, Uncategorized, Young Adult

What I’ve Been Reading Lately: 4 Quick Fire Reviews

3 Aug 2020 twonightstands

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It’s been so long since I did this. I’ve been reading so much during this pandemic and can’t wait to share some of the backlist books I’ve been reading. Anyway, here are four books that I’ve read lately that you might enjoy!

Sea Wife by Amity Gaige:

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“Everyone is hard to love, if you do it for long enough.”

Michael convinces his wife, Juliet who is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation, to up and go sailing for a whole year with their two kids—Sybil, age 7 and George, age 2. This book opens up with a promise of a mystery but ultimately fizzles out. On the very first chapter of this book, we are told that they’re back from their sailing trip and Michael is dead.

Told from dual perspectives – Juliet’s first person narration and Michael’s Captain’s log, that sometimes doubled as his diary. I found Michael’s Captain log narration to be a bit ridiculous towards the end because there were things he couldn’t possibly have written down that the author took liberties with. We see how strained their marriage is, how different their political opinions are and how the sailing trip affected all these things including their children.

I thought this one was okay and gave it 2 stars on Goodreads. If you like literary fiction that’s very atmospheric and well written, you should give this one a try.

2. Cradle Series by Will Wight:

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“When a traveler cannot find a path, sometimes he must make his own.”

I’ve been reading through the Cradle series during this pandemic. It’s an escapist read for me. There are currently 7 books in this universe and I’m currently on number 4. This series revolves around Lindon. Lindon is an unsouled which means forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan. He is treated like a pariah and forced to compete against people half his age bringing shame to his family until a horrible event takes place in his village and he meets an immortal who shows him the paths his life could possibly go. The story focuses on Lindon’s determination to be the best sacred arts wielder the world has ever seen. I really enjoy these books and totally recommend them. I haven’t given any of the books less than 3 stars on Goodreads.

3. Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K. J. Parker:

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“I like to let them talk things out, but fact isn’t a democratic process; if a thing isn’t true it isn’t true, even if everybody votes that it is.”

Orhan is an engineer who has more experience building bridges than fighting wars but he is his city’s only hope. A siege is coming. The army has left the city to fight an unknown enemy, leaving the city unguarded and open for the taking. The people have no food and very little weapon and the enemy has sworn to slaughter them all. It will take a miracle to save this city and Orhan who is a liar, cheater and enjoys history and engineering, is the perfect man for the job.

This book is the kind of fantasy I call competent porn – this is where the characters are extremely good at what they do. I really enjoyed watching Orhan come up with very interesting ways to defend a city and also stop the citizens from tearing it down from within. I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.

4. Skullduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy:

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“There’s no such thing as winning or losing. There is won and there is lost, there is victory and defeat. There are absolutes. Everything in between is still left to fight for. Serpine will have won only when there is no one left to stand against him. Until then, there is only the struggle, because tides do what tides do–they turn.”

Stephanie Edgley’s weird but rich and famous uncle just died and left her his entire estate to the chagrin of her other relatives. She’s just 12, what is she going to do with all that money and house? Due to some circumstances beyond her parents’ control, Stephanie is forced to spend the night alone in her uncle’s house. At first, she is excited to spend her first night all alone, until there is a break in and she is thrust into a world of magic and excitement and danger. She joins forces with her uncle’s friend, the weird and completely skeletal, Skulduggery Pleasant to solve the mystery of her uncle’s death.

This book is the first book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series. I was quite excited to read this but I didn’t enjoy it as much. I thought 12 was way too young for some of the things they got up to. There was actual danger involved in a lot of these. I also think if she was doing all these with kids her own age (like Harry Potter), I’d be more likely to overlook a lot but she’s completely running around with adults and I found it disconcerting. I gave this one 2 stars on Goodreads but I’m sure younger audiences wouldn’t have the same reservations I did.

These are some of what I have read lately and I hope you enjoyed these quick fire reviews. Let me know if you’ve read or intend to read any of these books in the comments. Have a great reading week everyone!

Leggy