Book Review: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?

Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy’s counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other’s trust, and come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.

With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn’t offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.

This is another example of a book that I tore through and couldn’t put down… but with time passing after finishing the book, I find my reaction to it shifting the more I think about it.

The story itself is completely absorbing. We have three point-of-view characters: Ruth, the African-American nurse; Turk, the White Supremacist father; and Kennedy, the white public defender who describes herself early on as someone who doesn’t see color (race) at all.

It’s an interesting approach. We often see the same sets of interactions through more than one person’s eyes, so that when Kennedy makes a point about how supportive she is and how she’s devoted herself to defending people of color, Ruth perceives these statements as coming from a woman of privilege who does not even recognize how her privilege pervades her own life. This leads to interactions throughout the book in which Kennedy is caught short, forced to recognize the unacknowledged racism that informs her life, despite considering herself a force for good and a champion of social justice.

Picoult makes many good and important points in this novel about the way privilege and racism go hand in hand, and how people with privilege seem not to recognize that for one person to succeed because of their skin color and economic status, someone else must not. Where I think Picoult is on somewhat shaky ground is in her chapters using Ruth’s POV. While any author should be able to write convincingly through the voice of his/her characters, whether or not they have anything in common personally with those characters, the use of Ruth’s voice here occasionally made me uncomfortable.

Should a white author be able to write as a black character? Yes, of course. And yet, so much of Ruth’s POV is focused on her experiences as a black woman, explaining how her life has been shaped by boxes society assigns her and the implicit racism in her daily encounters. At some points, it started to feel like appropriation to me. Picoult is essentially explaining blackness to her readers — presumably, a mostly white audience — and it can feel disingenuous.

At the same time, I understand from a few blog mentions I’ve seen that the publisher made early copies of the novel available without the author being disclosed (the concept was #ReadWithoutPrejudice), and I wonder about that experience. Might I have felt differently about Ruth’s voice if I didn’t know the identity of the author? It’s possible.

On the other hand, I didn’t have a problem with her portrayal of Turk, the white supremacist who is also a grieving father and devoted, loving husband. Understanding from within his mind how his life has led him to this point and how he became such a strong believer and advocate for hate is fascinating and informative, and also scary as hell.

Kennedy feels like a pretty typical Picoult lawyer. She’s a working mother, a dedicated professional looking for her opportunity to take on a case she feels passionately about, and thinks she knows about justice in America by virtue of her work as a public defender. Ruth forces her to confront her own assumptions and biases and tear down a bit of the wall that keeps her from seeing just how her white privilege has enabled her to be the person she is now.

In terms of the plot, it’s a doozy of a set-up. At the parents’ request, a note is added to the baby’s medical file saying that no African American personnel are to touch the baby. But Ruth is the only African American staff member in the labor and delivery ward, so this is clearly an order targeted specifically at Ruth, and only Ruth. I wish the book had explored the legalities of this a bit more. Hospitals honor patients’ requests, when reasonable — but this seems so blatantly unreasonable that it never should have stood as an order to begin with.

I had a hard time accepting that the criminal case could or would go forward as described. There was no evidence against Ruth to begin with, and the rush to judgment against her seems simply unrealistic. I just wasn’t convinced at all by the set-up of the legal case.

Further, Kennedy tells Ruth repeatedly that race is never brought into the courtroom — that it’s a sure-fire way to alienate the jury, and that it JUST ISN’T DONE. That may be, but I wish Picoult had fleshed this out a bit more with examples or explanations. This becomes a turning point in the trial, and only knowing that it’s not done because Kennedy says so doesn’t really drive home the real-life situation. I wanted to know — is this a plot device, or is this really borne out in real-life courtrooms? As it was written, I wasn’t really convinced, and like Ruth, didn’t buy that there wouldn’t be merit in telling the story as it played out in terms of the race relations of the people involved.

Finally, there’s a plot twist at the very end. I haven’t read every single Jodi Picoult novel, but I’ve read enough to know that a huge twist is pretty standard for her books. I won’t get into what the twist is in Small Great Things, but I will say that I thought it was rather unbelievable and unnecessary. The story didn’t need it, and the timing and delivery were just odd.

Overall, I’d say that Small Great Things is a fast and compelling read, but that it left me feeling like I’d been lectured to in a way that detracts a bit from the power of the story. The story itself is complicated and twisty, although there are so many side elements thrown in (the charismatic TV personality, the darker skinned sister who chooses to refuse the path that Ruth has taken, the wealthy white family that Ruth’s mother worked for as a maid for 50 years) that by the end, the courtroom scenes, which should be the dramatic climax of the book, feel a little rushed and curtailed.

From reading the author’s notes at the end of the book, it’s clear that Picoult poured her heart and soul into her research for this book, and has embarked on her own personal journey to recognize the inherent racism that’s a part of white privilege. I don’t doubt her sincerity at all, but all this earnestness doesn’t necessarily translate into great fiction. When the storyline takes a back seat to the message, it can start feeling overly preachy. I was fascinated by the unfolding story and become involved in Ruth’s struggles and her quest for true justice, but the use of POVs and the shoe-horning in of everything Picoult has learned about race in America weaken the power of the legal drama at the center of the narrative.

Still, I’d say that Picoult’s fanbase will of course love Small Great Things, and I’d recommend it to others as well. Jodi Picoult’s books are always thought-provoking, and she’s a master when it comes to taking even abhorrent characters and showing their humanity. She lets us see Turk and his wife as bereaved parents, and their pain is no less real and heartfelt than anyone else’s, despite the fact that they’re absolutely revolting in every other way. This, I think, is a great example of the power of Picoult’s writing: She takes us inside lives and minds we might otherwise never see, and always manages to show us the sparks of humanity to be found in the most unexpected places.

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The details:

Title: Small Great Things
Author: Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: October 11, 2016
Length: 480 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

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21Oct2016

Book Review: Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

The author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be delivers her most ambitious and powerful novel to date: a captivating story of two very different women who build an unexpected friendship: a 91-year-old woman with a hidden past as an orphan-train rider and the teenage girl whose own troubled adolescence leads her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask.

Nearly eighteen, Molly Ayer knows she has one last chance. Just months from “aging out” of the child welfare system, and close to being kicked out of her foster home, a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse.

Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

The closer Molly grows to Vivian, the more she discovers parallels to her own life. A Penobscot Indian, she, too, is an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past. As her emotional barriers begin to crumble, Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life – answers that will ultimately free them both.

Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.

It’s astonishing to me that until I read this book, I knew nothing about this important piece of American history. Over a span of 75 years, approximately 200,000 children, mostly orphaned and homeless, were transported from New York and other East Coast cities to farmland in the Midwest, where they were offered up for adoption via town hall meetings at stops along the rail lines. Some children found loving adoptive families and permanent homes; it appears that many, however, were treated as little better than manual labor or indentured servants, wanted for their ability to work but not adequately fed, sheltered, or schooled, much less given the love and support they most strongly needed.

In Orphan Train, we meet 91-year-old Vivian, who emigrated to America from Ireland as a young girl. When a tragic tenement fire leaves her all alone, she’s soon shipped out on the orphan train, ending up in some horrific circumstances in Minnesota — first, as an underfed worker in what was essentially a seamstress sweatshop, and then, as a poorly treated resident of an impoverished family farm, where abuse lurks around every corner. Thanks to a kind school teacher, she does eventually find her way forward through education and through the support of a kind older couple who provide her with all they’d once hoped to provide to their own deceased child.

When we first meet the elderly Vivian, it’s through the eyes of contemporary foster child Molly, who is just one breath away from being locked up in juvie at age 17 for the shocking crime of stealing a copy of Jane Eyre from the public library. As Molly fulfills her mandated community service hours by helping Vivian clean her attic, it becomes clear that the two women, young and old, have more in common than they realize. With each box of mementos that Molly opens and reviews with Vivian, a piece of Vivian’s history is remembered and reexamined. Through their connection, each helps the other come to terms with their pasts and think about new ways of envisioning and creating a future.

My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate.

I really enjoyed Orphan Train, although perhaps “enjoyed” isn’t quite the right term. The stories of Molly and Vivian are both heartbreaking in their own ways. While Molly, as a foster child in 21st century Maine, isn’t handed over into servitude, she does go through a series of foster homes, largely finding herself with people who see her as a chore or a duty, or worse, a source of a paycheck from social services. She’s unloved and unwanted, and gets used to traveling light and protecting herself by driving others away before they can reject her. Molly’s pain is palpable and real, and I wanted so desperately for her to finally find a place to belong and someone to really cherish her for herself.

Likewise, with Vivian, the loss and sorrow she endures is unimaginable. At the time at which she becomes an orphan, children have no voice and no rights, and it’s shocking as a modern reader to see how casually the children are handed over to any stranger who comes along and picks them. The deprivation, physical and emotional, that Vivian suffers is quite hard to read, especially keeping in mind that she’s not yet even a teen when the worst parts of her experience take place.

The way the two story threads weave together to create a whole is fascinating and well thought-out. The dual time line approach is pretty common right now in historical fiction, but in the case of Orphan Train, I think it succeeds because each time line gives us a central character to really care for. Vivian’s story is perhaps a touch more compelling, but I think a big reason for that is the fact that it’s so unusual and, for me at least, mostly unknown prior to reading this story. With Molly, while her story is sad and moving, it doesn’t have the same sense of discovery of a chapter of history that Vivian’s story does. Still, both pieces shed light on shameful practices and conditions of foster and abandoned children, and the two story elements together complement each other quite well.

I had one quibble with the storyline of this book, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t go into specifics. Keeping things vague, I’ll just say that Vivian makes a huge decision in the latter part of the book, when she’s a young woman, that I didn’t find particularly believeable. Given the way her life is at the time in question, I do think she’d have had other choices and should have had enough support in her life to at least take the time to consider her options. It’s a huge turning point that affects the rest of Vivian’s life, and yet she makes it quickly and at a time of great vulnerability. I just didn’t buy it.

That aside, I loved reading Orphan Train. I found the history fascinating, and loved the two main characters, Molly and Vivian. It’s the kind of book that leaves you desperately hoping that the people you’ve come to know will go on to find happiness in their lives.

Orphan Train is a book that will stay with me. I’m so glad my book group decided to read it this month! I just know we’ll have plenty to talk about.

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The details:

Title: Orphan Train
Author: Christina Baker Kline
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication date: April 2, 2013
Length: 278 pages
Genre: Contemporary and historical fiction
Source: Purchased

15Oct2016

Take A Peek Book Review: Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

“You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I’m one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.”

Set in the late 19th century—when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Through Karen’s eyes we get to know the other girls in the house—a resourceful group—and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.

Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper yarn of the old west with a light touch in Karen’s own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.

My Thoughts:

I picked up a copy of Karen Memory when it came out last year, and thanks to trying to finish up a reading challenge, I finally took it off the shelf and read it. What fun!

Karen’s voice is distinctive — maybe a little jarring at first, getting used to her grammar and word usage (especially “of” instead of “have”, as in “would of”…, etc). The first-person narrative by Karen lends a Western grittiness to the tale that really adds a lot in terms of flavor and setting.

The steampunk elements are enjoyable. I tend not to enjoy steampunk that gets so involved in the description of gears and pistons and steam engines that plot and character suffer. This is not the case in Karen Memory. The gadgets and gizmos serve the story, not the other way around.

The plot is engaging and exciting, as Karen takes on the bad guys, backed up by the do-gooder US Marshall, his Comanche partner, and the women of Madame Damnable’s. While I wished that some of the supporting characters were a bit more developed (it was hard to get a feel for several of the working girls as distinct people), overall the cast of characters is diverse, flavorful, and quite entertaining.

All in all, Karen Memory is a great romp of a read. Definitely quirky and unusual, it was a nice change-up for me from the somewhat heavy books I’ve been reading lately.

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The details:

Title: Karen Memory
Author: Elizabeth Bear
Publisher: Tor Books
Publication date: February 3, 2015
Length: 350 pages
Genre: Steampunk
Source: Purchased

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11Oct2016

Audiobook mini-review: The Dispatcher by John Scalzi

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone – 999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don’t know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.

Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher – a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those whose circumstances put them in death’s crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, Tony learns that there are some things that are worse than death and that some people are ready to do almost anything to avenge a supposed wrong.

It’s a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it’s too late…before not even a Dispatcher can save him.

What a treat! This brand-new audiobook is currently available FREE from Audible. How can you resist?

Narrated by actor Zachary Quinto, The Dispatcher is a brief novella that has an immediate hook. The intrigue starts with the opening scene — why is the main character insisting on being allowed into an operating room, and why is the surgeon so angry about it?

As the story unfolds, we learn about the new normal, in which anyone who dies via murder comes back — so that someone deemed irreversibly ill or injured requires the services of a Dispatcher, someone who will intentionally kill the near-death person so they can resume their lives. It’s a totally legal and licensed profession, except when a Dispatcher pick up a little gray-area work on the side.

As the mystery of Tony’s missing friend unfolds, we follow his work with a detective to uncover the seamier side of Dispatching and their race against time to find the missing man before he dies a permanent death. Meanwhile, while the story has many of the tropes of a noir detective story, we’re treated to one odd scenario after another in which we learn just how much our world changes when death is no longer final.

I won’t give away anything further. The Dispatcher is an absolutely glorious audiobook experience. The pacing and plot are fabulous, and Quinto’s narration is pretty much spot on (although his voice for a goonish bodyguard is perhaps too goofy, and his women tend to the breathy end of the vocal spectrum). Still, his reading of the story is terrifically enjoyable, with just the right emphases and pauses and intonations to make it fun and suspenseful.

What are you waiting for? It’s FREE. And it’s great. If sci-fi/speculative fiction is at all your thing, you owe it to yourself to check out The Dispatcher.

And oh yeah.

FREE.

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The details:

Title: The Dispatcher
Author: John Scalzi
Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Publisher: Audible Studios
Publication date: October 4, 2016
Audiobook length: 2 hours, 19 minutes
Printed book length: n/a – not available in print format
Genre: Science fiction/speculative fiction
Source: Download via Audible

11Oct2016

A two-in-one review: The Wrath & the Dawn AND The Rose & the Dagger

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

EVERYBODY fell in love with these books, am I right? From the moment I first heard about The Wrath & the Dawn, all I knew was that everyone was absolutely swooning over these stories.

Well… make that everyone EXCEPT me.

By now, you’re probably familiar with the bare bones of the plot. From Goodreads, about The Wrath & the Dawn:

In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad’s dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph’s reign of terror once and for all.

Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she’d imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It’s an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid’s life as retribution for the many lives he’s stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets?

Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, The Wrath and the Dawn is a sumptuous and enthralling read from beginning to end.

And the description of The Rose & the Dagger:

In a land on the brink of war, Shahrzad is forced from the arms of her beloved husband, the Caliph of Khorasan. She once thought Khalid a monster—a merciless killer of wives, responsible for immeasurable heartache and pain—but as she unraveled his secrets, she found instead an extraordinary man and a love she could not deny. Still, a curse threatens to keep Shazi and Khalid apart forever.

Now she’s reunited with her family, who have found refuge in the desert, where a deadly force is gathering against Khalid—a force set on destroying his empire and commanded by Shazi’s spurned childhood sweetheart. Trapped between loyalties to those she loves, the only thing Shazi can do is act. Using the burgeoning magic within her as a guide, she strikes out on her own to end both this terrible curse and the brewing war once and for all. But to do it, she must evade enemies of her own to stay alive.

The saga that began with The Wrath and the Dawn takes its final turn as Shahrzad risks everything to find her way back to her one true love again.

Okay…

Spoilers ahead…

These books try so hard to be swoony and sweeping and epic… but it just doesn’t work. The prose is so overwrought and overwritten, needlessly flowery but skimping on key action sequences. And while the concept of retelling the Arabian Nights is kind of cool, the execution left me cold.

First of all, Khalid is just a tad too Edward Cullen for my taste. Poor misunderstood monster. So he’s the victim of a curse that forces him to kill his brides in order to avoid destruction of his city? How hard did he try to stop it? Or why not just announce the fact of the curse to everyone, so his people could help him search for a solution (hint: check the library!) rather than just having their daughters taken away and hating him for it. And hey — he killed over 70 young women before something about Shahrzad’s amazing courage and beauty finally snapped him out of it enough to just say no.

So… none of the other brides were special enough to earn some remorse or even a pause? Nope, it took beautiful, special Shahrzad. So the monster can be redeemed, with the love of the right woman. And does that make him worthy of forgiveness?

I mean, worst case scenario, couldn’t he have just thrown himself over a cliff? I assume the curse would die with him, and it sure would have saved a lot of other lives. But then again, there’d be no romance in that case, so what would be the point?

And Shahrzad sure got over her hatred for her best friend’s killer in a hurry. Not more than a day or two went by before she started getting all weak-kneed because of his kisses. But it’s because he’s secretly noble and silently suffering, so it’s okay that he’s responsible for all those deaths!

Meanwhile, there are bunches of secondary characters thrown in, some who have actual personalities, some of whom are pretty much stock figures — the mysterious, magical wise man, the shady enemy Sultan, the sexy handmaiden with a secret, the boyish best friend. I couldn’t get invested enough to keep them all straight.

And then there’s the magic. I would have liked these books much better if the magical elements were limited to Shahrzad’s tales. Okay, fine, there’s a curse that Khalid has to break. But do Shahrzad and her father and Vikram and Musa and Artan (and probably some others) need magical power too? Yes, the flying carpet is fun — but I kept waiting for Shahrzad to break into song.

… a whole new world…

I realize I’m sounding pretty curmudgeonly right about now, and I’ll grant you — I’m not exactly the target audience. But still, I manage to enjoy good YA fiction plenty, despite no longer being in the demographic myself.

Besides all the plot points I had issues with, the writing itself kind of drove me bonkers after a while.

Because the author uses short, declarative statements.

Or sentence fragments.

All the time.

Practically every page.

And it’s so annoying after a while.

For example, a few random selections:

The tiger-eyes continued haunting her… watching, waiting.

Knowing.

Afraid.

His touch burned her skin.

The shame. The betrayal.

The desire.

Low and unassuming. Unmistakable. When Shahrzad met his gaze, everything around her melted away. Even the driving rain came to a sudden standstill.

A moment suspended in time. A pair of amber eyes across a balcony.

And there was no more fear. No more worry. No more judgment.

And then there are the moments of passion, which I found utterly flowery and false:

She was drowning in sandalwood and sunlight. Time ceased to be more than a notion. Her lips were hers one moment. And then they were his. The taste of him on her tongue was like sunwarmed honey. Like cool water sliding down her parched throat. Like the promise of all her tomorrows in a single sigh. When she wound her fingers in his hair to draw her body against his, he stilled for breath, and she knew, as he knew, that they were lost. Lost forever.

So what did I actually like about the books? I mean, I must have liked something if I stuck with them and read both, right?

Okay, first of all, the concept appealed to me. A retelling of Arabian Nights is a great idea. The author does a lovely job of describing the palaces, the deserts, and the tents of the settings, as well as the sights and sounds.. and the tastes and smells. The flowers, the spices, the foods — these are all done with wonderful detail, and truly evoke the exoticness of the place and time.

I also really enjoyed Shahrzad’s stories — the fables she tells to cast a spell of sorts over Khalid, to keep him so fascinated by her tales that he postpones her execution over and over and over again just to hear more. And yet, this is a failing as well, because after the first two nights, the storytelling aspect seems to fall away. Every once in a while, Shahrzad uses a tale to prove a point or illustrate a lesson, but the key element — that the stories are her means of saving her own life — becomes lost in the romance and the other tangled plotlines of the books.

As a side note, there are three related stories listed as ebooks on Goodreads. I read the two that were available free for Kindle. One, set between the two books, adds pretty much nothing to the story. The other (The Crown & the Arrow) is about 9 pages long, and tells the story of Khalid and Shahrzad’s first meeting. It might have helped to include this in The Wrath & the Dawn, as it shows a bit more about how and why Shahrzad engineers their marriage. The stand-alone stories are curiosities that might appeal to people who enjoyed the novels, but aren’t actually necessary for a sense of completion.

So why did I finish these books if I didn’t care for them very much? Well, to be blunt, I’d already bought them, and hated to just put them aside without reading all the way through. I came close to DNFing the first book after the first 100 pages or so, once I realized that the writing and plot didn’t appeal to me, but decided to stick with the story and see if it improved.

My opinion of the story and the writing never actually went up, but I was curious enough to see how it all worked out, especially after all the rave reviews I’ve come across.

I’m sure these books will appeal to many readers, but unfortunately, their swoony delights were just lost on me.

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9Oct2016

Audiobook Review: Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

A novel based on the forgotten true story of one of the nation’s first female deputy sheriffs.

Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago. One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists her help in convicting the men, Constance is forced to confront her past and defend her family — and she does it in a way that few women of 1914 would have dared.

Guys, Girl Waits With Gun may be the most enjoyable audiobook I’ve listened to all year! Fantastic story and characters, and narration that really pulls you into the mood of the story.

But stepping back a moment…

Author Amy Stewart has written several highly successful non-fiction books (with absolutely aweseome titles), including Wicked Plants and The Drunken Botanist. Girl Waits With Gun is her first novel, and is the first in what’s projected to be a series about the historical figures at the heart of the novel.

The Kopp sisters were real people who lived in New Jersey in the early part of the 20th century. After an unfortunate run-in with a powerful, corrupt factory owner, the sisters were threatened and terrorized for months on end. Led by oldest sister Constance, the Kopp sisters sought help from the local sheriff, and persisted in seeing that their tormentor would be brought to justice, no matter the risk to themselves.

The novel fleshes out these historical women and brings them to life, so that we really get to know the personalities and inner workings of the three sisters. Narrated by Constance, we see events through her eyes, and come to understand their small family, the state of politics, unions, and factory owners at the time, and the limitations placed on women by the traditions and societal expectations of the time.

Source: Amy Stewart’s website

The three sisters are sharply developed, so that we get to know their personalities, their quirks, and their unique voices — both in terms of how they’re written in the story, and how the narrator portrays them. The text and the narration play up Fleurette’s girlish naivete, Norma’s brusque no-nonsense approach to life at large, and Contance’s bravery and wisdom. I loved the character of Sheriff Heath as well, who comes across as a good, honest man dedicated to justice and decency, who’s willing to buck the system in order to see that the innocent are protected. (And I love the fact that it’s Sheriff Heath who gives the sisters their revolvers and makes sure they know how to use them.)

The author makes the historical setting feel real and vibrant, giving us the tastes and smells of factory towns and farms, the sense of busy streets crammed with horse-drawn wagons and sleek automobiles, and the hidden underbelly of society, where the factory workers live in company-owned boarding houses and work in abusive, unhealthy conditions.

The writing here is fast-paced, often funny, and always sharp, catching the nuances of the relationships and the characters, and capturing the colloquialisms and social niceties of the times. Even as the tension and threats mount, there are little moments of humor to keep things moving along.

I really, truly enjoyed listening to Girl Waits With Gun, and I plan to start book #2, Lady Cop Makes Trouble, a bit later this month. I love the Kopp sisters, and can’t wait to see what’s next for them.

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The details:

Title: Girl Waits With Gun
Author: Amy Stewart
Narrator: Christina Moore
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date: September 1, 2015
Audiobook length: 10 hours, 54 minutes
Printed book length: 408 pages
Genre: Detective story/historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley; Audible download purchased

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7Oct2016

Book Review: Crosstalk by Connie Willis

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Science fiction icon Connie Willis brilliantly mixes a speculative plot, the wit of Nora Ephron, and the comedic flair of P. G. Wodehouse in Crosstalk a genre-bending novel that pushes social media, smartphone technology, and twenty-four-hour availability to hilarious and chilling extremes as one young woman abruptly finds herself with way more connectivity than she ever desired.

In the not-too-distant future, a simple outpatient procedure to increase empathy between romantic partners has become all the rage. And Briddey Flannigan is delighted when her boyfriend, Trent, suggests undergoing the operation prior to a marriage proposal to enjoy better emotional connection and a perfect relationship with complete communication and understanding. But things don’t quite work out as planned, and Briddey finds herself connected to someone else entirely in a way far beyond what she signed up for.

It is almost more than she can handle especially when the stress of managing her all-too-eager-to-communicate-at-all-times family is already burdening her brain. But that’s only the beginning. As things go from bad to worse, she begins to see the dark side of too much information, and to realize that love and communication are far more complicated than she ever imagined.

The world of Crosstalk is very similar to our own, with the notable exception of an advance in technology. Connection is everything, and now there is a way for people in a relationship to take a step beyond, by means of a simple surgical procedure called an EED. Through this procedures — which is BRAIN SURGERY — two people with an emotional bond open up a neural pathway between them, so that they can each feel and experience the other’s emotions. It’s not mind-reading, as the doctors are quick to point out; rather, it’s a way to reinforce the connection already developing in a relationship.

After all, why just tell someone you love them when you can let them FEEL for themselves that the love is strong and true?

Briddey works for the telecommunications company Commspan, a company obsessed with beating Apple at its own game. Briddey’s true love, Trent, works for Commspan too. After a whirlwind six-week relationship, Trent pops the question. Not a marriage proposal, but one that causes just as much gleeful celebration — he asks Briddey to get an EED with him. The gossip flies through the company almost instantaneously, and then Briddey has to find a way to inform her overly-involved family about her decision. Meanwhile, her coworker C. B. Schwartz, who works in the basement and is routinely mocked for his antisocial ways, finds Briddey and rather stridently tries to talk her out of the EED.

When the world-famous surgeon who performs EEDs for royal families and Hollywood power couples (the book includes an already out-of-date reference to Brad and Angelina) becomes suddenly available to perform the EED right away, Briddey decides to go for it, and deal with the fallout afterward. Little does she know how hugely her world will change.

Crosstalk asks us to imagine a world in which we’re not just glued to our smartphones, but in which even greater instant communication is the top prize. Total connection, 24/7 — who wouldn’t want that? Being unplugged is considered a sign of social deviance, or at the very least, dysfunction. Not only is the workplace absolutely crawling with instantaneous sharing of every tidbit of news and gossip, but even on the home front, we see a nine-year-old practically being stalked by her overbearing, hyper-anxious mother.

Doesn’t sound familiar at all, does it?

Natually, when things go wrong after the EED, Briddey makes all sorts of startling discoveries — about herself, her family, her relationship, and her place in the world.

I’ll leave the summary at that, because the break-neck pace and chapter-by-chapter reveals are what makes this book such fun.

In terms of my reaction, it’s mixed.

Briddey is an engaging character, but I can’t help feeling that she’s incredibly naive. She is so completely taken in by Trent that she doesn’t see a single red flag, even though they’re right in her face. We never really find out what her job is at Commspan, which bothers me as well. For someone who spends that much time at work (or, if not at work, then communicating with work), it’s odd not to actually see her, you know, work at all.

I enjoyed Briddey’s large, unruly, nosy family, especially her wonderful niece Maeve, who has a secret taste for zombie movies and becomes more and more central to the plot as the book progresses.

After a somewhat slow start, the plot really picks up steam, and the last third or so of the book is fast and furious and practically impossible to put down. It’s certainly a fun and entertaining read. That said, I’m not sure that the entire plotline makes sense, and the climax and resolution are both hard to follow and hard to swallow.

I also felt that some of the technological insights were a little too obvious. Commspan’s big breakthrough seems to be a set of apps that will send excuses for not picking up the phone or other such types of social barriers — but how is that new? I mean, when my IPhone rings, I can hit a button and send a “can’t talk now” message. A lot of the implied commentary on hyper-connectedness and the need to unplug felt just a tiny bit beside the point to me. We’ve had this conversation already, haven’t we?

Crosstalk, at over 500 pages, is probably about 100 pages longer than it needed to be. Still, it moves fast after the first few chapters, and I was never bored. Briddey is quite fun to get to know, and so are the rest of the characters. Despite the craziness of some of the plot points, Crosstalk is a good choice if you’re looking for a sci-fi-tinged adventure set in our own time, with plot twists and complications that, although sometimes easy to predict, never fail to entertain.

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The details:

Title: Crosstalk
Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication date: October 4, 2016
Length: 512 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

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2Oct2016

Series wrap-up: The Magicians

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman:

The Magicians – 2009

The Magician King – 2011

The Magician’s Land – 2014

When The Magicians was first released in 2009, the shorthand buzz about the book was that it was “Harry Potter for grown-ups”. And this is kinda, sorta true, in some ways. In The Magicians, main character Quentin Coldwater heads off for a college interview and instead, suddenly finds himself taking the entrance exam at Brakebills University, a school of magic. Because magic is real, and Quentin is a magician. What follows is Quentin’s immersion in his magical education… so kind of Hogwarts-y — except in the world of Brakebills, sex and drugs and plenty of angst feature into the story too. For every moment of starry-eyed wonder at the magical world he finds himself in, Quentin also experiences neuroses and self-doubt and pain and ennui.

I love this Three-Panel Book Review by Lisa Brown, which really says it all:

At the time that The Magicians was published, it was intended to be a stand-alone… but a few years later, author Lev Grossman continued the tale. Books two and three of the series, The Magician King and The Magician’s Land, are a lot less Harry and a lot more Narnia. The action is all post-college, and the tone is adult. Yes, there are still moments of magic and wonder, but Quentin lives in a dark world in which there is struggle, disappointment, loss, and pain.

And quests. Did I mention quests? In the 2nd and 3rd books, Quentin and his friends find themselves in various worlds, ours and others, in which everything is on the line and apocalypse looms. But of course, there are also amazing adventures, such as a sea voyage to the end of the world (very Prince Caspian, at least in the broad strokes of plot outline) and a journey to an upside down world underneath the one on the surface.

The supporting characters are, for the most part, simply marvelous. I especially love Elliot, who we first meet at Brakebills and who goes in some very unexpected directions. The character of Julia, Quentin’s childhood friend who does not get into Brakebills, but instead finds her own path to magic, is dark and disturbing, and her transformation over the course of the trilogy is perhaps the most startling and extreme.

I’m leaving out most of the essential plot points about these books, because I think this is a series best read unspoiled. But read it, you should. It’s a marvelous journey from childhood to adulthood, with a rich fantasy world that’s brilliantly developed and articulated. The characters are terrific, and the writing is funny, arch, and moving.

It’s also quite deliberately full of nods and winks to its inspirations. Quentin and friends know the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter, and the text is full of little references. A favorite moment for me, late in the trilogy, comes when Quentin is entering a potentially dangerous situation, and says to his companion:

Wands out, Harry.

Sigh. Little things like that always make me happy. (PS – it’s worth noting that this is completely ironic, as wands do not actually factor into the magical stylings in The Magicians. There’s also no one named Harry, in case you wondered.)

You may be aware that The Magicians has been adapted for TV. The first season of The Magicians aired on the Syfy channel this past spring, and I thought it was pretty great. In fact, watching the TV show is what spurred me to re-read book 1 and then finally finish the trilogy. Here’s the trailer:

The show definitely differs in some pretty significant ways from the books, and incorporates later elements from the book trilogy into the first season, but much of the flavor comes through. I’ll be interested in seeing how they keep it going in the 2nd season, and beyond (assuming there’s a beyond).

Wrapping it all up…

I’m so glad I returned to the world of The Magicians. When the 2nd book came out several years ago, it had already been a while for me since I’d read the first, and I just couldn’t generate the interest at the time to dive back into the story. I’m glad that I took the time now to go back to the beginning and read the trilogy all the way through from start to finish.

In my opinion, this is a trilogy that’s worth reading as a whole, either one after another or with only short breaks in between. Keeping the continuity going is important, both in terms of the the sheer amount of detail that carries over from book to book, as well as for the sake of enjoying the building mood and character developments over the length of the trilogy.

But whichever way you choose to read The Magicians books — just read them. I highly recommend this trilogy for anyone who grew up on children’s fantasy books… and secretly hoped that their worlds were real.

24Sep2016

Take A Peek Book Review: The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

Chuck Dutton built Music City Salvage with patience and expertise, stripping historic properties and reselling their bones. Inventory is running low, so he’s thrilled when Augusta Withrow appears in his office offering salvage rights to her entire property. This could be a gold mine, so he assigns his daughter Dahlia to personally oversee the project.

The crew finds a handful of surprises right away. Firstly, the place is in unexpectedly good shape. And then there’s the cemetery, about thirty fallen and overgrown graves dating to the early 1900s, Augusta insists that the cemetery is just a fake, a Halloween prank, so the city gives the go-ahead, the bulldozer revs up, and it turns up human remains. Augusta says she doesn’t know whose body it is or how many others might be present and refuses to answer any more questions. Then she stops answering the phone.

But Dahlia’s concerns about the corpse and Augusta’s disappearance are overshadowed when she begins to realize that she and her crew are not alone, and they’re not welcome at the Withrow estate. They have no idea how much danger they’re in, but they’re starting to get an idea. On the crew’s third night in the house, a storm shuts down the only road to the property. The power goes out. Cell signals are iffy. There’s nowhere to go and no one Dahlia can call for help, even if anyone would believe that she and her crew are being stalked by a murderous phantom. Something at the Withrow mansion is angry and lost, and this is its last chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever. And it seems to be seeking permanent company.

The Family Plot is a haunted house story for the ages-atmospheric, scary, and strange, with a modern gothic sensibility to keep it fresh and interesting-from Cherie Priest, a modern master of supernatural fiction.

My Thoughts:

Meh.

Not scary.

That about sums it up for me. The Family Plot is more or less a classic ghost story. A woman and her crew sleep in the house they’re working to strip for salvage. The owner of the house seems to only want to be rid of it, and is intentionally cryptic about the house’s history. The house is completely isolated, up a hard-to-get through country road. It seems to be full of treasures, but weird things start happening almost right away.

(And by the way, that Goodreads synopsis is fairly awful, emphasizing the wrong things and giving away way too much.)

The key problem for me is that the surprises and secrets weren’t terribly surprising. The ghostly presence and its history seem pretty typical for this kind of story. Even when the drama comes to a peak toward the end of the book (cue the stormy night, blocked roads, and lack of emergency vehicles), I did not for a single second feel frightened or chilled or spooked out.

The story is fine, but I can’t say much more positive than that. If you’ve ever read a haunted house book before, then you’ll see pretty much the entire plot coming. It’s not boring, but at the same time, it just didn’t move me in the slightest.

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The details:

Title: The Family Plot
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Tor Books
Publication date: September 20, 2016
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Ghost story
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

18Sep2016

Take A Peek Book Review: The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

In this gripping New York Times bestseller, Kathleen Grissom brings to life a thriving plantation in Virginia in the decades before the Civil War, where a dark secret threatens to expose the best and worst in everyone tied to the estate.

Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white Lavinia arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate slave daughter. Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food, while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family.

In time, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master’s opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous yet protective son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen and big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart from Belle and the other slaves.

Through the unique eyes of Lavinia and Belle, Grissom’s debut novel unfolds in a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of class, race, dignity, deep-buried secrets, and familial bonds.

My Thoughts:

The Kitchen House has been on my radar for a while now, and I finally settled in and read it over the weekend in preparation for my book group discussion this coming week. Sometimes you need a little nudge to get to the good stuff, ya know?

Wow. This book has it all — terrific historical setting, a broad and varied cast of characters, and pains and sorrows that are instantly relatable.

Lavinia’s story is unique, as most pre-Civil War novels I’ve read with Southern settings focus strictly on the master/slave divide, broken along race lines. In The Kitchen House, Lavinia straddles the color line. As an orphaned indentured Irish girl, she’s settled — happily — with the black slaves on the plantation, where she finds love, comfort, and family. Yet based on the color of her skin, she’s easily accepted into the world of the big house as well, first as a companion for her master’s mentally ill wife, and eventually as a full-fledged member of the family.

Meanwhile, among the kitchen house slaves, the illegitimate children of the plantation owners are relegated to yet another generation of slavery, subject to the whims and demons of the twisted mind of their current owner.

Lavinia is the main narrator of the story, although we do get briefer chapters from Belle’s perspective, which help round out what Lavinia sees of plantation life and offer a sort of behind-the-scenes viewpoint that we’d otherwise miss.

The heartache and tragedy that plague Lavinia and her loved ones feel almost too much sometimes. It seems like every time there’s a chance for something terrible to happen, it does. The pain that all of the characters must endure makes the book tough to take, even while it’s impossible to look away.

The author seems to be drawing a parallel between the slaves’ captivity and Lavinia’s own powerlessness and lack of rights in a loveless marriage to a cruel, domineering, dangerous man. I can accept this up to a point: Despite her fine clothes and house, Lavinia is her husband’s property and is basically a prisoner, with no access to the outside world or to anyone who might provide help. Still, her situation isn’t nearly as helpless as that of the slaves, and her skin color and status offer her a protection that her beloved family does not have.

The Kitchen House is powerful and well-written, and I recommend it strongly for anyone with an interest in American history during that time period. The characters are unforgettable.

As far as I understand, The Kitchen House (published in 2010) was originally written as a stand-alone, but I was excited to learn that a follow-up novel (Glory Over Everything) has just been published. I can’t wait to spend more time with these characters… and just hope that at least some of them get the happy ending they so clearly deserve.

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The details:

Title: The Kitchen House
Author: Kathleen Grissom
Publisher: Touchstone
Publication date: January 1, 2010
Length: 385 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Library