Audiobook Review: Lessons at the School by the Sea (Maggie Adair, #3) by Jenny Colgan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Lessons at the School by the Sea
Series: Maggie Adair / Little School by the Sea
Author: Jenny Colgan
Narrator: Alex Tregear
Publisher: Avon
Publication date: Originally published 2018; reissued 2023
Print length: 304 pages
Audio length: 7 hours, 6 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased (audiobook); E-book ARC from the publisher/NetGalley
Rating:

The summer holiday brings new passion and new challenges in the enchanting third book of Jenny Colgan’s utterly delightful School by the Sea series, set at a girls’ boarding school in Cornwall.

School is out, following a bit of saucy scandal at Downey House…

Beloved high school teacher Maggie Adair had been comfortably, if somewhat ambivalently, engaged to her dependable long-distance boyfriend Stan. But in the heat of summer, Maggie’s attraction to her colleague David McDonald has caught fire. Now both are facing an uncertain future as they try to figure out how to stay committed to their careers–and each other.

Meanwhile, the girls of Downey House–mercurial Fliss, glamorous Alice, and shy, hard-working Simone–have had long summers at home, which weren’t quite the respite they had been hoping for. But the new school year is thankfully here, and it will bring new pupils and lots of fresh challenges for students and teachers alike at the school by the sea.

Welcome back to the School by the Sea! This charming series focuses on Maggie Adair, a dedicated teacher from Glasgow who takes a job teaching English at a posh boarding school in Devon. Three books into the series, we’ve seen Maggie grow into her role and truly make a difference in the lives of her students… as well as struggle to reconcile her engagement to her long-term boyfriend with her growing feelings for the sensitive, handsome English teacher over at the boys’ school.

Book #3, Lessons at the School by the Sea, picks up immediately after the ending of the 2nd book, which ended (spoilers for those who haven’t read it!) with a scandalous scene at a train station, as David attempts to make a grand romantic gesture while Maggie’s train is leaving the station, and Maggie (inadvisably) pulls the emergency brake. Oh dear.

As we return to the scene of their fairly mild crime, both Maggie and David are in quite a bit of trouble, facing possible criminal charges and (even worse!) the shame of bringing embarrassment to Downey House. The only solution is separation — David loses his job, and Maggie is allowed to stay on, but with the stipulation that the two must have no contact.

Needless to say, Maggie is somewhat despondent when the new school term starts in the fall, and she’s not the only one. A new year means new worries and drama among the school girls as well, and even the headmistress has her own personal life complications to sort out.

It’s all quite sweet and lovely, entertaining in a gentle sort of ultra-British way. For American readers, the ins and outs of boarding school life may seem somewhat impenetrable (although at least we have some exposure from other pop culture — it’s like Hogwarts minus magic, but with social media).

Speaking of social media — about ten years elapsed between the publishing of the second and third books, even though the books’ timeline is a seamless continuation. So, it’s a little jarring in book #3 to suddenly see the students obsessed with their phones, wifi access, Snapchat, Insta, and social media gossip. The author does a good job of weaving all this into the ongoing story, but as readers, we do sort of have to pretend that they’ve had this stuff all along.

The series as a whole is quite fun, and I love how well we get to know all the characters, adults and teens. This volume seems to spend a bit less time on the girls’ part of the story, but that’s okay — I was more invested in Maggie and David’s story than the rest, although I did enjoy it all.

Another thing I really appreciate about these books is how lovingly the value of education, and especially literature, is portrayed. Maggie and David both enrich their students’ lives through their commitment and compassion, but also because they so carefully and consciously choose literature that both challenges and enriches their students.

Hmmm — many of Jenny Colgan’s other books include recipes. The School by the Sea books should include reading lists!

The author mentions in her introduction that she’s envisioned this as a six-book series. Yes, please! While I don’t see anything on her website yet that says that there will be more, a reader can always hope.

10Mar2023

Book Review: A Sinister Revenge (Veronica Speedwell, #8) by Deanna Raybourn

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: A Sinister Revenge
Series: Veronica Speedwell, #8
Author: Deanna Raybourn
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: March 7, 2023
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Veronica must find and stop a devious killer when a group of old friends is targeted for death in this new adventure from the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

Veronica’s natural-historian beau, Stoker, has been away in Bavaria for months and their relationship is at an impasse. But when Veronica shows up before him with his brother, Tiberius, Lord Templeton-Vane, he is lured back home by an intriguing job offer: preparing an iguanodon for a very special dinner party.

Tiberius has received a cryptic message—along with the obituaries of two recently deceased members of his old group of friends, the Seven Sinners—that he too should get his affairs in order. Realizing he is in grave danger but not knowing why, he plans a reunion party for the remaining Sinners at his family estate to lure the killer out while Veronica and Stoker investigate.

As the guests arrive and settle in, the evening’s events turn deadly. More clues come to light, leading Veronica, Stoker, and Tiberius to uncover a shared past among the Sinners that has led to the fatal present. But the truth might be far more sinister than what they were prepared for.

Hurray! A new Veronica Speedwell adventure is here, and it’s deliciously complicated and captivating.

Veronica is a dedicated lepidopterist and natural history enthusiast, with a more-or-less accidental sideline in investigating unsavory crimes such as murder, impersonation, and other deadly pursuits. In partnership with her soulmate Stoker, who is perhaps more obsessed with taxidermy than might be advisable, she pursues solutions to complex conspiracies and usually manages to bring wrong-doers to justice — even if her definition of justice doesn’t always match up exactly with the legal system’s definition.

As A Sinister Revenge opens, Veronica is dealing with the fall-out of a MAJOR complication that came to light in the previous book, An Impossible Impostor. The impact on her relationship with Stoker is severe — he’s removed himself from London to engage in fieldwork, and has quite clearly asked Veronica for space. Yes, he still loves her… but is that enough?

When Stoker’s oldest brother Tiberius requests Veronica’s help, they track down Stoker to the forests of Bavaria, where Tiberius pleads for help. He’s received death threats, and needs Veronica and Stoker to figure out who they’re from — and prevent his own and possibly other people’s demise.

The action moves to Tiberius’s country estate, to which he invites close companions from his youth, all of whom may be either potential murder victims… or the murderer. With our power duo on the case, the house party will hopefully end with the discovery of motive, means, and the guilty party, and not with dead bodies to mourn.

As always, Veronica and Stoker are incredibly fun to spend time with. Veronica, as narrator, is full of snark and sass, highly intelligent, and fully insistent on her right to be her own person, and not give in to societal expectations about a woman’s proper place. Because she and Stoker are semi-estranged for much of the book, some of their usual spicy chemistry and high-octane banter are missing, but they still manage to work together, contradict one another, and focus on the case enough to keep the entertainment value high.

The mystery itself is a good one, combining tropes such as a country-house/isolated setting, a guest list where one person is sure to be the murder, and many, many red herrings. There are plenty of clues scattered throughout, but also quite a bit of misdirection and false leads. I was kept guessing throughout the book, and found the unraveling of secrets and eventual big reveal of the whodunit very clever and very, very well done.

I always love seeing Veronica in action, and adore her independence, risk-taking, and sense of adventure. I also love her whole-hearted embrace of the importance of physical love as well as romantic love (or as she puts it: “Physical congress, I have often observed, is as revivifying to the spirt as to the body”.)

The writing in this series is utterly delightful — this book includes such terrific vocab words as “omnificent”, “rampageous”, “rumbustious” “cicerone”, “thaumatrope”, “vellicate”, and more. The dialogue is quick and witty, and the characters are all quite distinct and entertaining.

Eight volumes in, the Veronica Speedwell mysteries remain energetic, clever, and enchanting. In A Sinister Revenge, we get a captivating mystery plot as well as terrific character dynamics. Once again, I read the newest release much too quickly, and now face the long, long wait for another new book!

I’ll end with the same advice I’ve included in my reviews of every book in this series: If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, start with book #1, A Curious Beginning. There’s a very good chance you’ll want to continue!

This series has become one of my favorites. Don’t miss it.

8Mar2023

Book Review: Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Nora Goes Off Script
Author: Annabel Monaghan
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication date: June 7, 2022
Length: 272 pages
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: Library
Rating:

Nora’s life is about to get a rewrite…

Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. As a romance channel screenwriter, it’s her job. But when her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her marriage’s collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life. No one is more surprised than her when it’s picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. When former Sexiest Man Alive, Leo Vance, is cast as her ne’er do well husband Nora’s life will never be the same.

The morning after shooting wraps and the crew leaves, Nora finds Leo on her porch with a half-empty bottle of tequila and a proposition. He’ll pay a thousand dollars a day to stay for a week. The extra seven grand would give Nora breathing room, but it’s the need in his eyes that makes her say yes. Seven days: it’s the blink of an eye or an eternity depending on how you look at it. Enough time to fall in love. Enough time to break your heart.

Filled with warmth, wit, and wisdom, Nora Goes Off Script is the best kind of love story–the real kind where love is complicated by work, kids, and the emotional baggage that comes with life. For Nora and Leo, this kind of love is bigger than the big screen.

What a breath of fresh air! It often feels like all contemporary romance novels tell versions of the same story, with the same plot beats, but Nora Goes Off Script offers a taste of something new and different, even while checking many familiar boxes.

Nora writes screenplays for romance channel movies, and is good at it. She describes it at one point in the book as being akin to doing Mad Libs — give her a gender, a location, and a career, and she’ll turn it into a romance movie. Is it the real estate mogul falling for the owner of a struggling country inn? Or the big city lawyer who finds love and happiness baking cupcakes in a small town? There has to be a break-up, then a big, grand reunion (preferably at a signficant town event), and then a more-or-less chaste kiss… and a very happy ending, of course.

But… Nora finds herself significantly less inspired to create on-screen romances after her selfish jerk of a husband leaves her and her two children after years of living off Nora’s earnings while also putting her down. When she does commit a version of her true story to paper, she ends up with a screenplay that gets optioned as a Hollywood movie, with the hottest stars and a big-name director on board — and they want to film on her property, where she’s located the story.

Nora and her kids live in their falling-apart country home in rural New York, but Nora’s pride and joy is the tea house, a gorgeous little outbuilding on the property where she does her daily writing sessions. It’s this place that inspires the movie — called The Tea House — and it’s also this place that calls to Leo Vance once filming has ended.

Leo is successful, sexy, and already an Oscar winner, but he’s not happy. Spending time at Nora’s place gives him a hint of life away from Hollywood and the spotlight, so when shooting ends, he offers Nora a ridiculous amount of money to be able to stay in her tea house for one more week. She’s still recovering from the debts her deadbeat ex ran up, so she agrees.

And day by day, sunrise by sunrise, Leo and Nora start to connect. He’s insatiably curious about her life, delights in the simple joys of family time, and even offers to help direct her son’s school play. Nora’s initial annoyance at having Leo in her space quickly turns to enjoyment of his company, and soon it’s clear that there’s more than friendship and appreciation of the sunrise going on.

I found Nora and Leo absolutely delightful together. They bring out sides of one another that had long been dormant, and provide support and joy in all sorts of lovely ways. Yes, there are plenty of Hollywood-star-falling-for-an-ordinary-person romances out there, but this one truly felt special.

I loved Nora’s devotion to her kids, her practicality, and her determination to make her life work. She’s creative, but also highly organized, and keeps her children physically and emotionally well cared for even on her hardest days. I couldn’t help but admire her resilience, and her clear-eyed view of her jerky ex-husband seemed quite healthy to me.

Leo is also lovely — a guy who everyone wants a piece of, but who craves the family and connections that he’s been without for too long. Together, Nora and Leo just work, and it’s very sweet to see how good they are for one another.

Now, this is a romance, so naturally there’s a giant misunderstanding and a break-up, which is heartbreaking for both characters (and the reader!). And really, this is the only part that annoyed me a bit, because two adults should have figured out there was more to the story, or at the very least, made one last attempt to communicate… but alas, in this fictional world, they both have to suffer through heartache and regrets before (not at all a spoiler) finally getting to a well-earned happy ending.

I’ve probably given away more plot details than I should have, but honestly, the joy of this book is in spending time with the characters and seeing the love story unfold. It’s a heart-warming story, but it’s never saccharine, and I loved the little moments just as much as the big dramatic ones.

Nora Goes Off Script is a wonderful reading experience, and I’ll definitely be looking forward to reading more by this author. If you’re looking for a pick-me-up or need a break from dire/gloomy/heavy reads, this is the one to check out!

**Save

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4Mar2023

Book Review: Backpacking Through Bedlam (InCryptid, #12) by Seanan McGuire

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Backpacking Through Bedlam
Series: Incryptid, #12
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: DAW
Publication date: March 7, 2023
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Urban fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Seanan McGuire’s New York Times-bestselling and Hugo Award-nominated urban fantasy InCryptid series continues with the twelfth book following the Price family, cryptozoologists who study and protect the creatures living in secret all around us.

Reunion, noun:
1. The state of being united again.

Reconciliation, noun:
1. An act of reconciling, as when former enemies agree to an amiable truce.
2. The process of making consistent or compatible.
3. See also “impossible.”

Alice Price-Healy gave up her life for fifty years to focus completely on the search for her missing husband. The danger of focus like that is that it leaves little room for thinking about what happens after…and now that she’s finally managed to find Thomas, she has no idea what she’s supposed to do next. The fact that he comes with a surrogate daughter who may or may not have some connection to Alice’s recently adopted grandson is just icing on the complicated cake.

So the three of them are heading for the most complicated place in the universe: they’re going home.

But things on Earth have changed while Alice, Thomas, and Sally have been away. The Covenant of St. George, antagonized by Verity’s declaration of war and Sarah’s temporary relocation of an entire college campus, is trying to retake North America from the cryptids and cryptozoologists who’ve been keeping the peace for the past hundred years. And they’re starting in New York.

Alice and company have barely been back for an hour before the Ocean Lady and the Queen of the Routewitches are sending them to New York to help, and they find themselves embroiled in the politics of dragons, kidnappings, and of course, the most dangerous people of all: family.

Getting “back to normal” may be the hardest task Alice has undertaken yet.

The InCryptid series is a big, sprawling, interconnected story about the varied and sundry members of the Price/Healy clan — humans (mostly) who specialize in cryptozoology, the study and preservation of non-human people who live among us here on Earth. The arch-enemies of the Price gang (and all non-human species) is the Covenant, a powerful organization dedicated to hunting down and eliminating all cryptids — ostensibly to protect humans, but really, at this point, it’s more from deeply ingrained hatred and a desire to rid the world of everything non-human.

The InCryptid series unfolds in waves, sort of, with different books in the series focusing on different family members — including siblings Verity, Alex, and Antimony, their wild adventures, and also their love lives. By book 12 in the series, we’ve shifted focus a few more times, and Backpacking Through Bedlam is the second book in a row starring Alice, the family’s grandmother (who appears to be about 20, not her actual 80-something years).

Backpacking Through Bedlam picks up the story where it left off in book #11, Spelunking Through Hell. Alice has spent the past 50 years searching alternate dimensions to find her beloved husband Thomas, who was stolen away from her after a disastrous deal with the crossroads. In book #11, the pair was finally reunited, and here in #12, the story continues with their journey home.

It’s not all smooth, and they have a humanitarian sort of mission to accomplish first, but they do eventually make it back to their secluded home in Michigan… only to be summoned moments after arrival to come help their granddaughter Verity in New York.

Alice and Thomas and their surrogate daughter Sally are immediately shoved into danger, as Verity and her family are busy trying to protect a nest of dragons from very persistent and deadly field agents sent by the Covenant. There’s no time for a family reunion — Alice is forced to pretty much instantly start fighting her way through the tunnels of New York to save the day.

All this to say, it’s another fun adventure in the InCryptid world, with the Price family protecting those in need and taking the fight to the bad guys.

It’s entertaining and also moving to see Alice and Thomas reunited with their grandchildren. The family as a whole has mixed feelings about their long-lost grandparents, since Alice essentially abandoned her own children 50 years early, leaving them to be raised by trusted friends, in order to pursue what everyone believed to be a hopeless quest to find her husband.

Now they’re back, but it’ll be a while before they can truly be part of the family again, and maybe even longer before Alice and Thomas can let one another out of arm’s reach without feeling the awful fear of another impossible separation. I love the family and relationship dynamics in these books even more than the action sequences — although those are great too.

Backpacking Through Bedlam has a bit of a slow start, but once the travelers land back in our own dimension, the story and pace pick up quite a bit.

In the previous book, it was a little jarring to focus on Alice, since we’d barely spent time with her up to that point. Now she feels more like a main character, and I enjoyed seeing her and Thomas reestablishing their lives together.

I have the same complaint about Backpacking Through Bedlam as I did with Splelunking Through Hell — there’s a lot of assumed knowledge about the characters’ backstories and the family history. Here’s what I mentioned in my review of #11, and it still holds true:

Side note on InCryptids: This is a huge expanded world, and it’s supported by many, many short stories available through the author’s website and via Patreon. That’s nice… but also frustrating. Apparently, if I’d been keeping up with all the Price short stories, I would be very invested in Alice and Thomas and would know pretty much everything about their courtship, romance, and early years together. But I haven’t! And that feels problematic for me. Yes, I can make an effort to go get caught up (and I probably will, once I figure out the order the stories should be read in) — but I do think the books alone should tell a complete story, and in this case, I felt like I was always missing key pieces of information.

There are SO many short stories that the author has written about Alice’s parents and grandparents. In Backpacking Through Bedlam, Alice refers quite often to her parents’ marriage, her own youth, and earlier generations too — but those aren’t details we have any way of knowing just from the main series. It’s frustrating, and I don’t particularly have the patience to go read every story on Patreon. Here’s hoping Seanan McGuire will some day collect all of these tales and put them into an all-in-one edition — that would be something I’d happily pick up.

Overall, though, Backpacking Through Bedlam continues the InCryptid series with the author’s signature quirky writing, funny dialogue, and plenty of hidden weaponry. I do love these characters, and will keep reading books about the Price family for as long as the author keeps writing them.

**Save

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3Mar2023

Audiobook Review: The Highland Hens by Judy Leigh

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Highland Hens
Author: Judy Leigh
Narrator: Phyllida Nash
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Publication date: August 4, 2022
Print length: 352 pages
Audio length: 11 hours 4 minutes
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Library
Rating:

In the imposing Glen Carrick House overlooking Scotland’s famous Loch Ness, lives eighty-eight-year-old Mimi McKinlay, cared for by her three adult sons. Hamish has inherited his mother’s musical talents, Fin is the responsible brother, and Angus has the complicated and brooding personality to match his dashing good looks.

But what all the brothers share is a concern that their beloved mother is living in her memories of her days on stage, while letting her present days pass her by.

Jess Oliver is at a turning point. Amicably divorced after years of being married, this trip to the Highlands is a first taste of independence. It isn’t long before the beauty and hospitality of Scotland captures her heart.

When Mimi and Jess’s paths cross, a friendship is formed that will change both women’s lives. And as together they find ways to look forward instead of to the past, long forgotten dreams are within reach, and every new day is fresh with possibilities.

I read my first Judy Leigh book last year, after seeing so many bloggers rave about her. That book was Heading Over the Hill, which I found delightful. Quirky, lovable characters, mature love, great friendships — so much fun!

Naturally, I was eager to experience more, so when I saw that her 2022 release was set in the Scottish Highlands, it seemed like a natural choice for me.

In The Highland Hens, while there are many characters, life revolves around Mimi McKinlay (stage name Mimi Solitaire), a spritely, spirited 88-year-old who spends her days glorying in memories of her life on the London stage. Wearing high heels and feathered headdresses, Mimi can still belt out showtunes and kick up her heels for a chorus-line number. But Mimi is getting frailer, and her eccentricities have driven away the family’s housekeeper.

Mimi’s three sons adore their mother, are committed to keeping her safe and comfortable in her own home, and are getting a bit frantic. They advertise for a companion, and that’s where Jess Oliver enters their lives.

Jess, a divorced 59-year-old, is vacationing in the Highlands while her cottage is being renovated. But when she hears that renovations will take much longer than expected, she’s left with no place to live for the next several months. Still, she’s loving her time in the Highlands, and taking a job as a companion to a darling older woman in a gorgeous home seems like a terrific temporary solution to her problems.

Jess and Mimi click instantly, and Jess seems to intuitively know how to give Mimi the attention and affection she needs, while also making sure she eats healthy foods and goes easy on the Chardonnay. Mimi’s sons welcome Jess to the family home eagerly, although middle brother Angus, recovering from a serious motorcycle accident, is initially gruff and off-putting.

The Highland Hens follows most of the plot beats you’d expect. Jess becomes close to everyone in the family, forms a close bond with Mimi, and makes life at Glen Carrick House better for everyone. She’s supposed to be returning to her own little cottage in time for Christmas, but the more involved she becomes with the McKinlays, the harder a separation will be.

This is a pleasant book, but I do have some quibbles. Without getting too spoilery:

Pretty much everyone is coupled up by the end, and most of the romances are half-baked and underdeveloped. A book this long could have shown the developing feelings more convincingly.
The end of the book, as it relates to Mimi, is NOT okay with me. It was not necessary. Not saying more about it, but just no.
There’s a hint of a deep dark secret from Mimi’s life, which ends up revealed very close to the end and really is more or less a big fat nothing.
The cover and title imply that the book will be something it isn’t. It isn’t about a bunch of women friends romping around the Highlands. There are friendships and outings, but that cover image doesn’t even come close to depicting Mimi, and I don’t know who the third character is supposed to be.

A major complaint is that this book is much longer than it needs to be. I listened to the audiobook, and the narration was fine — but so little actually happens that I ended up listening at 1.75x speed (which I never do!) just to get through it.

I’m not mad that I read this one, but I did feel let down. I had high hopes after my last book by this author. As I said, The Highland Hens is perfectly pleasant… but not a lot happens, and the romantic entanglements feel more like there was a need to match everyone up rather than true emotional connections.

I learned about this author from seeing her books featured on other blogs, and she does seem to have devoted fans. I’m not ruling out reading more of her books (and would welcome suggestions on which ones to try). The Highland Hens was fine (hence the three stars)… but not something I’d go out of my way to recommend.

26Feb2023

Book Review: Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Luck of the Titanic
Author: Stacey Lee
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication date: May 4, 2021
Length: 368 pages
Genre: YA historical fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Valora Luck has two things: a ticket for the biggest and most luxurious ocean liner in the world, and a dream of leaving England behind and making a life for herself as a circus performer in New York. Much to her surprise, though, she’s turned away at the gangway; apparently, Chinese people aren’t allowed into America.

But Val has to get on that ship. Her twin brother, Jamie, who has spent two long years at sea, is on board, as is an influential circus owner. Thankfully, there’s not much a trained acrobat like Val can’t overcome when she puts her mind to it.

As a stowaway, Val should keep her head down and stay out of sight. But the clock is ticking and she has just seven days as the ship makes its way across the Atlantic to find Jamie, audition for the circus owner, and convince him to help get them both into America.

Then one night, the unthinkable happens, and suddenly Val’s dreams of a new life are crushed under the weight of the only thing that matters: survival.

I’ve been a bit obsessed with Titanic this week, after seeing the movie again after so many years, so I decided to dig into this YA historical novel about a Chinese-British teen and her Titanic voyage.

Valora and her twin brother Jamie grew up in London, the children of a Chinese father and a Cockney mother. Their father taught them a thousand ways to get by, whether through get-rich-quick scams, trickery, or performing amazing acrobatics and passing the hat. After the deaths of both parents, Jamie left England behind to work in the boiler-rooms of ships sailing the world, and Val worked as a lady’s assistant to a wealthy upper class woman.

Val’s employer, Mrs. Sloane, booked passage on Titanic for herself and Val, but then died shortly before the sailing date. Val decides to go anyway after learning that Jamie will be onboard as part of a crew of Chinese shipworkers being sent to New York and then Cuba for their next assignment.

Val plans to brazen out the sailing by pretending that Mrs. Sloane is there with her, keeping to herself in her first-class cabin, but plans go awry almost immediately. Val is denied boarding, as the Chinese Exclusion Act is in effect in the United States, and without authorization papers, she’ll be turned away immediately in New York. Val doesn’t take defeat so easily, and deploying her courage and acrobatic skills, she manages to sneak onboard, then find a way to inhabit Mrs. Sloane’s cabin and, courtesy of a black mourning veil, pretend to be the wealthy woman.

Meanwhile, once the ship sails, she reunites with Jamie, and divides her time between the first-class quarters and the lower deck seamen’s quarters, donning “sea slops”, eating in the third class dining hall, and concocting plans to perform a twin acrobatics act for the circus bigwig also traveling on Titanic.

The first 70% or so of Luck of the Titanic is the story of Val’s desperate attempts to avoid having her deceptions discovered, convince Jamie to give up his sea career and start a life with her in New York, and find a way to audition for the circus. And then, of course, none of this matters any longer, once the fateful night of April 14th arrives and Val and Jamie begin a struggle to survive as the Titanic sinks.

As with any book about Titanic, once the ship hits the iceberg, the drama is amplified and the scope of the human tragedy takes over the narrative. Naturally, this section of the book is the most moving and compelling. Val and Jamie take risks and make bold moves to try to ensure the survival of the crew they feel responsible for, but at the same time, each is committed to making sure the other makes it onto a lifeboat before it’s too late.

I found myself not entirely swept up in the book as a whole. It skews a little young, in my opinion — it might be good for a younger teen audience, but as an adult reader who often enjoys YA, I found it a little lean and less than believable. Val’s impersonation of a first class traveler, her stowaway status, and the remarkable luck she has in mostly getting away with it all and finding key allies stretches reality. In particular, the scene of how she gets on board in the first place is so beyond belief that it sets a tone of “okay, REALLY?” that lingers throughout the book.

The writing also didn’t sit particularly well with me. There are some truly clunky descriptions:

His back is steep and contoured like the cliffs of Dover when golden sunlight falls upon them.

… and some that I didn’t particularly understand. I really have no idea what these two are supposed to mean:

His hair tapers to a curve at the nape of his neck, like a hook waiting for a wriggly finger to bait it.

… brown rubber-soled shoes look as faithful as a pair of beagles.

Some of the dialogue is awkward too, although it’s not clear to me if the author is trying to capture era-appropriate slang or the Cockney influence. Either way, it doesn’t particularly flow.

“Jamie’s the oldest born, which means he’s the most important one, and he loves the queasy seasies.”

“Well, aren’t you a nelly naysayer, rabbitin’ on, all gloom and doom.”

I did appreciate learning about the status of the Chinese passengers, the rampant discrimination they faced even among the other immigrants in steerage, and the teachings and superstitions that Val and Jamie learned from their optimistic yet unsuccessful father.

Authors setting fiction in such a well-documented setting have a very specific challenge: Creating fictional characters to inhabit a world where every person present historically is known and accounted for. Some real-life Titanic passengers are present in the narrative, and as in the movie Titanic, where Jack Dawson is missing from ship records because he wasn’t a registered passenger, Val’s stowaway status is a viable excuse for how someone could be on the Titanic without ever becoming part of the written history.

Luck of the Titanic is compelling by the end, but it would be hard to write a story set on the Titanic that isn’t. I had too many issues with the believability of the story and the characters’ actions to truly get absorbed by the book as a whole — but overall, the approach was interesting enough to hold my attention, even if I wasn’t fully invested.

24Feb2023

Book Review: An Easy Death (Gunnie Rose, #1) by Charlaine Harris

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: An Easy Death
Series: Gunnie Rose, #1
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publisher: Saga Press
Publication date: October 2, 2018
Length: 306 pages
Genre: Fantasy / speculative fiction
Source: Library
Rating:

In a fractured United States, a new world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards. Lizbeth Rose has a wildly fearsome reputation but these wizards are desperate. Searching the small border towns near Mexico, they’re trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner believed to be a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin.

As the trio journey through an altered America—shattered into several countries after the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression—they’re set on by enemies. It’s clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose has never failed a client, but this job may stretch her to her deadly limits.

In this fantasy novel set in an alternate version of the United States, the US as we know it no longer exists. Instead, after the assassination of FDR prior to his inauguration, the country has split apart. What was once California is now the Holy Russian Empire, ruled by Tsar Alexei after settlement by the exiled Romanovs. The East Coast states have largely sworn allegiance back to the UK and are now Britannia, the South is Dixie, and the southern border of Canada has moved further south, now enclosing the Great Lakes territories and then some.

Meanwhile, the action of An Easy Death takes place in Texoma (our current Texas, more or less) and Mexico. It’s a lawless area, or so it would seem. There’s a very old West vibe here, jarred somewhat by the existence of trucks and cars, electricity, and even refrigerators (for those lucky enough to afford them). People like main character Lizbeth Rose earn a living as “gunnies”, hired gunslingers who provide a variety of protection services. In Gunnie Rose’s case, she works as part of a crew who specialize in helping folks cross the dangerous territory from Texoma into New America, through mostly empty lands ravaged by bandits and wild, vicious dogs.

After a job gone bad, Lizbeth is the last person left from her former crew. Shocked and in mourning, the last thing she wants is to have a couple of Russian wizards, known as grigoris, show upon her doorstep. They want to hire her to help them find a man whose blood could be key to keeping their tsar alive… but they have many enemies working against them, who almost immediately begin trying to kill them and their gunnie.

As the trio sets out into Mexico, they face trial after trial — the dangers of deserts and wild lands, plus the even greater threat posed by assassins and deadly wizards. Lizbeth is continually forced to think fast and shoot faster, all the while questioning whether her clients have told her the whole truth and wondering who the true enemy really is.

An Easy Death (which is what gunnies say to one another when heading out on a job, rather than, you know “good luck” or “see ya”) is a fast-paced adventure in a world that occasionally made my head swim, especially in the early chapters. In fact, I originally tried the audiobook, and just couldn’t wrap my head around the setting and situation. Fortunately, the print edition comes with a handy map, and that helped me settle in and start truly appreciating the story.

The world-building here is so creative. Situating a Western adventure in the mid-20th century leads to some weird moments of cognitive dissonance — and add to that the existence of magic and wizards, and well, it’s utterly odd but also utterly absorbing.

I could possibly have done with a little bit less time spent chasing or being chased through the desert, but that’s a minor quibble. As the first book in a series, An Easy Death does the heavy lifting of establishing a world, its politics and factions, and the various types of people who live in it.

Lizbeth is a terrific character, hard as nails, always heavily armed and excellent with her firepower, and with hidden depths that I think we’ll see more of as the series moves forward. As of now, there are four published works in the series, with a fifth scheduled for release in fall of 2023. I’m not quite ready to commit to the entire series just yet, but I do know that I’ll be looking for book #2 on my next library visit! I will definitely want to continue onward with the series and see where it all goes!

*A Longer Fall – #2 in the Gunnie Rose series*

22Feb2023

Book Review: Mr. & Mrs. Witch by Gwenda Bond

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Mr. & Mrs. Witch
Author: Gwenda Bond
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication date: March 7, 2023
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

In Mr. & Mrs. Witch, the next novel from bestselling author Gwenda Bond, a couple discovers at the altar the surprising secret identities they’ve kept from each other.

Savannah Wilde is a witch, a very powerful one—an identity that only her fellow witches know. Following a whirlwind romance that surprised herself and her family, Savvy is all set to marry the love of her life. But she isn’t the only one with a secret that needs to be kept, even from her soon-to-be husband.

Griffin Carter is a top agent for a clandestine organization that, well, used to primarily hunt witches, but now mainly tries to shut down supernatural threats their own way. He can’t wait to lay his eyes on the woman he’s about to spend the rest of his life with.

As Savvy walks down the aisle to Griffin, the wedding quickly goes from blessed day to shit show when their true identities are revealed. To say there’s bad blood between their factions is putting it mildly. Savvy and Griffin are tasked to take the other out, but when they discover a secret that could take down both of their agencies, they realize the only way to survive is to team up. With assassins hot on their trail, will Savvy and Griffin make it out alive to try again at ‘I do’?

If you’re looking for a deep exploration of the perils of modern love and marriage… this is not that book!

BUT, if you’re a fan of the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith, love silly contemporary romances, and want some powerful witchcraft (and adorable familiars) thrown into the mix… well, Mr. & Mrs. Witch may be the perfect choice.

We open with Savvy and Griffin’s wedding day. They’re each ecstatic, about to marry the person of the dreams, their one true love, their everything — until the day absolutely and completely goes off the rails. Savvy is a talented witch and an agent of CRONE (a secret society of witches, obviously), and Griffin works for HUNTER, an equally secret society dedicated to fighting supernatural threats, with a dark history of hunting witches. Savvy and Griffin have no idea about one another’s true vocations, and things are about to get ugly.

The plot goes back and forth between “now” — the wedding day and beyond — and the past, from the couple’s first meeting, through the development of their relationship, and finally catching up to the present. They each get POV sections, so we get to know them as individuals as well as together, and also get to see just how much they’re hiding.

Mr. & Mrs. Witch is truly silly fun. As for my earlier reference to Mr. and Mrs. Smith — a movie about a married couple who are ignorant about each others’ careers as professional assassins, and end up with orders to kill each other — well, that kind of gives you the main story arc of this book. Savvy and Griffin are on opposites sides of a secret war between witches and hunters, but it turns out that the bosses of each of their factions may have ulterior motives. Once Savvy and Griffin get past their shock and hurt feelings about the secrets hidden in their relationship, they realize that their only hope for survival (not to mention their postponed Happily Ever After) is to join forces to fight the big bads.

On top of all the silliness, there are great friendships, interesting family dynamics, and awesomely adorable familiars (including a capybara named Captain Bear, because why not?).

In terms of the romance and steam factor, I’d classify this book as graphic: Sex scenes are explicit, but they do tend to be brief. For me personally, I tend not to appreciate super graphic sex scenes in my romance novels, but these were minimal enough that they didn’t get in the way of enjoying the book.

Having read Gwenda Bond’s two previous novels (Not Your Average Hot Guy and The Date From Hell), I was fully prepared for the funny, ridiculous, over-the-top tone of this romantic adventure, and I was not disappointed.

Mr. & Mrs. Witch is not at all a serious book… but if you’re looking for good escapist fun, this might be a perfect fit!

20Feb2023

Novella review: To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: To Be Taught, If Fortunate
Author: Becky Chambers
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Publication date: August 8, 2019
Length: 153 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

A stand-alone science fiction novella from the award-winning, bestselling, critically-acclaimed author of the Wayfarer series.

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. They can produce antifreeze in subzero temperatures, absorb radiation and convert it for food, and conveniently adjust to the pull of different gravitational forces. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life.

A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system fifteen light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds. But as Ariadne shifts through both form and time, the culture back on Earth has also been transformed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the story of the wonders and dangers of her mission, in the hope that someone back home might still be listening.

The title of this novella is a line from former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim’s message carried on the Voyager space probe in 1977:

We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship — to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.

These lines provide a beautiful summary of the theme of Becky Chambers’ deeply thoughtful novella, To Be Taught, If Fortunate. The novella tells the story of the four-person crew of the Lawki 6 mission — a team of astronauts sent on a decades-spanning mission to explore four potentially life-supporting planets located outside Earth’s solar system. The astronauts embark on their journey knowing that their friends, families, and colleagues will all be gone by the time they return to Earth some 80 years in the future — but knowledge is their holy grail, and they’re devoted to their higher purpose.

We learn about the mission through Ariadne, the mission engineer, who writes a letter back to Earth — this is the narrative we read. Ariadne describes the ship’s journey through space — the years of torpor (deep sleep/stasis in which the crew members pass the years of long transit, awakening when they reach their destinations), the glory of discovery as they set foot on each new world, and the traumatizing despair that sets in when they seem to have reached a dead end with no means of continuing the journey.

The story is full of moments of sheer joy, as the team revels in each new world and its wonders — but there’s also sorrow, as communications from Earth inexplicably stop arriving, and the crew is left to consider what, if anything, they might find upon their eventual return.

I’ve described Becky Chambers’ books as “gentle science fiction”, and I’d say the same applies here. Not gentle as in boring or uneventful, but gentle meaning focusing on the people, their emotions and relationships, their hopes and fears. There are no evil forces, no catastrophic invasions, no epic tragedies, and certainly no space battles or laser guns! This is science fiction on a human scale — it’s what the people experience, think, and feel that matters here, and that’s plenty.

We are human. We are fragile. Are we who you want out here?

The writing is lovely, and through the medium of Ariadne’s letter back to Earth, we get to know her on a deep and intimate level. What would a person feel in these circumstances, cut off from home, living in a restricted space with three other people, seeing the passage of time by the changing length of her hair and fingernails each time she emerges from torpor? This book makes the reader feel it all as well, all within just 153 pages.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a spare, finely-tuned portrait of humanity’s quest for knowledge and pursuit of higher purpose, as well as a moving depiction of particular people in a unique circumstance.

Don’t miss it!

17Feb2023

Book Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Sea of Tranquility
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Publisher: Knopf
Publication date: April 5, 2022
Length: 272 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal–an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.’

I’m not sure how to even begin describing the beauty of Sea of Tranquility. The writing here is so precise, and the narrative arc so carefully constructed, that I was spellbound from start to finish.

Part of me hesitates to describe the plot at all, other than what’s already shared in the book’s synopsis. I read the book without first reading anything about it, and I’m so happy that I did. Letting the wonder unfold around you is really the best way to experience Sea of Tranquility.

But to give a brief idea — the various sections of the book occur in completely separately timelines and locations. From 1912, across time and space all the way to the 2400s, there are vignettes — some very short, some with more detail and length — delving into specific actions and moments in the lives of the characters.

As you might guess, there is a connection that ties all these vignettes together eventually. As each piece slotted into place, I experienced continuous “aha” moments as elements became clearer. And while some concepts are more mind-blowing than others, there’s a sense throughout that there’s more to the book, and more to our lives, than we could possibly even hope to truly understand.

If you haven’t yet read Sea of Tranquility, then what I’ve written probably makes little sense, but I truly don’t want to discuss specifics and risk lessening the pleasure of discovery for anyone considering reading the book.

At under 300 pages, Sea of Tranquility is easy to get through quickly, but the images and ideas linger long after reading the final lines. This is my first 5-star read of 2023, and will absolutely be going on my “favorites” list.

In case it’s not obvious: Highly recommended.