2020

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My Monday tradition, including a look back and a look ahead — what I read last week, what new books came my way, and what books are keeping me busy right now. Plus a smattering of other stuff too.

Life.

Where did my weekend go? I want a do-over!

What did I read during the last week?

Meat Cute by Gail Carriger: An absolutely adorable novella that finally tells the story of Alexia and Connal’s first meeting and that unfortunate hedgehog incident that started it all! And if you have no idea what I’m talking about… well, this is a prequel story set in the world of the Parasol Protectorate, which is one of my very favorite series of all times!

The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2) by Philip Pullman: I had such mixed feelings about this book. My thoughts are here.

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver: Sad but life-affirming contemporary romance. My review is here.

When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk: Moving YA novel. My review is here.

In audiobooks:

Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs: This was a re-read for me, and I loved it all over again! And now I’m 100% ready for the new Mercy book coming next month!

Pop culture — Outlander, season 5:

We’re now two episodes into season 5 of Outlander! For past seasons, I’ve posted my reaction posts right after each new episode, but somehow Sunday nights have become extra hectic lately. So… while I’ve already watched the 2nd episode, my write-up will have to wait a day or two.

Meanwhile, from last week:

Episode 501, “The Fiery Cross” (aired 2/16/2020) – check out my thoughts here.

Fresh Catch:

One of these things is not like the others…

Oh, that sinking feeling when your book order arrives and you discover that one book in the series has different dimensions than the others. Why, book gods, why? Ah well, I’m still excited to have a bunch of Witcher books ready to enjoy.

What will I be reading during the coming week?

Currently in my hands:

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi: Considering I bought this book about two years ago, it’s about time I finally read it.

Now playing via audiobook:

The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan: I can always count on this author to lift my spirits!

Ongoing reads:

The Space Between by Diana Gabaldon: The latest in Outlander Book Club’s group read-alongs. This is yet another terrific novella set in the wider world of the Outlander series. It’s a re-read for me, and I’m enjoying it all over again.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: My book group’s newest classic read is now underway. We’re reading and discussing two chapters per week.

So many books, so little time…

23Feb2020

Book Review: When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: When You Were Everything
Author: Ashley Woodfolk
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication date: March 10, 2020
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

You can’t rewrite the past, but you can always choose to start again.
It’s been twenty-seven days since Cleo and Layla’s friendship imploded.
Nearly a month since Cleo realized they’ll never be besties again.
Now, Cleo wants to erase every memory, good or bad, that tethers her to her ex–best friend. But pretending Layla doesn’t exist isn’t as easy as Cleo hoped, especially after she’s assigned to be Layla’s tutor. Despite budding new friendships with other classmates—and a raging crush on a gorgeous boy named Dom—Cleo’s turbulent past with Layla comes back to haunt them both.
Alternating between time lines of Then and Now, When You Were Everything blends past and present into an emotional story about the beauty of self-forgiveness, the promise of new beginnings, and the courage it takes to remain open to love.

It’s refreshing to read a contemporary YA novel where romance takes a backseat. In When You Were Everything, the focus is on friendship — or more specifically, on the end of friendship.

Few things are more traumatic for teen girls that losing a best friend. In When You Were Everything, we witness the pain and sorrow and rage that occurs when besties forever, Cleo and Layla, fall apart.

It happens the way these things do. Friends since age twelve, the girls start moving in different directions at the start of their sophomore year of high school. Layla wants more than anything to join the school chorus, and while the “Chorus Girls” adopt her right away, they have no interest in including Cleo in their elite circle.

Cleo’s feeling are hurt over and over again as Layla spends more time with her new friends than with Cleo, and small slights turn into bigger and bigger betrayals, until there’s a final and irreparable break.

Cleo is also dealing with her parents’ separation, and her new friendless status is made even worse by a stream of bullying and harassment she endures from the Chorus Girls while Layla stands by and does nothing.

Cleo is smart and driven, but she also makes some poor choices, lashing out in hurtful ways when her own feelings are hurt. And while I felt that Layla was more to blame for the friendship break-up, Cleo isn’t blameless either.

When You Were Everything is hard to read at times, specifically because it’s so relatable. My own high school years are way in the past, but Cleo’s feelings as she’s isolated and tormented ring very true, in a sadly timeless sort of way.

I enjoyed seeing how Cleo opens herself up to new friendships and learns to see what’s in front of her instead of living inside her own head so much. There’s a sweet romance too, but it’s less important than what Cleo learns about herself and about friendship.

The cast of characters is nicely diverse, and I liked the way the story includes the importance of family and the impact of parents’ and grandparents’ support, love, and involvement. Despite the sadness of the end of a friendship, the book ends on a hopeful note.

Definitely a recommended read!

22Feb2020

Book Review: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird
Author: Josie Silver
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: March 3, 2020
Length: 432 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

In this next captivating love story from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of One Day in December, a young woman is reunited with her late fiancé in a parallel life. But is this happy ending the one she really wants?
Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They’d been together for more than a decade, and Lydia thought their love was indestructible.
But she was wrong. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.
So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants to do is hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life–and perhaps even love–again.
But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened.
Lydia is pulled again and again across the doorway of her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there’s an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there’s someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.
Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird starts with tragedy. Driving to Lydia’s birthday dinner, Freddie is in a car accident that takes his life. Lydia’s world is destroyed. She and Freddie, engaged to be married, have been together for over ten years, really ever since meeting as teens. He was her first and only love… and then suddenly, he was gone.

Lydia is left to pick up the pieces of her shattered world, and where this book excels is in its depiction of grief and loss. Lydia’s pain is not pretty or dignified — she’s a mess, and she remains a mess for a long, long time. Grief doesn’t have a timetable. There’s no quick fix or set number of months that the mourning should take. Lydia simply has to go through it, and fortunately, she has an incredibly giving and loving sister by her side every step of the way.

Lydia also has a secret: The unusual pink pills that her mother gave her to help her sleep have a decidedly odd effect: When she takes a pill and falls asleep, Lydia is pulled into a different version of her own life, one in which the accident never happened and Freddie is very much alive. Soon, Lydia is torn between her bleak waking world and the promise of escape into a world that she knows can’t be real — but it’s a world where she gets time with Freddie, gets to plan their wedding and enjoy their promised life together.

Thankfully, there’s no hint that this alternate world is a real option for Lydia. Even while experiencing this time with Freddie, she’s fully aware of what’s happened in her real life, so all the happy moments are overshadowed for her by the knowledge that Freddie isn’t really alive in her world.

Meanwhile, we spend much more time with Lydia in her waking life than asleep, which I appreciated. She has no choice but to begin the long, slow road forward without Freddie, finding a way to keep going without the love of her life.

There’s a lot to like about this book:

Lydia has a meaningful and rewarding job working in a community center, which hits very close to home for me and really warmed my heart. It’s refreshing to read about someone with a job that’s important but not at all corporate — a job that’s all about creating programming for the community to bring joy to other people.
Her mother is odd, but still supportive, and her sister Elle is the absolute best. She and her husband have Lydia’s back, fuss over her a lot, but also give her space to figure out her own life.
Unlike some other books I’ve read, at no point does anything negative about Freddie come to light. I’ve read too many versions of stories where the dearly departed turns out to be somewhat of an ass or a liar or in some other way not really worth the tears. Nope, not here. Even though Lydia eventually becomes open to the possibility of love again, there’s never any doubt that had Freddie lived, they would have had a happy life together.

Of course, I had some quibbles as well:

(And I suppose I should say… some of these are a little bit spoilery…)

The sci-fi geek in me (never too far below the surface) wants to know what was in those pink pills! Even though Lydia eventually acknowledges that maybe it was the pills and maybe it was just her brain’s way of helping her deal with her loss, my sci-fi brain wanted a real explanation! Was she in an alternate reality? Was it all in her mind? If it was all in her mind, I have to say, it was a very neatly constructed and chronologically sound set of delusions. (I would have preferred either no alternate reality story, or one that actually happens in a fully fleshed out way — again, sci-fi geek here!)
When Lydia picks herself up and goes off to Croatia on a moment’s notice, then stays there for nine weeks to rest and recuperate and find herself, I just could not suspend my disbelief. She goes off with no plan, happens to be approached by a cab driver who happens to have a seaside restaurant and room to rent with his wife, who happens to be smart and supportive and exactly what Lydia needs. Really? What are the odds? Because I’m willing to bet that in real life, the tourist showing up at an airport in a foreign country and trusting someone to drive her to a remote place with no hesitation… is maybe not going to return in one piece. Honestly, this piece of the story made no sense to me.
I’m really glad that Lydia grew and changed over the course of the book, which covers close to two years in her life — but part of how I was aware of how much she’d changed was by her constantly thinking about how much she’d changed. Um… show, don’t tell?

Quibbles, aside, I did actually enjoy this book very much, and especially appreciated how well the author conveyed Lydia’s suffering and the emotional rollercoaster she experiences during her mourning process.

You don’t get over losing someone you love in six months or two years or twenty, but you do have to find a way to carry on living without feeling as if everything that comes afterward is second best.

Lydia is flawed and human and feels real. She’s miserable and sad until, eventually, she learns to also start feeling happy again, although in a different way than before. I really liked her as a person, and felt that her journey never sugarcoated the pain of her huge loss. At some point, she finds new ways to participate in life, with her family and friends and work, and it’s pretty glorious to see Lydia find hope again after it all seems gone.

I guess I could have lived without the alternate world pieces of the story, but overall, I liked The Two Lives of Lydia Bird very much, and would happily recommend it to anyone looking for a slightly different take on love and finding meaning in life.

19Feb2020

Shelf Control #205: Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: Ghost Wall
Author: Sarah Moss
Published: 2019
Length: 144 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age.

For two weeks, the length of her father’s vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie’s father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs—particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind.

The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice?

A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the “primitive minds” of our ancestors.

How and when I got it:

I bought this book sometime last year, and can’t for the life of me remember when or where! Maybe I buy too many books…

Why I want to read it:

I think I must have heard about this book through someone else’s book blog. That, or it was in the window display of my favorite local bookstore on one of my visits — that’s probably pretty likely! It’s a slim book, and the title and the cover are certainly eye-catching. Beyond the look of the book, the description makes it sound really terrific and disturbing and otherworldly. I’m glad I stumbled across this book again this week, because I definitely want to read it!

What do you think? Would you read this book?

Please share your thoughts!

__________________________________

Want to participate in Shelf Control? Here’s how:

Write a blog post about a book that you own that you haven’t read yet.
Add your link in the comments!
If you’d be so kind, I’d appreciate a link back from your own post.
Check out other posts, and…

Have fun!

18Feb2020

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten books that gave me severe book hangovers

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is The Last Ten Books That Gave Me a Book Hangover.

Instead of the most recent 10, I thought I’d go with a mix of older and newer books that gave me HUGE book hangovers.

1. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Of course. This is a world I entered and never wanted to leave. And maybe that accounts for how many times I’ve reread the series!

2. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell: Another I’ve reread multiple times. And no matter how many times I read it, it still packs a punch.

3. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer: Don’t laugh!! It makes me cringe now, but thinking back to the early days of Twilight mania, as soon as I finished this book, I started it over again from the beginning, because I was on a trip, didn’t have New Moon with me, and couldn’t even think about reading anything else but this book, over and over again!

4. The Newsflesh series by Mira Grant: Honestly, I just could not get these books out of my mind. Once I started, I couldn’t stop until I’d read all the books and stories. Amazing!

5. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: Another one that I had to start over from the beginning as soon as I finished reading it.

6. A Witch in Time by Constance Sayers: This book hasn’t even been released yet! It’s coming soon (early March — don’t miss out!), and I hope it’s a big success. I have not been able to get the story out of my head since finishing it. (Check out my review, if you’re interested!)

7. Our War by Craig DiLouie: Ooh boy, this book was devastating and disturbing, and with everything going on in our country these days, it’s no wonder that I find myself flashing back to scenes from this book.

8. The Pact by Jodi Picoult: This was the first book I ever read by Jodi Picoult, and it just about killed me. I couldn’t not shake this book off for a long, long time.

9. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: Man, this book made me ugly cry so hard. I’m still not over it.

10. All the Winters After by Seré Prince Halverson: I loved the characters, the setting, and the plot itself, and just wanted more and more when it was done.

What books have left you with book hangovers?

Please share your thoughts, and if you wrote a TTT post this week, please share your link!

Save

17Feb2020

Book Review: The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2) by Philip Pullman

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2)
Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Publication date: October 3, 2019
Length: 641 pages
Genre: Young adult fantasy
Source: Purchased

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.
It is seven years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford’s Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.
Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . .
The second volume of Sir Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed.
Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.
Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost – a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.

How to describe this long, strange book, set in the world of His Dark Materials?

The Secret Commonwealth is very much a middle book. It’s packed with details and characters, most of whom are people on a journey or quest. There’s a lot of travel from here to there… but we leave off before anyone actually arrives at their destinations.

In La Belle Sauvage, the installment in The Book of Dust that precedes The Secret Commonwealth, we see Lyra as an infant. She’s the object of hot pursuit by nefarious agents of the Magisterium, the ruling religious entity, and a person to be protected by an assortment of good guys and heroes, chief among them young Malcolm Polstead, an 11-year-old boy with unflinching bravery and a very steady canoe.

Here, we re-meet Lyra at age 20. She’s a student at St. Sophia’s, and still lives at Jordan College, the Oxford college where she’s been sheltered under rules of scholastic sanctuary since infancy. Lyra’s life is difficult as the story opens. Her comfortable home at Jordan is no longer a safe place for her, the money supporting her has run out, and shady characters are once again intent on tracking her down.

Closer to home, Lyra and her beloved daemon Pantalaimon are not getting along, which is a huge deal, considering that daemons are the external representation of a person’s soul. Daemon and human are two halves of one whole; neither is complete without the other. It’s almost beyond imagining that Lyra and Pan should be so estranged. Pan believes that Lyra has come too deeply under the influence of literary and scholarly works that prize only what’s real and can be seen, discounting completely the value or even existence of subtlety, imagination, and unseen forces and worlds.

Meanwhile, there’s a movement behind the scenes within the Magisterium to consolidate power even further, pushing toward total religious authoritarianism, leading to fear, civil unrest, and a growing flood of refugees throughout Europe. There’s also a quest by the Magisterium to root out a particular type of rose oil that’s believed to have certain properties that are considered threatening and heretical, and the efforts to wipe out all roses is being conducted by force.

As Lyra is forced into a quest across Europe and into the Eastern lands, she faces incredible danger and constant pursuit, meeting some allies and encountering enemies of all sorts. We also see events through Pan’s perspective, as well as accompanying Malcolm and others on their own strange and dangerous journeys.

It’s a little hard to figure out just who the intended audience of this book is. It’s clearly a youth-oriented book, based on the publisher and where it fits into the greater world of His Dark Materials, but this book is different. For starters, it’s the first novel in either series with no children as characters. Lyra, at age 20, is the youngest, and she’s truly a young woman and not a girl any longer.

More than that, though, is the tone and feel of the book. This book is DARK. Really bad things happen. This rarely feels like fantasy-level danger, with mystical forces or supernatural threats. The danger in The Secret Commonwealth is from people, and it’s awful. Lyra suffers through terrible ordeals, and so do many of the other characters in the book.

The pieces that are revealed about human/daemon connections and certain things that can happen (being deliberately vague here) are pretty horrible too, and are really startling in the context of the series as a whole.

Finally, the Lyra/Pan relationship and where it is in The Secret Commonwealth is heartbreaking and demoralizing. There’s really no ray of sunshine in this book whatsoever.

I suppose that the bleakness of the story is appropriate to the political conditions of Lyra’s world, but it makes for a pretty dismal reading experience. Philip Pullman is masterful as always, and I do love the world he’s created.

However, The Secret Commonwealth is so unrelentingly dark and full of misery that it’s hard to consider it an enjoyable read at all. After 600+ pages, it ends more or less on a cliffhanger, with all threads still to be resolved. The book is building toward something, and I hope the final book in the trilogy is successful in tying it all together and, hopefully, bringing back a little of Lyra’s fire and optimism.

I will absolutely want to read the 3rd and final book in The Book of Dust, and hope the conclusion will make all the suffering of the 2nd book worthwhile. Meanwhile, The Secret Commonwealth has left me feeling sad, upset, and worried about Lyra, and that’s not a fun way to be left hanging.

17Feb2020

The Monday Check-In ~ 2/17/2020

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Life.

Oh boy. This week was my husband’s turn to have surgery. It was a pre-planned orthopedic procedure, but still, I really need my family members (and myself) to stay out of the hospital for a good long while after this! Hubby is doing well, and I’m busy trying to keep him comfortable.

What did I read during the last week?

Two novellas (not reviewed):

Finna by Nino Cipri: A totally entertaining novella about wormholes opening up in an Ikea-like superstore.
The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky by Mackenzi Lee: Or, basically, further adventures with Monty and Percy as they attempt to consummate their relationship. Fun for fans of the main books in the series.

Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales: A super cute teen love story about two boys who have a summer fling, then have to deal with the fall-out when they end up at the same high school in the fall. My review is here.

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski: Filling the hole left in my life after I finished my Netflix binge of The Witcher! The audiobook was terrific — my review is here.

Outlander, baby!

IT’S BACK! The season 5 premiere aired this past weekend, and I am completely delighted to be back on Fraser’s Ridge! As I’ve done during past seasons, I’ll be writing up my reactions after each episode. And here we go!

Episode 501, “The Fiery Cross” (aired 2/16/2020) – check out my thoughts here.

Fresh Catch:

Ooh. Look what e-novella just got released! I’ll be reading this as soon as I finish the big, huge novel currently in my hands.

What will I be reading during the coming week?

Currently in my hands:

The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2) by Philip Pullman: Almost done!

Now playing via audiobook:

Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs: There’s a new Mercy Thompson book coming out next month, which means now is the perfect time to revisit the last one via audiobook. I love these characters, and the narrator (Lorelei King) is terrific!

Ongoing reads:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: Hoo boy, wish me luck! My book group’s newest classic read starts this week, and we’ve picked a big one! We’ll be reading and discussing two chapters per week. Book one of DQ should take us about six months!

So many books, so little time…

16Feb2020

Insta-Reaction: Outlander, Season 5, Episode 1

Posted in Outlander by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Season 5 is here! I’ll be writing an “Insta-Reaction” post for each episode soon after viewing, to share some initial thoughts, questions, reactions — you name it.

(And hurray! While the season officially starts tonight, Starz made the first episode available early!)

Warning:

I may be talking about events from this episode, other episodes, and/or the book series… so if you’d rather not know, now’s your chance to walk away!

Outlander, episode 501: “The Fiery Cross”

The official synopsis (via Starz):

Following celebrations in honor of Brianna and Roger’s wedding, Governor Tryon reminds Jamie of his obligation to hunt down and kill Murtagh Fitzgibbons.

My take:

Major plot points:

It’s Brianna and Roger’s wedding day!

Claire and Jamie help Brianna and Roger prepare for their wedding at Fraser’s Ridge.
Lots of familiar faces in the crowd, including Lord John, Governor Tryon, and Aunt Jocasta.
Tryon seems unhappy with Jamie.
Roger doesn’t particularly fit in in the 18th century.
Lots of couples seem to enjoy the wedding night!
Jamie calls upon the Scots of the Ridge to stand by him, when and if there’s a need to go to war.
Jamie puts on his kilt!!

Insta-reaction:

For Outlander, it’s a surprisingly happy season opener!

We start with a flashback to Scotland, as a much younger Murtagh finds young boy Jamie and tells him that his mother has died, but swears to follow and serve Jamie forever. It’s sad and sweet, and little Jamie is adorable.

But quick, it’s time for a wedding!

Claire and Brianna share a sweet moment together before the big event. Jamie and Roger’s scene is funny and a bit more tense. Jamie’s still not completely sold on Roger as husband material, and Roger is well aware that he is ill equipped for this time period. He’s a historian and a scholar. He can’t hunt or farm or shoot. Or even shave his own face, apparently.

Still, it’s very sweet to see Jamie’s emotions as he talks with Brianna before the ceremony, and even though he’d have preferred a Catholic priest, Jamie does give Brianna away, and he and Claire are both beaming by the time the wedding ceremony is over. Plus, they share a sweet flashback to their own wedding day, now over 20 years in their past.

Food and drink and music make for a good time, and it’s nothing but happy faces and lots of drunkenness all around. The day is marred for Brianna when she overhears Jamie and Lord John discussing the fact that Stephen Bonnet has been seen in North Carolina. Why can’t awful people die and stay dead?

Fergus and Marsali are adorable as always, and apparently, baby #3 is on the way!

Jamie and Claire spend a passionate night together, in between tending to baby Jem. Brianna and Roger have a romantic wedding night, after Roger serenades Brianna with L-O-V-E and his guitar, and while they do make love, Brianna appears to be troubled by the memories stirred up by thoughts of Stephen Bonnet. And there’s a third couple enjoying some wedding night sparks — Jocasta and Murtagh rendezvous in a shack in the woods. Murtagh is still a fugitive (whom Jamie’s supposed to be hunting down). Jocasta shares that Duncan Innes has asked her to marry him, clearly giving Murtagh a chance to declare himself. He doesn’t. Is this the end for Jocasta and Murtagh?

Next day, Jocasta confronts Roger about the parentage of wee Jem — quite intentionally — provoking him into an angry outburst in which he declares Jem to be his son. He goes back to Brianna and Jem and formally claims the baby as blood of his blood, bone of his bone.

Governor Tryon made clear to Jamie that he expects him to gather up a militia of Scots within a week, to serve the crown’s interests and specifically, to find the traitor Murtagh. Jamie decides that if it’s a Scot the Governor wants, it’s a Scot he’ll get. He takes out his precious kilt and puts it on for the first time in years… and looks pretty darn spectacular in it.

Lighting a giant cross made of straw, Jamie invokes the old worlds used by lairds in Scotland. The men of Fraser’s Ridge aren’t a clan and he’s not their chief, but he asks them for their fealty and to swear to stand by him when the time comes. He calls Roger to his side and calls him “Captain Mackenzie”, and Roger swears to Jamie alongside all the others.

Claire and Jamie gaze out over their land, yet another straw cross by their side.

Insta-reaction wrap-up:

Another season, another terrific new version of the theme song. The season 1 version will always hold a special place in my heart, but I’m liking this one too!

For once, it’s nice to start a season of Outlander without violence or bodily harm or terrible occurrences. While there were hints of tension and upcoming conflict, it was mostly a happy episode, and that was fine by me.

It was such fun to see the “big house”, still under construction but looking pretty impressive, especially seeing Claire’s new surgery, her thriving doctor business, and how she’s apparently attempted to explain the concept of bacteria and germs to Jamie.

I love seeing Jamie and Claire, a little older, a few more gray hairs, but still as passionately in love as always. In contrast, Brianna and Roger, while clearly in love, have a bumpy road ahead of them. Roger has already said something about “going back”, and Brianna didn’t look particularly enthused. Plus, with his lack of ability to fit in and be useful, and the fact that he’s a Presbyterian (gasp!), and Brianna’s PTSD, and the baby’s unknown paternity… well, let’s just say that they certainly won’t lack for drama.

Seeing Jamie release Murtagh from his vow and send him away so was sad… particularly seeing the tears falling down Jamie’s face as Murtagh walks away. Back in season 3, readers speculated that Murtagh would take over the role played by Duncan Innes in the book in regard to Jocasta, and it had appeared to be working out (more or less) that way… but now Duncan is around after all? Hmmm. Let’s see where this goes, shall we?

The Fiery Cross isn’t particularly my favorite book of the Outlander series, and while it’s super long, there are also long stretches where not that much happens. (After all, the first two hundred pages or so are devoted to a single day!). The show seems to be off to a good start in terms of consolidating storylines and keeping the action rolling along.

And furthermore…

It’s just so wonderful to be back in the world of Outlander! At this point, it’s like visiting family, seeing all the beloved faces — especially when the season opens with a joyous occasion. Outlander threw a wedding and we were all invited! So sweet.

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14Feb2020

Audiobook Review: The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Last Wish
Author: Andrzej Sapkowski
Narrator: Peter Kenny
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: December 14, 2008 (originally published in 1997 in Poland)
Print length: 360 pages
Audio length: 10 hours, 17 minutes
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Geralt of Rivia is a witcher. A cunning sorcerer. A merciless assassin. And a cold-blooded killer. His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good… and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.
A collection of short stories introducing Geralt of Rivia, to be followed by the first novel in the actual series, The Blood of Elves. Note that, while The Last Wish was published after The Sword of Destiny, the stories contained in The Last Wish take place first chronologically, and many of the individual stories were published before The Sword of Destiny.

For anyone who developed an instantaneous obsession for the Netflix series The Witcher (*raising my hand*), the story collection The Last Wish is an absolute must!

The Last Wish introduces Geralt of Rivia, a solitary man who travels from place to place earning money by fighting monsters on behalf of the humans who hire him. He’s a Witcher, member of a profession of highly trained, magically enhanced people who take on the monsters of the world through their power with spells and swords.

Geralt is gruff, sometimes mean, straightforward, and never afraid of a fight. He has a strict moral code, and uses it to set his own path, even when men of power tried to oppose him or sway him with threats or bribery.

The book is structured as connected tales of Geralt’s adventures, with a through-story between chapters, called “The Voice of Reason”, where we keep up with Geralt after a particularly nasty escapade. Through the interwoven stories, we learn about his past adventures and how he got to this point.

The six stories in The Last Wish seem to be rooted in various fairy tales, but with some pretty big twists and variations along the way. This isn’t too surprising — as Geralt points out, all stories start from a grain of truth.

For viewers of the Netflix series, most of these stories will be at least partially familiar. We see the story of Renfri and the battle at Blaviken — which, by the way, is really a version of a Snow White story, which I totally didn’t get from watching the TV series. There’s also the feast at Cintra where Pavetta’s potential marriage is at stake (a great scene in both the book and the series), a Beauty & the Beast-inspired tale, and the story of the striga.

And, obviously from the title, The Last Wish includes the story of Yennefer and Geralt’s first meeting and the role of the djinn, although in many ways it’s pretty different from the presentation on Netflix.

Overall, I loved this book. There are pieces I missed, like Yennefer’s entire origin story, but so much added detail and explanation of various elements that it all evens out. Also, the fall of Cintra and the introduction of Ciri are not included in this book, but will be important in later books, from what I understand.

Jaskier, the delightful bard on the TV series who is responsible for the ultimate earworm, Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, appears in the books as Dandelion (pronounced by the narrator not like the flower, but as danDElion, which makes it sounds pretty charming). He’s still a totally fun character, but of course, I missed the singing!

Regarding the narration, I got off to a difficult start with the audiobook. I typically listen to audiobooks at 1.25x speed, and it took me a chapter or two to really accept that that just wouldn’t work for me in this case. Between the narrator’s speaking patterns and the heavy accents and rather incomprehensible names of certain characters, I finally realized that I’d need to either slow down the listening speed or give up and switch to print.

Once I took the speed down to 1.0x (normal speed), most of my problems were resolved, and I was much better able to follow conversations and narration. I ended up loving some of the voices, particularly the narrator’s approach to Geralt himself.

Fantasy character names can be tricky, so I ended up having to refer to a print version anyway because it drove me a bit batty not to have a clear idea of how certain names might be spelled. Nivellen, Coodcoodak, Eist Tuirseach, Drogodar, Crach an Craite… see what I mean?

Reading the book made me even more impressed with the Netflix series, because it made me appreciate how well they wove together so many different storylines into one cohesive whole. In fact, now that I’ve finished this book, I may have to watch the series all over again to see what I missed the first time around!

The Last Wish was a really fun, enjoyable listen, and I will absolutely be continuing with The Witcher books, either in print or via audio. After all, what else am I supposed to do with my time between now and whenever season 2 comes around?

12Feb2020

Book Review: Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Only Mostly Devastated
Author: Sophie Gonzales
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Publication date: March 3, 2020
Length: 288 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

SIMON VS. THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA meets CLUELESS in this boy-meets-boy spin on Grease
Summer love…gone so fast.
Ollie and Will were meant to be a summer fling—casual, fun, and done. But when Ollie’s aunt’s health takes a turn for the worse and his family decides to stay in North Carolina to take care of her, Ollie lets himself hope this fling can grow to something more. Dreams that are crushed when he sees Will at a school party and finds that the sweet and affectionate (and comfortably queer) guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High.
Will is more than a little shocked to see Ollie the evening of that first day of school. While his summer was spent being very much himself, back at school he’s simply known as one of the varsity basketball guys. Now Will is faced with the biggest challenge of his life: follow his heart and risk his friendships, or stay firmly in the closet and lose what he loves most.

Summer loving had me a blast
Summer loving happened so fast...Save

Well, you know how it goes.

Two cute teens meet on their summer vacation, fall head over heels, say sad good-byes… and then end up attending the same high school in the fall.

But in Only Mostly Devastated, we’re not talking good girl Sandy and bad boy Danny. Instead, we have two adorable boys, Ollie and Will, who have a magical summer together. They should be thrilled to end up at the same school unexpectedly, right?

The problem is (and of course, there has to be a problem): Ollie is out; Will is not. And while Ollie came out to supportive parents and a chill circle of friends and school acquaintances back in California, Will grew up in more conservative North Carolina, where homophobic jokes are de rigeur for the cool jock crowd and their hangers-on.

When Ollie and his parents relocate to North Carolina to be near his terminally ill aunt and help with her children, he doesn’t really expect to run into Will without some effort. Not to mention that Will appears to have ghosted him right after their final summer good-bye kiss.

So when Ollie tells the group of girls who befriend him on his first day of school about his summer love — and shows them a picture — complications almost immediately crop up. Because of course, Will goes to the same school, and of course, the girls are thrown for a loop by this news that straight hot basketball star Will is maybe not so straight after all.

Ollie is sweet as can be, and it’s so sad and painful to go through all his emotions alongside him. He’s firmly out and will never accept a situation where’s he’s forced back in the closet — but he has to respect Will’s choice, even if it means accepting that Will has to pretend not to know Ollie, and can’t hang out with him too visibly for fear of being teased about turning gay.

The author does a great job of helping us (and Ollie) understand why Will might fear being outed, showing the social environment at school and the not-so-subtle pressure to conform, as well as the scorn reserved for those who don’t fall nicely into socially acceptable gender and relationship roles.

Meanwhile, Ollie forms close friendships with a trio of girls who seem to adore him and take him under their wings. They’re all interesting and varied, not just a generic crowd of high school girls but real people with distinct personalities and conflicts and challenges.

Ollie’s family life is also portrayed sensitively, and it’s quite sad to see Ollie processing his aunt’s decline while also being there for his two little cousins. As if Ollie wasn’t adorable and sweet enough already, he’s also a terrific babysitter and loves his family unconditionally, and it’s heartbreaking to witness his grief when the inevitable finally happens.

The cast of characters in Only Mostly Devastated is nicely diverse without making a big fuss over it, which I really appreciated. The romance at the heart of the story is so well done, and even though it’s almost too sad at times to see how hurt Ollie is, by the end, it feels like a realistic journey that the boys go through to get to where they end up. (Being vague here, so as not to spoil too much…)

If you enjoy sweet, sensitive young adult romances with well-earned happy endings, definitely check out Only Mostly Devastated!Save