Book Review: Any Sign of Life by Rae Carson

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Any Sign of Life
Author: Rae Carson
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Publication date: October 12, 2021
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Young adult – Science fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

When a teenage girl thinks she may be the only person left alive in her town—maybe in the whole world—she must rely on hope, trust, and her own resilience.
Paige Miller is determined to take her basketball team to the state championship, maybe even beyond. But as March Madness heats up, Paige falls deathly ill. Days later, she wakes up attached to an IV and learns that the whole world has perished. Everyone she loves, and all of her dreams for the future—they’re gone.
But Paige is a warrior, so she pushes through her fear and her grief. And as she gets through each day—scrounging for food, for shelter, for safety—Paige encounters a few more young survivors. Together, they might stand a chance. But as they struggle to endure their new reality, they learn that the apocalypse did not happen by accident. And that there are worse things than being alone.

Any Sign of Life opens to a scenario that hits a little too close to home in 2021, when we still can’t say that the coronavirus pandemic is behind us. In this YA sci-fi novel, our current pandemic is a memory from the past for the characters. As the book begins, we meet main character Paige Miller as she awakens from a coma to confront a world wholly different from the one she thought she knew.

Paige wakes up to discover an IV in her arm and her family’s dead bodies in her house. As she ventures out away from the horror, she encounters nothing but more horror. Every home in her neighborhood contains dead people — she appears to be the only one left alive. After liberating a neighbor’s dog from their locked house, Paige and Emmaline set out to scrounge for supplies and figure out if anyone else has survived.

What seems from the beginning to be a story about a horrific virus that’s wiped out nearly all of humanity takes a turn as Paige starts to realize that this virus couldn’t have been naturally occuring. As far as she can tell, it killed people worldwide in only a week, and that just doesn’t make sense. When Paige meets Trey, another teen survivor, they start to put the pieces together, and realize that humankind didn’t just die out — it was exterminated.

Figuring out how this happened, and desperately fighting for a slim chance at survival, Paige and Trey’s journey leads them to a handful of other survivors and a small chance at making a difference in what seems to be a losing battle to hang onto a world that might still be fit for human life.

Any Sign of Life is both a story of the end of the world as we know it and a tale of a fight for survival. There are exciting action sequences as well as plenty of strategizing about how to survive — and whether there’s a reason to survive. The author gives the characters individuality and personality, as well as giving them each a backstory and inner depth.

Paige, as the POV character, is strong-willed and capable, but also carries the pain of her lost family with her always. Trey is also a great character, and all of the characters we meet are mourning someone they loved.

While the action sequence toward the end of the book is a little confusing, it’s still gripping to read, and I couldn’t help holding my breath while rooting for the good guys to succeed. The book ends on a positive note, but the future still looks grim — and I couldn’t help wondering whether a sequel will be coming along at some point. The ending works, but there’s plenty of room for more of the story to be told.

Any Sign of Life is an engaging read, once I got past the fact that what I thought would be a story about surviving a worldwide plague ended up being about a different sort of threat completely. Not giving too much away, the revelations about the cause of the virus and what the future might hold didn’t wow me, because I feel like I’ve read plenty of stories along these lines already,

Still, I liked the characters and the particular episodes involved in their survival, and have no problem recommending this book to anyone who enjoys post-apocalyptic YA fiction.

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15Oct2021

Book Review: Horseman by Christina Henry

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow
Author: Christina Henry
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: September 28, 2021
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Everyone in Sleepy Hollow knows about the Horseman, but no one really believes in him. Not even Ben Van Brunt’s grandfather, Brom Bones, who was there when it was said the Horseman chased the upstart Crane out of town. Brom says that’s just legend, the village gossips talking.
Twenty years after those storied events, the village is a quiet place. Fourteen-year-old Ben loves to play Sleepy Hollow boys, reenacting the events Brom once lived through. But then Ben and a friend stumble across the headless body of a child in the woods near the village, and the sinister discovery makes Ben question everything the adults in Sleepy Hollow have ever said. Could the Horseman be real after all? Or does something even more sinister stalk the woods?

Christina Henry books are always a treat, and this new release is another book that was perfect for my October spooky mood.

Horseman revisit the tale of the Headless Horseman, but with plenty of twists. While in the original legend, Brom Bones was a bully and somewhat of a villain, here in Horseman, he’s main character Ben’s beloved grandfather. Brom is big and self-assured, a leader within the town, a successful farmer, with an amazing laugh, and the person Ben turns to for love, understanding, and reassurance above all others.

Brom is happily married to Katrina, and theirs is a love match that often makes Ben blush after stumbling across one of their embraces or loving looks.

As the story starts, Ben stumbles upon a corpse in the woods — a boy from town who’s been left gruesomely dismembered, missing his head and hands. Soon after, Ben discovers a sheep in similar condition. Who — or what — is stalking Sleepy Hollow? Is it an evil spirit? Is it human wrongdoing? How does the legendary Horseman of Sleepy Hollow’s past fit into this? And what are those scary voices that Ben hears in the woods?

Without giving anything else away, I’ll just say that I loved this book! There’s gore and terrifying interludes, but most of all, the story itself is fast-paced and immediately immersive, and I loved the characters. The author does an amazing job of weaving in the classic Legend of Sleep Hollow, providing new context for the story and new explanations of its events, but also bringing the key characters forward into the next generation.

Brom is a fabulous character, hard-edged when threatened, but absolutely lovable and lovely when it comes to his wife and grandchild. Katrina, as seen through Ben’s eyes, initially comes across as mean and restrictive, but as the book progresses, we (and Ben) get to know her better and see that all is not as it initially seems. And Ben! Well, I encourage everyone to read Horseman and get acquainted with Ben on your own, but Ben is a brave but vulnerable character who struggles not just with the strange and scary happenings within Sleepy Hollow, but must also come to terms with family history, finding one’s place in a world that has strict expectations and limits of what’s acceptable, and embracing one’s true identity and committing to setting a path of one’s own.

Horseman is a terrific read at any time, but particularly if you’re looking for eerie, spooky, haunting reads in the weeks before Halloween. Highly recommended!

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14Oct2021

Book Review: Cackle by Rachel Harrison

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Cackle
Author: Rachel Harrison
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: October 5, 2021
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

All her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small village upstate. She’s stunned by how perfect and picturesque the town is. The people are all friendly and warm. Her new apartment is dreamy too, minus the oddly persistent spider infestation.
Then Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend. More importantly, she wants Annie to stop apologizing and start living for herself. That’s how Sophie lives. Annie can’t help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the townsfolk seem…a little afraid of her. And like, okay. There are some things. Sophie’s appearance is uncanny and ageless, her mansion in the middle of the woods feels a little unearthly, and she does seem to wield a certain power…but she couldn’t be…could she?

Feeling witchy? Cackle is a perfect choice for the spooky month of October!

As Cackle opens, Annie’s life, to be blunt, sucks. Her long-term boyfriend has informed her that their relationship is more friendship than romance — but since good apartments are hard to come by, they keep living together, taking turns on the futon, for five more months. No wonder Annie is depressed and in a rut, especially since Josh was so much the center of her world for all these years that she never developed a friend circle and is now alone and miserable.

Annie finally makes a change in her life, and it’s a big one: She’s moves from Manhattan to the small town of Rowan in upstate New York, where she accepts a teaching job at a local high school and moves into a rented apartment. She doesn’t quite know how to connect with locals and worries that she’s made a terrible mistake… until she meets Sophie.

Sophie is beautiful and kind, immediately taking an interest in helping Annie settle in and offering her unconditional friendship. But why do the townspeople all seem so deferential and even afraid when it comes to Sophie? Sophie takes Annie to her mansion in the woods, showers her with gifts, and offers her a refuge in which to be pampered and recenter her life. And Annie loves it — but is Sophie too good to be true?

Cackle is a fun romp, with some scary/slightly gross moments in the mix, but it stays mostly on the lighter side. There’s a lot of pleasure to be found in Annie’s enjoyment of Sophie’s friendship, even while red flags are popping up everywhere. (There’s also super adorable Ralph, and I’m not going to say any more about him! You need to meet him for yourself.) While it seems clear from the start that Sophie has secrets, Annie remains oblivious for quite a while, and even when she begins to sort it all out, her responses aren’t entirely what I would have expected.

This is an enjoyable pre-Halloween read — not too heavy or serious, some good character development and support of not bowing to others’ opinions, finding one’s true self, and a celebration of friendship. Plus… witches!!

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7Oct2021

Book Review: So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: So Many Beginnings
Author: Bethany C. Morrow
Publisher: Feiwel Friends
Publication date: September 7, 2021
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Library
Rating:

Four young Black sisters come of age during the American Civil War in So Many Beginnings, a warm and powerful YA remix of the classic novel Little Women by national bestselling author Bethany C. Morrow.
North Carolina, 1863. As the American Civil War rages on, the Freedmen’s Colony of Roanoke Island is blossoming, a haven for the recently emancipated. Black people have begun building a community of their own, a refuge from the shadow of the old life. It is where the March family has finally been able to safely put down roots with four young daughters:
Meg, a teacher who longs to find love and start a family of her own.
Jo, a writer whose words are too powerful to be contained.
Beth, a talented seamstress searching for a higher purpose.
Amy, a dancer eager to explore life outside her family’s home.
As the four March sisters come into their own as independent young women, they will face first love, health struggles, heartbreak, and new horizons. But they will face it all together.

So Many Beginnings takes the classic Little Women story outline and turns it into something new and unexpected — truly a remix, rather than a retelling.

As the author explained during an interview with NPR:

Were you one of those people who read Little Women over and over when you were young, and was that part of the reason you agreed to write your new book?
I want to start by saying I have no recollection of reading the original.
Seriously? And you didn’t read it before you started writing?
I had no intention of reading it. As I told the editor, it would not matter. I am writing a story about four Black girls in 1863. It does not matter what a group of white girls was doing; that has no bearing on it. I will say that I, like a lot of people my age, was very in love with the 1994 film adaptation, so if there’s any similarity, I would expect it to be closer to a couple of elements from that film. Basically, Little Women is considered historical fiction, but as a Black woman, I have been excluded from that narrative. It seems like the kind of property that no matter how many times it’s revisited, it’s the same. It’s for white girls.
Read the full interview at https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/09/12/187316369/little-women-remixed-but-not-reimagined

Here, the March family is recently freed from enslavement, living in the Freedmen’s Colony of Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. While the father is away working with the Corinth Freedmen’s Colony, Mammy and her four daughters live together in a life full of love, but not without struggle.

The sisters are absolutely devoted to one another and to Mammy, but they’re each very different. Their lives are full of work and often frustrations. Being free does not mean being truly in control of their lives or free from discrimination and otherness, as is made plain by the white missionaries and Union soldiers who control so much of the day-to-day life of the people of Roanoke.

I don’t believe I’ve ever read a book told from the perspective of formerly enslaved young women, and the writing here is incredibly powerful in showing the impact on the sisters’ worldview, sense of self, and need for true liberation. The book absolutely shows that even those abolitionists devoted to emancipation weren’t necessarily devoted to the concept of equality. While the term micro-aggression wouldn’t have existed at the time, the concept itself is very plainly evident in even the most well-meaning but still hurtful of exchanges. As Meg and Jo discuss:

“…So why does it enrage me?”
“Because,” Jo told her. “They’re only ever speaking for us, and about us. Rarely with us. Even when they have our best interest in mind, how could they know it without our input? The person who believes they know best, still, in some small way in some interior place they’ve yet to interrogate, does not truly comprehend equality…”

So Many Beginnings preserves many of the characteristics of the March sisters, but with shifts in meaning and importance. Amy is not a spoiled, obnoxious brat here (yes, my anti-Amy bias is showing!) — instead, Amethyst, called Amy, is cherished and protected. As the youngest child, she doesn’t remember enslavement the way the older sisters do, and the family is determined to help her hold onto the joy of innocence for as long as possible, even if that means indulging her and not making demands of her. Beth is really interesting here as well. While still sickly, she’s also inspired by a higher purpose and an ambition that propel her forward. Meg and Jo too, while sticking to some basic framework (Meg dreams of marriage, Jo uses her words to change the world), have a completely different set of experiences and motivations. The characters are each unique and fascinating.

I was not aware of the American Colonization Society or of the history of Roanoke Island before reading this book, and it’s eye-opening to realize how much of the American past is still not discussed in meaningful ways. Hopefully, So Many Beginnings will bring awareness and stimulate discussions amongst its readers, particularly within its target YA audience.

So Many Beginnings is a powerful, moving, and lovely novel. I enjoyed both the Little Women framework and the new take on the story, and most especially, the March sisters themselves.

Highly recommended.

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29Sep2021

Book Review: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Under the Whispering Door
Author: TJ Klune
Publisher: Tor Books
Publication date: October 21, 2021
Length: 373 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.
Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop’s owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.
But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.
When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
Under the Whispering Door is a contemporary fantasy about a ghost who refuses to cross over and the ferryman he falls in love with.

I absolutely adored TJ Klune’s 2020 novel, The House in the Cerulean Sea, so I had very high expectations for Under the Whispering Door. While I enjoyed this novel, it doesn’t quite live up to my (admittedly super high) expectations, but it’s still a sweet, lovely read.

In Under the Whispering Door, we have a very unpleasant first encounter with lead character Wallace Price. Wallace is a powerful, wealthy partner in a powerful, wealthy law firm, and an absolutely awful person. His whole life revolves around his work, and he’s completely heartless in dealing with an employee in need.

Which makes it kind of ironic that he soon drops dead from a heart attack.

When Wallace regains awareness, he’s at his own funeral, which is attended only by his business partners and his ex-wife, none of whom have anything good to say about the dearly departed. But there’s also a stranger there — a young woman whom Wallace has never seen before, who takes charge and informs Wallace that (a) he’s dead and (b) she’s a Reaper, there to escort him to his next step on the journey.

Where they end up is at a strange little tea shop in the woods, run by a kind man named Hugo, and inhabited by Hugo’s ghost grandfather and ghost dog. The tea shop is a real place, with real (living) customers, but it also houses the door to the next world, a portal for dead souls when they’re ready to move on. It’s a lot to take in, and Wallace goes through all the stages of denial and anger and so on — but ultimately, he comes to accept that what’s happening to him is real.

The longer Wallace remains at the tea house, the more he begins to reclaim something like his own humanity, as his contact with the people of the tea house helps him to see how terrible he’s been, and to remember times in his life when he actually experienced the joy of caring and being kind.

The book deals with loss and sorrow and depression throughout, and while the overall tone is whimsical, there’s a seriousness underlying everything that keeps the story grounded even during its most fantastical or silly episodes.

I loved the characters. Hugo, the ferryman, is kind and patient and possesses endless wells of empathy. I got a huge kick out of his grandfather Nelson (and also the very good dog Apollo). Mei, the Reaper, is one character that I couldn’t quite connect with — her scenes are always entertaining, but I didn’t feel that I had a very good grasp on who she was as a person.

Wallace is a tricky one, so utterly unlikeable to start with. It’s a real achievement that the author is able to take this awful person and show his development so carefully and believably that by the end, we really do care about him and want the best for him.

The plot itself isn’t always completely logical, in my opinion — the tea house is perhaps a little too weird to actually function in the real world as it does. And where even is it, besides being in the woods? But these little quibbles don’t really matter.

Ultimately, Under the Whispering Door is a lovely book about it never being too late to become a better person and about finding and seizing joy and choosing kindess wherever possible.

TJ Klune has quickly become one of my favorite authors, and I’ll read whatever he writes next! And meanwhile, I’m going to need to spend some time on his backlist.

Don’t miss Under the Whispering Door!

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26Sep2021

Book Review: An Observant Wife by Naomi Ragen

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: An Observant Wife
Author: Naomi Ragen
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication date: September 14, 2021
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

In this rich and compassionate novel, An Observant Wife, Naomi Ragen continues the love story between newly observant California-girl Leah and ultra-Orthodox widower Yaakov from An Unorthodox Match.
From the joy of their wedding day surrounded by supportive friends and family, Yaakov and Leah are soon plunged into the complex reality of their new lives together as Yaakov leaves his beloved yeshiva to work in the city, and Leah confronts the often agonizing restrictions imposed by religious laws governing even the most intimate moments of their married lives. Adding to their difficulties is the hostility of some in the community who continue to view Leah as a dangerous interloper, questioning her sincerity and adherence to religious laws and spreading outrageous rumors. In the midst of their heartfelt attempts to reach a balance between their human needs and their spiritual obligations, the discovery of a secret, forbidden relationship between troubled teenage daughter Shaindele and a local boy precipitates a maelstrom of life-changing consequences for all.

In An Unorthodox Match, we were introduced to Leah, a 30-something woman who turns to ultra-Orthodox Judaism after leading a mostly secular life, desperate for meaning and true connection to something greater than herself. As she enters the religious community of Boro Park in Brooklyn, she comes to care for a widowed man named Yaakov and his motherless children.

Here, in An Observant Wife, we follow Leah and Yaakov as the story continues with their wedding and early marriage. Leah has found true love with a good and kind man who loves her back, and she’s found fulfillment by becoming a mother to his young children, whom she loves unreservedly. She’s also made piece with his 17-year-old daugher Shaindele, who in the first book was set on sabotaging the relationship, but has now come to accept and even appreciate Leah’s innate goodness and the joy she’s brought back to their little family.

While Leah is committed to her family and to the complicated rules of behavior that come with with life in the religious community, the community does not truly accept her. Seemingly innocent moments get blown out of proportion and become the fodder for increasingly hostile gossip. When Shaindele is unwise and gets involved in a secret relationship with the black sheep son of a powerful family, the scandal can only be contained by agreeing to a harsh set of decrees from her school principle, but these in turn put Shaindele at risk. And when Leah and Yaakov take a stand to protect her, their entire way of life, as well as their family’s safety, is on the line.

Without going into detail, I will say that once again the author delivers an insider’s look into a world that feels like a completely alien culture. Even as someone raised in an observant Jewish household, I find this setting among the ultra-Orthodox startling and eye-opening. The rules governing every single moment of one’s life seem oppressive and often degrading to me, yet the author does an effective job of conveying how the people within the community find meaning and reinforcement of their faith by virtue of these guidelines for how to live a proper life.

The book perhaps spends too much time on introspection, as we follow the thoughts and feelings of not just Leah, but also Yaakov, Shaindele, and the family’s grandmother, Fruma Esther. It’s interesting to see how they deal with their lives and their religious obligations, but the plot can bog down when there are pages of contemplation and inner turmoil.

The plot takes some dramatic turns, and by the end, I was very invested in the characters’ well-being and their relationships. I did feel that the wrap-up was a little too neat and ideal, but the path to get there was certainly worthwhile.

Overall, An Observant Wife is a fascinating look into a world that can feel like a throwback to an earlier century for a 21st century reader, yet it’s set very much in the contemporary world of the ultra-Orthodox. I really came to care for the characters and could appreciate their devotion to their way of life, even while knowing that the religious elements that would absolute send me running in the other direction if they ever applied to my own life.

This book and An Unorthodox Match are both worth reading — the unusual setting and the memorable characters bring this world and its people to life.

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24Sep2021

Audiobook Review: Miss Kopp Investigates by Amy Stewart

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Miss Kopp Investigates (Kopp Sisters, #7)
Author: Amy Stewart
Narrator: Christina Moore
Publisher: Mariner Books
Publication date: September 7 , 2021
Print length: 320 pages
Audiobook length: 8 hours 17 minutes
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher; audiobook via Audible
Rating:

Life after the war takes an unexpected turn for the Kopp sisters, but soon enough, they are putting their unique detective skills to use in new and daring ways.
Winter 1919: Norma is summoned home from France, Constance is called back from Washington, and Fleurette puts her own plans on hold as the sisters rally around their recently widowed sister-in-law and her children. How are four women going to support themselves?
A chance encounter offers Fleurette a solution: clandestine legal work for a former colleague of Constance’s. She becomes a “professional co-respondent,” posing as the “other woman” in divorce cases so that photographs can be entered as evidence to procure a divorce. While her late-night assignments are both exciting and lucrative, they put her on a collision course with her own family, who would never approve of such disreputable work. One client’s suspicious behavior leads Fleurette to uncover a much larger crime, putting her in the unlikely position of amateur detective.
In Miss Kopp Investigates, Amy Stewart once again brilliantly captures the women of this era—their ambitions for the future as well as the ties that bind—at the start of a promising new decade.

The Kopp Sisters books are a mix of historical fact and fictional storytelling, as author Amy Stewart follows the lives of three real sisters and brings them to glorious life through her excellent writing.

In Miss Kopp Investigates, the 7th book in the series, the three Kopp sisters have returned home to New Jersey in the aftermath of World War I, but all is not well. Their older brother Francis has died suddenly, leaving behind a pregnant wife (Bessie), two children, and piles of debt. The sisters are grieving their loss, but they’re also the Kopp sisters — which means that they absolutely do not wallow or give up. Instead, they stand beside their bereaved sister-in-law and come up with plans to support her and the children, even though this means giving up their own dreams.

For Constance, who’s been the lead character in the series so far, this means turning down her dream job, a position with the Bureau of Investigations in Washington training women in law enforcement. For Norma, the bossy, curmudgeonly sister whose crazy ideas about messenger pigeons ended up working brilliantly during the war, it’s a return to New Jersey instead of staying in Europe to do relief work with a friend. And for Fleurette, the youngest sister who dreams of stardom on the stage, it’s abandoning her hopes of moving out and preparing for her return to her singing career.

Alas, poor Fleurette also has a damaged voice after a bad case of strep throat, and her once-beautiful voice isn’t coming back to her as it was. Now, with a new plan to support Bessie, Fleurette feels sad and unfulfilled and as though all her hopes are gone. Enter John Wood, a slick-talking divorce lawyer already acquainted with the Kopps, with a proposition for Fleurette. Why not use her acting skills in a new and different way? Divorces in New Jersey can only move forward if there’s cause, and he has clients who need evidence of adultery, even if none actually occurred. Fleurette’s role would be to be photographed (fully clothed!! nothing actually unseemly!!) being embraced by a man as if caught in the act. Her face would not be shown, she’d be protected by one of the law firm employees at all times, and she’d earn very good money for her efforts.

At first, Fleurette is shocked… but then she starts to think about it as playing a role. She’d pick her own costumes and characters, put in an evening’s work, and would earn enough to really contribute to the household. Why not?

I was surprised to discover that Miss Kopp Investigates focuses on Fleurette’s adventures — her first time as the lead character. Constance is mostly in the background, and while Norma is her grumpy, bossy self here, she’s also secondary. I admit that I was a little hesitant about spending that much time with Fleurette, who has often seemed shallow and self-centered in previous books, but I ended up being delighted by her fresh voice and her determination (as well as her occasional silliness and vanity).

Without going too much further into the plot details, I can say that Fleurette’s story takes some unexpected turns, and while her pursuits are done on her own and in secret, her story still intersects throughout with her sisters’ and with their shared goal of supporting and protecting their brother’s family.

The author once again provides snappy dialogue and distinct characters — both the Kopp sisters as well as the supporting and minor characters — and roots it all in a portrayal of post-war life that feels real and well-researched.

The plot zips along, and while settling back into post-war life is perhaps not quite as exciting as the war years, it’s still entertaining to see how the Kopp sisters fend for themselves and chart their own course.

The audiobook is wonderful, with the talented Christina Moore once again absolutely shining as she brings Constance, Norma, and Fleurette to life. Listening to her speaking as Norma, we immediately know exactly what sort of person she is — tough, take-charge, no backing down, and probably a nightmare to actually live with. Likewise for Fleurette — the narrator absolutely nails her youth, her vision of herself and what she yearns for, just by speaking in her voice.

Amy Stewart has shared that this is the last Kopp Sisters book, at least for a while. She hasn’t said she’ll never go back to their stories, just that she has no plans to do so at this time and will be working on other projects. While that’s very sad news and I hope she does end up continuing this series, Miss Kopp Investigates also ends in such a way that we readers can feel satisfied with where we’re leaving the family. As the author has said, she’s leaving them in a good place, and we can still have the pleasure of imagining what’s next!

I do love this series, and recommend the books whenever I can. If you’ve read this far, you’ll absolutely want to read Miss Kopp Investigates! And if you’re an audiobook listener, then do check out the audiobooks for the Kopp Sisters series. You’ll be in for a treat!

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The series so far:
Girl Waits With Gun
Lady Cop Makes Trouble
Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions
Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit
Kopp Sisters on the March
Dear Miss Kopp

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Signed copies available via Downtown Brown Books

19Sep2021

Book Review: The Pick-Up by Miranda Kenneally

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Pick-Up
Author: Miranda Kenneally
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication date: September 7, 2021
Length: 250 pages
Genre: YA contemporary
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

When Mari hails a rideshare to a music festival, the last thing she expects is for the car to pick up a gorgeous guy along the way. Mari doesn’t believe in dating–it can only end with a broken heart. Besides, she’s only staying at her dad’s house in Chicago for the weekend. How close can you get to a guy in three days?
TJ wants to study art in college, but his family’s expectations cast a long shadow over his dreams. When he meets Mari in the back of a rideshare, he feels alive for the first time in a long time.
Mari and TJ enter the festival together and share an electric moment but get separated in a crowd with seemingly no way to find each other. When fate reunites them (with a little help from a viral hashtag), they’ll have to decide: was it love at first sight, or the start of nothing more than a weekend fling?

Miranda Kenneally, author of the terrific Hundred Oaks series, is back with a fresh new stand-alone YA novel. The PIck-Up is a quick read with sweet romantic moments as well as more serious reflections on family and damaged relationships.

When TJ and Mari meet in a ride-share, their immediate attraction gives each a fresh burst of hope and excitement, and as they spend time together at the music festival, their connection seems instant and electric. At first, seeing them separated by the crowd and trying to find one another again, despite not exchanging contact info, I thought we were in for a story about missed connections and long searches. But thankfully, this wasn’t that!

Instead, TJ and Mari do manage to reconnect, thanks to the intervention of their friends, and commit to spending more time together over the weekend.

They each bring baggage, though. TJ is in Chicago for the weekend staying with his older brother, to whom he always compares himself and finds himself lacking. TJ’s family expects him to study business when he starts college in the fall, but he secretly yearns to pursue his passion for art.

Meanwhile, Mari is staying with her dad, stepmom, and stepsister for the weekend before returning to her home in Tennessee. Her parents divorced after her father’s affair with the woman he ended up marrying, and Mari’s mother is so consumed by anger and bitterness that she takes it out on Mari. Her verbal abuse has taken a frightening turn to the physical, and Mari both wants to stay with her father and is scared to mention it, for fear that it’ll just make things with her mother even worse.

As TJ and Mari spend time together, they each experience the highs of early attraction and emotional connection, but each also has to contend with their own fears and insecurities.

The story is told in chapters that alternate between TJ and Mari as narrators, and it’s a really effective way to show how their perspectives on the same events can be different and still make sense to the person experiencing it. While they’re both struggling with family issues, Mari’s are much more serious, and her scenes of confronting her father with her feelings and her fears are deeply affecting.

While there are plenty of serious matters portrayed throughout The Pick-Up, there’s also a lot of fun, from scenes at the festival to a Ferris wheel ride to goofy beach shenanigans. Mari and TJ have chemistry, and I really enjoyed Mari’s stepsister as a character as well.

Miranda Kenneally has a gift for creating well-drawn teen characters who feel real. They’re not idealized — they’re complicated and messy and emotional, and that’s what makes them so compelling to read about.

I really enjoyed The Pick-Up, just like I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve read by this author. Check it out!

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19Sep2021

Book Review: When Sorrows Come (October Daye, #15) by Seanan McGuire

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: When Sorrows Come (October Daye, #15)
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: DAW
Publication date: September 14, 2021
Print length: 384 pages
Genre: Urban fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Toby’s getting married! Now in hardcover, the fifteenth novel of the Hugo-nominated, New York Times-bestselling October Daye urban fantasy series.
It’s hard to be a hero. There’s always something needing October “Toby” Daye’s attention, and her own desires tend to fall by the wayside in favor of solving the Kingdom’s problems. That includes the desire to marry her long-time suitor and current fiancé, Tybalt, San Francisco’s King of Cats. She doesn’t mean to keep delaying the wedding, it just sort of…happens. And that’s why her closest friends have taken the choice out of her hands, ambushing her with a court wedding at the High Court in Toronto. Once the High King gets involved, there’s not much even Toby can do to delay things…
…except for getting involved in stopping a plot to overthrow the High Throne itself, destabilizing the Westlands entirely, and keeping her from getting married through nothing more than the sheer volume of chaos it would cause. Can Toby save the Westlands and make it to her own wedding on time? Or is she going to have to choose one over the other?
Includes an all-new bonus novella!

I’m willing to put a stake in the ground and state definitely that all October Daye books deserve at least 4 stars. (Well, maybe not quite books 2 & 3, but the series was still finding its footing at that point, so we’ll just pretend those were growing pains.)

15 books in, I’m at that difficult point in a series where I love the characters so, so much that I just want them all to be perfectly happy all the time. But where’s the excitement in that? So naturally, even though this book is very much about our lead character’s wedding, knowing October Daye, it absolutely can’t go off without a hitch. And lots of blood.

In When Sorrows Come, Toby and Tybalt are finally almost at their wedding day. Toby very much wants to marry Tybalt, but also very much does not want anything to do with wedding planning. Just tell her when to show up, basically. And so, the whole gang is off to Toronto, to the demesne of the High King, to celebrate the couple’s big day.

And of course, they stumble right into a nefarious plot to overthrow the High King, complete with Doppelgangers, assassination attempts, and a household thrown into chaos. What’s Toby to do but wade into the thick of things, figure out the deadly plot, and still make it to her wedding in one piece?

The story is action-packed, but also leaves time for Toby to reflect on how her relationship with Tybalt has grown over time, her relationships with the other members of her found family, and what might come next in the tangled world of Faerie.

All the favorite characters are here, Toby has some lovely reunions with long-lost connections, and there are some teary-eyed sentimental beats that left me feeling swept away. Plus, as I mentioned, buckets of blood.

When Sorrows Come includes the humor and wit that feature in all Seanan McGuire books. I adore the writing! Some choice selections from minor moments:

One entire wall was ovens and stoves and open holes leading to oceans of flame that probably had some reasonable name like “pizza ovens” or “big fucking baking place,” but looked to me a lot more like gateways into the human concept of Hell.

… and …

Maybe the knowe understood that we really weren’t civilized people and was just trying to save us the embarrassment of me forgetting which fork was supposed to go in my salad versus which fork was supposed to go in the person I was trying to kill.

… and …

If everyone got to stab someone on my wedding day except for me, I was going to be even more annoyed than I already was.

… and …

Being fae doesn’t make you immune to being a massive nerd. It just gives you more time to really plumb the depths of your potential nerdery.

You get the idea.

I gave this book 4.5 stars instead of 5, mainly because the sedition plotline really is a way to prolong the lead-up to the wedding, and the more it stretched on, the more annoyed I got at the delay. Just let Toby and Tybalt get married already!

Needless to say, the book ends with the wedding, and includes a bonus novella at the end, “And With Reveling”, set at the wedding reception, that adds a nice little finish filled with humor and love.

It’s often a fear that in an ongoing series, once the wedding happens, the story is basically done. But clearly, Toby and Tybalt getting married doesn’t equate to a Happily-Ever-After, The End, Nothing More to Say. There are many challenges and adventures ahead of them, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

After their Land of Disney honeymoon.

In case it isn’t perfectly clear, this is my favorite urban fantasy series, and I recommend it to one and all. Start at the beginning with Rosemary and Rue (which I just re-read via audio this week), and keep going. It gets better and better, and you’ll love the characters as much as I do.

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26Aug2021

Book Review: Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Instructions for Dancing
Author: Nicola Yoon
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication date: June 3, 2021
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Young adult
Source: Purchased
Rating:

In this romantic page-turner from the author of Everything, Everything and The Sun is Also a Star, Evie has the power to see other people’s romantic fates–what will happen when she finally sees her own?
Evie Thomas doesn’t believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually.
As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance Studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything–including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he’s only just met.
Falling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it’s that no one escapes love unscathed. But as she and X dance around and toward each other, Evie is forced to question all she thought she knew about life and love. In the end, is love worth the risk?

This YA book made me so, so happy. It’s sweet and sad, and makes me want to dance!

To understand Evie, the main character, you need to know a few key facts: Evie is a high school senior, and a former fan of romance novels. Evie is also the daughter of recently divorced parents. A year ago, Evie’s parents split up, and Evie discovered that her father was having an affair. Now she lives with her mother and younger sister, bottling up her anger at her father and refusing to see him, and she’s absolutely sworn off romance and love stories.

What I’ve learned over the last three weeks is that all my old romance novels ended too quickly. Chapters were missing from the end. If they told the real story—the entire story—each couple would’ve eventually broken up, due to neglect or boredom or betrayal or distance or death.

She’s seen it in real life — two people who were supposedly in love end up with nothing but pain and betrayal and ashes of a relationship. Why should she believe in happily ever afters?

Given enough time, all love stories turn into heartbreak stories. Heartbreak = love + time.

Through a strange set of circumstances, Evie winds up with a dancing instruction book that leads her to the La Brea Dance Studio, a small studio whose main clientele seem to be pre-wedding couples trying to master their first dance. The studio is owned by an older couple who are magnificent dancers and who’ve clearly been in love all their lives. While there, Evie meets X, the couple’s teen-aged grandson who’s recently dropped out of his senior year of high school and moved to LA to pursue a music career.

When Fifi, the domineering dance instructor, ropes Evie and X into being partners in an upcoming amateur ballroom dance competition, the two become friendly and then eventually acknowledge their chemistry, which grows along with their hustle, salsa, and tango skills.

“Anyway, you can play to thank us. Every good bonfire needs a hot guy playing guitar.” “You don’t have to play,” I tell him. “But you still have to be hot,” Cassidy says. “I don’t mind doing both,” he says with a grin.

Meanwhile, Evie has come into a strange gift: When she sees a couple kiss, she gets a flash of their entire romance — how they met, how they are in that moment, and what’s to come. This means that she sees the end of the relationships, not just the swoony romantic bits. And for Evie, that’s just further proof that love doesn’t last… so why even bother?

It’s not hard to predict that Evie and X will get together, but I won’t ruin things by going into further detail on how they connect, what obstacles they face, and how it turns out. Let me just share some observations instead:

I loved that this isn’t a by-the-numbers romance, with a meet-cute, initial attraction, getting together, obstacle/break-up, and happy ending. Yes, some of these beats are included, but the overall flow of the book is different enough to keep the reading unpredictable.

Evie’s family life is given equal weight to the romance elements, and this is critical. Evie’s perception of love and commitment have been perhaps permanently scarred by her parents’ divorce, but as the novel progresses, she learns more about long-term love and relationships, and learns that situations aren’t all one way or their other. By learning to let go of her bitterness, she’s able to start allowing some shut-off family connections back into her life, and she can’t help but acknowledge that this is much healthier for her.

“You think because your father and I didn’t last, our love was any less real?”

A harder lesson for Evie is X’s approach to life — saying yes to experiences, living in the moment, and grabbing joy when it’s in front of you. Evie is so consumed by endings that she’s unable to appreciate the middle parts — all the smaller and larger moments that make time together so valuable, no matter how long or short that time might be.

It doesn’t matter that love ends. It just matters that there’s love.

I feel like this would make a great movie, since my one complaint about the book is that I wanted more dancing scenes! At the same time, I have to acknowledge that it’s hard to make a written dance scene compelling, and while the author does a great job with this, I could only satisfy my need by diving down a dance video rabbit hole on YouTube.

Instructions for Dancing is a moving, well-written, thoughtful YA novel with some beautiful moments as well as heartbreak. With captivating characters, a hint of magic (that goes unexplained, but somehow doesn’t distract from the contemporary feel of the plot), great dance moments, and even some humor, this is a book that shouldn’t be missed!

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