Books read in June

 Pride month, we barely knew ye. I had a massive book hangover from rereading all of the Murderbot Diaries in May, so I didn't read as much this month. As always, DM me for trigger warnings. 

 

I was delighted to find that the second Dorothy Gentleman book available to check out on Libby, so I did so immediately. I adored the first book, Murder by Memory, so much that I bought it. I love what the author, Olivia Waite, has created with this series (queernorm retrofuturistic murder mystery). In this book, a baby in a basket has turned up on Dorothy's nephew Ruthie's and his husband's doorstep, which is especially mysterious because everyone on the ship is supposed to be sterile until they get to the planet they're heading to in a few hundred years. Dorothy investigates and starts to suspect foul play when the mother turns up in a new body with no memory of the baby. This story was very interesting and gave us even more details about the ship's culture; everything seems much more 1930s than I originally noticed. Dorothy's pocket watch is a smartwatch, but she has to write out paperwork by hand?? Come on. Also the cover confused me, as the people are all dressed like Victorians (1890s) for some reason? I didn't enjoy this book as much as the first one (it also suffers from Being Too Short), but I'm looking forward to reading the next book when it comes out.  ★★★★

During my last probably-unnecessary trip to the thrift store, I found and bought God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines (along with a huge stack of books). I was excited to get this as it'd been on my to-read list for ages. Vines is best known for his viral video where he gives a presentation that would become this book. He goes over the clobber verses (the ones Christians use to reject gay people) and their scriptural, historical, and cultural context, which I expected, but he also uses theological arguments as to why Christians should accept gay people, which I found interesting. While not a Biblical scholar (officially, as far as I can tell), Vines has thoroughly studied this issue, including people who take the opposite stance as him, and has tons of meticulous endnote citations (dozens per chapter). I did find it a bit naive for Vines to use the argument that even though the Bible reflects the deeply misogynistic cultures of its writers, surely no one today would actually think that women have no value (and therefore we mustn't think the same of gay people etc.). There are tons of Christians to whom the Bible's low view and treatment of women is a feature, not a bug. The book was written in 2014, though, and we had yet to see the virulent misogyny the rest of the 2010s would bring about. This book is very firmly for Christians; this would be a great book for LGBTQ+ people (themselves Christians or not) to give to their Christian parents to try to get them on board. I do recommend this, although I did find it slightly surprising Vines didn't use David and Jonathan as an example of a gay commitment ceremony in the Bible (he probably understandably didn't want to push it). ★★★★, lots of references to sex and sexual assault but that is not what chili ratings are for

 

The same day I finished G&tGC, I read Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. I had bought this book during Bookshop.org's pride month sale, but I stupidly forgot to apply the coupon code; to add insult to injury, Bookshop.org had a free shipping weekend during The Evil Smile's sale event after I made my purchase. Ah well. I'd come across Ocean Vuong's poetry online and found it beautiful and impactful, but it was "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" that pushed me over the edge to buy this book. This is an excellent poetry collection: beautiful and painful and nostalgic and raw and loving. I meant to savor it, but I just had to keep reading. May I one day write a fraction as wonderfully. ★★★★   🌶🌶

January books

The first two books I read in January were picture books, which I decided to count in my reading log spreadsheet (adapted from BookRiot's; it is last year's so I had to change the dates etc.) but not in my StoryGraph (follow/friend me!). I bought both of them during Barnes & Noble's half-off books sale in late December. 

A Piñata in a Pine Tree: A Latino Twelve Days of Christmas by Pat Mora, illustrated by Magaly Morales 

This is a cute latine take on the Twelve Days of Christmas song, with stuff like tamalitos and farolitos taking the place of the birds and people of various professions in the original song. Pat Mora has written tons of Hispanic books for children and is very influential in the field, while the artist's first name is the same as one of my relatives. Behind the little girl cavorting with her stuff, we see her parents prepare, greet the visiting abuelita, leave (abuelita is babysitting), and come back with the final Christmas gift: a new baby sibling. Very cute, although the Spanglish may bother some (i.e. my dad and by extension me). I do recommend this. ★★★★½

Jan Brett's The Nutcracker, written and illustrated by Jan Brett

Jan Brett has been known for decades for her beautifully illustrated, richly detailed children's books. I was given her The Twelve Days of Christmas mini picture book in kindergarten by my teacher as a Christmas gift and reread it every year. This one is similarly lovely; I love the details of animals playing musical instruments on each page. I also recommend this one. ★★★★½

 

It feels like everyone I follow/whose posts I'm forced to view despite not following them online is obsessed with the TV show Heated Rivalry. I am not immune to FOMO; I would have watched it, but my brother cancelled his HBO Max account. 😢 The next best thing? The books the show is based on. As a stickler for series book order, I read Game Changer, the first book in the series, then Heated Rivalry, the second, through my public library and Libby (both ebooks). 

 

Game Changer by Rachel Reid

This is a famous athlete x normal person romance, where the famous athlete is a professional hockey player named Scott and the normal person is a service worker named Kip. They meet-cute at the smoothie shop Kip works at; after drinking Kip's recommended blueberry smoothie, Scott breaks his losing streak, to everyone's delight. Obviously that means he has to keep coming back before every game to buy another blueberry smoothie--just to keep winning games, definitely not to see the cute smoothie barista... Kip and Scott fall in love, but being famous in a bro-y sport means Scott is closeted, and Kip isn't sure being back in the closet is worth it. I liked this book a lot and found it both sweet and spicy. The characters' issues with self-worth and being in the closet felt realistic, and I rooted for things to work out for them. ★★★★ 🌶🌶🌶🌶

 

Heated Rivalry (Game Changer #2) by Rachel Reid

Reid's mlm hockey series seems to be loosely interconnected, and you don't really have to read GC first or else you're lost (although it does provide nice background context for That One Scene that Scott & Kip show up in). Shane is a Canadian good boy and does everything by the book; Ilya is a Russian bad boy and is always up in everyone's faces being a jerk. As the two best players in the entire hockey league, they have been in a ~heated rivalry~ since their rookie seasons--and have been secretly hooking up since then. I want to say this book takes place over 10 years? They wish they could quit each other (Brokeback Mountain reference) but can't. Can they open their hearts to love and be themselves without sacrificing the sport they love? I also liked this book a lot and recommend it to fans of the "rivals to lovers" trope. ★★★★ 🌶🌶🌶🌶

Weirdly enough, I was on the waiting list for a couple of weeks for the first book (which I expected), was shockingly able to read Heated Rivalry immediately with no wait, and am now on the waiting list for the third book... which is over 10 weeks long. Why.

The final ebook in S.T. Lynn's Black trans fairytales series became free last month, and I happily snapped it up. I enjoyed Lynn's takes on The Little Mermaid and Cinderella and was really looking forward to this one, as Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairytales. Beauty's Beast is very similar to most BatB takes that I've read; like Mer Made, it's based on the Disney movie (the servants were enchanted into furniture/furnishings). The Beast has antlers and communicates using sign language, which I thought was interesting. This novella is quite short, and I wished for more character development (especially for the relationship between Beauty and the Beast), but I liked the world the writer created. Their relationship felt more like friendship than romance, which is not IMO a bad thing. There were some writing issues and errors (I swear STL made Gaston blond in their book, but in his last description he has black hair??), which took me out of the story. Ultimately I did enjoy this, but the errors made me glad I waited to get this when it was free. There is a little transphobia, and some violence and blood/wounds. ★★★½ 

I bought two books from my friends at Something Novel Books during their pop-up last month, and I shockingly (for me) read one of them within days of buying it! I had watched and enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club movie on Netflix (the cast is excellent, especially Helen Mirren), so I was excited to read the book. I enjoyed the book even more than the movie! Four senior citizens at an English retirement village that used to be a nunnery get together to solve cold case murders in the Thursday Murder Club. To their shock and excitement, they all of a sudden have 2 new (and 1 old) murders to solve! In the process of sleuthing, they uncover the secrets of some of their community members. There is a lot that happens in this book, and a lot to keep track of. We often spend a chapter in various characters' heads, but the story is mainly told from Joyce's diary entries and Elizabeth's perspective. This book is also deeply funny; I was chortling at the reference desk reading it. I loved all the main characters and can't wait to read the rest of the books! This book is a bit too sad and violent to truly count as cozy mystery, but it's pretty close. Trigger warnings for the usual things you expect in a murder mystery (murder, blood, violence, nice police characters, etc.) as well as suicide, grief, and slight xenophobia. ★★★★ 

Book Review: Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite

A mind is a terrible thing to erase...

Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty's most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.

Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.

Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the [person whose] body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes...

I discovered this book on Libby while looking through their Pride Month featured books. It sounded fascinating, so I joined the holds list and read it when it became available. 

Listen: this book is so freaking good! You already know I love mysteries, especially cozy and/or classic British mysteries, and this book is just that, only with a futuristic sci-fi setting. We're on a generation ship going from Earth to some far-off distant planet that humanity will live on several hundred years from now. They've figured out how to store people's consciousnesses or minds in "books", like documents in a hard drive, and you can just get a new body when your current one gets old and is no longer up to living. Consequently, everyone on the generation ship is functionally immortal. The generation ship is huge and high-tech, with lots of residential neighborhoods and businesses that people can run as they are interested; capitalism is no more, although there is mention of "posh" apartment complexes, so it sounds like there's still a little income inequality and class differences for some reason. The "Her Majesty's ship" thing makes me think this ship is English, which would I guess provide a reason for that, plus the whole "we're going to find a new planet to live on" which is colonization in a sci-fi way.

I was a bit confused at first, as the book just throws you into what is happening (Dorothy waking up in someone else's body), but that's actually perfect because Dorothy is confused as to what has happened to her, and it makes you feel her confusion. Dorothy has been offline for many years, her consciousness preserved in her "book". Unbeknownst to Dorothy, her nephew Ruthie (very Bertie Wooster-ish, if Bertie was also a software & mechanical engineering genius) wrote a program into the ship's computer that any ship's detective (which Dorothy is) whose book is destroyed gets their consciousness immediately put into the nearest available body. The thing is? Somebody was murdered right before this happened, and the murderer may have been the person whose body Dorothy is in... The chatty ship's computer is offline due to an electrical storm, so Dorothy has to figure out what's going on without any help or her detective status to get her places. Dorothy herself is one of those very practical British aunts who solves mysteries and knits, and she's queer! She's attracted to her accidental host's lovely ex-girlfriend (a fellow knitter who owns a yarn shop), but the ex-girlfriend hates her (ex's) guts and may have had something to do with the murder...

I'm going to stop there as I don't want to spoil it for you, but I really enjoyed this book and wished it was longer! The worldbuilding was very interesting, and I thought it was fascinating how they drank beverages that let them experience memories (a summer rainstorm, for example). I naturally loved the Library, where all the consciousness books are kept. There were lots of little mentions/analyses of human nature, and we meet interesting characters I hope we get to know better in future books (this is the first of a series). I cannot wait for future books!

Score: ★★★★.5 out of 5 stars (half star off for being too short lol)
Spice score: 1 instance of sexual attraction but otherwise zero
Read in: June 20
From: my public library - borrowed via Libby, read in the Kindle app

Genres/classification: mystery, science fiction, futuristic sci-fi, classic British mystery a la Agatha Christie (especially with the aunt element)

Representation: sapphic/wlw (possibly lesbian) main character, several sapphic secondary characters, several canon sapphic couples, gay couple, 1 queer male character of color (Asian, I think), 1 Black woman minor character. As this is a near-utopian future there is no homophobia or transphobia or racism

Trigger warnings: murder, drowning death, toxic relationship where one partner is constantly lying to and manipulating the other (possibly cheating as well), putting someone's mind/consciousness into someone else's body without the consent of either party, financial fraud, distrust of police mention

December books

As you know, I've been on a cozy mystery kick lately, so I picked up The Glass Is Always Greener by Tamar Myers from the same thrift store I got my Agatha Christie books from (it also cost 50 cents). It's a Den of Antiquity novel, which is a series of cozy mysteries about a mystery-solving antiques dealer in the Southeast. (I refuse to call it the South; that would actually be the bottom third/half of the US. The south of the eastern part of the US should be called the Southeast, to be correct.) That sounded intriguing to me, as I like antique shops and cozy mysteries. Read TGIAG's synopsis here. Anyway, this is the type of book whose calling card is EXTREME ZANINESS. I was choking on it. Everyone is very South(east)ern and insane. I couldn't keep up with all the characters and their weird names and who they were to each other. Barnes & Noble says this was the last book in the series (there were 16?!?!), but I should still not be this lost. With a series this big, a newbie should be able to pick up any book and be able to keep up. The way Abby (the antiques dealer/mystery solver and narrator) described people's physical appearances was weird. Her petiteness (she's 4'7") and that of her mother was remarked upon way too often. The murder wasn't really explained that thoroughly, and even though it's the last? book of the series, it ends on a cliffhanger. I will not be keeping this book and I won't be reading the others in the series. 

Cover notes: The cover has nothing to do with the book at all. I don't think the artist read any of it. Abby's cat (who doesn't even come into the story at all) is shown in front of a broken window of green glass. The green glass in the story is not that of a window. I mean come on.

Trigger warnings: murder, death, corpse found in a freezer near food, stabbing mention, poison mention, homophobia, racist/transphobic character, lots of food talk, touching without consent, characters ignore boundaries

 

 

Next was a Savers find, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy by Frances Mayes, another Southeasterner. Mayes and her boyfriend Ed purchase and restore an old Tuscan farmhouse, and learn how to live and eat in Italy. The book is based on the journals she kept while doing this. Mayes was the head of Creative Writing at the university where she works, so of course this book was written beautifully. Her voice is soothing yet intelligent and interesting, and I liked seeing everything through her eyes. She's one of those writers who is familiar with all sorts of literary and historical sources/works and casually mentions what they say about what she's talking about at the moment (Virgil is mentioned the most). My mouth watered reading about the food they cooked and ate there in Italy. At least once in my life, I need to eat at a dinner party in Italy, surrounded by friends, conversation, laughter, and delicious food. She also talks about the churches, architecture, history, art, etc. of the places she and Ed visited there. It made me long to go back to Tuscany, and while I only lived there a month, I feel like she really captured its essence and light. The book also includes some recipes! Highly recommended, and guaranteed to inspire both wanderlust and hunger. 4.5/5 stars because I didn't want it to end lol

Trigger warnings: corpses of human and animals described, death, car accident(s), sex mentions, some Ugly Americanism, lots and lots of food and cooking talk 

 

 

The last book I read in December was The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes by C.S. Lewis, which is a compilation of things CSL wrote about reading and books. I had wanted it for ages and asked for it for Christmas. It was a fairly quick and enjoyable read, as of course I love CSL and books and reading. It made me want to read his books again. Highly recommended if you're a CSL fan and/or love books about reading. I cannot think of any trigger warnings, although he is scornful of people who only read "the right" and "modern" things (aka nonintellectuals). That does come off as a bit classist. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and am glad I asked for it for Christmas. 4.5/5 stars

I also reread Christmas with Anne, as I do every holiday season.

It's cozy mysteries season, m***********s

 (Not actually cursing at you; title is a reference to this iconic McSweeney's post)

I stayed the weekend at my parents' a few weeks ago (or maybe last month?) and I went to the thrift store in my hometown. You guys, the books were all 50 cents each and the DVDs were all $1 each!!! This puts my local Savers to shame. $2-5 a book or DVD? Ok, filthy capitalist.

Anyway, I bought a stack of old Agatha Christie paperbacks, which I wouldn't have done at Savers due to their prices. 50 cents a book!!! I read them all over the first half of this month. I highly recommend Agatha Christie novels if you are in a reading slump because they are exciting (murder! mystery!) yet comforting (like a lot of people, I grew up reading a lot of books by and about white people in the 1900s, plus you know the detective will solve the mystery), plus they're pretty short! These are the books I bought and read: 

• N or M
  
• Thirteen at Dinner
  
• Murder in Mesopotamia
  
• Sad Cypress
  
• The Clocks

They are all Hercule Poirot mysteries, with the exception of N or M, which is a Tommy & Tuppence mystery (never heard of this series). Tommy and Tuppence are a married middle-aged (read: 40s) couple that were spies in WWI (previous books?) and are bummed no one wants them to help during WWII because they're too old, until Tommy gets a spy assignment and Tuppence, refusing to be left out, joins (she's such a BAMF). They have to find a Nazi spy who may have infiltrated a sleepy English seaside town, and their only clue is N or M. They pretend to be strangers at the same weird inn to find the spy, and the novel is suspenseful throughout. I enjoyed this one, and I'm open to reading other T&T novels. 

The Hercule Poirot mysteries are mostly narrated by someone else who is helping him; usually his Watsonian friend whose name I don't remember (Thirteen at Dinner), or a nurse roped into helping him solve a murder (Murder in Mesopotamia), or another detective/spy friend who splits the POV/narration with his police sergeant friend (The Clocks). Sad Cypress was unique in that it just had omniscient third person narration. I was most intrigued by MiM due to its setting, as I've been to places of archeological interest in the Middle East before. 13aD was perhaps the most classic Hercule Poirot novel, while The Clocks was kind of the most different. It is set in the 1960s, for one thing, which I couldn't tell because Agatha's writing style stayed the same, so it felt the same as the 1930s. What tipped me off were a few era mentions, plus Hercule is old in this one. He doesn't even come into the novel until a third of the way through the book at the absolute earliest. Sad Cypress was kind of the saddest, and we miss out on the classic HP end monologue. 

Overall, I really enjoyed reading these books, and while I guessed parts of some of the mysteries, I never guessed the whole thing or the right person. These really made my reference desk shifts go by much more quickly, and I recommend them. I will be giving these away, though.

• N or M - 4 stars
• Thirteen at Dinner - 4 stars
• Murder in Mesopotamia - 4 stars
• Sad Cypress - 3.5 stars
• The Clocks - 3.5 stars

Trigger warnings: murder, gore, blood, dead bodies, guns, Nazis, poison, sexism, probably more stuff

Book review: Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen

Ok everybody, you know the words to this one: I picked up this British cozy mystery at the thrift store. It was intriguing because the heroine was royalty (daughter of a duke) and in line for the throne, but she's also a spy. Summary from the back of the book:

My ridiculously long name is Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie. [Despite being] thirty-fourth in line for the throne, I am, as they say, flat broke. When my brother, Binky, cut off my meager allowance, I bolted from Scotland--and my engagement to Fishface (I mean, Prince Siegfried)--for London, where I have:

a) built a fire in the hearth--entirely on my own, thank you very much

b) fallen for an absolutely unsuitable Irish peer

c) made a few quid housekeeping incognita, and 

d) been summoned by the Queen herself to spy on her playboy son.

Less than thrilled with this last bit, I'm wondering what to do when an arrogant Frenchman--who was trying to swipe our family estate!--winds up dead in my bathtub. Now, my new job is to clear my very long family name...

A note of clarification: Georgie did not leave Scotland because her brother stopped giving her an allowance; she bolted because the Queen "requested" her brother and his wife host a party where Prince Fishface would attend, with the aim of getting Georgie engaged to him. Georgie was like hell no and peaced out. Also, for the "fallen for [...] an Irish peer" part, she was just attracted to him but felt he was too dashing and handsome for her to trust. They do get closer as the book goes on. Also, "family name" refers to the surname, such as Windsor, not her super long name with all the middle names. I mean. That's elementary stuff. 

 Ok, so despite the silliness of the title (it sounds like a middle-grade book about a princess who's a spy), I enjoyed this book. I did feel that there were probably quite a few anachronisms (it's set in the early 1930s), such as Georgie's worldly friend talking about sex all the time, and Georgie being close to her Cockney working-class grandfather and being willing to clean despite being nobility, and errors with all the royalty and peer stuff, but luckily I don't know a huge amount about that, so I was able to enjoy the book. I felt that Georgie did too much sighing out loud for a Lady, but whatever. There were a lot of characters, but I didn't really have any trouble keeping them straight.The mystery was pretty good and kept me guessing, although I had my theories.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes cozy mysteries set in the British Isles, or historical fiction in the same location about royalty and gentry, but not to anyone who's really studied this, because I feel that the errors and anachronisms would make them pitch a fit. I'm going to try to track down the others from the library (it's the first in a series).

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: April 17
From: thrift store
Format: paperback
Status: probably giving away

Book review: Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae

I think I bought Plaid & Plagiarism from the thrift store. I had initially thought it was from Barnes & Noble, but I didn't buy it online and I don't think I wouldn't have bought it in person, even though it totally is my jam according to the cover and description.
It's a mystery! (lol)

Set in the weeks before the annual Inversgail Literature Festival in Scotland, Plaid and Plagiarism begins on a morning shortly after the four women take possession of their bookshop in the Highlands. Unfortunately, the move to Inversgail hasn’t gone as smoothly as they’d planned.
First, Janet Marsh is told she’ll have to wait before moving into her new home. Then she finds out the house has been vandalized. Again. The chief suspect? Una Graham, an advice columnist for the local paper—who’s trying to make a name for herself as an investigative reporter. When Janet and her business partners go looking for clues at the house, they find a body—it’s Una, in the garden shed, with a sickle in her neck. 
Who wanted Una dead? After discovering a cache of nasty letters, Janet and her friends are beginning to wonder who didn’t, including Janet’s ex-husband. Surrounded by a cast of characters with whom readers will fall in love, the new owners of Yon Bonnie Books set out to solve Una’s murder so they can get back to business.

Right? The Scottish setting makes this book unique (to me), as I generally read books set in the US or England. Owning a bookshop sounds just divine. Janet is a reference librarian who worked for years in a public library! Overall, I should've liked this book more than I did.

I kept losing track of the many characters. There are four (seriously) main characters: Janet, the librarian; Christine, her best friend who is a social worker; and their daughters, who are a lawyer and an investigative journalist, respectively, and whose names I can't be bothered to look up. I kept forgetting whose daughter was who, as well as who everybody was. Was X the constable (police officer), the man who used to own the bookstore, or somebody else? Una was the only person that I didn't mistake for anyone else, as her name is distinctive and she's the one who was murdered.

I knew this was a cozy mystery going in, as the protagonists own a bookstore, hello, but it was hilarious to me that "solving the murder" consisted of the four of them chatting and texting about it every so often and writing in a shared cloud document. They also pestered people with questions and called the constable about everything, of course. Despite all this, and the continual adding of clues and red herrings and characters, I was surprised when Janet (and the others, maybe?) all of a sudden knew who the murderer was when something went down at the local crime author's place. There was nothing that led up to that revelation, apart from the murderer and their spouse acting suspicious.

This is spoilery, so don't read if you want to read this book, but I have to vent about it: the whole trash-dumping plotline was so annoying. At first the women thought it was a warning or a clue about the murder, and it ended up being (get this) Janet's son's mother-in-law, who was still livid at Janet because she "supported" her son and his wife (the lady's daughter) eloping instead of having a big wedding. Which was five years ago. And which Janet had nothing to do with (it sounds like she just went "oh well, congratulations" to her adult son AFTER the elopement had already taken place). For THAT that witch was dumping trash all over her grandchildren's other grandma's house??? And she got no comeuppance!! I would have told her off so hard.

Still spoilers: Also, at some point Janet meets the lady that was renting Janet's house from her with her husband when Janet was in the US, and the woman basically screams at her that it is NOT nice to meet her, that Janet's house ruined her life because her husband had an affair with Una. Like what? This chick really blames Janet and her house for something her husband and some other woman did? I was shocked she wasn't more of a suspect in Una's murder, but we're immediately told there's an alibi. Nobody ever gave her the dressing-down she deserved, either.

Spoilers continue: You know what also made me really mad? Janet kept being told by the constable  that her house wasn't ready and she couldn't go back for like over a week, and it turned out the constable's grandmother needed a place to stay until her spot in the nursing home was available, and instead of having the old lady stay in his place or renting a hotel room for her like a normal person, he LIES TO JANET AND PUTS HIS GRANDMOTHER UP IN HER HOUSE!!!!!!!! During the day, he had the old lady stay in the bookshop where Janet and co. would bring her tea and scones without knowing who she was or anything about it, which means that not only were they unwittingly giving her free room and board, but also free elder care during the day!!! I would have yelled at this idiot so hard. I would have yelled at his superiors and demanded they punish him. I would have made him pay me rent. That's just so unethical!! It's a police officer misusing his power!! And Janet was definitely miffed but she did nothing!!!! LITERALLY WHAT THE EFFFFFF.

While the story did keep me turning pages, I found the writing to be clunky and awkward in parts, and that kept taking me out of it. There was too much awkward description of people's hand gestures, and there was one semi-physical encounter that involved three of the characters that I kept rereading because I could not figure out what was going on, and why. The way they all talked didn't feel much like real people talking. Idk, the mystery just wasn't formulated in a way that I'm used to. I'm not going to go out of my way to find the next book in the series, but if I find it in the thrift store or the library, I'll read it.

I love this book cover. I think it is my favorite part of the book. It's infinitely better than the other options I've seen for this book.

Score: 5 out of 5 stars
Read in: March 6
From: thrift store?
Format: paperback
Status: I know I should give it away but the cover is so cute

October-December 2017 books

I read fewer books in the last 3 months of 2017.

I downloaded The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan because it sounded like a fun Regency romp, and instead it turned out to be about a girl who went to work as a governess for a duke and was raped by her employer. She decides she’s going to make him pay or be shamed, and the duke's fixer tasked with getting rid of her falls in love with her. It was a well-written romance with good chemistry between the leads. I think it’s a series that continues. 4/5

Next was another Regency ebook, Hand-Turned Tales, which is a sampler of stories from one author. They were pretty good and enjoyable, some more than others. 3.7/5

I almost forgot this book since I started it in September, but I checked out At the Root of this Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst from the library since it was on my to-read list and they had it. I thought this was going to be a book about how to reconcile your religious beliefs with feminism and vice versa, but instead it was about the author, Carol Lee Flinders,’s path to reconciling her spiritual beliefs with the evil and violence towards women in the world. She studied Hinduism with a mentor raised in a matriarchal Indian tribe, and was a scholar of Julian and other medieval Christian women mystics. It was an interesting book, but not as applicable as I thought. I recommend it. 4/5

Remember how last time I wrote about Morality for Beautiful Girls like it was the first in its series? I was wrong. M4BG is the third book, and the first book gives its name to the series: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. It was enjoyable, but it centered so much on Mma Ramotswe’s failed first marriage to an abuser and subsequent miscarriage, and that made me sad. Mma R is such a self-possessed and practical person that it’s hard to see her choosing a man like that. 4/5

I reread a kids’ book that I was on the fence about keeping, Midnight Magic by Avi. It has a lot of the elements I like: medieval or renaissance period, magic, mystery, magic is explained as science, plucky girl, hidden passageways, castles, etc. I like this story a lot but I’m going to give it away anyway. 4/5

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Beckett is set during the English Reformation and centers on Thomas More’s family, with his adopted daughter as the narrator, and a Dutch painter who made a lot of famous portraits of nobles such as Henry VIII. This was a really good story with political and religious tension, art, secrets, and shocking revelations. A lot of the characters were real people, but this is a historical fiction novel. It was really good, but to me the ending was too abrupt. 3.9/5

My favorite kids’ book that I’ve read in a long time is The Garden of Eve by K.L. Going, which is about a grieving girl who has lost her mom and gets wrapped up in a mystery around a cursed apple orchard, possible Edenic seeds, missing children, and a garden that may not be of this world. It was sad and beautiful and magical, but to me it felt too short, and I had too many unanswered questions. It felt like there was supposed to be more to the story, like it should have been several hundred pages longer. I loved it, though. 4/5

I took the fattest trade-size paperback I had to Cuba with me, The Light Bearer, which was about a Germanic chieftainess leading her people against Rome and trying to deal with treachery at home, as well as a slave turned senator’s son trying to survive corrupt emperors. They’re destined for each other, of course. It was sweeping and very Game of Thrones-esque, as it was very violent and women were getting raped all the time. The heroine was that annoying “the most skilled warrior yet slender and beautiful and everyone fell in love with her and she cheats death 1000 times” thing, which gets old. It was well-researched, but the author kept referring to statues and buildings as white when we now know everything was painted bright colors. I still finished it before the end of my Cuba trip, and was bookless for the last few days. 3.5/5

July-September 2017 books

I didn’t read very much at all these last 3 months. I was just super busy and worked throughout the summer.

The first book I started in June was The Moor, a Sherlock Holmes book by Laurie R. King where he and his wife, Mary Russell, solve a mystery in the moor. I know, right? I totally thought this was going to be derivative fanfiction and that Mary was going to be a Mary Sue (pun unintended). This book was actually really good, very well written, and it did not trample on the Sherlock Holmes legacy. Mary is this badass Jewish feminist scholar and she wears trousers and keeps her last name in the 1920s! She takes over the Watson role, helping Sherlock and being the narrator of the novel. The only thing I didn’t like was that the ending was pretty abrupt. I actually want to read the rest of the series. 4/5

After that was Highland Fling, a historical romance novel by Amanda Scott that had more history than romance. The romance was pretty uneven and typical (headstrong redhead and this older rich dude who resists his attraction to her then is like ‘I’m going to tame you’, gag me with a spoon), but the historical stuff was interesting. England’s dickishness in taking over other countries is well known, but I hadn’t heard much about how it was for Scotland. Anyway this was ok and whiled away the time. 3.5/5

I decided to start reading books from my ever-growing to-read list, and checked out All the Single Ladies: unmarried women and the rise of an independent nation by Rebecca Traister from my library. This book did not disappoint: it talked about the views and roles of single women (mostly in the US) and the changes they’ve made in this country and culture. It was so good and affirming to read about all the kickass ladies out there who didn’t get married and had good, fulfilling lives, as well as women who today are dealing with various aspects of being single. I liked that Traister followed up with the women she interviewed for the book so that we could see where they were a few years later at the time of publication. The author is currently married with kids but was single well into her late twenties, so she gets it. I may buy this book for my own library. 4/5

The last book of this trimester is Morality for Beautiful Girls, the third book of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. He is British, and I am usually very suspicious of books set in countries the author is not from, and of books with characters of color when the author is white, but Wikipedia says he was born in Zimbabwe and worked in Botswana as an adult, so it appears he knows his stuff. The books (I’ve read another book in this series many years ago) sound like he’s done his research, and have colloquisms and the like. Mma Precious Ramotswe runs a detective agency with her assistant Mma Grace Makutsi and is called upon to solve all sorts of mysteries. In just this book MFBG, the duo must (together and/or separately) determine if a government man’s brother is being poisoned by his wife, figure out where a feral child found in the bush came from, run the detective agency and Mma Ramotswe’s fiance’s auto repair shop simultaneously, try to figure out why the fiance, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, is acting the way he is, and detect if any of the contestants of a local beauty and morality contest are, in fact, immoral. This is a lot of plots going on, but McCall Smith handles them all well. The characters are very well written, interesting and likeable. I want to read the rest of the series but since there are like 17, I’ll stick to getting them from the library. 4.4/5