December

This month I read 4 ebooks and 1 eaudiobook and 5 physical books from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 10 books.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

Synopsis: Steve Wheeler’s world is small, but he likes it that way. He has a good routine going; he goes to the pub quiz, he sits on his favourite bench, he does a bit of low-stakes investigative work, and he chats with his daughter-in-law Amy. Amy Wheeler prefers life with a bit more adrenaline. She works for a private security firm, and she’s currently stationed on a private island, protecting the famous author Rosie D’Antonio (she’s not a day over 70). Rosie makes for excellent company, which is good because this job isn’t particularly interesting. That is, until the other security agent assigned to the detail attempts to kill Amy. Suddenly, she’s forced on the run (with Rosie and all of Rosie’s luggage), and it turns out that there’s a trail of bodies that all appear to lead to Amy. And when her boss at the private security firm goes dark, Amy’s forced to turn to the only person she can trust to solve this mystery: her father-in-law Steve.

My thoughts: When I heard that Richard Osman was pivoting away from his Thusday Murder Club series in order to start a new project, I was a little worried. But it turns out I had nothing to worry about. This has the same dry writing style that I adore from The Thursday Murder Club series, and although the characters aren’t quite as charming as a group of seniors, I still loved every minute of it. Readers will know that I’m not a fan of private investigators in crime fiction, but Steve and Amy together were both so competent that it was never an issue for me. It also had a really poignant message about grief, which is part of what makes these novels so much deeper and more enjoyable than your average crime novel. I can’t wait for whatever Osman releases next.

Rating: 5/5 marriage bets that you are waiting to cash in on (for love)

Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen

Synopsis: Saffy Huntley-Oliver is a socialite with a secret. No, it’s not that she’s having an affair, or that she’s addicted to drugs. It’s that for years, she’s been hunting and killing so-called “bad men;” rapists, abusers, corrupt politicians, and even her own step father (a child molester). And it’s made her pretty cynical about men in general; they all have secrets that make them bad men. Perhaps the only exception to that is Jonathan Desrosiers. He’s a beloved true crime podcaster that covers the cold cases, and his research actually helped solve a murder. Saffy can’t help it; she’s in love. Jonathan’s life is crumbling around him; his wife left him because he only ever focused on the podcast, and the next day a body is left on his doorstep, making him the prime suspect. He’s utterly miserable, but for Saffy, it’s the perfect opportunity. She engineers a couple of meet cutes with him, and suggests that the best way for Jonathan to clear his name is to solve the crime. Reluctantly, he agrees. Will Jonathan finally be able to prove his innocence? And, more importantly, will Saffy finally find the man of her dreams?

My Thoughts: I think this book would have been a disaster if it took itself very seriously. It billed itself as a feminist thriller, but I felt that the feminism was extremely surface level: an upper class white woman killing men that were abusing or harming other women. It wasn’t intersectional, and seemed a bit like a caricature of feminism. However, Saffy’s storyline was very fun and didn’t really take itself seriously, which made it work. It was especially funny to contrast Jonathan (completely stressed out because someone is stalking and poisoning his ex-wife, and he’s the main suspect) and Saffy (suspicious because she thinks that Jonathan is still in love with his ex-wife), but while still giving Saffy a lot of agency and importance even though her stakes were much lower.

Rating: 3/5 latex catsuits that are actually excellent forensic countermeasures

The Outlier by Elisabeth Eaves

Synopsis: Cate Winter is probably the most successful neuroscience ever. She and her team have developed a revolutionary treatment for Alzheimer's Disease, and her biotech company is about to be acquired for millions of dollars. You’d never suspect her darkest secret: that she’s a diagnosed psychopath. After a mysterious fire that killed her family, Cate was sent to the Cleckley Institute, an institution dedicated to the study and rehabilitation of child psychopaths. For Cate, it was a good childhood. She considered Dr M, the institute’s founder, as a surrogate father figure, and as an adult she’s become wildly successful. But Cate was an outlier among her classmates; by age 30, they had all been jailed, killed, or barely managing to earn a living. All except for Cate, and one other student. Armed with the knowledge that she’s not the only outlier, Cate becomes obsessed with finding him. But what happens if she’s finally met her match?

My thoughts: I think this book had an interesting premise, but overall was not very interesting. The other outlier (Hunter) eventually was revealed to be almost cartoonishly villainous. He literally had a tropical lair straight out of a James Bond novel, and his big invention had a water intake pump that doubled as a fish killing machine, which is how he eventually got caught. Hunter didn’t even have any issues with the fish, he just couldn’t be bothered to put in a grate or redesign the intake, or literally anything else.

Rating: 2/5 politicians that are promising to light up the night if they are elected

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett (Emily Wilde #2)

Synopsis: After the success of her Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Emily Wilde is comfortable at Cambridge University. She’s currently working on her new project, a map-book of the faerie realms, and enjoying life with her co-author (and possible fiance) Wendell Bambleby. However, things might just collapse when her colleague Farris Rose accuses Wendell of violating academic integrity principles during the creation of her encyclopaedia. While it’s true that Wendell is actually a faerie and had indeed committed such violations for other scholarly works, there were absolutely zero violations in the creation of Emily’s encyclopaedia. Rose threatens to reveal his suspicions to Cambridge itself, which would be a disaster for Emily’s career. At the same time, Wendell is under threat. His faerie step-mother has sent assassins after him (and did manage to poison him), and he’s clearly no longer safe at Cambridge. The only solution is for the three of them (plus Emily’s niece Ariadne) to immediately travel to the Austrian alps. That way, Wendell can outrun his assassins, Emily can research her map-book and hopefully find a door to Wendell’s realm to find a cure for this poison, and Rose can supervise everything to make sure there’s no impropriety. But the Austrian Alps are inhospitable at the best of times, and especially during winter, surrounded by malicious folk. Will Emily and her crew survive the winter? And will they manage to rescue an esteemed researcher?

My Thoughts: My controversial opinion is that I don’t really like this series, even though everyone seems to rave about it. I listened to it as an audiobook and I did not like the narrator, but beyond that it just didn’t feel like a great book. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was definitely lacking something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I didn’t find it particularly interesting. I’m also not a huge Emily x Wendell stan, so I wasn’t really impressed by the progression of their relationship in this book. I only read this sequel out of obligation to the first book, but I won’t be reading anything more in this series. I’m also annoyed that the book isn’t called “Emily Wilde’s Atlas of the Otherlands” because she’s working on a book of maps (aka an atlas), and not just a single map. The one thing that I did like was the Danielle de Grey storyline that continued from the previous book. However, the main charm of that storyline was when Emily detailed de Grey’s insane adventures in the footnotes of her diary, and that charm was lost when de Grey became a full character.

Rating: 3/5 tents that blend in perfectly into the surrounding grassy hillsides

The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis

Synopsis: After her parents were killed in a car crash, eight-year-old Beth Harmon was sent to an orphanage. After weeks of observing the janitor play chess, he begrudgingly allowed her to play. It soon became obvious that Beth had more than just a knack for chess; she was one of the best players in Kentucky, if not the whole country. After her adoption, Beth started entering chess tournaments around the country and internationally, eventually supporting her adoptive mother. Throughout the novel, Beth struggles with her addiction to tranquilizers (which was caused by the orphanage staff intentionally drugging all of their charges), and her inability to connect with anyone or anything that is not chess.

My thoughts: I’ll be honest, this was not the kind of book that I like. I only read it because I was looking for a book to satisfy the last category for the 2024 TPL Reading Challenge (A book about games), and because I was getting served a lot of short-form video content about The Queen’s Gambit Netflix show (I’ve never seen it, but I figured if the show was so popular, it couldn’t be that bad). My advice to readers: don’t ever do that! As soon as I started reading it I knew it wasn’t for me, but it was too late to back out. I don’t think that I can declare it to be a bad book, but it was just not enjoyable to read. The whole tone of the book is incredibly dour and grey, and all of the characters’ interactions are mechanical (instead of emotional).

Rating: 2/5 Heists of the century (breaking into the orphanage head office and stealing 200 tranquilizer pills)

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (Chaotic Orbits #1)

Synopsis: Ada Lamarr is out of options. Her spaceship has a massive hole in the side, and her oxygen tank is rapidly running dry. Unfortunately, her only hope of rescue is a government-run salvage ship, who are very reluctant to have her on board. They’re here on a classified mission to recover some high-value objects, and they certainly don’t want a loose cannon and illegal salvager like Ada to interfere with things. And Ada is fine with that. She’s more than happy to enjoy the abundant rations and luxurious (in comparison) accommodations on board, and to flirt shamelessly with Rian White, the government-representative in charge of the mission. But Ada and Rian each have secrets to hide, and it remains to be seen who is really manipulating whom.

My Thoughts: This was a short but fun sci fi novella. Readers will know that I’ve been hankering for a science fiction book that’s about science and spaceships (and not a fantasy or a war epic), and this really scratched the itch for me. I thought there was enough meat to the story that the author could have extended it into a full novel, so I’m glad that a sequel novella has been released. My most major complaint was that the name of the main character felt too obvious of a reference to two famous women in computer science (Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr). They both definitely deserve to be memorialized, but it just felt like I was being smacked in the face (especially because it stuck out compared to all of the other character names).

Rating: 4/5 notoriously reliable jetpack booster engines that just happened to fritz out when you were at the bottom of a tall, tall cliff

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Synopsis: This work of narrative nonfiction attempts to chronicle the initial discovery and effects of the ritual power: the ability for women (first teenage girls, and then spreading to older women) to generate electrical shocks from their bodies. It follows four major figures; Roxy, the daughter of a gangster who takes over her father’s empire; Allie, who runs away from her abusive foster parents and accidentally starts a cult; and Margo, mayor of an American city who slowly rises through the ranks. The fourth character is the only man: Tunde, a Nigerian journalist who allegedly recorded accounts of women’s rises to power around the world (it is common knowledge that Tunde’s body of work was actually written and published by his friend and coworker Nina). It is an engaging but ultimately implausible version of events.

My thoughts: I tried to write my synopsis in the style of the prologue and epilogue of the book, which consists of Neil proposing his book concept to Naomi. After reading, Naomi comments that the book is “cute but unrealistic” for depicting a patriarchal society, and suggests that Neil publish under a woman’s name so that he is taken more seriously. In reality, I think this is a great book that is worth the hype, and it explores the concept of rape culture and the overall patriarchy by flipping the script and giving women the power to painfully shock anyone. I loved the alternate history aspect of it, and it reminds me how much I like epistolary-style books, where you have to figure out what’s going on from the letters, reports, and other messages exchanged between characters. I thought that Alderman pulled off the concept really well. In the moment, I was irrationally disappointed that the female characters were complex and often immoral, but I definitely think the book is better for it. A small detail that I really appreciated was that the tissues that generate the electricity in women are called Skeins (which is the name for a bundle of yarn or string, and fibre arts are often portrayed as women’s work).

4/5 packs of glitter smuggled through Eastern Europe on order to support the troops

Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth

Synopsis: Sloane, Matt, Ines, Albie, and Esther were the chosen ones. As teenagers, they used a collection of folklore artifacts and uncontrollable powers to save North America from the catastrophic disasters wrought by the Dark One. But that was 10 years ago. Now, they all cope in different ways, but none of them are really doing well. At the 10th Anniversary ceremony commemorating the defeat of the Dark One, Sloane, Matt and Esther are captured. They wake up in an alternate dimension of Earth. In this universe, magic is everywhere, but so are threats. The Dark One is still active, and the leadership of this alternate Earth have a proposal: if Matt, Sloane, and Esther defeat the Dark One for good, then they can go back to their Earth. Esther and Matt agree, but Sloane is unable to master the magic. More than that, she’s tired of being used.

My thoughts: I thought that this was a cool concept for a book, and the first two thirds were done very well. However, Roth really lost the plot for the last third of the book. I thought it was absolutely insane that the main villain’s justification for constantly destroying the world was because he was immortal and wanted to die. Besides being insane, she didn’t really flesh out the main villain enough, but rather dropped everything in at the end. I’m also bothered that she completely sidelined Ines’s character. Why bother writing in 5 teenagers who saved the world if you’re only ever going to discuss four of them?

Rating: 4/5 origami paper cranes from a deceased loved one that weren’t necessarily acquired legally

A Holly Jolly Diwali by Sonia Lalli

Synopsis: Niki Randhawa has always made the practical choice, especially because her sister Jasmine was always the wild card who was breaking their parent’s heart. But being practical isn’t easy; in order to build her career in data analytics she’s been worked to the bone, with no time to make friends or visit relatives in India. But when she suddenly gets laid off from her job, it forces her to make other plans. So, she flies to India to attend her best friend Diya’s wedding. While there, she meets a very interesting guy, Sam, and starts getting in touch with her Indian roots. But Niki and Sam live oceans apart. Could they ever make it work?

My thoughts: This was a pretty standard romance novel, and I wouldn’t say that any part of it stood out to me. I was specifically hoping that this book would be an alternative to the huge influx of Christmas novels, since it was a book about Diwali, but Diwali was barely in the book at all (despite the title). I understand that it made sense for Niki not to know a lot about the history of Diwali and thus have to ask around about its significance (especially for Sikhs), but it felt like way too much telling and not enough showing.

Rating: 3/5 group honeymoons to the most gorgeous beaches you’ve ever seen

The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer

Synopsis: Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt has two big secrets. Firstly, she has myalgic encephalomyelitis, aka chronic fatigue syndrome. And secondly, she (a good Jewish daughter) has made a career of writing Christmas Romance novels. What can you do? The girl just loves Christmas. But when she meets with her publishers, she’s handed a major problem: they don’t want any more Christmas novels. What they do want is a Hanukkah novel, but Rachel hates Hanukkah. Well, she doesn’t hate it, but it just doesn’t have the same magic and charm of Christmas. So the only way that she’ll ever get inspired to write her next novel (and keep her job) is if she can get tickets to the hottest Hanukkah event in New York: the Matzah Ball. She even has an in with the event planner (Jacob Greenberg), because they went to Jewish summer camp together (we’ll skip over the part where he broke her heart). But the only tickets left are for volunteers, meaning that Rachel will have to work for 7 days in order to earn her place at the ball. Will she be able to balance her chronic illness with her assignment? And how can she deal with her unrequited feelings for Jacob after all these years?

My thoughts: I’ve previously read another Jewish romance by this author (Kissing Kosher), and I have to say that I didn’t like The Matzah Ball as much. I wish that Rachel’s CFS had been more of a focal point for the book. In Kissing Kosher, the main character didn’t cure her chronic illness, but she learned how to cope a lot better, and that’s what I was hoping to see again. This time, the chronic illness was not nearly as prominent, and I think the book was a bit less interesting for it. Also, I hated how much Rachel was obsessed with Christmas. The scene where she spent $60 (that she can’t afford) to visit a mall Santa Claus for a makeshift therapy session (that the mall Santa despises), made me almost stop reading the book.

Rating: 3/5 giant menorahs that were delivered with much assembly required

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

This month I read 4 ebooks, 1 eaudiobook, and 1 physical book from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 6 books.

Dishonourable Mentions

Blood Rubies by Mailan Doquang

Synopsis: Rune thought that this would be her biggest score yet: a bag of Charles Lemaire’s prized rubies. If she fenced it, the money would change her and Kit’s (her boyfriend) lives. But Kit’s younger sister Madee has gone missing, last seen in the slums of Bangkok. And Charles Lemaire is holding Kit hostage until Rune returns his rubies, which she lost while looking for Madee. Will Rune be able to rescue her friends, and herself? Or will she be forced to make an impossible decision?

My thoughts: Readers will know that I love a heist novel, but this one didn’t grab me at all. I didn’t find it engaging, nor were the characters that compelling, and the events of the book were starting to stress me out. So I didn’t feel the need to keep reading it.

You may like this book if: you, like Rune, are mixed race (she’s half American, half Thai)

And now for the Real Reviews:

Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross

Synopsis: It’s been two weeks since Roman and Iris were married at the front lines (the happiest day in Iris’ life). But it’s also been two weeks since the town was attacked, Iris was captured by her brother Forrest (MIA from Dacre’s army), and Roman’s presumed death. Iris has been forced to retreat back to Oath, and has continued writing articles for the Inkridden Tribune. The paper has asked for her and Attie to return to the front lines to continue their reporting. Meanwhile, Roman has been killed, captured, and brought back to life by Dacre and his forces. He doesn’t remember much of his past life, but he knows that he doesn’t trust Dacre. Will Iris and Roman ever survive this war and reunite?

My thoughts: I might have been influenced by reading some bad reviews of this book but I didn’t really like it that much. The first book in the series was driven primarily by Iris’ and Roman’s relationship, which kind of created rose-coloured glasses for the rest of the story. For this book didn’t have the same driving force, and was much more lackluster. I also listened to this book as an audiobook, and I definitely did not like either of the narrators. Usually this isn’t a problem for me, but their voices irritated me and their accents felt pretentious. To me, it definitely detracted from the story. But the main issue with this book isn’t really the presence of something bad, but more the absence of anything that was really good or interesting.

Rating: 2/5 enchanted coffee shops, where your drink never gets cold

The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro

Synopsis: After a scandal that rocked the Boston art world, no one is willing to give Claire Roth a chance. Despite her talent, the only work that she can get is painting reproductions of classic paintings. But suddenly, it seems as though her luck may have changed. Renowned gallerist Aiden Markel waltzes into her studio with a proposition: he’ll stage a show of Claire’s paintings at his gallery. All she has to do is paint a reproduction for him. It’s too tempting to refuse, so Claire agrees. But when she sees the painting that she’s supposed to reproduce, she’s shocked. It’s Edgar Degas’ After the Bath, which was famously stolen from the Isabella Steward Gardiner museum during a robbery in 1990. Claire should report this to the police, but Aiden assures her that the authorities will eventually be notified, once the reproduction is finished. However, Claire isn’t sure. As she falls in love with Aiden, she grows more and more paranoid that this After the Bath is also a reproduction, and that the original one must be somewhere else. And when Aiden is arrested on charges of art fraud, Claire panics, and starts desperately searching for the real version of After the Bath in order to exonerate Aiden. Will she like what she finds? Or is this an art mystery that is best left unsolved?

My thoughts: Overall I thought this book was pretty interesting. Probably its biggest feature was the window into Claire’s mind, where she constantly expresses her love for art and paintings. She’s absolutely transfixed by Degas’ works, and it’s really interesting to see all of the emotion that she feels. However, I was pretty shocked to see Aiden’s (and other’s) perspectives that collecting art was addicting, and that having the only copy of a certain work of art is so intoxicating that it would compel you to commit crimes. It’s the kind of language that I would more associate with addictions like drugs or gambling. As a final note, I was somewhat disappointed that After the Bath was not a real painting. Obviously, if the author is going to speculate about the personal relationships of the artist and his contemporaries, then it makes sense to invent a work of art to be discussed. But I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed that there weren’t more connections to existing works of art.

Rating: 3/5 secret rooms in the Gardner Museum that might just contain the answer we’ve been looking for

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files #13)

Synopsis: Harry Dresden is dead. Or is he? After being shot in the chest, and falling into the icy waters of Lake Michigan, Harry wakes up in a strange place with a familiar face. It’s Ron Carmichael, a former CPD cop who was killed by a loup-garou in Fool Moon (see my June 2023 roundup). He leads Harry through the Between to a special office building, where Harry meets Jack Murphy (Karrin Murphy’s deceased father). Apparently, there was an irregularity with his death, Jack asks him to investigate his own murder, hinting that his loved ones may be killed if he doesn’t. Harry agrees, and finds himself thrust into a very different Chicago. In the real world, 6 months have passed since his death, and the city has fallen to pieces since it’s no longer under the protection of the White Council’s most notorious wizard. And to make matters worse, Harry is a ghost. He can’t interact with the mortal world, and he can’t perform magic. Will he really be able to solve his own murder and rescue his friends? Or is this really the end of Harry Dresden?

My thoughts: This book was really good, except for one major flaw (which I will discuss momentarily). I liked that Harry had to reflect on his actions that took place in the previous book, especially how he had harmed so many people in his quest to be chivalrous and “do the right thing.” I look forward to seeing how the ramifications of his actions play out in the future. I also liked how this book was drastically different from every other Dresden Files novel. Harry being a ghost severely limited his normal powers, and also showed Chicago from a really unique perspective. However, I thought that the Uriel/Kincaid plotline was really weak, which is a huge problem because it’s the whole reason that Harry became a ghost at all. It just feels like Jim Butcher had a cool concept for a book and had to shoehorn in a reason for it to have occurred. It’s not just that Harry was manipulated, but that the internal logic of the story didn’t really make a lot of sense. The resolution of that whole plotline was a big disappointment for me.

Rating: 4/5 empty graves that have been beautifully maintained for you for this whole time

March Roars by Maureen Jennings (Paradise Cafe Series #4)

Synopsis: Private Detective Charlotte Frayne has recently received a peculiar letter. After the well publicized arrest of two young Black boys for robbery, a woman at Toronto’s House of Industry (the poor house) claims that they are innocent. She says that she witnessed the true thieves (two White men) acting suspicious shortly after the robbery took place, and that she now fears for her own safety by reporting them. Charlotte is forced to interview this woman and try to piece together what exactly is going on.

My thoughts: This book was decent, although it felt somewhat superficial. Charlotte suddenly becomes aware of the struggles of Black Torontonians in the 1930s (some of whom she has been friends with for many years), but doesn’t really use her station to make a difference (besides freeing the two boys from prison). I also feel like this series lacks a “B” plot, where the relationships between the main cast of characters would usually develop. It’s supposed to revolve around the Paradise Cafe, but Charlotte rarely, if ever, appears there. We didn’t develop deeper relationships with anyone else at the cafe, nor really see what was happening there, and that’s a major reason why I felt that this book lacked substance.

Rating: 3/5 single, engraved cufflinks that were pawned by a mysterious woman with a secret identity

The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation by Scott Carney and Jason Miklian

Synopsis: This book describes the lead up and the after effects of the Great Bhola Cyclone, which killed an estimated 500 000 people in the Bay of Bengal in November 1970. The cyclone can be considered the catalyst for the revolutionary movement (and brutal crackdown) that took place in East Pakistan, eventually leading to the formation of Bangladesh.

My thoughts: I thought this book was super interesting and really well written. Readers will know that I am a fan of narrative nonfiction, and I thought it was a great choice by the authors to bring parts of the true story to life. I know that not everything happened irl the way that it’s depicted in the books, but it was much more digestible for me (especially because I didn’t know anything about East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh before reading this book). I liked how the authors focused on several different perspectives in order to create a full picture of what was purportedly going on, and it was super impressive to see all the research that they had done.

Rating: 4/5 planned capital cities that were built ahead of schedule and under budget (but were unfortunately the only good thing that you ever accomplished).

Barcelona Red Metallic by Christine Cosack

Synopsis: The hit-and-run death of a small child in Oyster Hill, British Columbia shocks residents of the sleepy small town. The RCMP sends a team to investigate the accident site, and the only tangible clue they find is a fragment of Barcelona Red Metallic paint. Even after the initial investigation, the case stays with Luci Miller. But more than the family of the victim, the family of Jo Nelson (plus her son Oliver and grandson Nico) stays with Luci. Will she ever find out what happened on that fateful morning?

My thoughts: I found this book to be pretty different than other crime novels. The tone was very gentle but not cozy, which is a fine line to walk in mystery fiction. I also appreciated how the majority of the book was about Jo, and how she raised her chronically ill son (Oliver has cystic fibrosis). I also thought the ending was very unexpected (which isn’t generally great), but in a way that made sense with Jo’s character and the information that we already knew about her.

Rating: 4/5 paintings of lung-shaped lichens

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

October

This month I read 5 ebooks and 3 physical books from the Toronto Public Library, and 1 audiobook, totaling to 8 books.

Horrorstor

Synopsis: Everyone knows Orsk, your friendly nordic furniture store. But at the Orsk Cuyahoga store, weird things have been happening overnight. Mirrors are breaking, furniture is getting stained with unspeakable substances. Store Manager Basil thinks that vandals must be breaking into the store at night, and recruits Amy and Ruth Anne to work and overnight shift with him to see if they can catch the vandals before Pat from the regional office arrives the next morning. Ruth Anne is delighted to help out; she’s been working for Orsk for her whole career, and lives and breathes it. Amy, on the other hand, is not so happy about it. But Basil has offered to pay overtime and approve her transfer to the Youngstown store, so it’s an offer that she can’t really refuse. Will this unlikely group of employees survive their night in the store? Or will this job kill them all?

My thoughts: I thought this was a pretty well done horror satire about working for a corporation. The author really leaned in to the Ikea aesthetic, and each chapter started with an entry for a piece of furniture in the Orsk catalogue. Major spoilers ahead, but the store was actually built on the site of a destroyed panopticon prison, and was haunted by the prison warden that was obsessed with the idea that hard labour cures all ills. And still, the actual villain ended up being the Orsk corporate office. If you are employed, this book will make you want to quit your job. I did genuinely find the book very unsettling (readers will know that I don’t even really like horror media, so I probably shouldn’t have read this at all). Something else I appreciated was that Amy actually showed a lot of character development. Some of this was definitely because she started out as a shitty person, but I still give the author credit for actually having her meaningfully change.

Rating: 4/5 stylish BODAVEST chairs, that will confine the penitent and oppose the agitated movement of blood towards the brain, forcing the subject into a state of total immobility, conducive to self-reflection and free of stressful outside stimuli

Changes by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files #12)

Synopsis: Harry Dresden’s life has changed forever in an instance. His ex-girlfriend and half-vampire Susan Rodriguez has come back into his life after years apart, and she has two devastating pieces of news. Firstly, she and Harry have a child together. A daughter, who’s name is Maggie (after Harry’s mom). (Concealing this fact alone is enough to make Harry rage with anger.) And secondly, Maggie has been kidnapped by Dutches Ariana Ortega of the Red Court of Vampires, and will be used as a blood sacrifice if Harry and Susan can’t rescue her in time. Now, Harry is apoplectic. Even though he’s just now learned of her existence, Harry is determined to save Maggie’s life. It will take every single favour, ally, artifact, and ounce of luck that he can get his hands on. But is he prepared to pay the price?

My thoughts: I think “Changes” is an extremely accurate title to describe this book. Even the fact that it’s one word, compared to every other two-word title, helps to set it apart from the rest of the series. Over the course of this book, Harry loses everything. His car is destroyed, his apartment and laboratory burned down, and he breaks his back (rendering him paralyzed). He is in a truly desperate situation, and sacrifices everything in order to even have a chance at saving Maggie. Karrin Murphy also loses her job for good, finally severing her link to the Chicago Police Department, and I’m very curious as to where she’ll go now. There are also a lot of consequences to his actions, most of which are not even fully realized until the next book. The one exception to this was the magic wayfinding stone that Harry received as a belated gift from his mother, which helps him navigate passages in the Way and effectively allows him to arrive anywhere. It’s described as being very dangerous, and that Harry has to accept all of the risks if he chooses to accept it, although none of the risks ever materialize in this book or the next one.

Rating: 4/5 dream teams known simply as “the eebs”

Sweet Sweet Revenge LTD by Jonas Jonasson

Synopsis: Victor Alderheim cares only about one thing. Not his wife, Jenny, from whom he swindled millions of dollars and her family’s art gallery. Not his teenaged son, Kevin, whom he abandoned in the middle of the Kenyan savannah. He only cares about his gallery, and making sure that the right kind of art (realism) gets featured there. But after growing into a mostly-fledged Masaai warrior, Kevin returns to Stockholm and crosses paths with Jenny. After discovering that they’ve both been wronged by the same man, they become fast friends. They desperately want to take revenge on Victor, but how can they with only 20 kroner to their names? Luckily, they run into Hugo, adman and CEO of Sweet Sweet Revenge LTD, a boutique firm that promises to ruin lives for the right price. And to top it all off, Kevin’s adopted father, full-fledged Masaai warrior Ole Mbatian leaves Keny for the first time ever in search of his son. Will this dubious quartet pull off SSR LTD’s biggest job yet? Or will it end up exploding in their faces.

My thoughts: The events of the book were extremely goofy and silly, but the dry/dark comedy writing style helped a bit to tamp down everything so that it didn’t feel too obnoxious. Even still, it was definitely a lot to take in. I think I would have enjoyed it more if my sense of humor was a bit more open and accepting. By far the best character was Ole Mbatian, who was funny and charmingly optimistic. Victor, on the other hand, was cartoonishly evil in a boring way. Overall this book is definitely difficult to describe, and I would encourage readers to try it for themselves to really get a sense of what the heck is going on.

Rating: 3/5 salmon pate sandwiches that are honestly worth any deal you could make with the devil

A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue by Dean Jobb

Synopsis: In the 1920s and 30s, one of the greatest jewel thieves in American history was on the loose. He captured the imaginations of thousands all while he snuck into mansions and estates, prowling around silently, and making off with thousands of dollars worth of gold and jewelry. His name was Arthur Barry, and he was the best of the best. When he was finally captured after being set up by his partner in crime, he immediately confessed so that his wife, Anna Blake, would not go to prison. And when Anna Blake was dying, he broke out of prison so that they could spend their last years together.

My thoughts: Readers will know that I love a heist, and I thought this book was a fascinating look into Arthur Barry’s life and crimes. It’s a work of narrative nonfiction, so it was extremely easy to read, while still being packed full of accurate historical detail. I thought it was really well researched and put together, and would definitely highly recommend it to anyone who’s into true crime but wants something a little lighter.

Rating: 5/5 strings of rose pearls that scratch your teeth and are worth millions of dollars

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Synopsis: After attempting to rob a cashless bank days before Christmas, the robber flees into an empty apartment to hide from police. Except, it’s not empty: a real estate agent is showing the property to 8 prospective buyers. There’s Ro and Julia, a young couple who are nervous about becoming first time moms. Zara, a wealthy bank manager who tours apartments to see how the middle class live. Anna-Lena and Roger, an older couple who flip apartments and are very competitive, and Lennert, an actor who Anna-Lena has hired to bring down the property’s value. And Estelle, whose husband is just parking the car and will be here momentarily. They (plus the real estate agent) have all been taken hostage by the bank robber, who is trying desperately to figure out their next move. On the other side of the door are two police officers, reluctant father and son team Jim and Jack, who are out of their depth and struggling to keep the situation from spiraling out of control. But is that what’s really going on?

My thoughts: I hate to admit it but I did read this book because I saw it all over the internet. It was a booktok darling, but I do think that it was worth the hype. I still went into it pretty blind, but it was not the thriller I was expecting. Instead it was like sitting in a very good therapist’s office; cozy and comfortable, emotional, probing, and soul-searching. And eventually, after peeling back the layers, you finally discover what’s really going on. The book has a big focus on anxiety, depression, and loneliness, but there was still enough going on to drive the plot forward without getting bogged down. I also liked that the unreliable narrator wasn’t crazy or trying to protect themselves, but was instead misconstruing things to protect someone else, which I found new and interesting. Similarly, I liked that the book unraveled a mystery (how the bank robber escaped) that wasn’t a murder. Overall, I think that this is what I was hoping for when I read Sweet Sweet Revenge LTD, but Anxious People actually accomplished it.

Rating: ⅘ dead bodies filled with so much gin and tonic that you don’t dare cremate them (although that doesn’t mean they didn’t have good advice to offer)

The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther by Jeffery Haas

Synopsis: In 1969, Fred Hampton was a revolutionary leader, and Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. At only 21 years old, the FBI considered him a major threat and started surveilling and discrediting both Hampton and the Black Panthers as part of their COINTELPRO operation. On December 4th, 1969, the Chicago Police, working in tandem with the FBI, raided Fred’s home and shot him while he was drugged and unconscious in bed. The book is written by Fred’s lawyer Jeffery Haas, and chronicles his 12-year journey with the People’s Law Office in an attempt to gain justice for Fred’s family and the other survivors of the raid.

My thoughts: This book was really comprehensive and well written, and painted a pretty horrifying picture of how Black people were treated by police and the justice system both in the 1960s and today. Judge Sam Perry was particularly egregious, constantly ruling against Haas even when it was nonsensical to do so, and actively impairing their progress and ability to try the case. It was also insane that despite these giant court cases, and the settlements that the families eventually got, that the FBI and the Chicago Police still basically got away with murder. The only real consequence that any of the defendants ever experienced was not getting re-elected, which is overall very minor compared to how Fred was brutally murdered. He didn’t love long enough to see the birth of his son, and without him, the Black Panther movement crumbled. If Fred hadn’t been assassinated (especially at such a young age), I think that the future would have been noticeably different with him in it. I’m really glad that I got to read this with our book club, because it helped me engage with the text on a deeper level, and notice things that I had previously missed.

Rating: 4/5 perfect homecooked meals by Iberia Hampton

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Synopsis: Malcolm Kershaw owns a mysteries-only bookstore in Boston. Years ago, when he was just starting out, he wrote a blog post about eight perfect murders in crime fiction. It was just a little something for the bookstore’s blog, hoping that it was help increase sales. But now, years later, FBI Agent Gwen Mulvey thinks that someone is using that article as inspiration to commit a series of perfect murders in real life. She’s determined to get Malcolm, the resident subject-matter expert for crime fiction, to advise her in order to catch the murderer. Malcolm reluctantly agrees, but when the victims seem to be getting closer and closer to his personal life, it seems that he may be in way over his head. [The Eight Perfect Murders are: The Red House, Malice Aforethought, the ABC Murders, Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train, The Drowner, Deathtrap, and The Secret History]

My thoughts: I feel like the concept for this book was really cool, but the execution was not great. I was not at all convinced that the unsolved murders were connected to each other or the eight perfect murders for the first third of the book, which is definitely too long. I would have preferred the irl murders to be a lot closer to their fictional counterparts. I also was pretty doubtful when Mal started getting paranoid that the murderer was coming after him/his loved ones. Not everything has to revolve around him (although he actually did end up being the center of everything, for an unexpected reason). My final problem (readers will know that’s an allusion to a Sherlock Holmes story) with Mal was when he revealed that he might have done some things in a dream/suppressed his memory of doing them. I think the allusion to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was cool, but c’mon, you can’t just say “i thought i was dreaming but turns out it happened irl” and expect to get away with it. There are plenty of other ways to conceal something from the reader without being so outlandish (like, for example, just lying). The Gwen plotline felt super rushed. I thought that her suspension from active FBI service would actually go somewhere but she just was sidelined until the end of the book, when Mal confessed everything to her over a phone call. He claims that this would be enough evidence to prove to the FBI that her theory was right, but an unrecorded phone call would prove absolutely nothing and only serve to be for dramatic effect.

Rating: 3/5 pet cats that you adopted from the scene of the crime

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton

Synopsis: In the year 2041, humanity’s last hope was a spaceship called the Providence I. It was manned by the world’s best, with a goal of flying out to Proxima Century B and starting a new civilization on a goldilocks planet. Cleo grew up obsessed with the Providence mission, especially Captain Wilhelmina (Billie) Lucas. But on the day of the launch, the moment that the dark matter engines were powered up, the entire crew simply vanished. Humanity never recovered, and the Providence remained on Earth. Now, in 2061, an adult Cleo and her friends are determined to explore the Providence and see if they can solve the mystery of the crew’s disappearance. But while on board, they accidentally power on the engines, and get launched into space. They’re trapped on the ship, with only a hologram of Captain Lucas to guide them. Can they figure out what happened to the old crew? And what will happen when they start reacting strangely to the dark matter engines?

My thoughts: despite this being intended as an adult sci-fi novel, it was incredibly YA-core. The writing style and the actions of the characters felt pretty immature, considering that Cleo and her friends were supposed to be 29 years old. The voice of the novel also felt very targeted to a teen audience, and I was genuinely confused as to what age group the book was really written for. It was also not very science-y for a science fiction book, and I usually read sci-fi books because I am craving some hard science. I don’t think that just any book set in space/on a spaceship should get to call itself science fiction without actually embodying the principles of science fiction. This book ended up being more a teen romance between Cleo and the hologram of Billie. I thought it was a little odd that there was basically a love triangle between Cleo and holo Billie and real Billie (each Billie thought that Cleo would choose the other Billie over her). I’m glad that it was resolved, but at the same time felt that it was resolved a little too neatly.

Rating: 3/5 3D printers that can cook up (literally) whatever your heart desires.

What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund

Synopsis: In this book, Peter Mendelsund explores what we see when we read, and our misconceptions about our own minds’ eye.

My thoughts: I’ve been on an odyssey to read this book for seven months. As readers will know, I am hypophantasic, and rarely, if ever imagine things in my head when I read. (For those asking, yes, I just focus on the words, and the descriptions of what’s going on are more than enough for me.) I thought it would be interesting to understand how other people experience reading, so I figured this book would be perfect. The book itself played around with a lot of images, and interesting layouts for text. However, I really struggled with this book. The main thesis was that the images we imagine are made up, and often extrapolated from few details in the text. Mendelsund treated this like it was a revolutionary observation, but to me it seems pretty obvious? If something is not being exhaustively described, but you imagine it fully, then you have to be making up some of it in order to get a complete picture. He acted as though this was a controversial statement that would upset readers if pointed out to them. I also found Mendelsund was very prescriptive, eventually to the point of irritation. He didn’t really leave room for any interpretations or experiences other than his own. I also found the tone overall to be pretty pretentious. So no, I did not enjoy this book, and I’m perfectly happy to live in my words-only, pictureless world.

Rating: 2/5 mental images of Anna Karenina (even though you don’t actually know what she looks like)

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

September

This month I read 3 books, 4 e-books, and 1 e-audiobook, all from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 8 books.

Before we begin:

Dishonourable Mentions

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Synopsis: Mira Bunting is the founder of the activist gardening group Birnam Wood. They’re based in New Zealand, and are dedicated to growing local produce wherever they can find the land for it, even if it’s illegal. But Birnam Wood is struggling financially to survive. Then Mira finds an isolated plot of land that would be perfect for a secret urban farm. But it seems she’s not the only person interested in it.

My thoughts: Every synopsis I read of this book makes me want to like it, but I just could not get into the story. The narration felt very detached, and it was difficult to get invested in any of the characters. I also was hoping for something similar to Devolution by Max Brooks, but apparently that’s not what “eco-thriller” means.

You may like this book if: you got the MacBeth reference in the title

End of Story by A.J. Finn

Synopsis: Sebastian Trapp is a famous mystery novelist with a tragic family past. He’s dying, and invites longtime fan Nicky Hunter to come to San Francisco and interview him for a memoir. Will Nicky be able to figure out what really happened to Sebastian’s wife and son, or is she just another fly caught in the spider’s web?

My thoughts: In contrast to Birnam Wood, I actually did read the first third of the book, but I still wasn’t impressed. The central mystery was finally starting to be revealed, but it just didn’t seem like it was going to be interesting enough to be worth all the time I would have spent reading it. The characters also felt either irritating or very distant (or both), so it was hard to get invested.

You may like this book if: you are obsessed with the meta of mystery fiction

And now for the real reviews:

The Third Wife of Faraday House by B.R. Myers

Synopsis: Emeline Fitzpatrick is a ward of Judge and Mrs Shackleton in 1816 Halifax. Emeline is penniless, and her only redeeming feature is her beauty, so Mrs Shackleton is determined to marry her off to a suitable suitor as soon as possible (before her beauty fades). But Emeline only has eyes for one man: the handsome British navy lieutenant Ned Fletcher. He has promised to whisk her away to sunny Bermuda, and Emeline is desperate to leave gloomy Halifax behind. But when they are caught kissing at a debutante ball, Ned abandoned Emeline to face the shameful scandal all on her own. In a desperate maneuver, the Shackletons accept a marriage proposal for Emeline on her behalf, but it’s not for Ned. Instead, she’ll be married off to Captain Graves, who lives on a remote island on the Nova Scotia coast, and won’t have heard about her scandalous actions. Emeline is distraught. But when she reaches Faraday House, things are worse than she could have ever imagined. Captain Graves’ first wife Esther died years ago, and his second wife Georgina is currently dying. After Georgina’s passing, Emeline will become his third wife. The house itself is a veritable haunted mansion, with only a few staff to struggle with the upkeep. Day by day, Georgina’s condition worsens, and Emeline becomes more and more desperate for Ned to rescue her. Will her knight in shining armor come to take her to Bermuda? Or will Emeline have to use her wits for once, and figure out what’s really going on at Faraday House?

My thoughts: Overall I did like this book. I’ve read B.R. Myers’s previous book in my July 2023 roundup, and I like that she’s used the same formula of 19th century mystery where most of the things have a reasonable explanation, but there’s still a little bit of supernatural activity (as a treat). I also liked how Emeline had a lot of character development (although most of that was only possible because she had such a long way to go). Considering her relationship with the Shackletons at the beginning of the book was so contentious, I was pleased that she was able to repair it and build a great life for herself.

Rating: 3/5 shillings hidden in your mom’s tea that caused her to choke and die, that you only mention as an afterthought because apparently we don’t have time to unpack all that now

Worst Case Scenario by T J Newman

Synopsis: It’s a beautiful day in Waketa, Minnesota, but that’s all about to change. 35,000 feet about them, a pilot has a heart attack while flying a commercial airliner with nearly 300 souls on board. Dead, he slumps over the controls, pushing the stick forward and sending the plane into an unrecoverable trajectory towards the ground. It’s headed for Waketa, and ends up crashing into the Clover Hill nuclear power plant. Post 9/11, government official claimed that all nuclear plants in the US were plane-proof, but nothing in the world can stop an 80-ton jetliner travelling at 500 miles per hour. Now, Clover Hill is completely decimated, and the radioactive water that cools the spent uranium rods is leaking. If the rods aren’t cooled, they’ll cause a meltdown as bad as Chernobyl. But if the leaking, radioactive water reaches the nearby Mississippi river, it’ll contaminate the entire river basin, leading to a global food and immigration catastrophe. Will the people of Waketa be able to band together and save the day?

My thoughts: I really enjoyed reading Drowning by this author last month, so I had high hopes (but was also a bit apprehensive) at the thought of reading her newest release. Unfortunately, the plane crash was not really the central point of the book, and that’s always my favourite part. The crash itself did feel a bit unrealistic. I’m no expert, but you’re telling me that a plane colliding with a power line (before it even touched the ground) was enough to send debris all over Waketa and nearly level it? Maybe I need to see it rendered by the crew of Mayday to really believe it. Overall, the whole premise of a plane crashing into a nuclear power plant did seem a bit silly. I didn’t like how the timeline in the book was managed. The crew of the power plant had about 16 hours to avert major disaster, and they addressed the first problem within the first 3-4 hours. But then the book jumps forward to them discovering the second problem when there was less than one hour to address it? What were you doing with all that extra time? (Logically I know the crew was working very hard but you can’t just skip to the end to make it more dramatic). I also had some issues with the American President; namely, that he was flirting with Joss during the crisis, and that seemed to be the main reason why he cared about her at all. He kept going on long tangents whenever they were on the phone together. There’s literally an emergency going on, now is not the time to be flirting with your employee! I also didn’t love how Joss and Ethan were set up to be flirting when Ethan literally has a wife and kids. This time I know the point was for Joss to reflect on how different her life could have been, and I guess in a round-about way contributed to her making the choice to make a sacrifice, but still. I was also kind of annoyed that the local firefighters spent all their time trying to rescue a single child that was stuck in a single-car accident, instead of dealing with literally anything else (like the 17-car pileup on the only major highway in and out of Waketa, or the nuclear powerplant itself).

Rating: 3/5 folks who hate the government but have the only set of underwater welding gear in town

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

Synopsis: Cassie is a flight attendant with a secret. The secret is not that she’s an alcoholic, or that she likes flirting with the first class passengers on her flights (and many others). It’s that she met Alex Sokolov on her flight to Dubai; they went out to dinner, had a lot to drink, and hooked up in his luxe hotel room. And when she woke up in his hotel room, Alex Sokolov was dead. But Cassie was black out drunk, so most of the night was a complete blur. Did she kill him? Considering that she woke up next to his body covered in his blood, does it matter? So she cleans herself up, leaves his hotel, and catches her flight back to the US, determined to quit drinking, and to not tell anyone what really happened. But the scandalous murder is soon making headlines internationally, and the FBI have started to investigate. Can Cassie lie her way out of this situation, or has she finally gotten herself in too deep?

My thoughts: I picked up this book because critics were raving about the HBO series of the same name, so I figured I’d go right to the source. However, I was not impressed. The book was very introspective but in a shallow way: Cassie kept thinking about how bad her habits were but was never able to do anything about it. Also the fact that the killer’s identity was revealed really early meant that all of Cassie’s wondering about whether she could be a killer was kind of pointless (we know that she’s not a killer). Circling back to Cassie’s lack of character development, she basically did not change at all until the epilogue (Readers will know that I hate it when the author skips over really important stuff that happens between the end of the book and the epilogue). She had very little agency (except to make stupid small decisions) and I thought it was super unrealistic that she had been recruited to the CIA after the entire debacle and proving how unreliable she was. Additionally, I was really disappointed about the overall plot. When the author started dropping unusual details into the FBI interview transcripts, I thought they would amount to a lot more than they did. This was the thing that made me keep reading when I was initially unimpressed, and I unfortunately remained unimpressed. Those details were in fact clues to the big reveal, but they didn’t really go anywhere, and the final reveal itself was incredibly rushed.

Rating: 2/5 primal urges to summon a waiter to bring you Tsingtaos

Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice

Synopsis: 10 years after the world ended, Evan Whitesky and his family are thriving. They’ve left behind the old rez and are living in the bush, using ancestral Anishinaabe practices and knowledge to build their own community. But after 10 years, resources are running low. The lake has fewer fish, the berry bushes have smaller yields, and the deer and bears avoid the area. If they’re going to keep surviving, they’ll have to move somewhere else. The remaining elders dream of returning to their ancestral homelands, where the birch trees grow by the water, and they decide that it’s time to send out a small expedition in the hopes of finding a new home. But this isn’t the first time that members of their community have left in order to explore, and it’s risky. Will Evan and the others be prepared for what they might find?

My thoughts: I enjoyed the first book in this series (Moon of the Crusted Snow, see my July 2023 roundup), and I was really pleased to see that Evan and his community were thriving 10 years after the apocalypse. However, it did make me wonder how possible it is for communities to survive 20 or 50 years after the end of the world. Evan’s community was still using a lot of goods that were industrially manufactured pre-apocalypse (like clothing, knives, guns, etc), and they’ll all eventually be used up without any possibility for replacement, unless they can come up with alternatives themselves. Otherwise, I thought it was super satisfying that all of the indigenous communities were flourishing, while the white people had devolved into racist militarism, and the determining factor mainly seemed to be how people were engaging with the land. The indigenous communities were very aware of how the land was doing, and one of the main reasons that Evan wanted to move to a new area was because there weren’t enough resources to support the natural wildlife plus the humans.

Rating: 3/5 useless Leaf’s fan’s iPhones

A Life Consumed: Lilly Samson’s Dispatches from the TB Front by Diane Sims

Synopsis: In 1923, Lilly Samson was 22 years old, and had just started teaching near Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. She had a wonderful fiance, Bill, and a loving Swedish family. That year, she caught tuberculosis (TB). After months of illness, she wasn’t recovering, so she was sent to a sanatorium in Gravenhurst with the hopes of recovering her health. Instead, she spent 3 years in that sanatorium, and eventually died in 1927. Decades later, her niece Diane found the letters that Lilly sent to her family while in the “san” and compiled them into a book.

My thoughts: I actually discovered this book when I was looking for travel guides for Gravenhurst, Ontario (Readers will know that I took a little trip to Gravenhurst this summer and thoroughly enjoyed it), and it piqued my interest. I thought this book was a really interesting look into TB, as well as a snapshot of life and medical care in Ontario in the 1920s. It doesn’t really go too much into the actual medical care or the science behind the treatment that Lilly received; instead, it covers the life of Lilly and the other “sanites”, as portrayed in her letters. The author faithfully transcribes the letters into the book, and also uses a bit of creative liberty in order to add scenes of life in the san, which are inspired by events referenced in the letters. In the epilogue, she mentions that getting a diagnosis of TB a hundred years ago was about equivalent to how we’d receive a diagnosis of cancer now: extremely scary, and often fatal, and that comparison really stuck with me.

Rating: 3/5 fashionable jackets ordered from the Eaton’s catalogue

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #1)

Synopsis: After the death of his parents (who weren’t particularly good people so it’s not that much of heartache for him), Sir Robert Blyth needs a job in order to keep the household afloat. Robin’s been appointed to the British Home Office, as the Assistant in the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints. But when he arrives for his first day, at what he expects will be a boring middle management position, it’s nothing like what he expects. It turns out that there are magicians all over Britain (and possibly the world), who use cradling (a series of hand motions that you would use when playing Cats Cradle) to perform magic. Robin is told all of this (unbushelled is the term for it) by Edwin Courcey, the liaison to the Chief Minister of the Magical Assembly. Robin is flabbergasted by this reveal, and Edwin is frustrated. The person who Robin has replaced, Reggie Gatling, has been mysteriously missing for weeks, and Edwin is very concerned that something very bad has happened to him. This impression is only strengthened when Robin is attacked on his way home from work by a mysterious group of men, who curse him with runes (and now his having visions of the future too). Will Edwin and Robin uncover this mystery and remove the runes? Or are they in way over their heads?

My thoughts: Readers will know that I don’t visualize things in my head while I read, but I think this definitely worked to my advantage for this book. If I had seen what cradling actually looks like, I would not have been impressed at all, and figured it to be a ridiculous and silly way to do magic. But since all I see are the written word, I don’t have a problem with it, and I appreciate the author for creating something unique. At the beginning, this book seems like it’s going to be about bureaucracy and administration (because of Robin and Edwin’s jobs), but it is mostly adventure and intrigue, so don’t be worried. I thought the romance between Robin and Edwin was adorable (the classic jock/nerd alliance), and they generally worked well together as a team. My biggest complaint with this book (and the whole series in general) is that Robin’s assistant, Adelaide Harita Morresey, doesn’t get a bigger role. I thought she was an excellent character, and was super disappointment that she’s barely in any of the books despite having tons of potential.

Rating: 4/5 enchanted mazes that will destroy any magician that dares to enter

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #2)

Synopsis: Robin and Edwin have uncovered Walter Courcey’s plan to find all three items of the Last Contract, and use it to unlawfully redistribute magic from British magicians. Unfortunately they were forced to give Walter the coin, they're committed to stopping him from finding the cup and the knife. Robin dispatches his sister Maud to travel to America and warn the current holder of the cup that Walter’s men are coming for her. But the elderly Elizabeth Navenby is determined to return to England and help fight. Unfortunately for her, Mrs. Navenby is killed (and the cup stolen) almost immediately after setting sail to England with Maud aboard the RMS Lyric. Now, Maud is trapped alone on a giant steamship with a group of mysterious killers, and only Robin’s journal of recorded visions to guide her. She manages to recruit a few reluctant allies: Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, noted ex-boyfriend of Edwin’s and overall brooding figure, who mysteriously lost his magic; Violet Debenam, a actress in America who delights in doing the most scandalous thing at all times (and who has become a recurring character in Robin’s visions); and Alan Ross, a journalist interviewing the first class passengers about their luxury experience on the voyage, and also stealing jewelry and selling pornography on the side. Will Maud be able to rally her allies and find the cup? Or will this voyage be her last?

My thoughts: Overall I also enjoyed this book. I thought that everyone being trapped together on an ocean liner made for an interesting dynamic between characters, especially considering the societal norms that they all had to adhere to. Maud and Violet were constantly encountering their enemies and having to act cordially towards them because they were in public. The Lyric was also a great setting because it provided a wide variety of places, events, and other characters for the main cast to explore while looking for the cup. For this book, the main romantic pairing was between Maud and Violet. I didn’t like this romantic subplot as much for a couple of reasons. I was still holding out for an Adelaide Morrissey-focused book, so I was disappointed that she wasn’t there. I also think that the author was looking for ways to push the envelope, and it felt like a few things were included for the sake of being shocking and scandalous (which you are allowed to do, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it).

Rating: 4/5 zoobreak scenarios

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #3)

Synopsis: There are three objects needed to reenact the Last Contract, and start redistributing magical power between British Magicians. Walter Courcey has the coin, but his brother Edwin (and Edwin’s friends) have the cup. The last object is the knife, which is thought to be hidden in a magical house that was recently inherited by Violet Debenam. Now, it’s a race against time: by day, Violet is desperately trying to unlock the secrets of the house in order to locate the knife. By night, she’s defending the house against attempts by Walter’s lackeys to breach it and take control. It doesn’t help that Walter also has the support of the Magical Assembly on his side, and is attempting to contest the will that names Violet as the rightful owner of the estate. Will the group be able to defeat Walter and protect British magicians, or are they all doomed?

My thoughts: I did enjoy this book, but I thought it kind of fell apart in the second half. Since it takes place around 1910, I was really expecting that the “looming threat” that Walter wanted to prepare for was the Great War, but there didn’t appear to be any references towards it. I also found the final climax to be confusing: I wasn’t really clear what exactly happened to magic. No one has any magic, except if you live in a magical estate? Personally, I don’t know if that makes people substantially better off than if Walter had succeeded. I also really did not care for the dynamic between Alan and Jack (the main romantic pairing for this book). I thought it was a good idea for the author to branch out into different kinds of love interests (particularly Alan, who is a poor immigrant worker, and thus lived a very different life from Jack Alston, who is literally a Lord). However, the class dynamic completely pervaded all of the romantic aspects of their relationship to a point where it felt like Jack was continually wielding his power over Alan. I was hoping that the author would take the opportunity to flip the dynamic, or even make it reciprocal, but that never really happened.

Rating: 3/5 trees that have an ancient magical aura and know your greatest secrets

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

August

This month I read 4 ebooks and 2 eaudiobooks and 1 physical book from the Toronto Public Library, totalling to 7 books.

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

Synopsis: All of Cambria has been torn apart by the ongoing divine war, after the Underling god Dacre was unable to recapture his estranged wife, the skyward goddess Enva. Although the City of Oath, in the Eastern Borough, is attempting to minimize the effects of the war, it’s having a huge impact on rivals Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt. They’re both interning for the Oath Gazette, fighting over a single columnist position. Iris dropped out of school to support her alcoholic mother, who has spiraled ever since her brother Forrest enlisted to fight in the war for Enva. She’s only at the Oath Gazette after winning an essay contest. Roman, on the other hand, comes from a privileged family and got his internship through family connections. But he’s dreading his upcoming arranged marriage to the daughter of one of his father’s clients, who appears to be developing illegal chemical weapons for Dacre’s side. Fed up with the Gazette’s commitment to Dacre propaganda and reeling after her mother’s death, Iris quits her internship to sign up to be a war correspondent for the Inkridden Tribune, hoping to find some sign of her brother. She’s sent to a small town near the front lines, armed only with her magic typewriter that has been allowing her to exchange letters with a mysterious penpal named Carver, her only solace in these tough times. But Carver is actually Roman Kitt, and the connection that he and Iris are forming has left him desparate to protect her, no matter what.

My Thoughts: For me, despite its issues, this book was unputdownable, and I quickly devoured it. I thought the mythology was cool, and appreciated how it made a classic WW1-style war feel a bit more unique. I also liked how Iris and Roman were depicted as journalists: dedicated to reporting the truth, instead of harassing people in order to get the scoop. Readers will know, however, that I am a hater of the you’ve-got-mail trope, and it was one of the big issues I had with this book. By itself, I probably would have been able to look past it, but it went hand-in-hand with Roman being incredibly paternalistic towards Iris. I didn’t like that he had all the power when he knew Iris’s identity but refused to reveal his own when they were penpals. I also thought it was crazy that he followed her to the front lines based only on the connections formed in their letters (which is not real life), even though Iris couldn’t stand him at the office (which is real life). The book ended on a devastating cliffhanger, and I’ve heard that the sequel isn’t executed well, so we’ll see how I fare once I actually get my hands on it.

Rating: 4/5 honeymoons at a picturesque bed and breakfast run by lesbians

Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421 by TJ Newman

Synopsis: A summer day at the pool ended tragically when Annie slipped and hit her head on the concrete. She died that day, and her mother, Chris, and father, Will, never really recovered. 6 years later, their marriage is falling apart, and their remaining daughter Shannon is desperate for the independence that her parents are too scared to give her. Shannon is frustrated that her dad insists on flying with her from Hawaii to summer camp in San Francisco; she’s 11 years old, and can definitely handle herself. But two minutes into their flight, the airplane loses an engine, all hydraulics, and is forced to ditch into the ocean. By some miracle, the plane lands largely intact, and passengers are faced with an impossible scenario: leave the plane (conditions are rough and the water is covered in flammable jet fuel), or stay in the plane and risk being trapped inside. Will and Shannon decide to stay inside. Within minutes, the plane fills with water and sinks to the ocean floor, trapping a few survivors with a limited bubble of air. Will they make it out alive?

My thoughts: I’ve seen Falling (the author’s first book) by the same author for AGES in bookstores, and I’m pretty sure that I did read it, but the only thing I remembered is that I didn’t like it. However, I’m glad that I decided to give Drowning a chance. Readers will know that I love fire and rescue shows, and also that I love air crash investigation shows, so it was a match made in heaven. It definitely made me very emotional but sometimes you just want to feel some adrenaline and have a good cry. I would definitely recommend it.

Rating: 4/5 messages in a water bottle

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

Synopsis: Lucky St. James has always been unlucky. After her mom died when she was young, she was taken in by her grandmother Stella. Stella was a doting grandmother, but they only ever scraped by. Now, Stella’s dementia is getting worse, and their rent is being raised again. Lucky’s job at a temp agency doesn’t make enough to cover the bills, and she can’t bear to take her grandma out of the Toronto apartment where they grew up together. It’s full of memories and ghost stories, like the one Stella loves to tell about the psychiatric hospital that used to be down the block, and how one of the inmates dug a tunnel to try to escape. One afternoon while doing laundry, Lucky discovers the legendary tunnel, but the only thing in it is a strange silver spoon. A few days later, she’s approached by a beautiful woman with a tantelizing offer: come work for her company, VenCo. It’s a huge woman-run company with offices around the US, and they're looking to open a publishing house. For Lucky, an aspiring writer, it’s too good to be true. The woman invites Lucky and Stella to visit their Salem, Massachusetts office, so that Lucky can learn more about what the position entails; so they pack up the car for a road trip. Except when they get to Salem, it’s not what Lucky was expecting. Instead of corporate glass and steel, they’ve arrived at the historic mansion belonging to Mina Good and her wife Wendy. There, Mina explains that VenCo is isn’t what you might think. Mina is collecting a coven of witches. Once they find all seven, each with their own silver spoon, the coven will be complete and they’ll be able to change the world. Lucky is the sixth witch, and she has less than two weeks to find the seventh and complete the coven. Is Lucky (who, by the way, has no magic powers to speak of) out of her depth? Or will she really be able to find the elusive seventh witch and save the coven before it even begins?

My thoughts: I really enjoyed reading a book that was written from a very feminist and women-centered lens, especially one that was very pro-seniors. Readers will know that belonging to a coven full of feminine energy is literally the dream. I also really liked how Lucky made her magic all her own by drawing on the lessons from her mother, Arnia. They were a mix of Indigenous spirituality and general life lessons, and I thought they were used really well for the final battle. I also thought it was kind of cool that the cross-country road trip happened from the northern US down to the south, instead of being the typical east-west (I don’t know if it was intentional but it was cool to have a trope subtly flipped like that). My main nitpick is that I wish that the other witches in the coven had more character development and presence besides the story of how they each got their spoons, but I understand that 5 supporting characters can be a lot to balance. As a final note, this book had HUGE prequel energy (becuse it involved Lucky getting her powers, and the formation of the coven), which I haven’t ever seen before in a book that wasn’t intentionally advertised as being a prequel. From my research it doesn’t seem like the author is turning this into a series, so I thought it was a bold choice for her to focus on the building-up aspect of the storyline, and I appreciated it.

Rating: 3/5 elderly women that seem to attract gay men in spades

The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield

Synopsis: What if Apollo 17 wasn’t the last ever mission to the moon? It’s 1973, and NASA is preparing to send a group of astronauts back to the moon in the Apollo 18 mission. But this isn’t any ordinary mission; it’s funded primarily by the Deparment of Defense, so the priorities are a lot less about science and a lot more about National Security. The Soviets have just launched Almaz, a spy satellite with astounding resolution and capabilities. If it becomes operational, it’ll be very difficult for the US to keep their own secrets on their own soil. So, Apollo 18 will have to do something that’s never been done before: rendezvous mid-spaceflight with Almaz, incapacitate it, and continue on to the moon. But mission control is fully confident that the crew of Luke Hemmings, Michael Esdale, and Tom Hoffman have what it takes to pull off the most complicated Apollo mission yet. Except, just weeks before launch, Tom is killed in a routine helicopter flight, forcing backup commander Chad Miller to take his place. Commander Kaz Zemeckis, a former test pilot and current liaison between the White House and Misson Control, has a bad feeling about this. Thankfully he’ll be acting as the CAPCOM, communicating directly with the astronauts once they’re in space. Can he keep the mission afloat and bring the astronauts safely back to Earth? Or are there more surprises in store?

My thoughts: I don’t necessarily think that my summary does the plot justice, because it’s a bit of a slow burn, so I didn’t want to give everything away. The title is a bit misleading because it’s an alternate history novel with cold war intrigue, not a murder mystery, but I really did like this book! Especially how the author tried to line up things in the book with real-life people and events, in order to make things as plausible as possible. Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure this is my second time reading it. I don’t actually remember reading it for the first time, but the plot beats definitely felt familiar (but not in a predictable way). I am glad that I came back to it for another go-around though.

Rating: 4/5 mysterious, possibly bottomless, holes on the Moon

The Defector by Chris Hadfield

Synopsis: It’s the day before Yom Kippur, 1973. A soviet fighter pilot, callsign Grief, has crashed his MiG-25 fighter plane into the Levantine Sea just off the coast of Israel. Except, Grief didn’t actually crash. In reality, he landed his plane safely in an Israeli hangar and is attempting to defect to the US. The MiG-25 is currently one of the best recon and combat aircrafts in the world, and the Americans would love dearly to get their hands on one. So Commander Kaz Zemeckis is assigned to keep an eye on the pilot accompaning this miracle plane. Can Grief be trusted? Or is there more than meets the eye?

My thoughts: Based on the success of The Apollo Murders, I was really excited to try the second book in the series. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a let down. For me, the pacing was really off, because the book felt like it ended in the middle of the plot, immediately after the incident at Groom Lake. Anything that got wrapped up had to be addressed in the epilogue, and a lot of things were not. I was also expecting the Apollo Soyuz plotline to matter a lot more. I’m hoping that this is all building towards a third book that will pick up where everything left off, but I’m not really counting on it. However, I definitely enjoyed the first three quarters of the book.

Rating: 3/5 tickets to see old blue eyes

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer

Synopsis: Anton Treuer, an Obijwe from the region around the Leech Lake Reservation in Northern Minnesota, has put together an introductory guide that covers everything you may have wanted to know about Indians but were too afraid to ask. It covers things like terminology, history, economics, politics, and languages. Each section is split into direct questions with easy to understand answers.

My thoughts: This is a really great introductory book for people who are vaguely aware of issues facing Indigenous peoples but don’t really know a lot of concrete details. It might be because this is the Young Readers Edition (randomly, TPL has a lot of copies of the Young Readers Edition, but not nearly as many of the original edition for adults), but this book is extremely clear, direct, and to the point, so it’s very easy to digest and understand. I think the book was structured really well, and could easily serve as a reference material, especially if you only want to explore a few of the questions or topics that are covered. I really liked that the author injected a lot of his own personal experiences and even family photos. It made sure that he wasn’t generalizing to all Indigenous people, and also made everything discussed seem more concrete for the reader. I also found the comparisons between the US and Canada really interesting; I’m glad that the author made sure to emphasize that even though Canada is farther along in the conversation of reconciliation than the US, things are not necessarily substantially better for Indigenous peoples in Canada, and that there’s still much to be done.

Rating: ⅗ White mechanics that say “Miigwech” and “Gigawaabamin miinawaa” to their Ojibwe customers

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher

Synopsis: Mona is one of the few wizards that are left in Riverbraid, although you wouldn’t know it, since she’s only 14 and her magic only works on bread. When anti-wizard sentiment, spurred by Inquisitor Oberon, starts increasing, she’s perfectly happy to stay at her aunt’s bakery with her animated gingerbread man and her sourdough starter Bob. But early one morning, Mona enters the bakery to find a dead girl on the floor. The girl’s name was Tibbie, and she was killed by the mysterious Spring Green Man simply for being a wizard. Now, Mona can’t just ignore everything that’s going on. With the help of Tibbie’s brother Spindle, she’s determined to contact the Duchess of Riverbraid. Surely once a responsible adult finds out what’s been happening they’ll put a stop to everything, right? Right?!

My thoughts: I’ve read adult books by T Kingfisher before (see my April 2023 roundup) I think this was technically a middle grade book, and although I wasn’t intending to read a kids book I’m not mad about it. Overall I did like it! I thought the themes were interesting; they revolved around the idea of reluctant heroes and war veterans, and also the idea of children having to take charge when adults cannot or willnot. The characters were charming, and the final siege was cool. I appreciated that the author did a bit of world-building with regards to the magic system, by teaching Mona about sympathy magic.

Rating: 4/5 provinces where rats are NOT ALLOWED (very Alberta-core)

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

July

This month, I read 5 ebooks, 1 e-audiobook, and 2 physical books from the Toronto Public Library, plus 1 digital book from Mangadex, for a total of 9 books.

Dishonourable Mentions

The Woman with No Name by Audrey Blake

Synopsis: Yvonne is desparate to help with the British war effort in World War II, but as a woman in her forties, she’s constantly being overlooked and underestimated. When she is finally recruited to help, it’s to become a British spy in France. But will she have what it takes?

My thoughts: I unfortunately found this book to just be boring. I think that starting out with Yvonne’s spy work and then flashing back to her spy training was definitely the wrong way to do it. We already know that she passed spy school, which appeared to be the main conflict of that storyline. Overall the book just didn’t grab me.

You may like this book if: You have a think for WWII and also for MILFs

Honourable Mentions

Small Favor (Dresden Files #10) by Jim Butcher

I already read this in July 2023, so I'm not counting it as a book. See my thoughts on it below.

And now for the Real Reviews

Educated by Tara Westover

Synopsis: Tara Westover had an unusual childhood, to say the least. She grew up off the grid in the rural mountains of Idaho, in a family that belonged to an extremist morman sect. Instead of going to school, she learned how to sort scrap metal in her father’s junk yard, or harvest medicinal herbs with her mother. Tara reflects on her childhood, and the experiences of going to university, being cut off from her family, and eventually earning a PhD.

My thoughts: I’ve been a bit reluctant to read this book because I’ve heard a lot of hype about it over the years, and worried that it might be overhyped. Reader, it is not. Recently, I was discussing memoirs with a friend. We agreed that a lot of celebrity memoirs are not it, because the majority of them seem to be made becuause the author is a celebrity, not becuase the have anything interesting to say. Memoirs by regular people tend to be a lot better, because generally they have had some sort of interesting life experience that warrants a memoir, besides just being famous. Educated definitely falls into the later category. It was so well written that I had a hard time believing that it was in fact a true story. The fact that Tara went from a girl who never attended school and barely got her GED to someone with a PhD was almost unbelievable (not saying that I don’t believe her, but that that I’m even more shocked that she was able to pull it off). I also thought the arc of Tara’s mom was really facinating and tragic, how she at first was in opposition to Tara’s dad and his abuse (and seemed relatively normal), but then how she got deeper and deeper into homeopathic remedies (making her seem less sane), and then how she literally girlbossed a homeopathy empire for herself and the whole family (becoming the largest employer in the area). I’m really glad that Tara was able to grow up (more or less) whole, and reflect on the insane and abusive experiences that she survived.

Rating: 5/5 nickels that you’d have for every time that you left the Sun Belt at night in order to drive back to Idaho during a storm, in a car that was speeding severly over the limit and had no seat belts, ultimately resulting in a serious car crash

White Night (Dresden Files #9) by Jim Butcher

Synopsis: A serial killer in a grey cloak is killing women in Chicago, and it’s Harry Dresden’s worst nightmare (partially because he is too chivalrous to allow anything bad happening to women without doing anything about it, and partially because HE wears a grey cloak and lives in Chicago, so it directly implicates him). And it's especially bad because these women are all magic practitioners; not powerful enough to be wizards, but definitely powerful enough to be targets. Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to prove that he’s innocent. Unfortunately, it seems to implicate his half-brother Thomas, notable vampire in the White Court. Will Harry be able to save the women, vindicate his brother, and win back the trust of his ex-girlfriend and rival PI Elaine?

My thoughts: It’s been a bit of a slog, but it’s kind of vindicating to have read so many Dresden Files books that I understand the way the series works. For example, one year ago I was reading Grave Peril (see my July 2023 roundup), and was annoyed that the author kept referencing an incident before the start of the book. If it was so important, why didn’t it deserve its own novel? Turns out that Gravel Peril actually was that novel. Now, when reading about the New Mexico incident that was continually referenced in this book, I just patiently waited for all to be revealed (and it was). This book also marked the end of Lasciel’s arc (Lasciel is a fallen angel and a member of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. Since Death Masks (see my October 2023 roundup), She’s been trying to tempt Harry to accept enormous power in exchange for becoming evil, but Harry has stubbornly resisted her advances for three years. It was really cool to see how Lasciel changed over several books, and their final interactions were a great capstone to end off the arc.

Rating: 4/5 french hair salons that are addictively good

Small Favor (Dresden Files #10) by Jim Butcher

This was the first Dresden Files novel that I ever read (see my June 2023 roundup), and it represents a big “full circle” moment for me. It means that I’ve now completed the first 10 novels (17 are currently published, and I believe that 22-25 are expected in total). I kind of feel like I’ve graduated from unconscious incompetence (I don’t know what I don’t know) into conscious incompetence (where I now know how much I don’t know). The first time I read this book I lacked a lot of context and had so many questions, but now that I have all of the context, my questions are more about the future implications for the rest of the series. I do plan on reading as many Dresden files as possible, although we’ll have to see if Jim Butcher ever finishes it. It’s also funny to think that this series has been released across my whole life (the first was released when I was only a year old, and more books are expected in the future), and that hopefully it will continue to be released as I get even older.

Turn Coat (Dresden Files #11) by Jim Butcher

Synopsis: Donald Morgan, a member of the White Council of Wizards, has hated Harry Dresden for close to a decade. So it’s a huge surprise when he shows up at Harry’s door, gravely injured and wanted for the murder of a member of the wizard Senior Council. The evidence against Morgan is pretty strong; he was found holding a knife over the body, and had recieved some mysterious payments. On the other hand, he’s the most staunchly lawful person Harry has ever met (part of the reason why Morgan despises Harry’s unorthodox ways). And Harry kind of believes him. So now, he has to harbour a wanted criminal on the verge of death, solve the crime he’s being accused of, and also fight off a naagloshi. What’s a naagloshi, you ask? Only an extremely powerful Diné creature that literally eats magic and is the most terrifying thing that Harry has ever witnessed with his wizard’s Sight. Plus, this investigation will require him to get tangled up with the White Court of Vampires again. What could possibly go wrong?

My thoughts: The best thing about slogging through 11 Dresden File novels is seeing how the overarching pieces are starting to work. This book definitely advanced that overall plot forward, and even if I don’t quite get everything, I’m excited to read more about the new Grey Council, and Deamonreach island. I also liked how the relationship between Harry and Luccio was set up in the previous book, and became a really major plot point in this book. I will definitely soldier on with the series.

Rating: 4/5 Private Investigator tasks that you subcontracted out to a different private investigator (which may or may not have been further subcontracted out to even more private investigators).

Champions of the Fox (Thieves of Shadow #3) by Kevin Sands

Synopsis: After their adventures in Children of the Fox and Seekers of the Fox, the gang is back for their ultimate adventure with this third book. Our crew consists of: Cal, the defacto leader who grew up as a gaffer running cons with his mentor, the Old Man; Meriel, a girl from the neighbouring kingdom of Torgal, who has at least 8 knives hidden in her dress at all times; Lachlan, a street urchin that has many contacts within the Breakers (the collective name for members of the criminal underworld); Gareth, very shy but incredibly smart and knowledgeable; and Foxtail, a mysterious girl who is an expert at acrobatics but wears a steel plate covering her whole face and does not speak. Together, they’ve travelled across the Empire of Areyth, stealing the Dragon’s Eye (an amber monocle that has attached itself to Cal’s face, granting him epic powers of perception but often demanding much from him), and the Dragon’s Teeth (a pair of swords with the power to transfer life energy between them). Cal is tired of doing the Eye’s bidding, and worried that he’s getting himself and his friends into trouble. But now, the Eye has commanded Cal to find the Hollow Man (who is currently being kept in the most secure prison in the Empire). Breaking the Hollow Man out of prison will require their biggest gaff yet. But what will the costs really be?

My thoughts: This series of books is absolutely kid kino, bordering on real kino. I (readers will know that I am a grown woman) have thoroughly enjoyed the entire series without reservation. (I read books 1 and 2 in the Fall of 2022, prior to starting my Reading Roundups) It’s full of excellent heists (readers will know that I love a heist) with a really engaging and dynamic cast of characters. Callan in particular made for an excellent narrator and overall group leader. The mythology and lore of Areyth was very interesting and connected to the plot without being overly complicated or detracting from the story. I generally like books that have a Dickensian/England in the 1800s asthetic with a little bit of magic thrown in, and this series definitely delivered. If you’re trying to get back into reading, I definitely recommend this series!

Rating: 5/5 enchanted rings that make the wearer look like they have the weeping sickness

The Parliament by Aimee Pokwatka

Synopsis: Maddie isn’t happy to be back at her hometown. She has a lot of bad memories, and is really only there as a favour to her friend Farrah, a librarian. All she has to do is teach a bath-bomb making workshop to a group of teenagers, and then she can go home. But the small town West Virginia library is surrounded by owls. At first it’s just odd, but it quickly becomes dangerous. The owls begin to attack the windows, and devour anyone who dares to step outside. Trapped in the library, with dwindling hope of rescue, and few supplies (except for a copy of Maddie’s favourite childhood book, the Silent Queen), will Maddie and the others have what it takes to make it out alive?

The Silent Queen synopsis: Every year the 8-year-old girls of the Kingdom get their Enrichment, a power that will help them and their communities. Surely a finger, or a hand, or a leg is a small sacrifice to keep the Monster satiated and the community safe. Alala knows this. Even she, the Silent Queen, had to undergo an Enrichment, although she has never told anyone what power she recieved. But the Monster is growing hungrier. When Desperia, a princess of a rival kingdom, kidnaps Alala out of desperation that she could fix everything, Will Alala have what it takes to defeat the Monster and save the next generation of girls?

My thoughts: This book had an element of meta-fiction in it, where each chapter alternated between the universe of Maddie stuck in the library, and the universe of The Silent Queen (which Maddie was reading to the kids). I personally think it was overkill to swap each chapter. I was way more interested in the library universe, and I found The Silent Queen storyline overall to have been kind of boring. Every 2nd or 3rd chapter probably would have been fine. I also didn’t really like the ending. I understand that the point was “the only thing to fear is fear itself” but in The Silent Queen, I didn’t really feel satisfied when Alala was just able to use her voice for the first time, because it didn’t really feel like she had earned it. Yes, her journey was challenging, but did she really experience enough personal growth to “deserve” getting her voice back (in the context of the structure of the story)? I was way more interested in the library storyline. I thought that the fear of the incompetent small town government was kind of unusual and really hit the spot (ie, that Maddie could not rely on police or emergency services to rescue them) and ramped up the tension. Things kind of went off the rails a bit towards the last third of the story, but overall it was not bad.

Rating: 2/5 antique chairs that have historical value and should be preserved at all costs

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

Synopsis: The year that no one in the book club can attend their annual cottage trip is of course the year that Elsy needs it the most. She’s still trying to get over her broken heart, and is struggling to cope with the endless grind of her job as an English professor. So when each member of their romance book club cancels, one after the other, Elsy refuses to quit. Even if it means having to spend a week in their usual cabin totally alone, it’s still worth it. After the rough year she’s had, the one thing she needs the most is her favourite romance series: the Quixotic Falls series by Rachel Flowers. Set in the picturesque small town of Eloraton, each of the four books captures the love story of a different couple. But the series was never finished, after Rachel Flower’s tragic death, and Elsy is so disappointed that she’ll never learn how it ends. But on the way to the book club cabin, Elsy’s car breaks down, and she’s forced to pull over in a small New England town that feels oddly familiar. She had stumbled into Eloraton. Could she really be inside her favourite romance novels? Everything is exactly the same as described, except for a mysterious grouchy bookstore owner. Can Elsy help conclude the Quixotic Falls series? Will she ever get her own happily ever after?

My thoughts: This book definitely wasn’t bad, but after absolutely devouring Ashley Poston’s other books, it just wasn’t as good (which was a devastating blow for me). I didn’t really like how the book-come-to-life plot was executed. It wasn’t like Elsy was trapped in a groundhog day-style time loop (although the author didn’t make it that clear); she could have left at any time as soon as her car was repaired. I think the stakes could have been higher, especially because Elsy was about to mess with the cannon without repurcussions (despite her own worries about it). I also think “Quixotic Falls” is a pretentious name for a book series. The stakes being low also meant that this book didn’t stand out to me among the other small town romances I’ve read (particularly When in Rome and Practice Makes Perfect, reviewed in my January 2024 and November 2023 roundups, respectively).

Rating: 3/5 bags of honey taffy (even though you don't like sweet things)

This Summer Will Be Different by Carely Fortune

Synopsis: Lucy and Bridget have been best friends for years, and Lucy is so glad that she’s been folded into Bridget’s family in PEI so easily. The first summer they went back, Bridget missed her flight, so Lucy had some time to kill. She hooked up with a handsome stranger, only to realize the next morning that he was actually Bridget’s brother Felix. This is a huge problem, because Bridget’s last best friend dated Felix and broke his heart so that she could “find herself”. So Lucy has careful instructions: don’t fall in love with Felix. Except that every year when she goes back to PEI, they always end up hooking up. But this summer is too important to mess up. Bridget is getting married, and Lucy (a florist) is doing the flowers for the wedding. And when Bridget unexpectedly flees back to PEI just days before her wedding, it’s up to Lucy to follow her, figure out just what the heck is going on, and make sure to NOT hook up with Felix.

My thoughts: This was a very steamy romance (so much so that I struggled to listen to it in public), but it was also very sweet and heartwarming. Overall I did like it, especially because a lot of the action revolved around Lucy and her best friend, instead of Lucy and her boyfriend. (A similar technique is used in my favourite Emily Henry novel Book Lovers, reviewed in my March 2023 roundup). The major issue that I had was in the climax of the book. Lucy and Felix are about to make their relationship official, but she accuses him of only seeing her as a hookup; in order to prove that he really loves her, Felix declares his love for her, and they proceed to hook up. Personally, I think that is completely missing the point. I would much rather have seen Felix prove his love in a non-physical way, like by making a big sacrifice or doing some kind of act of service for her. I never doubted that he loved her, but it’s about the principle of the matter. But other than that, Carely Fortune has produced another winning romance novel, and I’m excited for whatever she publishes next.

Rating: 4/5 Cow's Creamery cows named Wowee that live in the Charlottetown airport

Fifty-Four Pigs by Phillip Schott

Synopsis: Peter Bannerman is a veterinarian in New Selfoss, Manitoba (just north of Gimli). Despite growing up in town, he’s always been a bit of an outsider, preferring logic and objective thoughts over emotions and irrationality. He and his wife Laura and their dog Pippin live a quiet life together. Although Peter has started to gain a reputation as someone with a knack for solving small crimes, largely thanks to Pippin’s superior sense of smell (one of the best in Canada). Early one morning, Peter witnesses a large explosion in Tom Pearson’s barn. The structure is level, but thankfully the only victims are 54 pigs. That is, until RCMP officer (and Laura’s brother) Kevin discovers the remains of one human in the rubble. Who blew up Tom’s barn? Peter decides that perhaps he and Pippin should do a bit of unofficial investigating, just in case the RCMP miss something. But what is Peter really getting himself into?

My thoughts: I did have high hopes for this book based on my previous love of the Rockton and Haven’s Rock series (see my April and May 2024 roundups), because of the similar rural Canadian setting. Plus, this book was touted as a Canadian version of the Thursday Murder Club series (see my July, August, and October 2023 roundups), and I thought it might have a similar dry wit. However, I was pretty disappointed. The setting of rural small town Manitoba was interesting, but it wasn’t really enough to carry the rest of the story. Instead of witty and charming, Peter Bannerman came off as manipulative, because he kept lying to his wife that he wasn’t investigating the crime even after the RCMP told him to stop. (Readers will know two of my major pet peeves: people that don’t respect their wives, and people that try to solve crimes even after the police have told them to stop.) Even when he wasn’t annoying me, Peter was not an exceptionally interesting protagonist. I was disappointed that Pippin didn’t have a larger presence of character throughout the overall book. I also thought that the lightbulb moment kind of missed the mark, because the connection that Peter made was both too direct and too obscure. A great lightbulb moment that solves the crime should ideally be something that the audience can put together at the same time. In this case, the eureka was a very obvious connection to a very obscure thing: Peter was discussing polar bear gall bladders with someone else when he realized that the killers had probably been smuggling polar bear gall bladders. In this instance, the leap of logic was very easy to make but the fact it was based on was obscure (how am I supposed to know that polar bear gall bladders are extremely valuable on the black market??) In my opinion, this moment would have been more satisfying if the fact that it was based on was more accessible to the audience, but the leap of logic was more complex, because then it’s up to the reader to use their own critical thinking skills to solve the case, instead of relying on trivia. I have to admit, this normally wouldn’t really bother me. Readers will know that generally for mystery novels I am just happy to be along for the ride, and don’t necessarily try to solve it myself before the detectives. I just found this specific mystery solve to be unsatisfying. When added to all of the other notes I have about this book, I will likely not finish the series (which I have to admit surprised even myself).

Rating: 2/5 subnationalists who believe that the division of the Prairies into three separate provinces was arbitrary and inefficient

Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui

Synopsis: After his sister Faylin is eaten by a dragon, Laios must rally the remaining members of his adventuring party to go back into the dungeon with only meager supplies. They’ll have just enough money to make it through, but his plan requires doing the unthinkable: eating monsters!

My thoughts: Even though this manga was published in 14 volumes, I’m only going to count it as 1 book (to do otherwise would feel like artificially inflating my stats for the year). It’s actually the first manga I’ve ever read, and I liked this manga a lot more than I was expecting to. My favourite parts were the monster-of-the-week format at the beginning. As the plot and lore became more complicated in the middle, it wasn’t really to my taste. But I really liked how the ending revolved a lot around the themes of eating and desire. I definitely related to Marcille the most, even her flaws! which I think is a sign of a good character. Plus she’s a blonde, Italian magic user, and readers will know that’s literally me. I was also disappointed that chilchuk and itzizumi didn’t really get much character development (yes, they both were given official backstories, but it didn’t feel like they go to do much in the present timeline of the story, which was definitely a shame). In the translation that I read, I really enjoyed the glossaries at the end, which helped English readers understand more of the Japanese cultural context as well as references to previous chapters.

Rating: 3/5 servings of spirit-cooled holy water sorbet

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

June

This month I read 5 ebooks and 2 physical books from the Toronto Public Library, plus 1 audiobook podcast, totalling to 8 books.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Synopsis: James Harris is charming and new to Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. He’s here to take care of his aunt, Mrs. Ann Savage. When he meets Patricia Campbell (a long suffering housewife with an absent husband, rebellious children, and a mother-in-law (Ms. Mary) with dementia), she invites him into her home willingly. Big mistake. James Harris may look charming, but strange things are happening all around Mount Pleasant. Children in the local Black neighborhood are going missing, claiming that a strange white man is meeting them in the forest. Ann Savage viciously attacks Patricia and bites off her ear. And a floor of rats invades the Campbell home, swarming Ms. Mary and her caretaker Ms. Greene. But worst of all: Ms. Mary knows James Harris. He used to be a friend of her father’s 60 years ago, when his name was Hoyt Pickens. He bankrupted the family and blamed a local Black man when children went missing. And he hasn’t aged a day since then. Patricia is convinced: James Harris is some kind of creature, and he needs to leave Mount Pleasant. But will she be able to stand up for her children and do the right thing? Will she be able to even convince anyone else (including her husband and her book club) that something is wrong at all? Or will James Harris take everything that matters.

My thoughts: I was expecting this to be a quirky adventure, but this was truly one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. Partially because the vampire attacks (as well as other crazy things) freaked me out. There were rat attacks, spider/centipede/cockroach encounters, and more. But it was mostly scary because this book took place in the 1990s, and rights for women felt more like the 1940s and 50s. Everyone gave up their jobs when they got married. Everyone was a housewife, dedicated to cooking and cleaning and raising the kids, with almost zero support from their husbands. Patricia appeal to her husband and her friends husbands for help multiples times, and they never believed her because they trusted James Harris (a wealthy, charismatic man who invested with them) over their own wives. That was the part that really freaked me out the most, especially because Patricia kept trying and failing. Eventually she and her book club succeeded, but I wasn’t sure that they would.

Rating: 3/5 women who have not read Cry, the Beloved Country, even thought it was assigned for the book club that month

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob

Synopsis: This is a graphic memoir about growing up as a child of Indian Immigrants in the United States, as well as Mira's experience being Brown in New York in 2001 and 2016. It also covers many conversations that Mira has with her Jewish husband, and uncomfortable questions from their mixed-race son, Z.

My thoughts: This book had a really unusual art style for a graphic novel. It felt very mixed media: there was usually a background photo, and then illustrations of each character speaking and then the speech bubbles on top. Each character only had one illustration of them at each age, and the effect was kind of disconcerting: it felt very static, because the characters poses or facial expressions never changed in reaction to what they were saying or hearing. On the plus side, I did find it much easier to recognize each character (readers will know that's a struggle of mine when reading certain kinds of graphic novels) because they generally looked exactly the same.

In terms of the contents of the book, I was not super impressed, although a large part of that was due to some faulty advertising (I was told that the book was about growing up religious, but the author only very briefly mentioned her family's Christian roots in India, and that her partner was Jewish). Instead (not a bad thing, just different), the book mainly delt with race and racism. I thought it was fine, but the references felt very much like a time capsule in a bad way. Additionally, for a book that claims to be “a memoir in conversations” it could have leaned in to its own theme a bit more. I would have made more distinction between each conversation, or down the exposition in a way that felt more distinct from the conversations themselves.

Rating: 2/5 children that want to be Michael Jackson when they grow up

The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor

Synopsis: After they drowned in the frozen creek and were nursed back to health by their mother’s celtic magic, Kathleen McNair, now known as Kit, was never the same. Kit hated any time that they were forced to look or act feminine, and wanted to be treated just like their brothers Landon and Jep. Rebekah, daughter of a German-Canadian doctor, similarly feels like an outcast. The growing tensions of the 1930s mean that it’s difficult for Rebekah’s father to get a job anywhere except for Kit’s southern Ontario town (too desperate for a doctor to be able to turn down anyone). Rebekah and Kit are drawn to each other, spending more and more time together, although Landon’s feelings for Rebekah complicate things. But after a fateful night, Rebekah’s family is forced to flee back to Montreal, forcing her to say goodbye to Kit forever. Years later, during World War II, Rebekah will encounter the McNairs again, changing her life forever.

My thoughts: Even though it wasn’t particularly plot heavy, I enjoyed this book. It was a lot more about the characters, primarily Kit and Rebekah, although it definitely painted several pictures of the settings (ranging from the McNairs Farm to a Halifax air force base). It reminded me of Great or Nothing by Joy McCullough et al (see my May 2023 roundup); a story set in and around World War II, involving several siblings and other characters that orbit around each other. But overall it was pretty good.

Rating: 3/5 jazz clubs that are in desperate need of a good seamstress

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

See my May 2024 review of Dune.

Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor

Synopsis: In Durton, Australia, twelve-year-old Esther Bianchi has gone missing. She was last seen by her best friend Ronnie by the creek, when they split off from each other on the way home from school. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels and her assistant have been called in to solve the case, but a set of twin girls went missing the day before in the city, so their resources are very limited. Sarah goes around town, interviewing folks and trying to figure out what happened. Perspectives are also shown from Ronnie, Esther’s mum Constance, Esther’s friend Lewis, and others.

My thoughts: This book was good, but I don’t think it really landed for me as well as it could have. Usually I’m a big fan of rural settings, but instead of an ode to a small town it was more of an elegy. The vibe was pretty depressing, especially how the children insisted on calling it Dirt Town instead of Durton. This was especially apparent in the “we” chapters, where the author used the first person plural to write from the perspective of the children of Durton as a whole. I thought this was unusual, although it had a kind of haunting quality to it. The mystery itself was interesting and well done. I was really worried when everyone kept referring to a future regrettable incident involving Ronnie that she would be falsely accused of murdering Esther, but the reality turned out to be completely different, which was a relief. This book won a Lambda Literary Award for best queer mystery, which did confuse me a little. There were two queer relationships depicted. One was between Lewis and Campbell (two boys in Esther's class discovering what it’s like to have a first crush), and I thought that its place in the story made sense. (It was related to the plot of the mystery, but it wasn’t a huge aspect and it wasn’t trying to be.) The other was Sarah reflecting on her relationship with her ex-girlfriend Amira, and I feel like that was where the author may have missed the mark. Her relationship with Amira felt like a very minor point in the whole book, and was laden with conflict. Sarah was often reminiscing about Amira and trying to get over the pain of their breakup, but the big reveal (that Sarah accidentally shoved Amira and injured her) didn’t hit very hard within the overall context of the book, and didn’t really seem to impact significantly on Sarah’s actions. I think the fact that their relationship only appeared in flashbacks was a disservice to their storyline, because it separated their storyline from the bulk of the plot. I guess I just assumed that a book that won a queer literary award would feature its queerness in a way that was more integral to the overall story.

Rating: 3/5 dogs that really do deserved to be locked up

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

Synopsis: Dinios Kol is an Engraver, a Sublime that has taken a magical suffusion that makes him remember everything he’s ever seen or heard. After struggling mightily with his exams and applying to all of the Imperial Iyalets (Legion, which defends the Empire; Engineers, who build the walls that keep out the Leviathans; Apothetikal, which grows and manages the exotic plants with their unusual abilities; and more), he was finally accepted by the Iudex, the branch of the Empire that manages the courts and delivers justice. His first posting is as assistant to Anagosa Dolabra, a revered Iudex Investigator. Ana was recently reassigned to Daretana, a Canton in the outer ring of the Empire (an undesirable place to live), and rumours abound that she was sent there as a punishment. It’s easy to believe, considering that Ana is very smart, very irritating, and very eccentric (even though she is sighted, she constantly wears a blindfold to reduce her sensory input). So far, all of Ana and Din’s cases have been simple fraud. But all that changes when they receive a report of a peculiar dead body at the Haza (a prominent gentry family) estate in Daretana. Din is sent to examine the scene and engrave everything in his memory, and report back to Ana. Although the case is simple enough, one dead body starts leading to more, and soon enough Din and Ana find themselves in the middle of a conspiracy that just might destroy the Empire.

My thoughts: I found this book super addictive and hard to put down, which is one of the signs of an excellent book. It’s giving Pacific Rim, but from the perspective of everyone else that lives in the world (Readers will know that I hate gratuitous violence, so this was perfect for me) Usually I have trouble when fantasy books overwhelm the reader with the new elements of the world, but I found this book pretty approachable. (The fact that it was ultimately a murder mystery probably helped a lot, because I was more easily able to scaffold the new elements onto a framework that I’m very familiar with). I thought it was really interesting how much the Empire seemed to revolve around plants (as opposed to animals). There was a character that had the powers of a speedster, and I really appreciated that the book treated speedsters with the reverence they deserve, classifying them as highly dangerous and nearly impossible to kill. I also thought Ana made for an excellent lead detective; very Sherlockian and eccentric. She was probably written to be autistic, but I thought it was refreshing that the bulk of her autistic traits revolved around her being very easily overstimulated (to the point that she often blindfolded herself to remove any visual stimuli), and having special interest hyper fixations, instead of just being bad at social interactions. I also thought the budding romance between Din and his future boyfriend was super cute, and fingers crossed that it’s able to continue into the next book in the series.

Rating: 5/5 shoots of dapplegrass, the perfect murder weapon

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

Synopsis: Anthony Horowitz is back with another Horowitz/Hawthorne adventure. The first four books have done quite well, and his agent is pushing him to start on the fifth in the series. The only problem? Hawthorne hasn’t had any cases lately, so there’s nothing for Anthony to write about. Anthony has a brainwave: if he can’t shadow Hawthorne solving a case in real time, he can at least write about a case that he solved previously. He remembers Hawthorne mentioning a case that he worked several years ago, a murder in Riverview Close, and is determined to write about that. Unfortunately, Hawthorne has even more reservations than usual, and is especially reluctant to give out any details. Eventually, Anthony convinces Hawthorne to work on the project with him, and he can finally make some progress (although Hawthorne insists on only giving him a handful of details at a time, and won’t reveal who the killer was). At the same time, Anthony is still incensed that Hawthorne won’t share any details about his personal life, and decides to start investigating both Hawthorne, and the Riverview Close murder, on his own time. But will he like what he finds out?

My thoughts: I’ve generally been pretty satisfied with this series, and this book was no exception. I really like that Horowitz (the author) decided to push the boundaries more into metafiction with this one, which really helped to keep things fresh and exciting. It was fun to read chapters about the murder interspersed with Anthony (the character)’s own actions. The murder at Riverview Close was fun to read about, with lots of clues and moving parts. Anthony’s own investigation was still interesting, if less satisfying (mainly because I still don’t see any reason why he just can’t leave Hawthorne alone?). However, I still find it incredibly funny that Anthony seethes so much that he comes off as unhinged, and Hawthorne as completely normal.

Rating: 4/5 segments of paper straw that are too short to snort cocaine with

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett

Synopsis: Emily Wilde, PhD, is one of the world’s leading dryadologists (experts on fairies (also known as Faie or Folk)). Since she earned her doctorate at Cambridge University in 1900, she’s spent the past nine years working on an encyclopaedia. When completed, it will be the world’s first and most complete compendium of knowledge about the Folk. As of now, it’s almost complete; she just needs to finish the final chapter about the Folk of Ljosland (in northern Scandinavia). Unfortunately, these species of Folk have long been understudied, so it’s up to her to travel to the village of Hrafnsvik and do the research herself (an exciting prospect). Unfortunately, her stay in Hrafnsvik is looking to be more difficult than she expected. The climate is hostile, and she seems to have offended her hosts (why must it be so difficult to talk to people), and her cabin is constantly overrun by unruly sheep. But worst of all, fellow professor Wendell Bambleby has taken it upon himself to join her expedition, uninvited. Bambleby is charismatic, lazy, and taken to falsifying his research (everything that the curmudgeonly Emily is not), and immediately charms the entire village, much to her chagrin. But Bambleby has a proposition for Emily: if she will let him co-author a paper about the Ljosland Folk with her, they can present it together at the International Conference of Dryadology and Experimental Folklore. The ICODEF is incredibly prestigious, and Emily has never once been invited. Will she be able to work with the infernal Bambleby? Or will the Folk of Ljosland prove too much for either of them to handle?

My thoughts: Kaitlyn (readers will know of my friend Kaitlyn) recommended this book to me, saying it was a cozy fantasy, so of course I had to try it. I thought it was nice enough, and I really appreciated being able to see the world through Emily journal entries (especially since I think she was written to be autistic). I also liked the footnotes, especially the ones that referenced the life of dryadologist Danielle de Gray, who is interesting enough that she could easily support her own spin-off. However, it had some issues. I still don’t understand why Emily released the Fairie King from the tree. I know some reasons were given in the books, but they felt especially weak, considering that Emily cut off her own finger (which no one made a big deal about??) to get rid of the enchantment that compelled her to free the King, but then went and freed him anyway? I also found the use of the Word of Power here to be sort of anti-climactic, and made it feel like there were pacing issues. I also didn’t love that Emily got herself into a big mess and had absolutely no agency to get herself out of it (even though she had enough agency to adjust the enchantment to allow her to cut off her own finger? Emily, you are smarter than this!). The romance between Bambleby and Emily was also a bit too subtle for it to have ended with a marriage proposal, although I acknowledge that this book was set in the early 20th century, and that Emily didn’t accept it.

Rating: 3/5 hearts filled with the dust of a thousand library stacks

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

May

This month I read 3 books, 9 ebooks from the Toronto Public Library, and 1 podcast, totaling to 13 books.

Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah

Synopsis: It’s Montreal, 1986, and Muna Heddad is desperate for a job. Her savings will only last her and her 8-year-old son Omar one more month. When Muna and her husband Halim initially applied to immigrate to Canada, civil war had just broken out in Lebanon. But then Halim was kidnapped, and Muna was left to raise an infant Omar by herself. Now, Muna is struggling to support the two of them in Canada; nobody wants to hire her as a French teacher, despite the immigration agency assuring her that French teachers were in high demand in Canada. Now, Muna is desperately applying to every job ad in the paper, including one for Nutri-Fort’s (a diet food company) call center. Miraculously, Muna gets a call back, and is soon hired in the call center, where she calls her clients and helps them develop meal plans. This novel chronicles Muna’s experiences as a single mom and worker in Montreal, as she finds her footing in the community and finally comes to terms with her husband’s death.

My thoughts: This book was the 2024 One Read/Un Livrel Canada, a nation-wide digital book club. This year, electronic copies of Hotline were available without holds or waitlists at libraries across Canada during the month of April, so that people could all read together (in English or French) and discuss the book together. (Readers will know that I am a librarian, so I figured that I should probably join in, even though I didn’t actually finish the book until May). I was unsure about this book when I started it, but I actually really liked it. I think my trepidation was due to the marketing: most of the descriptions of this book focused entirely on Muna’s work as a faceless hotline operator, and the connections she learned about her clients. Even though Muna’s job at Nutri-Fort was a central aspect of the book, the story was more about her life as a whole in Montreal, which I thought was much more complex and interesting.

Rating: 4/5 wooden horses carved from the leg of your marriage bed and buried in a jar of sand for you to find

Company Town by Madeline Ashby

Synopsis: Hwa lives on New Arcadia, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland that is basically a small city. She does security for the Canadian Union of Sex Workers, making sure that they aren’t abused or taken advantage of during their appointments. But then Hwa is recruited by the Lynch family. After a recent takeover, the Lynches now own New Arcadia, and they want Hwa to guard the youngest member (and eventual heir of the family). Hwa has a lot of security experience, but she’s also the only person on the whole rig who doesn’t have any technological implants or biological enhancements, so she can’t be hacked. Hwa accepts, but gets unwittingly dragged into the Lynches intrigue and conspiracy. To make matters worse, someone is going around killing the prostitutes that Hwa used to guard (and who were her friends). Will Hwa survive this deadly contract, or will she be its next victim?

My thoughts: I thought this book was interesting but not my favourite. I’m still not really sure why Hwa was the only person with no implants on New Arcadia; the author described it as Hwa’s mother not wanting to pay for anything, but there were so many people much poorer than Hwa, so I don’t get it. She didn’t seem to have a strong ideological opposition either. I didn’t really take a shine to the Jack the Ripper storyline (readers will know that he’s never been one of my favourite serial killers). This book also seemed to just go from fight to fight, with Hwa continually getting more and more injured. I think the setting was interesting, but it could have been explored more. Overall, I found a lot was lacking, even though I wouldn’t say that this book was bad. The character I liked the most was Daniel Siofra, Hwa’s boss and aid to the Lynches; he had a wit that I really liked, and was very kind and sensitive while still being cool and effective.

Rating: 2/5 library sims of Jack the Ripper documentaries that unfortunately aren’t great for helping you solve irl crimes

The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

Synopsis: After their friend Alec died of a drug overdose in their senior year at Berkely, college friends Naomi, Craig, Marielle, and the Jordans (Jordy & Jordan) are devastated by his funeral. All funerals are tragic, but it truly devastated the friends that they weren’t able to express how much they loved and appreciated Alec until after he had died. Thus, the pact was born: once in their life, each member of the group can call on the others to host a funeral for them while they are still living. It’s a chance for them to honour and celebrate a friend who is going through a tough time (divorce, prison time, cancer diagnoses, etc). This book chronicles each funeral, starting with Alec’s and then for the rest of the Celebrants.

My thoughts: I thought this book was a more mature twist on a trope that I see in a lot of YA/New Adult fiction: the friend who died mysteriously in college. (Here, I’m specifically thinking of If We Were Villains by ML Rio, which I reviewed in my June 2023 reading round up, but the trope has occurred many other times.) I don’t particularly like this trope; I find it to be too “dark and twisty,” everyone is obsessed with catching the killer or piecing together what happened that fateful night. So, I thought it was really interesting that Steven Rowley ended up flipping this trope on its head by having Alec’s death as a difficult but catalytic event, and centering the lens of his book on characters in their 40s and 50s instead of teens and 20s. I also really liked how the characters ended up thriving after each of their funerals, even if it did take them a few years afterwards to really find their footing.

Rating: 4/5 rare straight men in a world full of women and gay men

Off the Map by Trish Doller

Synopsis: Carla Black was a van-life girlie before there were van-life girlies. She and her dad Biggie spent every summer growing up traveling around North America while living out of their bright red jeep Valentina. And after Biggie was diagnosed with dementia, he pleaded for Carla to keep traveling and live her life, instead of staying home and watching him lose his memories piece by piece. They FaceTime most days, but Carla hasn’t really seen her dad in almost six years. When she travels to Ireland for her best friend’s wedding, she meets Eamon. He’s the brother of the groom, and has wanted to travel around the country for years, but has never really gotten around to it. So, Carla hatches a plan to tour around some of the most beautiful parts of Ireland while they head to the wedding in Eamon’s home town. Their connection is instant and obvious, but they live completely different lives. Will this just be a summer fling, or can Carla and Eamon make it work?

My thoughts: I read two romance novels back to back (Off the Map and That Summer Feeling, reviewed below), and I liked this one much better. The characters were interesting, the romance was compelling, and the relationship between Carla and Eamon wasn’t toxic. I really liked the juxtaposition of Carla, who traveled a lot but now wanted to spend more time with her family, vs Eamon, who felt tied down by relationships and wanted to spend more time adventuring. I’m also glad that Carla was able to see her family when it mattered most, but didn’t have to give up her traveling lifestyle that clearly brought her so much joy. The only complaint that I had was that the bulk of the plot took place over 2 weeks, and did feel a bit rushed to me.

Rating: 4/5 bulls that are blocking your Land Rover’s only way out

That Summer Feeling by Bridget Morrissey

Synopsis: Garland Moore met her soulmate at the airport. She was rushing to catch her flight when she dropped her bracelet, and a tall blond man chased after her in order to give it back to her. When they touched hands, Garland had a vision of her and the blond man sitting together in a beautiful hunting lodge, surrounded by friends and family and love. The only problem? Garland was in the airport with her new husband, trying to catch a flight to their honeymoon, so she ignored the vision. A few years later, Garland is divorced, living with her older sister Dara, and moonlighting as a rideshare driver. She’s still hung up on her ex, and doesn’t have a lot going on in her life, when she gets an invite to a sleepaway summer camp for adults. Dara and Garland are eager to go, in order to live out the classic childhood experience they never had. But when they get there, Garland discovers something even more exciting: the man from her vision is here at camp (along with his gorgeous sister). Will Garland finally heal her broken heart and end up in a love worth keeping?

My thoughts: I read this just after Off the Map (reviewed above), and although they were somewhat similar, I thought that this book was much worse. It may have been due to the overall setting and concept, but I found this book to be very childish and Pollyanna-equse, especially because the entire story took place over only 5 days. Honestly, I think the short timeline was what disappointed me the most. I wish that the novel had covered a year of Garland and Stevie’s lives together as they traveled around the country in a van and found themselves, and had included their camp meet-cute as a flashback, instead of the other way around. Including scenes of the characters drinking and clubbing may make something PG-13, but definitely doesn’t make it “mature”, in my opinion. There were a handful of scenes about Garland’s divorce and a few other topics that partially scratched my itch for more complexity, but it wasn’t really enough. I also didn’t like whole “vision” storyline. At first, I’ll admit that I thought it was cute, but as the story went on I was less and less impressed, particularly because the characters were really focused on setting up Garland with the blond man in her vision, despite the fact that they had no chemistry and obviously weren’t a great match. Personally, I think the author invented it just to create obstacles between Garland and Stevie, which I despise. If your book has to have conflict in it, there are other ways to achieve it than by interfering with the main couple’s unproblematic relationship. Separately, I was also a bit disappointed that Dara’s C-plotline about wanting to dramatically cut her hair wasn’t a way for her to experiment with gender and femininity. I guess sometimes a haircut is just about cutting your hair. If you’re looking for a fluffy, cutesy romance, this book is for you, but unfortunately for me I felt it was a flop.

Rating: 2/5 crowds that chant “hee-haw” whenever you walk into the room, because of something that you said once when you were drunk

Kissing Kosher by Jean Meltzer

Synopsis: Avital Cohen is incredibly busy trying to run Best Babka in Brooklyn, her family’s kosher bakery that was started by her grandfather, Chayim Cohen. Their famous pumpkin spice babka is flying off of the shelves, and they don’t have enough staff to keep up with all of their customer’s demands. Best Babka was founded decades ago by Chayim and his business partner Moishe Lippmann, but they had a huge falling out and Moishe left to start his own company. Lippmann’s is a household name when it comes to mass produced kosher treats, but sales are falling and Moishe is desperate. He sends his grandson Ethan to Best Babka with instructions to go undercover, get hired, steal their famous pumpkin spice babka recipe, and get revenge on Chayim, or else. Ethan is not sold on the idea, but failure is not an option when it comes to Moishe. So, Ethan (who majored in business and has never had to lift a finger thanks to his grandfather’s household staff and estate) puts together a fake resume (where he claims to be a graduate of the best french pastry schools) and gets himself hired by Avital, and of course sparks start to fly between them. But will Ethan be able to keep his secret forever? And how can Avital start a relationship with anyone when she’s constantly sidelined by her interstitial cystitis and debilitating chronic pelvic pain?

My thoughts: I thought this was a pretty cute romance book, with a good overall story. I really liked getting a window into the Jewish traditions, culture, and lifestyle of the characters and their families. The only part I didn’t love was the extended lecture on how Jewish theology informs intimacy, because it felt a little bit preachy and a lot of “telling” instead of “showing”. I also really liked the portrait of Avital’s struggle with her chronic illness, especially an “incurable” one like IC, because she went on a journey of learning how to live with the pain instead of focusing on trying to cure herself. Ethan gets points for being a very supportive partner, although I am pretty suspicious of how quickly he went from not knowing how to cook to being a master baker that was experimenting off the cuff (about 3-6 months). To me, the whole book felt a little too goofy and over the top, but if you’re looking for a happy romance with no toxic relationships, I would definitely recommend it.

Rating: 3/5 flutes of organic, fresh squeezed pear juice (instead of champagne)

Dune by Frank Herbert

My thoughts on Dune have been made clear already.

Murder at Haven’s Rock by Kelley Armstrong

Synopsis: After the collapse of the old Rockton, Casey and Eric are finally putting their plan B into motion: a new invisible town that they get to run. It’s no small undertaking, but to them, it’s worth it. Construction has gone on for the past 18 months, and the new Haven’s Rock is only weeks away from opening when the construction crew’s architect goes missing in the forest. Casey and Eric are called in to pose as heads of security (not the town owners) and find her. But will they like what they find?

My thoughts: So blessed and excited that the Rockton series is continuing in a new form! This series is so good that it’s literally addictive, I love it so much and can’t stop reading it. I thought this book in particular was interesting because it finally had a gold-mining plotline (very appropriate considering that everything is set in the Yukon). I love the descriptions of rural and outdoor living, plus all of the wildlife encounters. I also love Casey and Eric as a couple; extremely respectful, non-toxic, loving, and competent. I even love to hate on the annoying townspeople (in this case, construction crew members) that are lying in order to protect their own interests regardless of the murder investigation.

Rating: 5/5 beautifully camouflage cabins hidden in the woods, with little painted rabbits and deer

The Boy Who Cried Bear

Synopsis: Haven’s Rock is finally open for residents, and for the first time, it will house couples, children, and families. One of these children, Max, has been coming back from hikes with troubling reports: some kind of wild creature, with the fur of an animal but the eyes of a man, is in the forest around Haven’s Rock. Wild people wouldn’t be unusual back in Rockton, as there were several settlements and even more individuals living in the surrounding woods. As of yet, there’s no such thing at Haven’s Rock, and it’s a little concerning for Detective Casey Butler and Sheriff Eric Dalton, but nothing too concerning. But when Max is spotted going into the forest and not coming out, that is extremely concerning. They stop everything to go on Max’s trail. Is there really a wild man? Or has Max’s families past found them in Haven’s Rock?

My thoughts: This book was just as good as any of the Rockton series, with a few small exceptions. For one, I’m still getting used to how the new town runs itself. To be honest, I think some of the changes were made just to make a distinction from Rockton, like having dormitories instead of apartments. I think the inclusion of families and children will definitely create new and interesting dynamics, and it opens the way for Casey’s pregnancy. I also think the distinction between staff and residents is kind of weird; logically I know it’s so that people can stay on as staff even if they aren’t running from something, but in my opinion it creates a weird hierarchy. While these are all differences, they’re not detracting from my enjoyment of this book. The actual issue I had was with the plot: the ending was a bit ambiguous and we relied on Casey’s deductions and ideas for what was really going on, instead of getting confirmation of the truth from the suspects themselves. But I’m still very glad I read this book, and look forward to the next one being released.

Rating: 4/5 perches where you can spy on people as they go in and out of the forest

Funny Story by Emily Henry

Synopsis: Daphne and Peter made a cute couple.. They had a real-life meet cute, and Daphne moved back to Wanning Bay, Michigan so that they could built a life together. But 6 weeks before their wedding, Peter cheated on her with his “platonic” straight best friend Petra. And now he’s kicking her out of their house (okay, only bought in Peter’s name, technically). So Daphne is forced to move in with Petra’s exboyfriend, Miles. All Daphne wants is to do is get out of this town, and as soon as her library’s Read-A-Thon is over at the end of the summer, she can finally escape. But then Miles offers to be the tour guide to Wanning Bay that she never had. And Daphne starts to make friends at work, is it possible that she’s starting to have reasons to stay?

My Rating: I absolutely LOVED the first three-quarters of this book. The characters were cute and relatable (Readers will know that Daphne, a children’s librarian who read Dune in order to impress her boyfriend’s friends, is LITERALLY me). Miles was an all-around good guy, and treated Daphne really well. She was flourishing more over this summer than she was in the past 3 years that she had lived here with Peter. A true Emily Henry classic. Unfortunately, the book kind of fell apart around the 3rd act conflict. I was really disappointed because it seemed as though Daphne hadn’t actually made any changes: she was still attaching herself to her boyfriend instead of really living her own life. She totally ghosted her friend Ashleigh after swearing that she would never treat people the way her absent father treated her. (And she tried to buy Asheighs’ forgiveness in the exact same way that she always criticized her dad for). And she didn’t communicate properly with Miles (my own pet peeve). Daphne and Miles did eventually make up, but then the author fast-forwarded to the following year and completely skipped when all of the character development happened. I just want to see people being happy, okay? So sue me if I’m upset that the book completely skipped the part where the characters were living their best lives. On a positive note, I felt that the portrayal of library work was reasonable accurate! I was ready to crack down so hard over inaccuracies, but everything felt mostly true to form (except when Daphne called in sick to work on day that her co-worker had already taken off because “nothing much would be happening that day” I could never. They would be so busy for being so short-staffed). I also wish that Emily Henry had gone into more detail about the Read-a-Thon, but I guess it wasn’t totally necessary.

Rating: 4/5 senior proms (ie. proms for senior citizens)

Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six by Lisa Unger

Synopsis: This year, Hannah and Bruce had a baby girl named Gigi, and like any new parents, they could really use a vacation. When Hannah’s brother (and Bruce’s supervisor) Mako invites them on a luxury weekend, along with his own wife Liza, and family friend Cricket and her boyfriend Joshua. Mako, a wealthy CEO of a video-game company, has rented a secluded cabin that sleeps six in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s determined to have a perfect weekend, but there are tensions bubbling beneath the surface. Hannah in particular is worried: it’s the first time that she’s been away from Gigi, but Mako has also been acting weird as of late, and her marriage to Bruce has been full of tension. It doesn’t help that years ago, the cabin they’re renting was the site of a tragic murder-suicide. And when the power goes out (surely caused by the huge storm), will Hannah and the other survive their vacation?

My thoughts: This was a pretty standard thriller novel, not excellent but not the worst. I thought the villain’s overall plotline and motivations were truly insane, but I appreciated the plot twists that were not related to this. For example, that the creepy landlord was in fact creepy but overall harmless, or Henry’s identity (he actually was just Henry, not the secret identity of a different character).

Rating: 3/5 family history DNA tests that Santa brought for everyone’s Christmas gifts

The Hundred Lives of Juliet by Evelyn Skye

Synopsis: Helene Janssen is trying to bounce back from what is shaping up to be an ugly divorce. After constantly pushing aside her career in favour of her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s, enough is enough. And when she spots cheap plane tickets to a small town in Alaska, it’s a sign for her to take the next two months and finally write a book. Her whole life, Helene has written romance short stories that take place in different times throughout history. The heterosexual couples always look and act different, but they always have the same souls (especially the male character). So when she meets fishing boat captain Sebastien, she’s shocked: it’s the male character from all of her stories, her eternal literary crush come to life. Sebastien is also shocked to see her, but for a very different reason. Sebastien is actually Romeo Montague, and Helene is his Juliet. Ever since the original tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo accidentally killed is true love (Shakespeare did take a few liberties with his version), Romeo has been unable to die. He drifts through history, aging 1 year for every 50 that pass, waiting and waiting. Juliet is always reincarnated, and in each of her lives they always meet and fall in love, just like in Helene’s stories. But (and the stories don’t capture this) Juliet always dies anyway, whether by accident or illness or political uprising, and Romeo can’t do anything about it. Sebastien is convinced that they are cursed, but Helene wants to try. Will their love be the greatest of an age, or will it again end in tragedy?

My thoughts: I feel like this concept had really good potential, but it flopped because Helene didn’t have any agency. She always had to be rescued by Sebastien (and yes, he’s the one who’s amassed a great fortune over hundreds of years, but seriously this girl cannot do anything for herself). The only thing she actually did by herself was change a plane ticket (but only so that she could fly to Sebastien’s lawyers offices, not so that she could do anything really by herself). It didn’t help that the climax of the book was actually Sebastien’s lawyers digging up blackmail material for Helene’s ex so that he’d leave them alone. Sebastien at least accumulated all of the resources to make this possible; the only thing Helene did was occasionally make suggestions and be pregnant. It also really bothered me that the curse seemed to resolve itself. This was definitely not a “they learned to have a healthy love and do the right thing so the curse was resolved” type of situation; the curse literally just ended. The only tangible differences were that Helene vaguely remembered Sebastein through her short stories, and that she got pregnant (and being pregnant should NOT be the reason that the curse is lifted, because many of the previous Juliets were either trying to get pregnant or died during their pregnancies). Helene didn’t survive or avoid any kind of freak accident or near death experience, so she didn’t do anything to make her pregnancy more viable. Overall the romance part was cute, but the above reasons really bothered me so much that I’m rating this book low.

Rating: 2/5 girlfriends who perpetually cannot cook across many many lifetimes

The Atlas Complex by Olivie Blake

Synopsis: By the time of Libby Rhodes’ explosive return from the past, the 6 newest recruits to the Alexandrian Society know that things will never be the same. They’ve failed to satisfy one of the archives’ only rules: if they plan on taking all that knowledge, there must be a blood sacrifice. When Atlas Blakely was a recruit himself, his cohort tried to fight the rule, and paid the price dearly. With agents of the Forum hunting their every move, will the original Atlas Six do what is right, or what is just?

My thoughts: I was already cooling down on this series by the second book, so I’m not surprised that I didn’t really like this book (the third) either. In the acknowledgements, the author stated that she intended to write a book without a plot that would be totally driven by the character’s relationships, and also that she wrote the series as a reaction to the 2016 elections and events thereafter. Personally, I thought that was insane. This book is definitely short on plot, but the relationships weren’t really doing it for me either. By the end, it feels as though the six students have almost formed a loose polycule (which is great), but most of them seem to act completely independently and selfishly. Especially in the previous two books, they didn’t seem to be forming meaningful relationships with anyone. Something else I disliked was the author’s writing style; it’s giving pretentious and fake academia, and she seems to hide behind buzzwords instead of actually explaining what the characters are trying to achieve. (For example, in the climactic experiment, it was super unclear what was going on, and why/how a core character died). In addition, everything felt like it was coated in a veneer of dullness. Nothing was really interesting or exciting, even combat scenes or the climax. The only thing this book had going for it was some parts that used non-traditional/epistolary storytelling (like book club discussion questions or the results of 600 possible futures), but that was just not enough for me.

Rating: 2/5 dream convertibles that transform into dream bulldozers to crush everything in your dream path

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

April

This month I read 4 books and 4 ebooks from the Toronto Public Library, totalling to 8 books.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin

Synopsis: Hana Khan works part time at her family’s restaurant, Three Sisters Biriyani Poutine. It’s the only halal restaurant in the Golden Crescent neighborhood of Toronto and a beloved family-run institution. Unfortunately, sales are slowing, and they rarely have any customers. What Hana really wants to do is become a Radio host and share stories from her community (South Asian Muslims) with the world. She already has a mini podcast (Ana’s Brown Girl Rambles) and at least one devoted fan (stanleyp). Right now she’s struggling in her radio internship, and she’s about to have way more problems than just her annoying coworker and her ignorant boss: another halal restaurant is opening up in the Golden Crescent, and the owner has declared that he’s trying to put Three Sisters out of business. Can Hana save her family’s restaurant?

My thoughts: This book was touted as a Muslim “You’ve Got Mail” (which annoyed me a bit because it completely gave away the whole plot, but whatever). Overall I thought it was generally good. I really liked the plotlines surrounding Hana’s Auntie who was visiting from India (because she was a really good character), and the themes of families who immigrated vs those who chose to stay. I did not like when Hana started spreading online rumours about the rival restaurant, because it felt like a cheap move, and I’m glad she regretted it. I also wasn’t really sold on the storylines surrounding Hana’s work at the Radio Station. Personally, I view radio and journalism as a profession where you share information with others, not really where you tell stories, so the final podcast that she produced (Secret Family Histories) didn’t really land with me.

Rating: 3/5 background star-crossed lovers who flee to northern Ontario in order to be together

Rockton Series by Kelley Armstrong

City of the Lost (Book 1)

Synopsis: 10 years ago, Casey had the world’s worst boyfriend. When he got caught selling drugs on someone else’s territory, he escaped by himself, leaving Casey behind to be brutally assaulted. Weeks later, when she was finally out of the hospital, Casey confronted him; when he refused to apologize, she killed him. No one ever tied his death to her, and since then Casey has kept her head down and worked her way through the ranks to become a homicide detective in the local police force. She has a good life; her best friend, Diana, and occasional companionship from guys if she wants it. But all that changes when her current beau gets shot by a hired gun; only luck prevented the hitman from killing Casey too, and it means that her time is up. Her ex-boyfriend was the grandson of a notorious Quebecois mobster; he must suspect that Casey killed his grandson, and will stop at nothing to get his revenge. Casey needs to get out of town immediately. At the same time, Diana’s abusive ex is back in town, and she also needs a safe haven to go to. Diana’s heard a rumor about a mysterious off-the-grid town; the kind of place where no one can find you. Casey is reluctant to go, but the town’s council will only admit Diana if Casey comes along, because they’re in desperate need of a homicide detective. So, Casey and Diana arrive in Rockton, a settlement deep in the Yukon woods, hidden from civilization. Rockton isn’t like any other place; there’s no cell service, minimal electricity, and everything has something to hide. Once you arrive, you can’t leave until your term is over. And now, there’s a string of unsolved murders that the town’s Sheriff, Eric Dalton, has been unable to handle by himself. Will Casey be able to solve the murders? Or has she just committed herself to the worst two years of her life.

Ranking: 5/5 Rockton labour credits (the only currency worth anything up here)

A Darkness Absolute (Book 2)

Synopsis: It’s been a few months since Casey arrived in Rockton, and surprisingly she’s adapted quite well. She’s dating the Sheriff, Eric Dalton, and is best friends with his Deputy, Will Anders. When Casey and Will are out exploring the woods, a blizzard forces them to take shelter in an isolated cave. There, they find something truly horrifying: a woman who went missing from Rockton over a year ago. But the worst part: she’s still alive. Her name is Nicole, and she’s been trapped in that cave for months by a mysterious captor that returns frequently to assault her. She’s in desperate need of medical attention, and Casey and Will are determined to do everything in their power to get her back to Rockton safely. Once they return, Casey must figure out who Nicole’s captor is, before he can strike again.

Rating: 5/5 Newfoundland dogs named after the X-woman Storm

This Fallen Prey (Book 3)

Synopsis: Rockton isn’t just a safe haven for victims with nowhere else to go. When it was initially founded in the 1960s, it was, but the town’s council has changed overtime. Now, they treat it as an investment, and they’re determined to get their money's worth. A town like Rockton isn’t cheap to run, especially when most people (like Casey and Diana) only paid about $5000 to stay for two years. Even an influx of white collar criminals, whose financial crimes mean that they can afford to pay significantly more than the average resident, isn’t enough for investors. So, they’ve decided that Rockton needs more streams of revenue. Sheriff Eric Dalton has suspected that many of the alleged white collar criminals are actually on the run because they’ve committed violent crimes, and that the council is wilfully turning a blind eye as long as they get paid. But things come to a head when a small plane lands in Rockton. It’s only passenger: an alleged serial killer named Olive Brady, whose parents are paying Rockton a small fortune to keep him imprisoned in the Yukon where no one will find him. Eric and Casey are furious; the small settlement doesn’t have the resources to keep anyone prisoner, and even if it did, the townspeople will understandably riot if they find out that there’s a dangerous criminal being kept in Rockton (and they do). But the most worrying issue: Brady quickly manages to escape, something that only could have been accomplished with outside help. Does Brady have an accomplice in town? Is he even guilty of his alleged crimes? It’s up to Casey and Eric to find Brady and figure out the truth, before even more people get killed.

Rating: 3/5 loving stepfathers with no ulterior motives.

(A note on the rating: Readers may wonder why this is the only book in the series with a rating of less than 5/5. This book had everything that I love about the Rockton series, but I was so upset about the ending that I docked it two points. Brady and his stepfather were both killed without figuring out if either (or both) of them were actually guilty. Multiple female characters had plot twists that felt extremely out of character and had very little explanation. Overall, I think that the author had too much going on and rushed the ending instead of taking the time to resolve things. But the first 75% of the book was great, and I still really wanted to keep reading.)

Watcher in the Woods (Book 4)

Synopsis: Detective Casey Butler has had to face fearsome challenges while living in Rockton, but she might be facing her biggest one yet: talking to her sister. April is a world-renowned neurosurgeon in Vancouver, but her and Casey’s relationship has always been frosty at best. But Casey has no other choice; their carpenter Kenny was shot in the back and might be paralyzed, and the town has no doctor or nurse to speak of besides Will Anders, current head of militia and former Army medic. April reluctantly agrees to spend one weekend in Rockton, so Casey and Dalton plan to quietly smuggle her in and out without the rest of the townspeople finding out. The only problem? That same weekend, a man claiming to be a US Marshal arrives in Rockton, and he’s looking for someone. He refuses to say who, much to Casey and Dalton’s frustrations, never mind that a US Marshall shouldn’t even have jurisdiction in the Yukon. And when the marshall ends up dead, April (a convenient new arrival) becomes the biggest suspect. Will Casey be able to clear her sister’s name and figure out what’s really going on?

Rating: 5/5 rent-controlled properties partially owned and operated by your ex-friend’s grandmother

Alone in the Wild (Book 5)

Synopsis: Casey and Eric are on a much needed vacation (although when you live in rural Yukon, it usually means going to a different part of the woods). But on the way back, they discover something more than just the typical dead body: a dead body and a live baby. Rockton is a strictly for single adults, so there’s no way the baby came from there. When it’s discovered that the dead woman isn’t the baby girl’s birth mother, Casey must figure out who she really belongs to. But a lot of people seem to think that the baby would be better off away from her true family. If that’s true, Casey must wrestle with the possibility of adopting the baby and becoming a mother. And since severe injuries have left her infertile, this might be her only chance at motherhood. Will Casey be able to figure out the truth, and make the right decision?

Rating: 5/5 bracelets made by your wife’s lesbian lover

A Stranger in Town (Book 6)

Synopsis: Detective Casey Butler and her boyfriend Sheriff Eric Dalton are out for a walk in the Yukon forests surrounding Rockton. It’s a nice day, about to be made much worse by an unpleasant discovery: a female hiker who was brutally attacked by someone or something. Casey brings her back to Rockton for treatment; the hiker is in a state of mental confusion and doesn’t understand English, but luckily a new Rockton resident, Jay, speaks Dutch and agrees to translate. Casey and Dalton are worried; after finding the hiker’s presumed campsite, it seems as though she was attacked by the hostiles; a group of former Rockton residents that fled into the forest and somehow became savages. The hostiles can’t be reasoned with, and will attack anything that they perceive as a threat. Casey has always been worried about the hostiles, but this incident has her even more concerned; will she be able to find out what’s really going on?

Rating: 5/5 boots with your lover’s severed foot in them

The Deepest of Secrets (Book 7)

Synopsis: After finally discovering the secret history of the hostiles (wild people that live savagely in the woods around Rockton), and that the council was responsible, Detective Casey Butler is satisfied. But it seems as though she’ll be punished for solving this mystery: the council is shutting Rockton down. No ones extensions are getting approved, and no new villagers are being accepted. The council doesn’t want to completely give up on their investment, but they want to start fresh with a new settlement that has a less inquisitive police department. Of course, Sheriff Eric Dalton and Casey are both invited to come along, but it’s the last thing that they want. They’ve both had issues with the way the council has run Rockton for years, and this is the last straw. But the townspeople are restless; someone is going around revealing residents secrets (a major sin in a town designed to shelter people running away from their pasts) and fomenting discontent. And of course, a body is soon discovered. Will Casey be able to solve this final mystery, or will it die along with Rockton?

Rating: 5/5 outdoor movie screens with a startling accusation pinned to them

My Overall Thoughts: I am obsessed with this series, I love it (and it’s sequel series that I’ll discuss next month) so much. Casey and Eric are great main characters, and have a really loving, supportive, and unproblematic relationship. I like how unique the setting of Rockton is, and the author makes sure to describe a lot of the wilderness surroundings (including dangerous encounters with wildlife), and how life in Rockton is so different from what it’s like to live down south. Truly, I don’t think my synopses have done the series justice, so I’ll just say that I’m addicted to it, and cannot wait for the next book to be released. (Editor’s note: looking back on my review of this series, I feel like I’m not really doing it justice because I’m unable to fully articulate what I really like about it. It’s partially that I read the books back to back to back so quickly, partially that I’m doing this review after the fact, and partially because this is the kind of book where I go into a fugue state while reading it. I just get so entranced that I can’t wait to see what happens next. I suppose this isn’t the sign of a book written particularly well, but I’m choosing to focus on how much joy this series has brought me. Hopefully you are able to pick up what I’m putting down.)

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa

March

This month I read 1 book and 6 ebooks from the Toronto Public Library, totalling to 7 books.

Before we begin:

Dishonourable Mentions

Gideon the 9th by Tamsyn Muir

Synopsis: Gideon is planning to escape the hellish dungeon where she was raised, but her childhood nemesis won’t let her go without one last service to the Ninth House.

My thoughts: This book pretty famous for being described as “lesbian necromancers in space” online, so I figured I’d give it a shot. But I found it uninteresting and too much of a fantasy for my taste.

You may like this book if: you won’t be disappointed to find out that “lesbian necromancers in space” isn’t really a great description of the book.

Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, Edited by Otto Penzler

Synopsis: This is a collection of short stories from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, written by classic American mystery writers. They all feature the locked room trope, where a body is discovered in a place where the killer could not have possibly accessed (ie. a room with no windows locked from the inside).

My thoughts: I read the first few short stories and really liked them, but I never finished this book before I had to return it to the library, and didn’t feel compelled to put the book on hold in order to finish it.

You may like this book if: you’re a sucker for mysteries, the Golden Age, and transatlantic accents.

And now for the real reviews:

The Future by Catherine Leroux

Synopsis: Gloria’s daughter Judith died of a drug overdose, and no one has seen her daughters since. So, Gloria packs up her life and moves to Fort Detroit in order to get there. When she arrives, conditions are even worse than she could imagine: Fort Detroit (a francophone city that is a Canadian territory) has been utterly abandoned by all levels of government. The only people she can count on are her neighbors. As Gloria learns to live in Fort Detroit, she slowly discovers the gang of children that have set up their own society on the banks of the Rouge River. Could that be where her grand-daughters are?

My thoughts: This was one of the least enjoyable Canada Reads books, so I was kind of disappointed to hear that it actually won (allegedly, it’s the best book to “carry us forward,” I guess because the last few pages slip in something about the children being our future? I just didn’t really care for this book. The premise (alternate history Detroit that has suffered massive urban decay) was pretty interesting, and I thought Gloria’s interactions with her friends and neighbors trying to make a life for themselves in Fort Detroit. However, I was not at all impressed by the sections that centered on the wild children/ There were way too many children introduced, and they had very few distinguishing characteristics besides their crazy nicknames (Adidas, TickTock, etc), so I was forever mixing up the children with one another. I was disappointed when Gloria’s grand-daughters were revealed at the very end, because they had just been hidden away by the wild children for the whole time. Why did the author choose to spend all her time focusing on children that were not the grand-daughters (who, if you’ll recall, are the entire reason Gloria moved to Fort Detroit at all, and therefore feel like they should have a more central role in the plot). I wish that the story had featured the grand-daughters thriving (or struggling) as part of the wild child society.

Rating: 2/5 Urban Decay bus tours that ran over you’re neighbour’s elderly father without a second thought

The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships

Synopsis: Tonight is the night: it’s the Karaoke Championships for Crow Valley, Alberta. This year, after being ravaged by forest fires and mourning the loss of Dale Jepson (pillar of the community, guard at the local prison, and Karaoke Champion), the winner of the Crow Valley qualifiers will get fast-tracked straight to nationals. Everyone in town wants to win: Brett, who wants to dedicate his song in memory of his best friend Dale; Molly, who wants to dedicate her song to Dale because he stopped to rescue her during the forest fire that ultimately killed him; and many others. This novel follows Brett, Molly, and three other characters [Val, who worked with Dale at the prison and is unhappily married to Brett; Marcel, a convict that escapes from the prison; and Roxanne, guest karaoke judge and Dale’s widow] over one fateful night.

My thoughts: This book was not exceptional, but I thought it was quirky and enjoyable all the same. I appreciated the cancon, and there were several running jokes throughout the book that kept popping up subtly, and I thought those were quite funny. I also appreciated how each of the 5 character perspectives were intertwined with each other to create a full picture of the day (I feel like this is usually reserved for mysteries, since every second has to be accounted for in order to solve the crime). However, a lot of the storylines were dragging and uninteresting, which made the book a bit of a slog to get through.

My rating: 3/5 signs to beware of a bear? porcupine? zombie? it’s really not quite clear

The Words We Keep by Erin Stewart

Synopsis: Lily Larkin is trying her best to keep it together. Ever since she discovered her sister Alice attempting suicide, Lily’s been having panic attacks. She’s unable to focus at school, and she’s about to be kicked off of the track team for poor performance, but she can’t say anything because everyone is supposed to be keeping it together to support Alice in her recovery. It doesn’t help that she’s paired up with Micah for a school poetry project. Micah has a reputation at school for being crazy and manic, but the part that really stresses Lily out is that he spent time at the same treatment home as Alice; Lily cannot let anyone at school find out the truth about Alice. To make matters worse, the group with the best project will be entered into a contest, and the prize is a scholarship big enough that Lily could attend her dream college debt-free. Will Lily be able to move through her anxiety, or will it end up drowning her?

My thoughts: Readers will know that I’m 25, and thus out of my angsty high school era, which is when I would have most enjoyed this book. It isn’t something I would have picked up by myself, but I actually read it for work to see if it would make a good addition to the IBBY Collection for Young People With Disabilities, which collects children’s and YA books that feature disability (including mental illness) representation. I thought it was a fair representation of Lily and Alice’s mental illnesses, although it definitely could have done more. In particular, I wished it spent more time depicting Lily and Alice’s recoveries, and clarified if Lily was or wasn’t suffering from OCD and PTSD, instead of just generalized anxiety.

Rating: 3/5 random acts of guerilla poetry

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

Synopsis: About a year after the events of his true-crime memoir about finding the Black Tongue serial killer (see my August 2023 round-up), Ernest Cunningham is back. He’s been invited to be a panelist for the Australian Mystery Writers Festival. In celebration of it’s 50th Anniversary, the AMWF will take place this year on the Ghan, a cross-country train trip that traverses Australia from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south. Other panel guests include Lisa Fulton (who wrote one award-winning novel 20 years ago and is finally publishing a second), S. F. Majors (who writes psychological thrillers), Alan Royce (who writes forensic thrillers), Wolfgang (who writes literary fiction and believes that all other kinds are beneath him), and the guest of honour Henry McTavish (a Scottish author best known for his iconic Detective Moribund series). But when Henry McTavish drops dead during a panel, Ernest will risk life, limb, and his relationship in order to find out who killed his idol.

My thoughts: In both of Benjamin Stevenson’s books that I’ve read, the mysteries themselves were just okay; the real thing that knocks it out of the part is how Ernest cheekily breaks the fourth wall. I liked how Ernest added in a few emails to his publisher discussing the very book that you are reading. In this book, the mystery itself was quite convoluted, and I found it upsetting that Ernest and Juliette almost broke up because he was obsessed with solving it (#JusticeforJuliette). However, the final act of the book was really dramatic, and it was worth it to see the reveal and finally tie up all of the loose ends (and some of those ends were extremely loose!). Also, this is the first book that I’ve read to feature AI-generated fiction as a major plot point, and I think that one was enough. So if all authors could take my advice and not feature or even mention “Chat GTP” in any of their books ever, I’d appreciate it.

Rating: 4/5 men who were awarded the Justice in Fiction Award, Women’s Prize through special exemption.

Precious Cargo: My Year Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077 by Craig Davidson

Synopsis: It’s the summer of 2008, and Craig Davidson needs a job. After struggling as an author, he now needs something (anything) just to make ends meet. So, he signs up to drive a school bus in Calgary. This book is a true account of the year that Craig spent driving the bus, and the 5 passengers that he drove every day.

My thoughts: After reading The Words We Keep through a critical disability lens, I ended up using the same lens for this book, and found it to be a bit lacking. The main problem was that Craig made the book too much about himself, and how he related to and perceived the disabled passengers on his school bus. That feels like a weird complaint for a book that Craig himself wrote about his own personal experiences, and maybe I’m not really justified with that criticism. However, Craig didn’t really discuss any other aspects of his life outside of driving the kids around (especially why he stopped driving the bus and what he moved on to, which really bothered me). It felt like they were just along for the ride (literally), and didn’t seem to have much agency, or even really do much at all. Craig is an author, and he also included some chapters from the novel that was working on at the time, which was an X-men style book about a group of children with super powers. Eventually I could tell that it was obviously based on the children who rode his bus, but I don’t really know why he included it at all. It wasn’t a short story with its own narrative through line, it was literally just a few chapters sprinkled throughout the memoir.

Rating: 2/5 Code Blues (a non-specific serious emergency)

Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin

Synopsis: Nada Syed feels stuck. She’s almost 30 and still living at home. Her work as a software engineer is draining, and her big idea (a muslim-specific search engine called Ask Apa [Ask your Older Sister] that would give tailored advice and search results for young South Asian muslims) is dead in the water. Nada is still bitter that Haneef, son of Sister Rusul (friend to the Syed’s and Nada’s primary investor) launched his own app with the same concept only six months before Ask Apa would have premiered. The absolute last thing she wants to do is attend a Muslim convention, but her best friend Haleema’s new fiance is one of the organizers, and she promised Haleema that they would go together. But the conference goes badly for Nada. She gets into an embarrassing argument with Sister Rusul, and their fight goes viral. Even worse, she finally meets Haleema’s fiance Zayn, and Zayn’s brother Baz. Nada and Baz have a long history, much of it bad. Will Nada ever be able to move forward, or will she stay stuck in the past?

My thoughts: This book is not based on the Shakespeare play. It is supposed to be loosely based on Persuasion by Jane Austen, but I’ve never read or watched it, so I can’t really comment on it as an adaptation. However, I really think that it’s still a good novel by itself, which is the mark of a good adaptation. I really liked how the author flashed back to different points in Baz and Nada’s relationship, and how she slowly uncovered everything that happened over the course of the book. I also liked how the flashbacks included more history about Ask Apa, and how Nada was able to get justice and let go of her resentment. Even the plotline between Haleema and Zayn (while a bit overly dramatic) came to a mature and sensible resolution, which I really appreciated.

Rating: 4/5 dates at EJ Pratt Library on the University of Toronto campus, where I myself studied many times.

Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin

Synopsis: Ayesha is a teacher in the Golden Crescent, a majority Muslim neighborhood in Toronto. She’s finally started her first ever teaching job since graduating with her degree, but it’s stressful and unfulfilling; in short, nothing like what she expected. What she really wants to be is a poet, but it’s not a career choice that her traditional family would approve of (and it won’t pay back her family’s debts to her uncle Sulaiman, which she’s determined to do). Even worse, she’s single at 27, while her younger cousin and best friend Hafsa is practically drowning in rishtas (arranged marriage proposals). Khalid has been working for a Toronto tech company for years, and he’s never really had any problems (but he hasn’t made any friends either). But he’s about to have a huge problem: the new HR manager, Shelia, hates that Khalid dresses and acts according to very old-fashioned Muslim beliefs (including always wearing a white robe and skullcap, not shaving his beard, and refusing to shake hands with any women who aren’t related to him). She’s determined to get Khalid to quit by sabotaging his projects. Khalid and Ayesha meet while organizing a Muslims in Action conference for the Toronto Muslim Assembly, and sparks fly between them. Organizing a conference is never easy, but the stakes couldn’t be higher: their initial consultant Tarek might be scamming them, and the conference is TMA’s last chance to avoid going bankrupt). Will Khalid and Ayesha be able to save the conference, even when Khalid gets engaged to Hafsa?

My thoughts: This is apparently supposed to be a Muslim retelling of Pride and Prejudice, but readers will know that I’ve never seen the movies or read the book, so this part is totally lost on me. I generally enjoyed it, but I think it’s the weakest of Uzma Jalauddin’s three books (perhaps a sophomore slump?) All of the plotlines relating to Hafsa (the mistaken identity, the alleged kidnapping, etc) were confusing and not entertaining, and I hated how immature she was, and how much she took advantage of Ayesha’s kindness. Overall I didn’t really vibe with this book, but I think that most romance fans probably would like it more than I did.

Rating: 2/5 coffee mugs left on the roof of your car as you drove away in a hurry

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa