elisa

Reading Roundup: I'll take a shot of wit, extra dry, please

September

This month I read 4 ebooks, 2 e-audiobooks, and 1 book from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 7 books.

Honourable Mentions

My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel by Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris

Synopsis: This is a choose your own adventure novel, so there isn't a single narrative that I can recount for you. Instead, I'll introduce the primary love interests, and then go into more detail about the paths that I did end up choosing. It all starts with you, a pretty but penniless lady's maid in Victorian England. Your mistress is old, bitter, and mean, so you are desperate to get out of her employ and start a new adventure. You attend a ball with your mistress, and meet your friend Lady Evangeline, a wealthy adventurer who is looking for her own lady's maid to accompany her to Egypt for an archeological expedition. She introduces you to two eligible bachelors at the ball. One is Sir Benedict Granville, the heir apparent to a vast fortune (although that might not be true if Sir Rafe Caddington has anything to do with it) who is full of banter. The other is Captain Angus MacTaggart, a retired Scottish veteran that adores orphaned children and animals alike. Elsewhere is Lady Evangeline's cousin Lord Garraway Craven, who broods about all day on an isolated manor deep in the moors. [I personally read through all of the Lady Evangeline and Sir Benedict storylines]. If those aren't your vibe, I also skimmed through every ending and can exclusively reveal that there are storylines involving vampires, werewolves, ghosts, spies, con artists, Ocean's 8-style heist teams, and many more.

My thoughts: When they said this was an interactive romance novel, they were not kidding. Almost every single pathway (as well as most of the endings) involve a graphic romance scene, and you are able to romance basically every secondary character that is of age. So I do applaud the authors for covering their bases that way. Unfortunately, I do have some complaints. Because YOU are the protagonist, it felt super uncomfortable when a character romances your character without YOUR consent. I also always forget that the nature of choose your own adventure stories means that each individual storyline develops at a lightning pace, so I definitely felt like there were some parts that were rushed (YOU cannot be the love of his life, you literally just met him), but I don't know if I can fault the authors for that. I also don't know if I can fault them for another issue I had: sometimes when I was flipping to the next page of my storyline (classically, CYOA makes you flip to pages out of order), I wasn't sure that this was actually the correct next page because the story didn't really pick up where we left off. Instead it just progressed to the next scene. I figure that this is because multiple pathways can lead to the same storyline, but it really threw me off in several places.

You may like this book if: You are a fan of the Monster Prom franchise.

And now,

The Real Reviews

The Dangerous Damsels Series

Two hundred years ago, Beryl Black (and her good for nothing husband) were shipwrecked on a desert island, where she found a small glass bottle with a valuable message: a Latin incantation that can make anything fly. In the years since, many different groups of women (and some men) have adapted the incantation to suit their needs, and the result is a rollicking Victorian England full of pirates, witches, and spies.

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels (Book #1) by India Holton

Synopsis: In an alternate Victorian England, pirates are a dime a dozen. But they don’t sail ships; they use the incantation to fly battlehouses. Cecilia Bassingthwaite is one such pirate, and she’s finally old enough (at 19) to warrant her own assassination attempt (egads, how exciting!) from one of the members of the Wisteria Society (a social group for female pirates). She easily thwarts a couple of attempts, but unfortunately there are much more serious threats. Namely, Captain Patrick Morvath: a crazed pirate and descendant of Lord Byron, his obsession with the Wisteria Society has grown homicidal, and he intends to capture and destroy them. He also happens to be Cecilia’s estranged father. Cecilia and her would-be Italian assassin Eduardo de Luca (aka Teddy Luxe, a suave fencing instructor, aka Captain Ned Lightbourne, a pirate employed both by Her Majesty’s Army and Captain Patrick Morvath) are forced to partner up in order to rescue the Wisteria Society (and if they fall in love along the way, all the better).

My thoughts: I actually had a tough time in nailing down the plot while writing the above synopsis. It’s definitely the most complex of the series, especially when you consider all of the history between Morvath, Ned, Cecilia, and Cecilia’s late mother Cilla (but in a good way, considering that the others are more about taking a journey to find a MacGuffin). I fell in love with the sarcastic, dry, witty writing style (Readers will know that it’s been my favourite as of late), and I thought that Cecilia and Ned made for very charming love interests. The series definitely peaks here, possibly because this is the first time that the author uses her formula (a repressed Victorian lady that uses magic goes on a scandalous journey and falls in love with the male protagonist), but the others are still very readable. The only complaint I really had was that Miss Darlington, who is Cecilia’s aunt, legal guardian, and feared pirate herself, was one of the people that was most oppressing Cecilia, right up until the end when she did a complete 180 and told Cecilia to escape the politicking and flee with her true love. It was just so out of character, and if she (as an obstacle) was going to be easily removed at the end, then what was the point of her in the first place?

Rating: 5/5 hypochondriac aunts who are convinced that you will contract the Great Peril (freckles) if you don’t mind the sun on your face

The League of Gentlewoman Witches (Book #2) by India Holton

Synopsis: Charlotte Pettifer is a witch (although you’d never hear her admit that in public, because witchery is technically still a crime in England), a woman who can use Beryl Black’s incantation to make things (and people) fly. She’s also bordering on spinsterhood at the ripe old age of 21. After a chance encounter with pirate Alex O’Riley (good friend of Ned Lightbourne) in the street, and an incident with a flying bicycle, Alex and Charlotte become reluctant allies in order to track down Beryl Black’s amulet. (It’s said to give the holder immense power. So naturally, when it’s revealed to be on display at the British Museum, it immediately becomes the most coveted piece of jewelry for any respectable pirate or witch.) Will they be able to retrieve the amulet? Or will these star crossed lovers be forced to part?

My thoughts: I really liked this book, but it did have some flaws. Firstly, it just didn’t feel as witty as the first book (although that may have been because I had it in audiobook format, and maybe the jokes just didn’t translate as well). Up until the last quarter of the book, Charlotte would just not stop complaining about Alex, and it was so so annoying. Yes, she was self-aware enough admit that the complaining was an intentional strategy, and yes this is Victorian England, but it was still soooo annoying (and unfeminist). I also didn’t like that Charlotte had a one-sided fake feud with Cecilia; I know that it was supposed to demonstrate that it takes strength and vulnerability to form female friendships, and that she overcame her feud, but it was still annoying. Still, the dry wit of the writing and the overall content was still quite good.

Rating: 4/5 flying bicycles that surely were not ridden by any proper witch

The Secret Service of Tea and Treason (Book #3) by India Holton

Synopsis: If you looked at Alice Dearlove, you’d never guess that she was anything more than a ladies maid. But really, she’s much better known as Agent A, one of the most formidable agents of the Agency of Undercover Notetakers (aka AUNT) that acts as a shadow government in the UK. However, her newest assignment might just kill her. She has been tasked with infiltrating a pirate party (rumored to be attended by Cecilia Bassingthwaite and Charlotte Pettifer) in order to find and steal a mysterious powerful weapon before it can be used to kill the Queen. That’s actually the easy part; the hard part is that she’ll have to go undercover as the wife of Agent B, better known as Daniel Bixby (who until recently, was on assignment as Alex O’Riley’s butler), and AUNT’s other most formidable agent. What will kill her first: the murderous pirates, their endless social quirks, or the enchanted spy gadgets created by a hapless AUNT engineer?

My thoughts: I recently learned that the author (India Holton) is autistic, and apparently writes a lot of her characters to also be autistic, which would explain a lot. Readers will know that I minored in psych during my undergrad without ever taking a clinical, abnormal, or social psych course, so I am fully qualified to make the following assessments: Alice is definitely autistic, Bixby might be autistic, and I think that Cecilia and Charlotte are probably also on the spectrum, although I don’t think that Ned or Alex are. Again, this book was not as good as the first, and did have some flaws, but I still found it to be enjoyable. I typically hate the fake dating trope because the situations that cause it are usually so convoluted and unrealistic, but “spies going undercover” is one of the more believable takes (although this DOES NOT excuse the scene where the pirate dared Alice and Bixby to kiss because they were married! that was atrocious). I think that my favorite part was actually the epilogue, because it showed that all three female protagonists had escaped the organizations that were oppressing them, and lived a free life of quiet (but also exciting) contentment.

Rating: 4/5 copies of your favorite book: a pocket dictionary

Hearts on Hold by Charish Reid

Synopsis: Dr Victoria Reese is an English professor at Pembroke University, a small college in Farmingdale, Illinois. Pembroke desperately needs to increase it's enrollment, so faculty have been asked to submit proposals for the so-called “four-week initiative.” Victoria wants to set up an internship with the Farmingdale Public Library, but her department head thinks its a terrible idea. To prove him wrong, she teams up with Children's Librarian John Donovan, in order to get library support for her project. But when Victoria and John meet, it's clear that they have insane chemistry. How will level-headed, stait-laced Victoria deal with a chance at real happiness, if she can't ever take risks?

My thoughts: I have a LOT of thoughts about this book. To start, the romance scenes are not very good; it's all stuff that sounds like it would be good in theory, but was NOT good when it played out in the books. Victoria also initiated their physical relationship by creating a strict schedule of physical encounters that they would participate in. She literally called it a “sordid affair”. Only afterwards did they start dating and actually build a relationship together. Why tf would they do it backwards like that, instead of building up to a relationship more naturally? It felt so forced. The other huge issue I have is with how John acts as a librarian. When Victoria first emails him her project proposal, almost immediately he starts teasing her about an overdue book she has (because it's a romance book). This is super unprofessional, and practically sexual harassment (because they hadn't even met at this point). At the end of the book, he waives her overdue fines because he loves her (and puts an official note in her account saying as much). This is also SO unprofessional! It's unethical to give people special treatment like that! Plus, most libraries are moving towards a fine-free model, so she shouldn't have even been charged any late fees in the first place! Also, the work that the student interns would have been doing (shelving books) would not have been that informative, and they definitely didn't deserve the title of Student Librarians. They should have been employed in programming or readers advisory in order to actually get the benefits that Victoria was trying to create. Surprisingly, I think the protrayal of academia was reasonably accurate (haters will say it's the Gel-Man Effect, but the author's husband is a professor, so I think she just has a better source). It depicted Pembroke as an elitest boys club dominated by white men, and has Victoria (a Black female assistant professor) really struggling to succeed. But she was able to succeed professionally through-out the book. John's family life was also interesting; I liked the dynamic of his mom and step mom being best friends, and I liked that he stepped up to care for his niece while his step sister was away with work. However, I don't think that John's struggle with ADD (isn't it supposed to be ADHD now??) was very compelling, or well done. Victoria's conflict with her controlling mother was also mostly just depressing, and the climactic rebellion didn't really hit.

Rating: ⅖ maxi dresses that your mom thinks are too revealing, so instead she makes you wear a dress that is so tight you have to be cut out of it after you pass out at her fancy gala, which is way more revealing

Crumbs by Danie Stirling

Synopsis: Ray is one of the strongest Seerers in her generation. However, she never sees what will be, only what already is. It sounds nice (and it got her into the Council Academy), but it’s made it hard for her to make friends when one tough will reveal their secrets to Ray. Instead, she focuses most of her efforts on her Council Internship. Her only real indulgence is the Marigold Bakery; every week she goes for a cup of the Sacred Forest Blend and a side of Romance (the baked goods at Marigold can actually imbue traits on the person who eats them). There, she catches the eye of Laurie, a part-time barista who dreams of becoming a famous musician. But Councillor’s identities are protected by memory charms; while in office, no civilians remember who they are, and they don’t remember any civilians (like HBO’s Severance). Ray will have to choose between the career she’s worked so hard for and a life with the boy she loves.

My thoughts: This is a graphic novel print of a digital Webtoon, and the vibe that most accurately describes it is “cute” (both the art style and the story itself). The author doesn’t really go into the mechanics of the magic, but I didn’t feel deprived or anything. I think the drawings are digitally done, and it’s almost giving pencils/pencil crayons in terms of texture. Ray and Laurie’s relationship, while surface level, was cute! And I’m really glad that Ray was able to make piece with her career and ended up becoming a Councillor. The only thing that I wish had been expanded more upon was the memory charms; it wasn’t really clear what Ray could or could not remember from her internship. My favourite characters were Stella and Wobbles! They were the magic spirits that resided in Ray’s and Laurie’s phones respectively (kind of like a Siri/Alexa but way cuter).

Rating: 3/5 eponymous songs that you wrote for your girlfriend as a thanks for her teaching you how to fly your broomstick

The McMasters’ Guide to Homicide Volume 1: Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes

Synopsis: Cliff Iverson thought that he had planned the perfect murder. Turns out, he didn’t even manage to kill his target, and he was caught by police immediately after the fact. But they weren’t just any police; they were recruiters for the McMasters School, a highly secretive and exclusive private college that teaches their pupils one thing: how to commit the perfect murder. The book serves as the first ever McMasters’ textbook released for wide publication (in order to meet the needs of students who can’t afford the lofty tuition or aren’t blessed enough to have a benefactor that funds them), so in order to maintain the privacy it focuses solely on students who attended in the 1950s. It includes journal entries from Cliff Iverson, and also follows his classmates Dulcie Mowan (aka Doria Maye) and Gemma Lindley, as they attend classes, hone their craft, and eventually attempt to complete their final theses: murdering their employers.

My thoughts: It turns out that the author Ruport Holmes is the same guy as the singer Rupert Holmes, best known for his hit song Escape (The Pina Colada Song). A true cinematic crossover event. Readers will know that I am a golden age girlie, so I thought that setting the events of the book in the 50s was very charming. Plus it was full of the dry wit that I have been absolutely fiending for as of late. Although I think making it extra realistic by making Cliff’s storylines way more interesting than either of his female classmates was a bit too far. The account of everyone’s classes was interesting, but the best part was definitely when everyone went back into the real world to apply their education in order to actually commit their murders. The amount of intricate planning and set up required for Cliff and Dulcie’s plans was giving heist movie in the best way. (Unfortunately Gemma kept taking L after L, and her plan was never very good. Honestly I don’t think she even deserved the faculty position that she eventually got at the end).

Rating: 4/5 women who managed to evade all overtures like a theater-goer who loves Hammerstein but hates Rodgers

Summer Knight (Dresden Files #4) by Jim Butcher

Synopsis: Several months after the events of Grave Peril, Harry Dresden is still wracked with guilt over not preventing his ex-girlfriend Susan Rodrigues from being turned into a vampire (or a half-vampire? It’s unclear). Now that the Red Court of the Vampires has declared war on the White Council of Wizards, Chicago has been very violent and not very lucrative for Harry’s private detective business (he’s almost out of money). His only friend left is Billy, a college student who leads a band of werewolves known as the Alphas (who previously allied with Harry during the events of Fool Moon). Additionally, the White Council intends to execute him for his part in starting said war. Thankfully, he finally has a client at the office. Unfortunately, that client is actually Mab, the Winter Queen of the Faeries. Through an elaborate system of debt transfers and general trickery (a la the 2008 mortgage crisis), Harry now owes her three favors. Immediately, she cashes in the first: Harry must solve the murder of Ronald Reuel, the Summer Knight, and find his mantle, the source of his power, which has disappeared and dangerously upset the balance between Winter and Summer. If Harry can’t figure out what happened by the Summer Solstice, the Faerie Courts will be forced into a war that nobody wants. And if that’s not enough, Harry’s ex-girlfriend Elanie (who was missing and presumed dead) has suddenly reappeared. She’s been tasked by Summer to solve the exact same murder, and will surely be killed if they can’t figure it out.

My thoughts: I am not an Elaine stan (nor a Susan stan, but that’s besides the point), and I really hate that Jim Butcher specified that she and Harry were adopted siblings that became lovers while living with their adopted father. Why couldn’t they just have been wards, or apprentices, or mentees? The thing that got me through the gratuitous violence and battle scenes was the intrigue about how the White Council would finally resolve things. And then Jim Butcher had the absolute nerve to completely skip over that part and end with a touching scene about Harry’s friendship with the Alphas. I literally thought that the book had glitched and there were some chapters that I was missing, but apparently not.

Rating: 3/5 armies of 2-inch tall pixies armed with the sharpest box cutters other people’s money can buy

And finally,

The Bracelet of the Month

... will be posted on the cafe.

i am, your most faithful blogger, elisa