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