Historical Mystery Review: Jennifer Ashley’s SPECULATIONS IN SIN (Below Stairs Mystery #7)

· 6 Comments ·

Speculations_In_SinI’m always content to see another Below Stairs Victorian mystery from Ashley: the main character, master-cook Kat Holloway, and her band of merry assistant cooks and butler, Mr. Davis, along with friends in high and low places, and protector and love-interest, police-agent Daniel McAdam, are a wonderful group to spend reading time with.

Speculations In Sin sees Kat and company solving a murder that hits too close to home not to have their emotions in turmoil. Grace, Kat’s daughter from a former abusive marriage, is now happily, comfortably, and safely living with her best friend Joanna and husband Sam Millburn and their happy brood. Sam makes a modest living as a bank clerk…but not all is well in the Millburns’ and Kat’s frugal paradise. Daalman’s Bank is seeing funds siphoned, a murder in one of their storerooms, and Sam arrested on both counts, an innocent man, Grace’s and Kat’s rock, as well as his family’s. With Ashley’s well-researched awareness of the precariousness of modest people’s lives in 1883 Victorian London, this spells disaster. (more…)

Interlude with BLACK NARCISSUS…

· 8 Comments ·

I’m a Backlisted (“giving new life to old books”) podcast fan, though every time I read one of their recommended, “resurrected” reads, I have a “do not like” to “meh” reaction. This is what happened with Black Narcissus, though it wasn’t Godden’s novel that was recommended. Backlisted did a great talk on Michael Powell’s 1986 biography (of the writing/directing team of Powell and Pressburger who filmed Godden’s novel. I should have known better given how much I disliked The Red Shoes.) But a reader’s rabbit-hole is a reader’s rabbit-hole and it will take a reader where it will. Off I went to read Godden’s novel and watch The Archers’s film.

I’ve had a copy of Godden’s Black Narcissus (pub. 1939; film, 1947) knocking around for a few years (who can resist the beauty of a Virago cover after all?) because I enjoyed her coming-of-age novel, The Greengage Summer. (The film? Easily accessible on a streaming service.) I was ambitiously going to read and watch and compare. What I wasn’t counting on was how unpleasurable the experience would be with both texts, though the film edges out the novel in cinematography and the novel, in character development. Both fail on the Indian characters’ depiction. (more…)

A Few Notes on Frances Spufford’s THE CHILD THAT BOOKS BUILT…

· 4 Comments ·

Though blog-absent, occupied with too much going on at work and care-giving, I have been reading. And, I noted, what I’ve been reading came together in a peculiarly apt pairing, through no conscious effort on my part.

I don’t remember where or who put Francis Spufford’s The Child That Books Built in my reading sight-line, but I’m grateful (likely, I heard about it on a pod). I read it as “non-stop” as I could, given it was the last week of teaching before spring break (it’s now spring break and quite spring-like for a Canadian March). At the same time, I’ve been rereading Tara Westover’s Educated because I assigned it as “spring break reading” to my students. I read it a few years ago and didn’t much like it, found it flat, the narrator too “hidden” (tell me what you think of all this that happened to you?!). It’s a completely different experience rereading: more moving, more engaged and engaging. To read Spufford and his rich childhood reading life while simultaneously reading about Westover’s childhood reading desert is an experience I’d highly recommend: lives and identities at opposite ends connected by intellect and introspection.    (more…)

Contemporary Mystery Review: Janice Hallett’s THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE ALPERTON ANGELS

· 13 Comments ·

Mysterious_Case_Alperton_AngelsThe first time I tried to read Hallet’s Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, I failed, her writerly choices leaving me nonplussed. But I then listened to the NYT’s books podcast praising it to high heaven. The reviewer said she bought FOUR copies and lent them to make sure people were reading Alperton Angels! Most read till the wee hours…’fession, I did too.

Why? Because Hallett’s is no ordinary straight-telling mystery: the how she tells the story is as compelling, though disorienting, as the mystery. Readers of Hallett’s previous two books (now in the Gargantuan TBR) may be old hands at her unique narrative choices, but I was taken in, fascinated, and ready to do it again.

Centred on true crime writer Amanda Bailey as she gathers material to complete her book on the Alperton Angels, the narrative is made up of snail and e-mail, text and Whatsapp messages, interview and podcast transcripts, quasi-fictional accounts, old documentaries, an unproduced movie script, even a YA fantasy novel. Characters are as diverse: police, witnesses, family members, podsters, authors, nurses, even amateur true crime club members. The effect is compelling, disorienting, fragmentary. As Amanda puts the pieces together, so does the reader (I’m vain enough to say I guessed one part of the mystery correctly… but there were surprises too. Clever Hallett: we aren’t privy to motivation.)    (more…)

SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge Review “Furry Friends”: Marian Lennox’s NIKKI AND THE LONE WOLF (Banksia Bay #3)

· 18 Comments ·

Nikki_Lone_WolfThank goodness for Lennox’s dog-centric category romances, or I would have a hard time fulfilling Wendy’s February theme. I reviewed the second Banksia Bay romance back when for Wendy’s TBR Challenge and now Nikki and the Lone Wolf, the series third and best one so far. The Lennox romances I’ve read lately start with her signature heart-stopping scene of people and/or animals in peril and then peter off into exposition. Not so with Nikki: tension and scenes of danger and distress follow one upon another while building a moving romance.

When Nikki and the Lone Wolf opens in Banksia Bay, Nikki Morrissy is settling down to sleep in her new home when she hears a dog’s mournful cry. She tries to ignore it, but her heart is too soft and she sets off to rescue the pooch. Her landlord and next door neighbour, “lone wolf” Gabe Carver, does the same. Nervous about moving around in the dark of her new isolated coastal home, she carries a poker…and promptly brains Gabe. They do rescue a big, elderly hound, so huge and bony Nikki dubs him “Horse”. She and Horse watch over the concussed Gabe throughout the night: waking his grumpy self every two hours, taking his phone to keep him from leaving on his fishing boat before dawn. When he wakes up in sunlight…having missed his alarm, he’s beyond grumpy. But Nikki can’t abandon either: the loner hermit-man with the closed-off eyes, or the mangy bag-of-bones dog, though Nikki herself is a wounded soul in need of healing. She left her successful Sydney engineering career after learning her boss and lover, whom she hoped to marry, was married. It’s a sad-fest with happy ending our Nikki and her lone wolves, animal and human. (more…)

Historical Mystery Review: Alys Clare’s THE OUTCAST GIRLS (World’s End Bureau #2)

· 5 Comments ·

Outcast_GirlsI continue my reading journey through Clare’s World’s End Bureau Victorian mystery series with the second, The Outcast Girls. It’s a tighter book, less episodic than the first, and I was quite keen on the setting: an isolated girls school in the Fens (teacher here!), with girls gone missing. Clare’s investigators, Lily Raynor, former nurse, worked in India, now in England having created her investigation bureau. Her assistant, Felix Walbraham, whose background and the estrangement from his family remains a barely sketched story, remains as wonderful, loveable, and sexy as he did in the first book, The Woman Who Spoke to the Spirits.

When The Outcast Girls opens, Lily and Felix are awaiting clients, mildly anxious for the bureau’s fortunes, and saving coal on a cold winter’s day. Into their thumb-twiddling day walks Miss Georgiana Long, English teacher at Shardlowes School, worried, anxious, concerned about the missing girls and a teacher. Shardlowes is a charitable institution for the unwanted, illegitimate, physically and mentally challenged, the odd, the ugly, the overweight, even the too clever, and the de trop to the family fortunes girls: in sum, when a family doesn’t want their daughter, off she goes to Shardlowes. It is no Lowood, however: the girls are treated with kindness, with respect at the very least. The school is supported by a mysterious group, the “Band of Angels,” its members of the highest social order and secretive and the mystery of the disappeared girls and teacher connects to them.    (more…)

Contemporary Romance Review: Cara Bastone’s READY OR NOT

· Leave a comment ·

Ready_or_NotIs it a romance? Is it women’s fiction? Is it coming-of-age? Like some of the best romance (see Jane Austen), Bastone’s latest, Ready or Not, is a romance and definitely a story about the heroine’s growth. (If there was less emphasis on a lovely romance, it could be WF, but thankfully, not.) Most importantly for readers of this blog, it’s really really really good. I’m thankful to a newfound ability to stay up past my bedtime because it gave me several hours of uninterrupted reading time. The fact Bastone’s story is wittily and well-written with wonderfully nuanced characters and good pacing to the HEA kept me from snoozing.

Ready or Not‘s opening captures the reader thanks to Eve’s wry voice. Eve Hatch is at an obstetrical clinic waiting to find out if she’s pregnant, convinced she is, given the three positive home tests. From that scene onwards, we watch Eve transform physically and emotionally: is it the pregnancy? In a sense, yes, it makes her rethink and re-evaluate her life and I loved that her decision to keep the baby (though abortion is discussed as a choice, which I also appreciated) doesn’t make her world sparkle with the fairy-dust of *heart eyes* saintly motherhood. It’s damned hard and Eve often messes up with the people who love her: her best friends, Willa and Shep Balder and the baby’s father, Ethan Rise (frankly, he’s a nice guy but he messes up way worse than Eve). What Eve realizes as the pregnancy proceeds and relationships shift is how she has shortchanged herself. More importantly and significantly, because pregnancy is irrevocable, Eve realizes she’s been “stuck” in certain patterns, ones she must break to make a fulfilling life for herself and baby. For a novel whose plot is growing a baby (her name ain’t “Eve” for nothin’), it sure kept me riveted. Why? Eve’s voice and her relationships as she navigates pregnancy and figures out the future.    (more…)

Historical Mystery Review: Alys Clare’s THE WOMAN WHO SPOKE TO SPIRITS (World’s End Bureau Victorian Mystery #1)

· 2 Comments ·

Woman_Spoke_SpiritsThanks to one of this blog’s readers for reccing Clare’s Victorian-set mystery series. I read the first, as “non-stop” as I could manage given the pesky time demands of the day job. Like Lilah Goodluck, I was thoroughly entertained. I was also intrigued because Clare sets up scenes that reveal the main characters’ backstories, but doesn’t fill them in completely. I want to know more about the owner of the World’s End Bureau, Lily Raynor, and her secretary-PA-sleuthing-partner, Felix Walbraham: where they’re coming from and how they got to where they are?

Like another favourite read from last year, Goodman’s Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies, The Woman Who Spoke To Spirits is episodic, sketchy on the narrative structure, seamless not. In The Woman Who Spoke To Spirits, our two investigators tackle cases and learn to work together. Situated in the home and former pharmacy Lily inherited from her grand-parents and great-aunt, the World’s End Bureau is getting off the ground and cases are coming her way. When the novel opens in 1880, Lily has hired an assistant, Felix Walbraham. Lily and Felix investigate two major cases: one on behalf of Lord Berwick whose son wants to marry an older actress. The Bureau is tasked with collecting information about Violetta da Rosa in hopes Lord Berwick can dissuade his son from bringing this inappropriate woman into the family as the future Lady Berwick. Secondly, Ernest Stibbins, humble clerk, approaches the Bureau about his wife, Albertina, a medium whose seances bring comfort to the grieving, but who’s been receiving messages from the spirits that her life is in danger. She is the eponymous woman and not Lily, for which I was grateful as I’m not a big fan of the woo-woo.
 (more…)

Contemporary Romance (With a Touch of Paranormal) Review: Kylie Scott’s THE LAST DAYS OF LILAH GOODLUCK

· 8 Comments ·

Last_Days_Lilah_GoodluckI’m a newbie to Kylie Scott and I sure did enjoy her standalone The Last Days of Lilah Goodluck. It was refreshingly entertaining and I haven’t been purely entertained in oodles of romance. No agenda, just a fun read. The premise is improbable, maybe even eye-rollingly silly (tongue-in-cheek though), but it’s fun and underlying it, a theme of memento mori. So serious too. Our eponymous heroine, Lilah Goodluck, is an ordinary gal enjoying her best friend’s birthday party when she and the hired entertainment, fortune-teller Good Witch Willow, have a near-death experience; what results is something else. The publisher’s blurb fills in the details:

Your boyfriend is cheating on you

You will be passed over for the promotion

5-8-12-24-39-43

Your soulmate is a royal prince

And your time is up a week from Monday

When Lilah Goodluck saves the life of Good Witch Willow as they’re crossing a busy LA street, the last thing she expects is five unwanted predictions as a reward. Who gives someone the lotto numbers then tells them they’ve only got a week to live? And who believes in that nonsense anyway?

But when the first three predictions come true within twenty-four hours, Lilah’s disbelief turns to mild panic. She’s further horrified when she nearly runs a car off the road that belongs to Alistair Lennox, the illegitimate son of the English king.

Alistair is intrigued by her preposterous story, but Lilah is adamant about resisting the heat between her and the playboy prince. If he’s not her soulmate, then the last prediction can’t come true. But as the days count down, they become maybe friends…and then maybe more. Between the relentless paparazzi and his disapproving family, dating a sort-of prince isn’t easy, especially when you have death on your doorstep. (more…)

Contemporary Romance Review: Charlotte Stein’s WHEN GRUMPY MET SUNSHINE

· 3 Comments ·

When_Grumpy_Met_SunshineI’m not sure what I thought of Stein’s When Grumpy Met Sunshine, except what I thought depended on what part of the romance novel I was reading. Stein’s romance fell into three not-well-meshed parts: an initial and lengthy slow-burn getting-to-know-you romance between retired footballer grump Alfie Harding and sunny ghostwriter Mabel Willicker, a shorter sequence of explicit love scenes when the burn fires up and vrooms away, and a dangling chapter dedicated to the HEA. This is how I experienced the novel as a reader, disjointed, but the blurb will give you the overall picture: 

When grumpy ex-footballer Alfie Harding gets badgered into selling his memoirs, he knows he’s never going to be able to write them. He hates revealing a single thing about himself, is allergic to most emotions, and can’t imagine doing a good job of putting pen to paper.

And so in walks curvy, cheery, cute as heck ghostwriter Mabel Willicker, who knows just how to sunshine and sass her way into getting every little detail out of Alfie. They banter and bicker their way to writing his life story, both of them sure they’ll never be anything other than at odds.

But after their business arrangement is mistaken for a budding romance, the pair have to pretend to be an item for a public who’s ravenous for more of this Cinderella story. Or at least, it feels like it’s pretend—until each slow burn step in their fake relationship sparks a heat neither can control. Now they just have to decide: is this sizzling chemistry just for show? Or something so real it might just give them their fairytale ending?  (more…)