The Kiss Quotient

I had high hopes for this book going into it since I’d seen many, many reviews and hype for this book…and it didn’t disappoint!

This contemporary love story is about Stella, a thirty-year-old  with Asperger’s.  Her ability to be singularly focused, scheduled, and driven is wonderful at her job in econometrics (predicting buying trends by using data and coding) but not so great when trying to find a compatible boyfriend.  With her mother’s bluntness about wanting her to get married soon and her empty social calendar, she decides she needs some help.  So she did what any girl would do:  hire a male escort to teach her how to improve her romantic life.  She finds Michael (who has emotional baggage of his own), proposes a deal to meet up weekly to work out her romantic deficiencies, and soon finds herself invested in her fake relationship more than she ever thought she could be.

I guess what I really loved about this novel was the fact that she acknowledges her quirkiness but it’s not her only defining trait.  She’s still kind and trusting and inquisitive and just like most women who want to find someone to connect with.  It shows that everyone feels self-conscious about some part of themselves, even people who seem perfect from the outside like Michael.  I also liked how the point of view changes in each chapter between her and Michael.  It makes it feel like a fuller story knowing that her infatuation turned love isn’t just a one-sided affair.

Disclaimer:  This is an adult novel.  An adult romance novel.  With sex (regular and consensual, but still a little graphic in nature).  I mean, the whole premise of the novel is her trying to hook up with a male prostitute, so you’re not going into this one with false pretenses.

The Matchmaker's List

I’d seen this book all around, and with part of my new year’s reading resolution being to read more diverse books, I thought this would fit right into my February rom-com reads.  However, it fell a little flat for me.

Raina is almost thirty, her best friend is engaged, and she’s still secretly pining for her ex-boyfriend who’s been out of her life for years.  She reluctantly agrees to let her Indian grandma play matchmaker.  Hence, the matchmaker’s list of pre-approved eligible bachelors.  As Raina goes on one bad date after another, she finds out that her ex is moving back to town, her best friend is trying to push a groomsman at her, and Raina is at her wits end.  Even in Canada, her Indian culture of marrying to find fulfillment rubs her the wrong way, but how do you tell the ones who love you the most that they’re making you miserable?

I guess with the name like the Matchmaker’s List, I thought most of the story would be Raina going through her grandmother’s list, when in actuality that lasts the first fifty or so pages.  After that, it starts to get a little off track…like her grandmother signing her up for an IndianSingles.com profile without telling her or her not correcting her grandmother when she asks if she’s a lesbian (which leads to another whole drama in itself).  By the end, it does all come back together in a very predictable “I know that was going to happen” way, but some of the choices in the middle seemed a little off from the original story premise.

I did enjoy learning about another culture and their expectations around marriage.  I also liked how the problems Raina created in the story forced her traditional, close-knit community to shed some of its biased nature.  There were redeemable qualities about the book, however, it wasn’t a must-read, in my opinion.

Unmarriageable

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

This famous first line by Jane Austen is the launching point for Sonia Kamal’s novel, Unmarriageable, a Pride and Prejudice retelling in Pakistan.  In a modern-day 2000’s culture, many Pakistani girls marry young or find love through family connections and arranged marriages.  This is no different for the five Binat daughters.  Jena and Alys, the oldest two daughters, are in their early thirties and seen as closing in on their marriage expiration dates, until the day the Binat family receives a coveted invitation to a blow-out wedding in their small Pakistani town.  Mrs. Binat believes this is a gift to launch her daughters into the arms of eligible bachelors.  Enter Fahad “Bungles” Bingla and his best friend Valentine Darsee.  As Bungles falls head over heels for Jena, Valentine’s stand-offish manner rubs Alys the wrong way, but she finds herself thrown into situations with him again and again.  With Bungles’ interfering sisters—Hammy and Sammy—and Valentine’s disapproval, Alys can see that Jena has a hard road to climb if she wants to keep her demur reputation.

This book is very much in the same vein as the original—the conniving mother, the love-at-first-sight, the misinterpretations, the family dynamics—just set in Pakistani culture.  Having never been to Pakistan and not read much literature from there, it was nice to read it from a Pakistani author’s perspective.  She did a wonderful job showing how themes bridge cultures and how classics can be reimagined with the same essence as the original.  Kamal says it best in her acknowledgements at the end:

“In reading literature through a Pakistani lens, it seemed to me that all cultures were concerned with the same eternal questions and that people were more similar to one another than they were different.  As Alys Binat says in Unmarriageable, ‘Reading widely can lead to an appreciation of the universalities across cultures.’”

One Day in December

This book gave me some anxiety.  I think part of it was I knew from the back that I was jumping into a ten year love saga that may not have a happy ending.  Part of it dredged up some unpleasant memories from my past.  Regardless, it took me a week to crack the cover, and then another week to read the first 120 pages.  But after breaking through that barrier, I finished the last 275 pages in two days.

Don’t let the “Christmas” sticker fool you in the library…this isn’t really a Christmas book.  It just happens that December marked the first time that Laurie and Jack meet, her on the bus while he was at the bus stop.  It was a movie-cliche love at first sight moment.  But the bus left, hauling Laurie away, embarking her on a year-long quest to find her missing “bus boy” with the help of her vivacious friend Sarah.  A year later, Sarah excitedly introduces Laurie to her new boyfriend…Jack, the mysterious bus boy.  This is where my anxious heart couldn’t take it because Laurie and Sarah are close.  BFFs.  Practically sisters.  But now Laurie has to decide whether to tell Sarah her new boyfriend is in fact the mystery man they’ve been looking for all year.  It’s stressful and tension filled and enough awkwardness to make anyone cringe.

But the story doesn’t end there.  It keeps going…for years!  Skipping every few months, it tells of Laurie and Sarah’s friendship, of Laurie and Jack’s infatuation turned friendship, of Laurie trying to mend her heart without uprooting friendships.  Heartbreak.  Loss.  Love.  Fallouts.  

This book reminded me of the 2014 movie Boyhood because it gives you snippets and pieces of Laurie and Jack’s lives without filling in all the tiny details.  Sometimes it will jump a month, sometimes six months.  Sometimes we’re in Laurie’s point of view, other times we go to Jack.  

I guess part of my reluctance once I started reading was the fact that I identified with Laurie.  Not in the love at first sight part (because if you’ve read any of my romance reviews, you know how I feel about that subject), but the effervescent best friend who always catches the eye of the guys part.  In high school, one of my best friends was that person.  She never stole the guys I liked, but it seemed that I was always the third wheel, the awkward side-kick without a date, the one who was not quite pretty enough.  I shrugged it off, like Laurie, but that nagging voice stays in your head longer than you’d like it to.  Laurie’s shock and pain at realizing her friend (even unknowingly) took the guy she’s been pining for brought back some of those high school feelings, so it was hard to get through the first part of the book.  But that same feeling is what pushed me towards the ending with abandon.  I needed to know that Laurie got her happy ending, just like me.

Overall, a slow start but a good read for any rom-com fans.  

Extracted Trilogy

I have lots of book genres that I enjoy reading, and sci-fi is one of them!  Time travel, fictional technology, mysterious events…what’s not to love?  Sure, sometimes the stories can get a little out there and confusing, but as long as there is a line of plausibility, I’m up for it.

I read the first book in this series about a year ago.  Extracted sets up the main conflict of the series.  In the year 2061, a genius kid built a time machine to save his father’s life, but after jumping into 2111, he finds out the world has been left in utter destruction with no sign of life.  It’s decided that they need to extract people from history with a special set of skills—both military and intelligence—so they can figure out what went wrong in the future and fix it.  The problem is they don’t want to disrupt history’s timeline further, so they need to choose people who died but whose bodies were never recovered.  They decide on three:  “Mad” Harry Madden—a WWII legend who is built like a tank; Ben Ryder—an insurance investigator with a brain to make complex connections; and Safa Patel—an elite police officer with impressive combat skills. 

The first book, Extracted, really lets the reader get to know the characters and understand the conflict of the story while the second book, Executed, picks up where the last on left off.  Now a special force unit—comprised of Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta, and Echo—is after the group because they want the time machine.  They report back to their mysterious leader “Mother” and are willing to do whatever it takes to find the group and take the time machine.  Harry, Safa, and Ben also have other changes:  Roland, their previous leader and the person responsible for extracting them, is out and Miri, an old intelligence leader for the military, is now in charge.  With Miri’s help—and a lot of time machine practice—Harry, Safa, and Ben are able to save the time machine inventor and his sister (in a previous timeline—after he built the machine but before people started coming after them) so that they can protect the time travel technology from getting into the wrong hands.  This book, though it gets a little crazy, is still easy to track and understand because only one group is time traveling while the other is fixed in 2061.

The third book is when it starts to get really wibbly-wobbly (and if you make it this far, trust me, you’ll want to finish the series).  In Extinct, Ben, Safa, Harry, and their new recruit Emily have slipped by the special force unit, but Mother is undeterred.  She hijacks the time traveling technology and now has a working time machine of her own.  Now the two groups are fighting against time and each other to figure out how to stop the other…oh, and how to save the world from destroying in 2111.  There’s now three working time machines, lots of jumping here and there in time, and a whole lot of deception.

I really enjoyed the ingenuity of this trilogy (and who doesn’t love a good time traveling book?).  The only fault was the coarse language throughout the entire series (this is definitely an adult book), and some sexual references that weren’t explicit but enough to make me not want to pass this on to a high schooler (again, adult book).

If you enjoy some science fiction hilarity, then you should enjoy this series as much as I did.

The Library Book

I’m not typically a nonfiction reader unless it’s more of a narrative nonfiction.  After seeing some hyped reviews for this book about the Los Angeles fire of 1986, I really wanted to read it.  It seemed right up my alley:  a book about books!  However, it was a little off for me.

On the gorgeous front cover, there’s a review that says it’s a mix of “true crime, history, biography, and immersion journalism.”  This book doesn’t fit into just one nonfiction genre; it’s a mix of many different types which made it feel very disjointed for me.  Part of the story is the history of the Los Angeles public library, from it’s start as a gentlemen’s reading room to its current state as a modern day information center.  Part of the story is the history of libraries themselves, focusing on the history behind book burnings and library fires.  Part of the story is the Los Angeles library fire and the hunt for the arsonist.  Part of the story is Susan Orlean’s research process and interviews with past and current library staff.  

It was interesting, but all of the differing stories seemed to make it feel disjointed, in my opinion.  You’d be skipping from the background story of the main arson suspect to the modern day librarian interviews to World War II book burnings to the eccentric library director in 1905 who hiked from Chicago to Los Angeles.  I had a hard time staying engaged with the book because it seemed so scattered.  I’d get really into one chapter then find myself skimming the next to get through it.  

For anyone who loves libraries, history, and books, this will be a great book for you.  If you need linear, chronological order when reading a book, then you may just want to skip this one.

New Year's Resolutions and Reading Challenges

I admit, I’ve never been one to pick a resolution for the new year (except that one year I tried to give up chocolate in college and it ended flopping like a professional basketball player).

So this year I’m doing something different:  I’m committing to a reading challenge.  

There are tons of reading challenges out there:  post a picture every day on a specific theme, read through the genres, read lesser known books with fewer review hits…but the one I’ve decided to do is the Unread Shelf Project for 2019.

My current unread stack of books

The rules are simple, read books you already own (or in my case, books that I’ve wanted to read but haven’t found the time).  I currently have a stack of 23 books next to my nightstand waiting to be read, another 18 books on my Kindle, and 71 books on my Goodreads “Want to Read” list.  And in all sincere honesty, I blame all of you for this.  You give me really good book recommendations.  My husband passes on great library finds to me.  Instagram is inundated with books, books, and more books.  I also blame myself.  I’m a mood reader, so if I’m reminded of a favorite book, I really want to go back to reread it (for example, I read Fangirl FOUR TIMES in 2018 because it’s my go-to book to destress my anxious mind).

So what are the specifics, you may ask?

• January:  read any unread book
• February: read a book gifted to you
• March:  read the book that’s been on your self the longest
• April: read the book you most recently acquired
• May: read a book you bought because of the movie/TV/theater adaptation
• June: read a book about travel or set in a country you’ve never been to
• July: read a book from a series on your shelf or one you already started
• August: read a book recommended for you by a friend
• September:  read a book you can buddy read with someone else
• October: read a book that scares you (can be its length, content, or genre that’s out of your comfort zone)
• November: read a book from your favorite genre
• December: read the shortest book on your shelf

Usually I read multiple books a month, so this will be one of my monthly picks to give me some emotional freedom to still moody read.

Want to join me?  I’d love the company and the accountability.

Happy reading in 2019!

Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe

I love Pride and Prejudice.  It’s my favorite classic novel for many reasons that I will not go into here (see this post for all my P&P love).  And because I love the original story so much, I’ve read lots of retellings and modern adaptations, like Eligible and Jane in Austin.  Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe tops that list.  

I know, I know…it’s written as a fluffy Christmas story, and it is.  But it’s also more than that.  The author captured the original angst of the story and the misconstrued intentions perfectly, even if the setting is modern.  There are also a few other changes I enjoyed, like the role reversals.  In this story Darcy Fitzwilliam is an independent, self-made woman who has a fantastically lucrative career in New York City.  But when her mother has a heart attack, she must go back to Pemberly, PA, her hometown that she hasn’t been to in eight years.  There she reconnects with her best friend Bingley Charles and her neighbors, the Bennett boys.  

Another change I liked was the story being told from Darcy’s point of view.  Most retellings stick with Jane and the Bennett sisters, since they are the main focus of the original novel, but I enjoyed being in Darcy’s head throughout all the confusing, conflicting feelings she’s having for Luke Bennett, her old high school rival.  I was expecting the novel to flip back and forth between the two points of view, but by sticking with Darcy, the story seemed more honest and truthful.  

Could I have used a few more details throughout the story?  Sure, being only 225 pages.

Did I read this practically in one sitting?  Why yes, I did.

Did I throughly enjoy it?  Most definitely.

You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

The thing I love about my book club is the fact that it gets me out of my reading comfort zone.  When you’re in a group with a dozen other people, there’s a very diverse pull for what books to read.  Some I’ve been pleasantly surprised with, but sometimes you come up with a dud, like this month’s book.

Augusten Burroughs is a nonfiction writer who writes about his life in a very satirical way, much in the same writing style as David Sedaris.  From what I gathered from our book discussion, this book is in the same vein as his other books.  Burroughs wrote seven short stories about different Christmases he’s experienced over the years.  Some parts are slightly humorous, like when he tricks his parents into buying all the presents on his list by demanding a horse or when his newly renovated house floods.  But mostly it just made me depressed and feel sorry for him, like the Christmas he didn’t remember because he was blackout drunk or the last Christmas he spent with his AIDS-infected boyfriend.

What I really wanted to read was a hilariously funny set of Christmas stories, but instead what I got was story after story of hardships and confusion and struggles, like a tasteless cookie with some sprinkles on top to try and make it look better.

The Glass Ocean

If you know me, you know I love history, especially the opulent time of the Gilded Age.  Although technically the Gilded Age stopped around 1900, the wealth and extravagance lasted into the 1910s and 1920s.  The Glass Ocean is a historical fiction book chronicling the final passage of the Lusitania, an ocean liner that was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 during WWI.  

The Glass Ocean is written by three authors—Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White—and the story is told from three women’s perspectives.  Two of the women lived in 1915, Caroline a wealthy socialite and Tess a con woman, who were both on the Lusitania.  The third is Sarah, a historical writer in the modern day who is investigating a mysterious note left by her great-grandfather, a steward who died on the Lusitania.  Her research lead her to England and John Langford, a descendant of another Lusitania passenger who was the supposed sender of the mysterious snippet.  While John and Sarah try to piece together how their ancestors connect and why a coded message was safely sealed in a waterproof bag for a century, the reader is pushed back in time to see the events play out in real time.

If I had to classify this book, it’s historical fiction but also a mystery.  I liked figuring out the new pieces and realizing who people were in relation to the modern day research Sarah was doing, but the beginning and the end of the story was uneventfully slow.  It took me a while to swap to the different character’s perspectives and to be invested in their outcomes.  Once they made it onto the boat, the action and suspicions started picking up and made the book better.  But the ending seemed a little…up in the air?  Anticlimactic?  It was just missing something.

Overall, I’m glad I read it.  I’m also glad that I checked it out from the library instead of buying it.

The Hollow of Fear: A Lady Sherlock Mystery

I’m a sucker for a good old fashioned “who done it” mystery, and the latest Lady Sherlock book did not disappoint.  It’s written in the same style as a classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie, which just makes the language feel so much richer than some modern day books.  I also enjoy how they’ve taken Sherlock Holmes and reimagined “him” as a woman.

You’ll have to start with the first book in the series, A Study in Scarlet Women, to get the full background, but the basic premise is Charlotte Holmes is a beautiful young woman with an even more brilliant mind.  To prevent her parents from marrying her off against her will, she decides to purposefully get caught in a compromising position (to put it lightly) so she will be ineligible for marriage.  Now she must find a way to make money so she can live on her own, hence the creation of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes.  Along with her sister Olivia, her benefactor Mrs. Watson, and her long-time friend Lord Ingram, she successfully creates and maintains the persona of Sherlock.  But now in the third book, Lord Ingram is under scrutiny for his wife’s murder, and only Charlotte’s quick mind can try to extricate him from blame.

This novel, much like the last, cannot be predicted.  There are too many pieces all floating together and they don’t match up until the last 50 pages.  All the seemingly minor loose ends have a purpose, even though the reader may not be able to see how they all fit together as the story progresses.  That’s what I love about a good mystery.  I’m great at predicting motives and murderers, so it takes a lot to stump me, and when it’s done is such a way that keeps you interested the entire book, well, that’s even better.

If you enjoyed the first two books in this series, then you’ll be just as enthralled with this third installment.  

The Proposal

Sometimes after a long difficult book all you need is a light read that will make you laugh.  That’s why The Proposal was such a good relaxer for me.

The Proposal is a companion book to The Wedding Date, which means it has some of the same characters in it, like Drew and Alexa, but the main characters are different.  This time around, it’s Drew’s friend Carlos turn to accidentally find love.  While at a Dodgers baseball game, Nikole’s actor boyfriend decides to propose…during the game…on the JumboTron.  The problem (one of many) is that they’ve only been dating for five months, and Nik knows it won’t last, so she turns him down.  Now she’s the villain, stuck in a stadium full of people with camera crews closing in when in swoops Carlos and his sister.  Feigning recognition, they save Nik from the crowds, and a friendship starts to form.  Neither Carlos, a busy doctor with extended family to take care of, nor Nik, a writer with many failed relationships under her belt, want anything serious, but their natural chemistry is hard to deny.

There are many striking similarities between this book and The Wedding Date (which I—of course—had to go back and read after finishing this book).  First, they both go into the relationships with the “I’m never going to fall in love” mantra.  The Wedding Date meet cute was funnier—getting stuck in an elevator then becoming the guy’s fake girlfriend for a wedding—but The Proposal’s felt more real, mainly because Carlos and Nik started off as friends before getting physical.  Another similarity is the interracial relationship.  Alexa and Nik are both black, so there are a few cases (especially in The Wedding Date) where race is brought up because people said utterly inappropriate things.  Finally, they both also focus on current struggles.  Alexa in The Wedding Date is working to implement a youth outreach program for troubled teens, while Nik is learning self-defense to protect herself from her threatening ex-boyfriend.  I felt like the issues brought up in The Proposal were good and valid, but it did seem to take away from the ending because the explanation for it was very lengthy.

Overall, it was a cute, predictable story, but if you liked first one, you’ll enjoy this second book as well.

Outlander

After watching the Great American Reads on PBS this summer, I decided to choose a few books from the list to read.  One of my choices was Outlander.  

I honestly didn’t know a lot about the plot other than a woman time travels back into time.  Being a fan of history and time travel, I thought this book would be right up my alley…and it was.  I really enjoyed the characters, learning about 1700s Scottish/English history, and the storyline in general.  In the book, Claire and her husband Frank travel to the Scottish Highlands for a second honeymoon since WWII has now ended and they have been separated for eight years.  While there researching her husband’s genealogy, Claire finds herself accidentally propelled 200 years in the past, into 1700s Scotland full of clans and English redcoats.  Seen as a spy, she’s now caught in a whirlwind of events that imbed her in the past with little hope to return to 1945 again. 

As much as I loved the story, however, there were a few drawbacks to this book that will turn off non-bibilophiles.  

First, it’s L-O-N-G, over 600 pages of tiny print.  I’ve read a few books that length before, but I’m pretty sure they were YA books and the writing style is completely different.  Which brings me to my second frustration, the writing itself.  I loved it and hated it at the same time (if that makes sense).  Typically I’m a fast reader, but with this book I could not read as fast as I wanted because of all the details.  Most were interesting additions and plot driven, but others plodded along ponderously (I don’t really care to read about English botany or the intricacies of Catholic monasteries).  But I also loved the details.  It created a memorable story that made you feel like you are in 1742 Scotland and made you invest fully and wholeheartedly in the characters.  The last drawback was the sex and violence.  This book has very mature content, like multiple attempted rapes, many consensual romantic encounters, and violence (partly due to the Scottish skirmishes with the English and partly because the main character is a fugitive). It did feel very over the top at times, which probably plays into the TV show content.

This is the first in a series, so if you want to read it, prepare in advance.  You’ll need all your extra time for reading.  

Noodle Shop Mystery Series

This cozy little mystery series has been a nice change of pace for me.  Sometimes books really shake you up, make you upset, and just make your heart hurt.  That’s fine; books are supposed to broaden our horizons and expand our empathy.  But sometimes you just want something predictably fun, and that’s what this series is.

In Death by Dumpling, Lana works at her parents noodle shop in Asia Village, a pagoda-inspired mall full of Asian shops.  She’s between jobs, disgruntled at working back with her family, and just off a bad break-up.  What better way to shake her out of her misery than a good, old murder mystery!  The director of the Village is found dead in his office from an allergic reaction to shellfish, and everyone’s pointing the finger at Lana (who delivered his last meal) and Peter (the cook for the restaurant).  After meeting the police detectives—including dreamy Detective Trudeau—and deciding they cannot solve this problem alone, Lana and her roommate, Meghan, decide to dig up the dirt themselves.

Dim Sum of All Fears picks up a month after the first book ends.  Lana is still reeling from her findings surrounding Mr. Feng’s murder, but she doesn’t have time to mope.  Her parents are taking a surprise trip to Taiwan to visit her grandmother, and they’re leaving the restaurant management to Lana—much to her older sister’s chagrin.  While her parents are away, there’s another grizzly murder at Asia Village.  This time Lana’s close friend Isabelle and her husband Brandon are found murdered in their small souvenir shop.  What first seems like a murder/suicide turns out to be much more than that.  Detective Trudeau is back on the case and this time is determined to keep Lana out of trouble.

If there is such a genre as a mystery-rom-com, this would be in it.  It’s got the will-they-won’t-they love interest, the roommate side-kick, and spurned ex-lovers.  Oh, and murder mysteries!  I enjoyed these books because they read similar to YA books:  they aren’t difficult, the action in the story is spaced so you won’t have any long lulls, and I read each book in about two days.  Like I’ve said before, sometimes you need the Hallmark channel movie instead of an Oscar nominated film, and this is the literary equivalent.  

The Dry

So, I have a confession to make…I read this series out of order.  It has happened in the past (thanks, sister, for hogging Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) and will probably happen again in the future.  However, this time, I think it was for the best.

The Dry is the first in the Aaron Faulk series by Australian author Jane Harper.  I read the sequel, Forces of Nature, earlier this summer and really liked it!  Women lost in the woods…a mysterious serial killer…unknown motives…money laundering…it was a complex story but well told.  The Dry has many of those same literary characteristics, but it seemed to drag a little slower and not capture my attention as easily.  

Aaron Faulk is a federal agent in Australia, but he returns to his small southern town when he finds out his childhood friend murdered his family and then shot himself.  Since the town’s going through an epic drought, people assume it was motivated by money problems.  Even though the town hates him (due to past secrets revolving another dead friend), Aaron stays to try and clear his friend’s name.

Like the first, this story is told in the present with flashbacks interspersed to help fill in the blanks of what happened.  This was a good way to tell the story and to add some foreshadowing and suspense.  What I wasn’t too keen on were the people in the town.  For the most part they were so mean and petty, acting before thinking.  It’s nothing that takes away from the storyline, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.  The story is also two mysteries in one:  what happened to the recently murdered family and what happened to Aaron’s other friend twenty years ago to make the town hate him.  Both stories do get wrapped up, but by the time I hit the resolution of the first murder, I was on information overload and really didn’t care about tying up the second murder.

All in all, it was a fine detective novel…just not one I’ll be picking up again anytime soon.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Y’all.  This book was crazy…but in a good way.

Each morning, Aiden wakes up at Blackheath, an estate owned by the Hardcastle family.  Every night, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered at 11:00 pm.  Aiden’s job is to find out who killed her…but if he doesn’t, he wakes up and repeats the day in another guest’s body.  He has eight days to figure out her murder and eight different bodies to inhabit.  To make matters worse, there are others stuck at Blackheath like him who are searching for the murderer, but they are also coming after Aiden.

I knew going into this book it was a mystery, but even then I was totally twisted the first dozen chapters and had no clue what was going on.  I think there were a few things that contributed to this confusion:

First, the book’s in first person point of view.  This means we see the entire story from Aiden’s eyes but during the story he’s jumping his personality into another person’s body, with very limited memory of that person’s immediate life.  This means until Aiden figures out what’s going on, you are just as in the dark as he is.

Secondly, the book isn’t linear.  It will tell you when it moves on to a new day with a new body, but sometimes it will jump back into a previous body.  That means you’re not meeting characters in chronological order, which makes it sometimes confusing.

Besides these challenges, the book grows on you.  By the time Aiden realizes that he’s in a murder investigation, he’s able to adapt quickly.  This book has a lot of classic mystery elements:  red herrings, double-crossing, murders, hidden family secrets…you name it!  It reminded me very much of Agatha Christie’s works, where there were so many different pieces to the puzzle, you won’t be able to figure it out until the big reveal. 

Overall, it’s a well-done mystery novel, even with the shaky start.

**Thank you Net Galley and Sourcebooks for this free book in exchange for an honest review!**

**The book is out now (also under the title The 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle) so enjoy!**

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper

There’s a hidden fiction sub-genre that you may not know about:  the quirky old man books.  This sub-genre has books like A Man Called Ove, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and Out of Sorts.  These stories revolve around men in their later years where some shocking event has made them realize that their small, orderly, predictable lives aren’t enough.  Maybe their spouse dies or moves out, or they are forced to retire earlier than expected.  Whatever the case may be, these men realize that you’re never too old to start afresh and have an adventure.

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper falls solidly in this category.  Arthur Pepper’s wife died a year ago, and since then he’s become a recluse who’s chained to his daily routines.  That is until he cleans out his wife’s closet and finds a gold charm bracelet.  He’s never seen it before and has no idea what the eight charms mean.  So he sets off to figure out where the charms came from.  From elephants in India to tigers in England, Arthur realizes that looking back into the past is fine but living in the past isn’t.

This was overall just a cute story.  You’ll enjoy Arthur and his changing midst throughout the book.  Yes, there are a few plot lines that I wish were more resolved or went by too quickly, but that could just be me.  For the most part, this book will just make you chuckle with all the crazy situations Arthur finds himself in and wonder what will happen next.

The Lost for Words Bookshop

This book just happened to be in the “newly arrived” section of the library where my husband snagged it, read it, and passed it on to me saying, “It’s about an antisocial girl who prefers books to people.  You’ll like it.”  I may classify myself as introverted (not antisocial) and would pick a book over people about half the time (people are just exhausting to be around in large quantities), but I did feel empathy for the main character Loveday Cardew.

Loveday works at the Lost for Words Bookshop, where the owner Archie hired her when she was fifteen.  Now twenty-five, Loveday prefers to keep her past to herself, until one day a book shows up that she swears was in her family’s home growing up.  This opens up some memories she would prefer to keep clamped down.  Around the same time, Nathan shows up at the bookstore to retrieve a lost book.  Between Nathan and Archie, they may be able to get Loveday to open up and live her life, but it’s not easy dealing with a misanthrope.

The book is told not in chronological order but in genres based on what’s happening during that time.  Each genre tells the story of that particular time in Loveday’s life, from poetry to history to crime to biography.  The storytelling itself is more like a stream of consciousness from Loveday’s point of view, and she even breaks the fourth wall a few time just to keep it personal, like she’s telling you this story herself.  Even though I was able to predict her background story, the last 100 pages will give you a run for your money, with multiple shocks along the way.

This book would be a great read for someone who enjoys quirky characters and a little bit of mystery.

**Looking for another similar book?  Try The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend!

Force of Nature

“Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things.  One:  No-one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell.  And two:  Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you.”  

During a corporate team building retreat in the Australian bushland, five women begin the four-day hiking excursion but only four come out.  So what happened to Alice?  Was she lost by some tragic accident…or was she murdered?  Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk and his partner have come to help with the investigation because they think her disappearance may have been malicious.  Falk had been in talks with Alice about turning over corporate documents that indicated her bosses had illegal finances coming in.  So did Alice’s boss find out and decide to do something about it?  Was it her overused and undervalued assistant?  Was it her frenemy from high school that now works at the same firm?  Or was she a victim of a serial killer who’s been known to be in the Giralang Ranges?  This is a mystery thriller that will definitely keep you on your toes!

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d like this one as much as I did.  My last few thriller choices have been duds, so I was skeptical, but the mystery drew me in immediately.  The story is told in chronological chapters from the point when the four women are picked up and find out Alice is missing.  Interspersed between these chapters are flashbacks that show what actually happened during the women’s hike from varying perspectives.  The mix of both really works for this book since you’re finding out clues in the real world then seeing if they match up with what really happened.  

Also, I didn’t know this book was the second on a series before starting it, but it really doesn’t matter.  The first also features Agent Falk but has no real relation to this story other than it’s the same character.  So don’t feel like you HAVE to read her previous novel, The Dry, before reading this one.

Jane Harper did a wonderful job, and I’ll definitely be picking up another book by her in the future!

**This book was a part of a book train giveaway, so if you want to read it, see my Instagram giveaway!  @whatmrs.harperisreading

Thrawn: A Star Wars Story

Ever since my husband and I got married, we’ve made it a habit to read aloud to each other while driving in the car long distances (it also helped that we moved nine hours away from our families and came back to visit every few months).  We’ve read other genres of books, but mostly we’ve read Star Wars books.  This newest joint-read is another in the Star Wars universe.

Thrawn is set after the Clone Wars but at the beginning of the Star Wars Rebels TV show.  Obviously, it revolves around Mitth’raw'nuruodo (more commonly known at Thrawn) and how he came to be a part of the Empire.

After being cast out of Chiss society, Thrawn is found alone on a world in the Outer Rim’s Wild Space and is taken to the Emperor.  This blue skinned, red eyed alien shows his military intelligence and is told to attend the Empire’s Academy to train him to be an officer.  The problem is Thrawn doesn’t know a lot of Basic (the main language in the Star Wars universe), so he’s given a translator, Ensign Eli Vanto, who just happens to know a remote trade language that the Chiss also use.  

Along with chronicling Thrawn’s career from a lieutenant to a grand admiral, the story also introduces us to Arihnda Pryce, which you know as Governor Pryce of Lothal if you’ve watched the Rebels TV show.  Her story starts with the loss of her family’s mine on Lothal and her move to Coruscant.  It shows her drive, and her manipulations, to get back the power she’s lost.

It is your typical Star Wars story…there’s political power plays, space battles, smugglers, and hidden agendas.  It’s also very well written and easy to follow, especially if you’re already familiar with the Star Wars universe.  I just think Thrawn himself is such an interesting character, being a military genius but also an alien in an Empire that dismisses anyone non-human.  It shows you that you shouldn’t judge people who are different from you; what you should do is look at what’s underneath.