Book Review: The Lake House by Kate Morton

Title: The Lake House
Author: Kate Morton
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A pretty darn clean read

When Sadie Sparrow is placed on administrative leave from her police job (basically for becoming overly involved in the family of one of the cases she was investigating), she retreats to her newly-retired grandfather's home in Western England. Even though she's supposed to be relaxing and regrouping, her mind cannot rest, and soon she finds herself investigating the decades-old disappearance of a baby boy from an estate in town. She reaches out to Alice Edevane, the sister of the lost boy, who was sixteen when her brother disappears and is now a reclusive, cranky writer in her eighties. Alice and her sister have never talked about their brother's disappearance, and both always carried the weight of their own culpability. In The Lake House, Morton manages to marry the strains of guilt, responsibility and familial love of all kinds.

The Lake House is a remarkable book. There are many books that I get to the end of and think, "I could have written that." The Lake House has such a complicated story, and Morton manages to bring back tiny threads from early in the story that become prominent as everything comes to light. I was delighted to guess the mystery right with about 100 pages left to go, and even though some people might say that the way Morton ties together some of the threads are implausible, I prefer to see them as lovely and serendipitous.

Book Review: Circling the Sun by Paula McLain

Title: Circling the Sun
Author: Paula McLain
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: sex

Based on the life of real-life aviatrix Beryl Markham, Circling the Sun opens with her pioneering trip across the Atlantic from Europe to North America (the hard way, where the winds weren't favorable), yet the book isn't about her career in aviation at all. Rather, the book focuses on the early years of her life, growing up in Kenya with her father (after her mother returned to England with her brother), carving out a career as a successful jockey, and negotiating romantic and business relationships with men.

McLain has a lovely command of the English language (she has an MFA in poetry, and it shows), and uses it to show the conflicts within Beryl-- her restlessness, her desire to be free like the Kipsigis boy she grew up with, and wild like the horses she struggles to tame. The story also makes Kenya come alive and thrum with romance (Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa, appears in Circling the Sun as the third point in a love triangle with Beryl and Denys Finch-Hatton). I wonder if McLain romanticizes Markham at all-- she seems entirely sympathetic to some difficult choices she makes (particularly leaving her only child with his grandparents) and seems to gloss over an affair she had with Prince Henry during the period. All in all, an interesting, if somewhat simplified portrayal of someone who appears to have been an even more interesting and complex person in real life.

Book Review: The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati

Title: The Gilded Hour
Author: Sara Donati
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: violence, sexual violence, lots of talking about sex (but not a lot of sex itself)

When Dr. Anna Savard gets called from her New York home to vaccinate Italian orphans one morning in 1883, she can't foresee the many ways her life will change as a result of that day. First, she meets Rosa and her brothers and sisters, and Anna promises them that she will try to make sure they aren't separated. Then she meets Jack, a detective with the New York Police Department. While the young family and Jack enrich Anna's personal life, her professional life, along with that of her cousin, Dr. Sophie Savard, is under attack due to their involvement with a young mother who had been under their care and died after receiving an abortion. Donati uses this story to highlight the lack of family planning options available to women at this time, and to the evils of the Comstock laws, a series of anti-vice laws. Sophie, who is of mixed-race, also figures prominently in the book, especially as she prepares to marry her childhood love, the scion of a wealthy New York family, and travel to Switzerland with him so he can receive treatment for tuberculosis.

Some of my very favorite books ever (Caleb Carr's The Alienist, Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni) have taken place in the same NYC Donati uses as her setting. It's a place of swishing skirts, menacing shadows, wealth, poverty, and danger. Typically, I am also a huge fan of books with medical subjects, and of books that really get into a world I'm interested in. Readers of The Gilded Hour know about everything from the style of dress that was popular at the time, to home decorating trends, to what foods were popular in Italian immigrant families, to birth control methods. I loved that aspect of the book, as well as the character development-- Jack and Anna's relationship was so smart and measured and romantic, I wanted to live in it. In the second half of the book, Donati introduces the idea of a serial murderer performing abortions in a way that will kill the women who seek them, and while this story was engrossing, the fact that this part of the narrative (along with several others) doesn't have a clear resolution, weakens the reading experience for me, even though I knew from the outset that this was going to be the first book of a series. At 700+ pages, at least tie up the murder mystery, please.

I'm now interested in Donati's Wilderness books. The covers looks SO much like historical romance novels, which makes me a little less interested in reading them than if they were historical novels with romantic subplots, which is how I would characterize The Gilded Hour.

Book Review: The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

Title: The Masqueraders
Author: Georgette Heyer
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read

When I was growing up, I knew a family with several sons and daughters. The sons in the family were all petite and small boned, while the daughters were tall and broad. In The Masqueraders, Prudence Tremaine and her brother Robin use the same situation to their advantage. Since their father played a part in the Jacobite revolution, they've had to change their identities, with Prudence becoming Mr. Peter Merriott and Robin assuming the role of his sister, Kate. They ingratiate themselves into London society, and the ruse works until they fall in love and are accused of murder, and somehow, they have to use all of the skills of trickery they learned from their father to come out on top.

The Masqueraders is a really interesting book on several fronts. First and foremost, I love Heyer's portrayal of Prudence/Peter and her love interest, Sir Anthony Fanshawe. Fanshawe admires Peter, and grows to love Prudence, not despite the fact that she's been disguised as a man, but for her strength. Instead of rescuing her, Fanshawe and Prudence work together to help her get through the situation she faces. I also adored the twist that comes late in the book when the Tremaine's father appears. It's genius. The Masqueraders is really fun and funny. It feels a lot like a Regency-era Shakespearean comedy, complete with mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and multiple marriages at the end.

Book Review: Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig

Title: Last Bus to Wisdom
Author: Ivan Doig
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read

When Donal Cameron's grandmother needs to have surgery and no one on the ranch in Montana can care for him, he boards a Greyhound and heads east to Wisconsin. He has adventures to spare along the way, and gets plenty of signatures for his autograph book. At the end of the journey, he meets his cantankerous Aunt Kate and her husband Herman, and Donal's life is changed by this strange summer of new experiences.

Ivan Doig died in April, and this book, his last, was published in September. In many ways, Donal's life reflected Doig's own. Both lost their mothers when they were young and were raised by grandmothers who worked as ranch cooks. While it's impossible to read Doig's fiction and not fall in love with Montana, or at least with the idea of Montana, this book was also different from his other works in many ways. It was a little bit more rambly and ruminative. I loved the three principal characters, and Doig did a lovely job weaving characters into and out of the journeys to and from Wisconsin. While I'm really sad that Doig is gone (he's one of those authors where sometimes I'd say, "I'm in the mood to read an Ivan Doig book") the good news for me is that I came to him late enough that there are still books to be discovered. This, like everything I've read in his body of work, is a real treat.

Book Review: Malice at the Palace by Rhys Bowen

Title: Malice at the Palace (Her Royal Spyness #9)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Although the book opens with a sex scene, it's actually a pretty clean read

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a sucker for Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness books. The series focuses on Georgie, a lesser royal, trying to scrape by in London with no man and no means of support in the 1930s, and usually ending up solving some kind of major crime, sometimes despite herself. The nine books in the series have ranged from delightful and refreshing to rushed and sloppy, and Malice at the Palace is one of the better books in the series. The queen (Georgie's great-aunt) asks her to live at Kensington Palace to act as a companion to Princess Marina of Greece during the weeks before her marriage to Prince George (George and Marina's were actual people whose wedding took place in November 1934). When Georgie discovers a body on the palace grounds her first night there, and learns that the dead woman was one of many who had relationships with the prince, her loyalties are torn-- does she want to know who killed this woman?

I don't know if I've ever stated this on the blog, but in my mind, I've equated the Her Royal Spyness and the Maisie Dobbs series. Right now, they take place at a similar place and time in history (London in the 1930s), and both involve female sleuths. I've always thought as Her Royal Spyness as Maisie Dobbs lite. And while this may be true, maybe now it's only because Maisie Dobbs has taken such a dour turn. While Georgie was pretty silly in the early books, she has matured, as have many of the characters (with the exception of the infuriating Queenie, her maid), and this book in particular feels on point historically, especially as it takes on the issue of unwed mothers during the period. Malice at the Palace is a pretty fun read, with a little more gravitas than some of its predecessors.

Book Review: What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Title: What She Left Behind
Author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Psychological abuse, some swearing

Izzy is seventeen, and has been living with relatives or foster parents for a decade, since her mother killed her father and was sent to prison. When her newest foster parents get Izzy involved in a history project at a recently-closed mental hospital, Izzy gets captivated by the story of Clara, an apparently healthy eighteen-year-old girl who was institutionalized in 1929. Through coming to understand Clara, Izzy gains insight into her mother's motivations, and begins to gain some hope for her own future.

Wiseman does a lot of things right in What She Left Behind: both Izzy and Clara are interesting and complicated, and their alternating narratives are nicely balanced and subtly parallel. The book is also painstakingly researched, and the view of mental hospitals in the mid-20th century is pretty heartbreaking.  What I didn't like about the novel is that many of the supporting characters are very flat. We never really understand what motivates Clara's parents to lie about her mental state and have her forcibly committed. I mean, we understand that they're upset that she has fallen in love with the wrong kind of man, but who has their daughter put into a mental hospital (basically worse than a jail) for that offense? I didn't find their actions believable. I was similarly annoyed by the bullies at Izzy's school, who seem in the thrall of a single mean girl (why?) and whose offenses go way beyond just razzing the new girl. I could go on with the staff of the mental hospital as well. If the characters were more nuanced, or at least their horrible actions were more clearly explained, I think I would have liked this book a lot better.

Book Review: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Title: The Nightingale
Author: Kristin Hannah
Enjoyment Rating:
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Wartime violence, French curse words

Vianne and Isabelle are sisters living at the outbreak of World War II in France. Both bear the scars of their mother's death and their father's subsequent abandonment of them when they were young girls, and while they share a bloodline, they don't seem to share a worldview. Vianne, a wife and mother living in a small village, is concerned primarily with keeping her family safe and protecting her home. Isabelle seeks adventure, and finds it in the Resistance movement, moving into Nazi-occupied Paris right when most Parisians are fleeing the city.

Like many readers, I have a little bit of fatigue when it comes to World War II stories. I feel like I've read a lot of them, and they're all emotionally difficult for me. While The Nightingale is no exception, it's a book that's engaging enough that I wanted to keep reading. Hannah does a lovely job exploring the strengths and weaknesses of Vianne and Isabelle's characters. These are two women who are complicated, who make grave errors due to the ways they view the world, and who have to pay for those errors. It's also a beautiful love story (actually two love stories) and a story of friendship, loss, and forgiveness. Hannah also keeps readers guessing with a third main character (an elderly woman who is hiding her identity and is presumably one of the sisters, but which one?) The Nightingale is the kind of audiobook you want to keep listening to all day long, and would make a really great book club read.

Book Reivew: Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner

Title: Secrets of a Charmed Life
Author: Susan Meissner
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Kindle
Content Alert: A pretty clean read

It's Isabel McFarland's ninetieth birthday, and her family has gathered to celebrate. However, before the party can start, Isabel has agreed to tell her experiences in the London blitz, which she has never shared before, to a college student who is gathering oral histories. Isabel launches into an epic tale of two sisters, fifteen-year-old Emmy and six-year-old Julia, who lived in London until just before the first bombs started falling, when their mother sent them to live in the Cotswolds with a retired schoolteacher and her sister. Emmy, angry at being sent away from the job she loved at a dressmaker's shop, returns to the city to meet with a potential employer, and this action changes the lives of both girls forever.

Secrets of a Charmed Life is the story of many voices-- we have Isabel's voice looking back, Julia's voice in journal entries, and Kendra (the student) frames the story with her interviews. Actually, my only quibble with the narrative is the fact that Isabel's voice doesn't feel like narrative storytelling. Meissner will have her go on for a hundred pages with no interruption, and when we jump back out to Kendra, it feels a little jarring. But that's only because Isabel's story is such a good one-- rich in detail, regret, and longing. I love the way that we see Emmy come to understand and even forgive the single mother of whose choices she had been so disapproving. There's a lot of tragedy in this novel, but a lot of redemption too, and it's one that I read from cover to cover quickly, sneaking away to read a page or two between loads of laundry and car pools.

Book Review: Spring Muslin by Georgette Heyer

Title: Sprig Muslin
Author: Georgette Heyer
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read

A bachelor in his thirties who lost his true love during their engagement a decade earlier, Sir Gareth Ludlow is on his way to propose to Lady Hester, a woman he admires but does not love. He gets sidetracked by Amanda, a young girl running away from her grandfather in hopes that her flight will somehow convince him that she should be allowed to marry the naval officer she loves. Amanda is full of stories and hijinks, and once Sir Gareth gets rejected by Lady Hester, he embarks on a quest to return Amanda safely to her family, which proves more difficult than he could ever have imagined.

While Georgette Heyer is the unrivaled champion of the Regency Romance, Sprig Muslin was not my favorite of her novels. Part of it was undoubtedly that I was listening while trying to get ready to go on vacation, so I kept walking out of the room and missing parts of the book. Part was that I was more annoyed than charmed by Amanda. Mostly, it was because I had very strong feelings about who Sir Gareth should end up with at the conclusion of the novel (NOT the sixteen-year-old he had run off to save) and I was seriously anxious that Heyer was going to take the story down the path of an April-September romance. I think I would enjoy the book a lot more upon a second read. The madcap ending reminded me of a Shakespearean comedy, with all of the silliness and all of the convenient matchmaking.

Book Review: The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg

Title: The Dream Lover
Author: Elizabeth Berg
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: lots of sex

The Dream Lover opens in 1831, when twenty-eight year-old Aurore Dupin leaves her husband and children behind at her home in Nohant in the French countryside and moves to Paris, where she assumes a male identity and writes her first novel, publishing it under the name George Sand. The book then explores the events in her past that led up to the schism, as well as the experiences she had living as George Sand. Berg's Sand is a woman who both revels in and chafes at domestic life-- she loves her children, but feels that she can't accomplish her artistic goals when she's mothering them.

The conflict between motherhood and freedom has been explored so much these days that it's almost a cliche. It's something I live every time I sit down at my laptop-- if I'm writing or editing, I'm not reading to my kids. If I'm out at night with friends, I'm not kissing them goodnight. But I would imagine that Sand's struggle felt more novel in her day and age, especially as she chose to live separately from her children for at least half of the year. I enjoyed the passages that showed her struggle, as well as those from her childhood (she was the daughter of a courtesan and the grandson of the king of Poland, which provided very fertile ground for cultural conflict), much more than the passages in which she tries to "find herself" (mostly sexually) in her late twenties and thirties. I'm no prude, and I know The Dream Lover aims at verisimilitude, but Berg definitely chose to center her narrative on the bed jumping years rather than the elder statesman years.

Book Review: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Title: The Paying Guests
Author: Sarah Waters
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: violence and hot sex

It's 1922 and the Wrays, mother and twentysomething daughter Frances, have finally come to terms with the fact that they can't afford to live in their home, on the outskirts of London, unless someone else helps pay. Enter Leonard and Lilian Barber, the young couple who rent a few rooms on the upper floor. While the Wrays and the Barbers initially seem to have a friendly relationship that goes no further than landlord and lodger, soon the families find themselves almost irrevocably intertwined.

The first third of The Paying Guests reads like a well-written literary/historical novel. Readers come to understand the mores of the Wray's society, and the reasons why they're forced to take in lodgers (basically, all the men in the family died). Waters does a beautiful job recreating London in 1922, complete with the disabled veterans, the men who returned from the war, and the women who had a degree of freedom and have found themselves displaced. The second third of the novel is, in a word, hot. One of the lodgers and one of the landladies (if you've read any of Waters's other novels, you probably can guess which ones) get together, and wow-ee, sparks fly. Then a crime takes place at the cusp of the third third of the novel, and the book becomes something of a police procedural. While I was delighted by the first third, and entertained by the second third, I found the last third totally boring. The Paying Guests lost all its sparkle, and I can't envision a happily ever after for these characters, no matter what Waters's characters pledge in the final pages.

Book Review: Funny Girl by Nick Hornby

Title: Funny Girl
Author: Nick Hornby
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: a little sex, some swearing

It's the 1964 and Barbara has just won a beauty pageant in her small town of Blackpool in the north of England when she has a revelation-- if she takes the crown, she will never escape her hometown. So she hops on a train to London, and within very short order, she snags a role on a BBC sitcom, changes her name to Sophie, and becomes the it-girl of her age. The story takes place mainly on the set and in the writers' room of that sitcom, Barbara and Jim.

Although I've seen High Fidelity and About a Boy, I think that Funny Girl is the first Nick Hornby novel I've ever read. Many fans of Hornby say it's not his finest work, but I thought it was thoroughly enjoyable. Hornby does a lovely job with the dialogue between the characters, and with the two levels of the story (the sitcom itself, which we never actually see, and the conversations surrounding the sitcom). However, the four guys in the book (the producer, the male lead, and the two main writers) are much more interesting as characters than Barbara is. I think even Hornby recognizes this, because he spends a lot more time with them, particularly with the two gay writers, who chose disparate paths and feel compelled to justify them to each other. So the book is definitely mistitled. I originally decided to read the book because my current podcast du jour, Pop Culture Happy Hour, was holding a book club on the book, and their resulting discussion is totally on point. The book is definitely enjoyable and Hornby is a master at his craft, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Funny Girl didn't quite live up to its potential. It's an easy, breezy, fun read, but I wanted more.

Book Review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

Title: A Dangerous Place (Maisie Dobbs #11)
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: some violence, incredibly sad, Maisie Dobbs fans the world over will feel betrayed

I think I finished my review of the tenth Maisie Dobbs novel by making the desperate (and untrue) pronouncement that if Maisie and James didn't get together in the eleventh, I would quit reading the books. Winspear knows how to quell an adult temper tantrum-- Maisie and James do, in fact, marry and conceive a child in the first chapter of A Dangerous Place. But I won't spoil more than five pages for you to let you know that Winspear doesn't give them a happy ending raising a baby on a farm in Canada, safely away from the bombs that will drop on London during World War II. No, Winspear's Maisie isn't made out for domesticity, it seems, and her aging uterus isn't destined for motherhood, since Winspear bumps off James (yes!) and the baby (I know!) in one fell swoop. Months later, after recuperating in India (natch), Maisie finds herself mentally unfit to make the final leg of her journey back to England and stops in Gibraltar, a British garrison town on the Southern tip of war-torn Spain, where she works to solve the murder of a Jewish photographer and finds herself drawn into the political intrigue of the place.

As far as Maisie Dobbs mysteries go, this one was fine. Winspear knows how to work a setting, and her description of Gibraltar had me searching plane tickets on Expedia. Winspear does a nice job explaining the situation in Spain without it feeling like a textbook, and she does a similarly nice job with her the Sephardic Jewish characters. But I was reeling after the first chapter and needed time to mourn myself. I feel like Maisie suffers from the Murphy Brown problem-- could Maisie have a baby and still be Maisie? Can she solve crimes if she's pumping breast milk? I can't imagine Winspear wanting Maisie to be the kind of mother who leaves her baby with a nurse or nanny all day, and James was never the kind of man who would have wanted his wife to be in that position. So Winspear dodges that bullet by cutting Maisie off at the knees and taking both husband and baby. Can Maisie ever just be happy? I'm not sure. Winspear has effectively said that she will never be a mother, and based on what's coming up in European history in the coming years of the novel, I would say that peace and happiness aren't on the horizon any time soon.

Has anyone else read A Dangerous Place? I'm dying to talk with someone about it. Not the mystery, so much as the bomb of James's death.

Book Review: Forbidden by Kimberley Griffiths Little

Title: Forbidden (Forbidden #1)
Author: Kimberley Griffiths Little
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Some violence, death, very oblique talk about prostitution

At sixteen, Jayden, who lives in an ancient nomadic Mesopotamian tribe, has been betrothed to her cousin. It's a fortuitous match, since her cousin will soon lead the tribe, but her cousin is all the bad things-- conceited, dishonest, abusive, unfaithful. The tribe begins to move just as Jayden's mother goes into labor with twins, and the family is left behind to suffer a great tragedy. Then Kadesh appears-- he's from the land southward, and although he's injured he helps save Jayden and her family. As they spend more time together and Jayden has opportunities to see the world outside her small circle of tents, she realizes that she wants Kadesh to be part of her life, even if it means she has to leave everything she has always known.

The spunky, brave heroine of YA novels is so widespread these days, it's a bit of a shock when someone who doesn't fit that mold appears in the pages of YA fiction. Jayden is modest and shy (it's 1759 BC, for crying out loud-- would readers expect any different?), and finds enlightenment and release only in the all-female dancing circle in which the women in her tribe take part. While she encounters many obstacles that challenge her culture and her perceptions, it's hard for her to step out of her comfort zone. That doesn't mean that she doesn't do it, but don't expect Katniss Everdeen out of Jayden. I find her character refreshing, and the historical details are richly drawn. I'm interested enough in the story of Forbidden to want to keep reading the series.

Book Review: Death on Blackheath by Anne Perry

Title: Death on Blackheath (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt #29)
Author: Anne Perry
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: violence, Victorian discussions of extramarital affairs

When servants discover that a maid has gone missing and there's blood and hair on the steps of the London home of Victorian naval expert Dudley Kynaston, Thomas Pitt of Special Branch is called in to protect the interests of Britain. While the local police work to see if the missing maid is indeed dead, Pitt tries to uncover a traitorous conspiracy involving Kynaston.

This is the first of the 29 Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels I've read, and I was a little surprised to see Charlotte getting top billing, since she seems to be such an accessory in this novel. Apparently, early on in the series, the pair solved crimes together, but these days Charlotte raises their teenage kids. I listened to this book at the same time I listened to the newest Maisie Dobbs book, and although I was incredibly frustrated with Winspear's narrative choices, I can see why it's hard to write a historical novel in which Victorian (or later, in Winspear's case) women have the kinds of career options that modern women have.

That said, I loved Death on Blackheath. Once I understood that Pitt was never going to concern himself with whether or not the maid was actually dead and was only interested in what was going on that concerned national security, the book became downright fascinating. I was very surprised by the ending (although in retrospect, I guess I shouldn't have been), and was impressed by the way that Perry created so many complicated characters (both the suspects and the detectives) and wrote about all of them with a deftness that shows why she is one of the preeminent mystery writers of our day.

Book Review: Softly Falling by Carla Kelly

Title: Softly Falling
Author: Carla Kelly
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

When Jack, a Wyoming ranch foreman, is given the job of fetching Lily Carteret for her alcoholic father, the ranch clerk, he's not sure what to expect. When Lily, a beautiful biracial girl who had been raised by her uncle in England, steps off the train, all of her expectations of life in Wyoming are unmet, especially the one that her father, who has lost all of his land in a card game (to Jack), will care for her. Instead, as the worst winter in memory sets in, Lily and Jack are the ones who must care for everyone else on the ranch. As they show their true grit, they also fall in love.

One thing I love about Kelly's books is that they focus on ordinary characters, and Kelly allows a slow build up to the romance. Softly Falling reminded me a lot of Ivan Doig's wonderful Dancing at the Rascal Fair (a slow burn of a story that takes place in a similarly wintry Montana). This one is perfect for curling up with on a rainy day, but maybe not during a blizzard.

Book Review: Gone for a Soldier by Marsha Ward

Title: Gone for a Soldier (The Owen Family Saga)
Author: Marsha Ward
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Some war-related violence

Mary is only fourteen-- way too young to be married according to her parents, but she's hopelessly in love with Rulon Owen, who will be leaving their small Virginia town to enlist at the beginning of the Civil War. Mary and Rulon marry, and when he leaves, they expect that he will be back by Christmas, or at the very least before their first child arrives, but as we know the war wasn't as quick as they thought it would be.

While many novels about the Civil War focus on male characters and storylines, my favorite thing about Gone for a Soldier is that it's a story about women and relationships. While at first glance, the story is Mary and Rulon's love story, it's really more about what happens to Mary while he's gone-- going through childbirth without her husband, developing a relationship with her mother-in-law, championing the girl she hoped would become her sister-in-law, and gaining enough maturity to see her relationship with her mother from a different perspective. Gone for a Soldier is interesting and well done, and I love the point of view it shows.

Book Review: Eve: In the Beginning by H.B. Moore

Title: Eve: In the Beginning
Author: H.B. Moore
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

You know the story: man, woman, God, serpent, fruit. HB Moore's novel Eve: In the Beginning, fleshes out the story (get it?) of the first few chapters of Genesis. Moore does a really nice job with Eve's mindset and the relationship between Adam and Eve, especially once Lucifer enters their lives and Eve starts to think about making the choice to have more wisdom and knowledge. While I think Eve's character is pretty fantastic, because the book is from her perspective, we don't see a lot of Adam's thought process, and while this is a 'historical" novel, one of the things I value most about historical fiction is being able to learn about a bygone era or a culture I don't know much about, this book is pretty remarkable in its absence of culture-- instead Adam and Eve are the culture makers. It's still worth a read as an insight into Eve's motivations.

Book Review: Deadly Alliance by A.L. Sowards

Title: Deadly Alliance (Espionage #3)
Author: A.L. Sowards
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: War-related violence

Idaho farm boy Peter and his team of Allied soldiers have only just returned from a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. One of the men is still in the hospital, and Peter has been enjoying just a few hours of time with his girlfriend Genevieve (an OSS spy), when he's sent out on another mission to destroy a bridge in Nazi-occupied territory. However, they're dropped hundreds of miles away on a suicide mission and declared missing. Genevieve is determined to find him, or at least what happens to him, and she soon becomes a target herself.

Although Deadly Alliance is the third (and final?) novel in Sowards's Espionage series, it feels and functions like a stand-alone novel. Sowards does a nice job getting new readers up to speed with complicated characters and relationships, and with the complexities of alliances during the end of WWII. There was plenty of action, just enough love, and lots of nice, detailed storytelling to keep me reading.