Book Review: Miss Delacourt Has Her Day by Heidi Ashworth (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Miss Delacourt Has Her Day
Author: Heidi Ashworth
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Library Copy (but this book was really hard to get-- no electronic copy provided, and the book was $25 at Amazon; the library copy came in at the very last minute)
Books I've read this year: 58

Miss Delacourt Has Her Day is Heidi Ashworth's sequel to the 2009 novel Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind, in which Ginerva Delacourt, the daughter of an English clergyman, and Sir Anthony, her distant cousin, get waylaid by highwaymen and once they get over their initial revulsion for each other, fall madly in love. When the second novel opens, the couple is just about to announce their engagement, but due to his cousin's recent death, Sir Anthony finds himself in line to become a duke, and the current duke has reservations about the relationship and wonders if the couple is a suitable match. In Miss Delacourt Has Her Day, Ginny and Sir Anthony go through a series of misunderstandings and miscommunications (and letters thrown in haste into figgy pudding, and lots and lots and LOTS of descriptions of what everyone is wearing) before they can find their way to wedded bliss.

I think that this is a case where not reading the first book does readers a disservice, because initially I though that both Ginny and Sir Anthony were despicable-- mostly because they weren't very nice to their servants or the other people around them. Then I went back and read about the first book and realized that they were both intended to be feisty, not jerky, and that helped me as a reader. I also think that I didn't care enough about their relationship because I didn't see it blossom. So I think this book works well for people who loved the first book and want to see them brought to the altar (spoiler-- there is no altar in the second book, ha ha!), but not as well for new readers.

Finally, and I know that this is not Ashworth's fault, but Miss Delacourt Has Her Day isn't historical fiction as I define historical fiction. It's a romance novel. It would probably be considered a "Regency Romance" but it's definitely a romance, and is published by Avalon Romance, which seems to be a pretty good clue. For a book to be historical fiction, I think it has to either include historical figures (like "real" people) or else it has to be against the backdrop of historical events. And this book isn't and doesn't. While I think it would have been a decent contender in romance, I think the book was done a disservice by putting it in with the historical fiction.

And that's it, folks! I'm done! 35 for 35! I have a big long list of books I'm going to read next-- just because I WANT to read them. I feel so free!

On Sunday we will post a wrap-up of the Whitneys at Segullah. I may post my own wrap-up here too, depending on how much the marathon, the social worker, and the baby blessing take it out of me tomorrow.

Book Review: I Don't Want to Kill You by Dan Wells (Whitney Finalist)

Title: I Don't Want to Kill You
Author: Dan Wells
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Personal copy, purchased with the intent to read it last year
Books I've read this year: 57

I'm coming into the home stretch with the Whitney books. I'd planned to read I Don't Want to Kill You as my last book, sort of a reward for finishing the whole thing, and while a library hold that took more than two months thwarted that plan, it was incredibly satisfying to (almost) finish out the Whitneys by finishing out the story of John Cleaver. The first year I read the Whitney finalists was the year I am Not a Serial Killer was a finalist, and that book made a huge impression on me. For the most part, it was a fantastic book-- albeit a little more gory than I was expecting and a lot more supernatural than I was anticipating until the end. Mr. Monster was also a rewarding read, although it was definitely the middle book of a trilogy, and those poor middle books always have issues just by nature of their place in things. But I Don't Want to Kill You is Dan Wells at his finest-- he hit his stride with this one. We know John Wayne Cleaver, and love him despite his sociopathic tendencies, we understand the world he inhabits, and we know that no matter what else we see in the novel, Cleaver's small North Dakota town will see lots and lots of deaths.

For a guy who doesn't understand girls and has the unfortunate habit of fantasizing about seeing them dead on his embalming table (he and his mom run the town mortuary), John certainly gets a lot of action in I Don't Want to Kill You, where he tries to track a serial killer, beckons the demon he spoke with to come find him, and has to cope with the fact that a rash of suicides has erupted among his high school peers. He's also juggling a new, hot girlfriend while holding out a torch for Brooke, who got tortured alongside him in Mr. Monster and is now keeping her distance. One of the most consistent parts of the John Cleaver stories thus far has been the way his family (his aunt, his sister, and particularly his mother) work together to prevent John from giving into his tendencies (he doesn't want to become Dexter, if he can help it), and the aunt and sister are largely absent from I Don't Want to Kill You. However, John's mother's role is as supportive as ever, and she plays a large part in the surprising (but if you look at the arc of the three stories it seems inevitable) conclusion. A thoroughly rewarding finish to the Awards readings.

Book Review: Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs #9)

Title: Elegy for Eddie
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I've read all of them!
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 55

Over the nine books in the Maisie Dobbs series, there are times when I want to cheer Maisie on (she can make such big breakthroughs!) and times when I want to shake her and tell her to get over herself (she can be so dense sometimes!). In most of this book, I felt like shaking Maisie, but towards the end, I think I may have started to cheer for her a little bit.


In Elegy for Eddie, Maisie has to figure out if a suspicious death (which turns into a series of suspicious deaths) in a printing establishment in her old stomping grounds on the east end is a murder or just an accident. Along the way, Maisie gains some insight into the large conflicts on the horizon (the novel takes place in 1933, and instead of hearkening back to WWI, like most of her the previous novels in the series, this one is definitely setting up for the conflicts of WWII).

The story of Eddie is almost incidental to Maisie's navel gazing in this novel. The mysteries often mirror the psychological drama Maisie endures, and I guess that's true in this story, since Maisie discovers that both she and Eddie (the dead guy, who had developmental delays) "walked a narrow path" in life, meaning that they are uncomfortable with change. Maisie also comes to realize that she can't fix everything that goes wrong in other people's lives just because she has the money to do it, which I think is an important lesson for her, because she spent so much of the last book micromanaging everyone with her newfound wealth. 

I'm always curious about the degree that the author's worldview influences characters. For example, I married young and have had a very fulfilling family life, so my life experience has taught me that marriage and family are desirable objectives. It seemed in previous novels that Winspear might be steering Maisie toward marriage and family before her biological clock (which never ticks audibly) would run out. But in this novel, James is such a ninny-- he was so sweet in the previous books, and while I'm all for real, complicated love with real, complicated people, it seems apparent that Winspear doesn't seem to be steering Maisie and James down the path of marriage and kids sliding down the banisters at the Dower House. I wonder how much of this is Winspear's own life experience-- does she think that it would be inconceivable for a woman to balance a fulfilling career and a family in the 1930s? If anyone could do it, Maisie could, it just seems that she might not want to.

Book Review: Bloodborne by Gregg Luke (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Bloodborne
Author: Gregg Luke
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Electronic copy
Books I've read this year: 56

If you like the drama of Dan Brown (to whom Luke gives an over shout-out in the book), combined with the medical knowledge of Michael Crichton, and the suspense of Dean Koontz (who is also alluded to in the book), I think you get what Luke attempts to achieve in Bloodborne (minus any implausible romances, if I'm reading correctly that the final pages are motivated by duty/friendship instead of romance budding among the mosquitoes).

In the opening pages of Bloodborne, someone opens fire at a deli and tries to kill Dr. Erin Cross, a scientific researcher at a Lehi, Utah lab, working on vaccines for H1N1 and malaria, among other things. Within pages, someone else tries to kill her, then a co-worker gets killed and she discovers someone creeping around her house. She flees, and turns to the only person who she thinks might be able to help her, Sean Flannery, a  former special ops Marine who she met earlier at the deli. They run off to the Dixie National Forest, where Erin soon learns that Sean has a host of his own problems. Meanwhile, evil scientific researchers are unleashing deadly mosquitoes on a small Hawaiian island, testing out their new biological weapon, which will make them rich and powerful, if they can only get rid of Dr. Cross. Eventually, the two stories come together, and Cross can only avert disaster if she places her trust in the right people.

While the writing is fairly clean and the story moves quickly, it feels SO derivative.  I enjoyed Dr. Cross's character, but most of the other characters either felt wooden or problematic. This is a book to take at face value, but not one that seems to reward a deeper reading.

Assimilation

On Saturday, Rose went to her first gathering of the entire Miner clan-- both of Ed's brothers were in town, so we all got together for the first time in more than six years (so it was actually Maren's first gathering of the whole family as well). And what do you do when you have the whole family together? Take pictures, of course. We didn't hire a photographer because we weren't 100% sure Ed would make it until he walked though the door halfway through the party (those pesky heart attacks), and one certain member of the family has forbidden me from posting any pictures of him, but here's what we got of our immediate family:


Rose looks pretty darn cute right in the middle, doesn't she? Many thanks to Blue for sacrificing her Saturday afternoon and coming to snap a few shots.

I think I had some idea that after Rose joined our family we'd start shopping at the Chinese grocery store in Sandy and chopsticks would grace our dinner table. But we haven't done much adapting. Rose, however, has done lots of adapting. To the ever-present car seat, to the heavy-duty lotion rubdown every night, to being pushed around the house in Maren's dolly stroller. She's taken most of it in stride (although she didn't like it when Maren dumped her out onto the bathroom floor). But she really digs this:


Her first McDonalds cheeseburger. She are almost the whole thing-- mustard and all!

Here is one last look at my precious, drooly-faced baby standing at her new play table. She thinks she can stand all on her own, but we've had a few mishaps when we let go for a second. Take a close look at this sweet face, because in my next update she'll probably be markedly less cheerful, but her upper lip will be all in one piece! Surgery on Monday! Cross your fingers and say your prayers that everything goes well.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Book Review: Shifting by Bethany Wiggins (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Shifting
Author: Bethany Wiggins
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 54

It's been a while since I finished reading Shifting, so it might be hard to give a great review of it. Maggie Mae is seventeen, and has been in about that many foster homes during her childhood. She has the unfortunate habit of being picked up by the police for indecent exposure. So Maggie's social worker deposits her in a town in Southern New Mexico with his mother, who promises to get Maggie out of high school and past her eighteenth birthday without mishap. However, this proves to be more difficult than either of them anticipated. People follow her. The kids at school seem to hate her. And then there's Bridger, the impossibly gorgeous guy who seems totally interested in her. Maggie isn't sure how much she can trust him or tell him about herself.

Shifting is well-written and engrossing. I definitely found myself captured by the story, and was even more impressed when I read that the paranormal stuff in the story, the Skinwalkers, come directly from Navajo legend. Wiggins does a great job setting the story against a backdrop that's rich in Navajo history. My main quibble with the story, and it's a small one, I think, is that Maggie waits so long to let readers know what exactly is going on with her. I can understand why she would want to keep the secret from her foster families and people at school, but it made me distrust her a little bit as a narrator when she didn't come right out and tell us why she was always naked in public until we saw it happen for the first time. 

Book Review: Smokescreen by Traci Hunter Abramson (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Smokescreen
Author: Traci Hunter Abramson
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Electronic copy
Books I've read this year: 53

I really didn't like Lockdown or Crossfire, Traci Hunter Abramson's books that were nominated in the Mystery/Suspense category in the last two years, so my sights were set low for Smokescreen, the fifth book in the Saint Squad series. The books in the series follow a set formula-- there's a group of LDS Navy Seals, and in each novel Abramson focuses on how one of the men in the group falls in love with a woman who happens to be at the center of an international terrorist plot. If you can look past the implausibility of the entire concept (which was a difficult thing for me, in the first two novels), then the books are actually pretty entertaining.

In Smokescreen, Taylor Palmetta is an artist who comes home to Virginia after spending time in Europe and hitting it big in the art scene. The only thing missing from her life is a man, specifically Quinn, a guy her brother-in-law works with in the Navy, with whom she had a promising start at a relationship before leaving from Europe, until Quinn suddenly withdrew. Now Taylor's back, and when crazy things start happening to her (mysterious pools of blood in a hotel room in Paris, her new SUV gets broken into), Quinn becomes her protector. Taylor is a target, but she doesn't know why-- it's just her and her paintings, after all. But the Saint Squad bands together and works to avert (yet another) international crisis, all against the backdrop of Quinn and Taylor's budding love.

First of all, a small quibble. Quinn and Taylor? Please don't give both of your protagonists androgynous names! It was hard for me to keep track of who was who. Also, while the character development for Q&T was pretty good, I think it's a shame that the other characters in Abramson's books are so flat-- by this time we know everyone really well, and they can serve as more than just vehicles for the plot to move forward. Finally, Abramson chose to reveal certain details and withhold others in a way that was annoying. Quinn has a skeleton in his closet (literally, kind of) and while Abramson gives us most of the story early on in the book, she keeps other information for a reveal about halfway through, and that felt kind of like a cheap move. All in all, I was entertained and found myself rooting for Taylor not to get killed by the baddies.

Book Review: Rearview Mirror by Stephanie Black (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Rearview Mirror
Author: Stephanie Black
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Electronic Copy
Books I've read this year: 52

New England college professor Fiona Claridge has had a successful academic career, but she's also been haunted by the car accident where she accidentally killed her BYU roommate Mia. She finds herself unable to move on or find love, and she's plagued by guilt. Adding to that guilt is a former student who is getting back at Fiona for accusing her of plagiarism by dredging up some of the more unsavory details of Mia's death. Furthermore, Fiona learns that her ex-boyfriend's mother has died and when she attends the funeral, it turns out that he's held a torch for her all these years (despite marrying someone else). And then the mother's death (and other subsequent deaths) are revealed not to be accidents, after all, and Fiona seems to be in the center of everything. Who killed the old lady? Are they working with Kimberly, the disgruntled student? Is this a mean trick or is Fiona's life in danger?

There's a lot going on in this book. I like the characters-- and particularly like that Black has the courage to create Mormon characters who are flawed, even very flawed and damaged. In years past, it seemed that many of the Whitney mystery/suspense novels shied away from having a Mormon pull the trigger/plunge the knife/shove the old bag in the water, and that isn't the case here (I think I can say that without revealing too much). The story is also interestingly complicated in many ways, with great side stories that tie into the main narrative. But the romance part of the story felt forced and didn't work too well for me. I wanted to see Fiona actually falling for James, Mia's old flame, instead of coming to him in a place of comfort and need.

Book Review: If I Should Die by Jennie Hansen (Whitney Finalist)

Title: If I Should Die
Author: Jennie Hansen
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Electronic copy
Books I've read this year: 51

I was out running a few mornings ago. It was dark, and I was by myself, and I was listening to my iPod, when I heard branches cracking and the sound of footsteps. I pulled my earbuds out and prepared to either flee onto Wasatch Blvd or kick someone in the crotch when a deer came leaping out past me. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath, and for that I blame Jennie Hansen, whose book, If I Should Die, (spoiler alert) is about a serial killer who preys on Salt Lake's unsuspecting female runners. Awesome-- now, in addition to cars, deer, ice, and dogs, I also need to worry about serial killers.

If I Should Die is part suspense, part murder mystery, and part romance. When Kallene's running buddy Linda goes missing, police are pretty sure that Linda's soon-to-be-ex-husband did it, but Kallene isn't so sure. Over the course of the next few months (the time jumps are frustrating in this book), Kallene tries to figure out who is responsible for her friend's disappearance, while also saving the day at the office (that part of the story didn't feel integrated or relevant to the rest of the novel) and dating both the lead detective and the victim's brother. It seems that everyone in Kallene's Herriman neighborhood is a creepy potential suspect (and if I were her I think I'd move away). This book didn't quite come together for me-- first of all, it seems a little bit unlikely that Linda's killer had to come from their subdivision, and the rest of the story wasn't unified enough for me. And from now on, I'll always be looking over my shoulder when I run.

Book Review: A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz

Title: A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter
Author: William Deresiewicz
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: I think this was in the bargain bin at Audible
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year:50

It took me a LONG time to read this book. A really long time. I started out all gung-ho, because who wouldn't want to read a book about how reading Jane Austen changed some guy's life (yes, you read that right, a GUY's life). The first chapter was great. And then I found that I didn't like this William Deresiewicz guy all that much. He complained a whole lot-- about his dad, his apartment, his spot in an Ivy League PhD program, his love life-- everything. So I quit reading it for a month or two, and then one morning I went out for a run and picked it up again. I won't say that I absolutely loved the book, but Deresiewicz did grow on me over time. I think part of his strategy was to make himself as repugnant as possible in the early chapters so he could be redeemed as he learned and grew from what he'd read (almost like an Austen heroine?). And the book rekindled my love for Jane Austen. I have three more Whitney finalists to read, and then Persuasion is at the top of the stack on my bedside table, calling my name.