Review: The Obsession

The entire time I was listening to The Obsession by Nora Roberts the phrase "damning with faint praise" kept running through my mind.  Which means I feel the need to explain how I tend to approach romantic suspense.

I was a mystery/suspense reader long before romance, so when it comes to romantic suspense I tend to be a Suspense First, Love Cooties Second kind of gal.  And I've long accepted that this puts me in a small minority in Romancelandia.  The premise of this book is dynamite.  Roberts really outdid herself cooking up this one.  The downside?  With the suspense concept so dynamite I totally began to think of the "romance stuff" as "filler."  Which probably isn't a good sign.

Shortly before her 12th birthday, Naomi Carson follows her father out into the early morning dawn and discovers he's a monster.  He's been raping and murdering women for years, using an old, abandoned cellar to carry-out his evil.  Naomi discovers a woman, still alive, that day and rescues her.  Her father is arrested, but it's only the beginning.  Her, her mother, her younger brother, go to live with mother's brother - looking for a fresh start.  But the past doesn't stay buried - even after Naomi is all grown up, and finally trying to settle down in the Pacific Northwest.

The first part of this book is bloody fantastic.  It's the story of Young Naomi, her rescuing her father's latest victim, her father's arrest, and the fall-out from realizing that Daddy is a monster.  Then the story jumps to present day.  After years of traveling the country, working as a photographer, Naomi falls in love with a rundown house, decides to fix it up, plant roots, and falls in love (rather unwillingly at first) with Xander Keaton, local mechanic, singer in a bar band, and all around good guy.  She's finally starting to settle down, to let people get close, when someone following in her father's footsteps finds her.

Here's the issue.  Once we're past the Young Naomi portion of the story, we get into Settling Down Grown-up Naomi.  Grown-up Naomi:

Buys a rundown house
Hires a contractor to fix it up
Blah, blah, blah whole bunch of renovation/remodeling porn
Finds an abandoned dog
Keeps the abandoned dog, reluctantly
Falls in love with the dog, because of course
Starts tap-dancing around Xander
Cooks several delicious meals
Takes a bunch of photographs - work, work, work
Romance, romance, blah blah blah....

I. Don't. Care.

Yes, it's harsh.  But the whole concept of this book (that even serial killers can, and sometimes do, have loved ones, family, friends - they're not always loners....) is so fantastic.  That's what I want.  I want more of that.  I don't give a flying hoot about Naomi finding the perfect desk to rehab for her home office.  Or that she makes Eggs Benedict for Xander and he practically orgasms on the spot.

I. Just. Don't. Care.

But back to the suspense.  Once it shows up again (Praise Jeebus!), Naomi has to stop running from her past and admit some hard truths.  The one (and it's big) downside is that while the concept of the suspense is fantastic, the actually WhoDunIt is....obvious.  As in, really, really obvious.  I felt like Roberts' tipped her hand way too early and there are no credible red herrings or uses of misdirection.  Which made getting through the I. Don't. Care. Renovation, Dog Owning, Cooking Porn even more tedious.  I know who the bad guy is.  Can't we just skip all this other stuff and get to the end?

Seriously, I wonder what this book would have been like as a Harlequin Intrigue?  I'm thinking pretty awesome.

The world-building is good, the characterizations are good, and Roberts writes small town life in a way that doesn't make me want to put my fist through a wall (no cutesy cupcake shops!).  And Roberts is a great storyteller.  This is a good story.  The plot concept is great!  But it's how it's executed that I found myself bored by.  I also wanted the mystery to be a bit beefier.  Some twists and turns would have been nice.  This is more straight line.  Wide open space.

I'm not sure where this leaves me and my reaction to this book.  I hate giving it a low grade.  I recognize the good story.  I recognize that I liked these people, I liked the concept - I just didn't really care for how it was all executed.  So it's going to be a middling grade, but it's honestly probably better than that.  Especially if you're a Romance First, Suspense Second romantic suspense reader.

Final Grade = C+

Mini-Reviews: Cranky Wendy Being Cranky

This latest round of mini-reviews is where Wendy is going to show her figurative underpants.  I'll be honest - there's a certain segment of "literary fiction" I just don't get.  The You're Nothing Without an MFA and Let Me Write In Circles To Show You How Smart I Am segment of "literary fiction."

Which brings us to The Girls by Emma Cline.  This is debut novel by a young author who got some crazy-stupid advance ($2 million dollars. For a debut novel.)  It's getting glowing reviews all over the place.  Seriously, just Google it - I'm not linking to them all.  Everybody and their Dead Grandmother thinks this is the bestest book in the whole world and OMG IT'S MAGIC! 

The plot, in a nutshell, would be like if Charles Manson and Jim Jones had an illegitimate love child.  It follows a 14-year-old girl in Northern California who falls in with a cult.  I'm not sure how you make that boring enough to make me want to drive bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails, but there you go.  I got through over 3 hours of a 9 hour audiobook and was so bored out of my mind that the thought of getting in my car and listening to it during my commute had me thinking affectionately about inane DJ chatter.

Endless musings about complete nothingness, and dialogue?  Who needs dialogue?  (By far my biggest gripe with the literary fiction world is that dialogue is seen as some odious four-letter word.  You know how fun it is to read a NOVEL with close to zero dialogue?  Yeah, it blows.)

Since I slogged through the audio, I'm cribbing some examples of the writing from a GoodReads reviewer.  I did get to this part of the "story" and the only thing keeping my eyes from crossing was that I was driving. I can't cross my eyes and drive at the same time:

I ate in the blunt way I had as a child—a glut of spaghetti, mossed with cheese. The nothing jump of soda in my throat.

I tended to the in-between spaces of other people’s existences, working as a live-in aide. Cultivating a genteel invisibility in sexless clothes, my face blurred with the pleasant, ambiguous expression of a lawn ornament.

Now imagine page after endless page of that with close to zero dialogue to break it up.  And THIS is the latest "it" book everyone is raving about. 

The older I get the more I realize that I want a storyteller.  Give me a good story.  Engage me with interesting characters and dialogue.  Have a bloody point to what you're writing.  I was essentially 1/3 of the way through the book and I wanted to bang my head repeatedly against my car's steering wheel to JUST. MAKE. IT. STOP. ALREADY.

Philistine, thy name is Wendy - but I'll be over here reading a romance novel thankyouverymuch.

Final Grade = DNF

Kinsey and Me: Stories by Sue Grafton is a short story (duh) collection.  The first half of the book is a collection of stories featuring Grafton's female private detective character, Kinsey Milhone.  Like all short story collections, some of the stories are better than others.  If you're already a fan of Grafton's character and series - these stories will be marginally interesting.  It's like visiting an old friend.  That said, there's nothing terribly earth-shattering here.  Even as a Kinsey fan, I feel like had I never gotten around to this collection?  That would have been OK.  So basically....meh.

The second half of the collection are stories featuring "Kit Blue" and they're semi-autobiographical stories Grafton wrote after her mother died.  I know this is going to come out sounding cruel, your mother dying is no joke, but I feel like Grafton should have left the therapy writing in her desk drawer.  Again, it's endless pages of zero dialogue, musings about whatever, and the stories fail to hang together in any cohesive way (they jump around in time and space).  Frankly the whole thing came off as self-indulgent to me - which I know makes me sound like a horrible person - but whatever.  I'm sure a writer is going to write to cope with emotions, times of grief - I get that.  Doesn't mean they all have to be published.

Final Grade = C-

Mini-Reviews: Thrill-Seeking Librarian and Flapper Medium

Besides the obvious Librarian-Related reason, I have read and enjoyed shorter works by Anne Calhoun in the past - so that was enough for me to give The SEAL's Rebel Librarian a whirl.  The results were decidedly mixed.

Erin Kent is an academic librarian still recovering from a divorce.  Tired of hearing her ex-husband's disapproving voice in her head, she decides she's going to do the things she's always wanted to do. First on the list?  Buy a motorcycle.  Jack Powell is a former SEAL with PTSD and a case of bad nerves (he has tremors in his hands, doctors haven't found any physiological reason for them - hence, PTSD) and he's now at loose ends, post Navy.  He's taking a class at the college where Erin works and they meet through her work at the library.  What follows is an attraction, a Neither Of Us Is Looking For Serious "relationship," and Jack helping Erin with her adventurous bucket list, which also includes sky-diving.

I hesitate to mention it given that I read an ARC that has been languishing on my Kindle since earlier this year and I did not have access to a final copy - but this story had serious editing issues in the beginning.  A prime example?  In one scene Jack is driving a car, then riding his motorcycle, then he's back in the car but wearing a helmet and then when he gets home he finds his motorcycle in the garage.  Yeah, that's not good.  My library didn't have a copy of this and I'm too cheap to buy a final copy to check to see if the errors were corrected - so just take this as a warning.  The editing on the ARC was problematic.

I liked Erin a lot and for those of you who care about such things - the "library stuff" was good.  I got a huge kick out of seeing EBSCO mentioned in a romance novella, dork that I am.  I was less enthralled with how Jack's story wrapped up - namely that his tremors magically seem to vanish in the end, which he chalks up to helping Erin live out her thrill seeking.  Even though the tremors aren't physiological - this smacks way too much of Being Cured By The Love Of A Good Woman for my tastes.  In the end, I liked her and this is a sexy enough read but mostly....meh.

Final Grade = C+

The Other Side of Midnight by Simone St. James was a recent listen on audio and it's my second "read" by this author after her debut novel, The Haunting of Maddy Clare.  In just three short years between those two books, I feel like this one shows tremendous growth for her as a writer.

Ellie Winter is a spirit medium who no longer contacts the dead and instead specializes in helping people find lost items.  She's contacted by the mysterious (MI5) George Sutter after his glamorous sister, a medium, Gloria Sutter is murdered.  Brother and sister were estranged, but Gloria left him a note prior to her death instructing him to seek out Ellie - which he does.  Ellie is compelled to help George because she and Gloria used to be friends - until the day that Gloria had Ellie's own mother debunked as a psychic.  Ellie's mother died shortly thereafter and needless to say the two friends fell out.

Once again the setting is wonderfully drawn (1920s London), the world-building keen, and St. James uses the ghost of World War I to optimum effect.  Romance comes into play in the form of our hero, a former soldier who works for an outfit that investigates reports of psychic phenomenon, and naturally he was part of the tests that ruined Ellie's mother (and by some extension - Ellie).  The mystery here is also quite compelling, which I found more advanced and layered than the author's debut.  The one thing holding me back on totally loving this story was Ellie's relationship with the dead Gloria.  I...well, I just didn't see these two as friends.  I get that Ellie latched on to Gloria because finally she had met someone (who was not her mother) who was a "freak" like she was - but Gloria is just so....unpleasant.  I mean she's vain and narcissistic and just not very nice (even if she does say some pretty smart things).  Other than being Just Like Me in the psychic department I couldn't for the life of me figure out why or how these two were friends.  But everything else?  Top notch.  If you like Gothics you need to be reading St. James.

Final Grade = B

Mini-Reviews: A Girl Without a Train, Brain Candy and a Historical Western

It's time for another round of mini-reviews!  This go-around Wendy, once again, succumbed to hype, revisited her favorite writer of "brain candy" and tackled a historical western romance written by an author who has published scads of Regencies.

I cannot remember exactly now why I put my name on the wait list for the audiobook version of The Widow by Fiona Barton - especially since the PR for it is heavy on the references to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.  Stylistically it reminded me of The Girl on the Train - with multiple narrators and to be honest, it's pretty heavy on "tell over show."  Flashbacks are employed, and the time line jumps anywhere from 2006 to 2010 to years in between.

It's a Bad Things Happen to Kids story.  A toddler girl goes missing.  A woman's husband is accused.  The story is told from the point-of-view of The Widow, The Mother, The Detective, The Reporter and eventually (for one chapter), The Accused Husband.  I wouldn't say this was overly graphic (I've read WAY more graphic) but the crime is pedophilia, and that's an automatic NOPE for a lot of readers.

Did I like this?  Meh.  I'm not going to lie, it's compelling as all get out.  The wait list was such at work that I couldn't renew the title, so I had to burn through the last couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.  It kept me engaged, but as a suspense story? I kept expecting it to get all twisty (Hello? The PR is selling me on this being the next Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train!), but it never really twists let alone turns.  I guess I would call this "psychological."  You get deeply inside the heads of the characters, namely The Widow.  But suspense barreling down on you like a freight train?  Biting your nails compulsively towards the end?  Yeah, not so much.  I finished it and my immediate reaction was torn between "That's it?" and "Holy heck, parents everywhere should be terrified."  For lack of a better word?  I'd say this was a disquieting read.  You'll also never want to go on the Internet ever again.

Final Grade = I'm torn between a B- and a C+

+++++

Laura Levine is the only cozy mystery author I'm reading these days and her latest Jaine Austen book, the 14th in the series, Murder Had Nine Lives, is set to drop on June 28.  I'll be honest - this series fills the hole left behind when I finally got fed up and quit Stephanie Plum.  Levine definitely has her formula down cold now.  Jaine is a freelance writer, unlucky in love, with wacky parents, and a demanding kitty named Prozac.  There's always a dating disaster.  Her father always gets up to hijinks in his retirement village (this go around it's a Scrabble tournament) much to the horror of her long-suffering, Home Shopping Channel addicted mother.  Prozac destroys hosiery and sweaters while demanding to be fed, BFF Khandi always has a new love of her life and fabulous neighbor Lance takes a swipe at Jaine's personal grooming and dietary choices.

This is all a long-winded way of me saying that this book is more of the same.  It delivers exactly what I've come to expect and it didn't disappoint.  This time out Prozac has been plucked from obscurity (the vet's office) to star in a commercial for a diet cat food. But before you can say "That's a wrap!" - there's a dead body on the set, Jaine is a suspect, and Prozac's dreams of kitty stardom go up in smoke.

Levine is writing the cozy mystery equivalent of a TV sitcom.  They're fast and fun but I don't take them seriously.  I keep reading them because 1) I like them 2) Everyone needs quality Brain Candy now and then and 3) The mysteries tend to be solid.  These are category-length books (around 250 pages) and there's always, at least, half a dozen suspects and motives.  I'm not sure how it will play for newbies, but fans should enjoy this.

Final Grade = B

+++++

Julia Justiss has written a western!  The same Julia Justiss who has written numerous Regency historicals for Harlequin Historical and HQN.  It is exceptionally rare for an author to leave behind the Regency (even temporarily) to write a western, so of course I was going to read Scandal with a Rancher!

You can read a more in depth review over at The Good, The Bad and the Unread - but here are some quick hits:

This is a digital release from small press, Tule Publishing and is a prequel to the contemporary Whiskey River series by Eve Gaddy and Katherine Garbera.  I haven't read any of the contemporaries, so I can attest this historical stands alone well.  It did get a bit heavy on the mental lusting for my tastes, and I felt the heroine was too trusting of the hero (especially early on), but this was a solid read.  It didn't jump out as being OMG AMAZEBALLS! but the author handles the change in setting well, it's a readable story, and I liked it.  Trust me, I've read westerns that made my eyeballs bleed, and this isn't one of those.  If you're a Justiss fan, I think this is worth a look.  If you're in the mood for a western - also worth a look.

Final Grade = B

No Author Is Immune: Anatomy of a DNF

There are certain authors I read for very specific reasons.  I read Beverly Jenkins for her heroines.  She writes great heroines.  Smart, self-reliant, with a touch of sass.  Jenkins writes the sort of heroines who don't need a romance.  If a romance never came along, they'd be just fine.  No, they deserve a romance and as the reader you want to see them get their happy ending.

Work had Always And Forever on audio and despite my mental block of listening to romance, I thought I'd try it.  I was mostly enjoying it until...well, until the sex ruined everything.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Warning, warning! Thar Be Spoilers Ahoy!

Grace Atwood has been left at the altar.  Her mother died when she was young.  Her banker father valued that his daughter had a brain in her head and raised her to be independent.  In fact, after he passes, Grace has taken over running the bank.  Finally, at 30, she thinks she's found The One.  Only to have her groom throw her over at the altar when the wealthier woman he was pursuing agrees to marry him.  Grace then has to face the guests, return the wedding gifts, and deal with the inevitable talk that follows - but she does so with her head held high.  That said, when her cousin in Kansas asks her to coordinate finding some mail-order brides of good, quality backgrounds?  Grace goes all in.

Grace has no trouble finding the brides and decides that they will travel by wagon.  Jim Crow is now firmly entrenched and she can't risk the women traveling by train (where they would either have to travel in cattle cars, or be dumped out in the middle of nowhere by racist, unethical conductors).  It will take longer, but a wagon train seems the wiser course of action.  But she needs to hire a man to lead the wagon train and that's when she stumbles upon Jackson Blake, a Texan With a Past who is now living in a Chicago whorehouse.

This is all fairly straight forward.  Headstrong heroine, Alpha hero, wagon train heading west.  Sparks fly, banter exchanged, sexual tension you can see for miles.  Interesting characters and amusing exchanges (Grace's great-aunts are fantastic, as is a scene when secondary character Loreli Winters dispatches some bandits).  The plotting could have been tighter in some spots (Do I really care that Grace's ancestor was a pirate?  No.  No I do not.), but this was hovering somewhere around a B or B- for a good long while.

But then it happened.  The sex scene.

There actually wasn't anything wrong with the sex.  A little flowery, but again - I was listening to this on audio and I, admittedly, have a difficult time with someone reading me sex scenes.  No, it was the aftermath that landed this firmly in my I Cannot Be Bothered To Continue pile.

Jackson is all like, sure Grace I'm all for us burning up the sheets - but you'll have to marry me if you get pregnant because ain't no way I'm letting a child of mine be born without my name.  Of course they're getting all hot and heavy by this point and Grace is all like, "Whatever cowboy just do me already!!!!" and, you know, they do.  Then Jackson is all like, "Well now you have to marry me because you're carrying my child." 

That's right - they've literally just had sex.  The one time.  And Jackson, who obviously has delusions he's a Great Swami besides a cowboy, tells Grace she's now pregnant and that she will, in no uncertain terms, marry him.  Grace is naturally a little peeved by his high-handedness never mind that THEY DON'T KNOW FOR SURE IF SHE'S PREGNANT!!!!

I'm not kidding.  He pulls out and basically is all like, now we get married.  Grace resists, he threatens to wire her great-aunts, she's all like, you're a jerkface, he wires her aunts, they show up and say, "Honey you should marry that man."  Nevermind that NOBODY KNOWS IF GRACE IS EVEN PREGNANT!!!!  She hasn't even had a late period yet.  SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!?!??!

I just couldn't deal anymore.  I think the objective was to show the reader that Jackson is a good, honorable man who wouldn't use the heroine for mere sexual gratification and then dispose of her cruelly.  Never mind that he agreed to take on the wagon train because he has plans to go back to Texas to avenge his father's murder.  He's going to railroad the heroine into marriage first THEN go off to Texas to possibly get himself killed.  His demanding marriage, him just immediately knowing she MUST be pregnant, all the while he has plans to leave the heroine behind while he's off to seek revenge - well, it annoyed me no end.   

We Had Sex One Time Ergo Of Course You MUST Be Pregnant Because I Am Strong And Virile With The World's Most Amazing Super Sperm!!!!!  Mwhahahahahaha!

And while I'm at it - the guy was living in a Chicago whorehouse.  I know since the dawn of time birth control has largely been an issue women have dealt with (and Grace, while 30, is a virgin...) - but dude.  He didn't pick up any pointers at all?  Of course he's a man - he probably couldn't be bothered.

So yeah. I'm out. I don't know if Grace is really pregnant and I don't know if Jackson ends up going to Texas after all but....ugh. I'm done caring.

Final Grade = DNF

Mini-Reviews: All Things Audio

Audiobooks have been the only thing keeping my reading afloat these days, and it's a way to 1) keep me entertained on my long commute and 2) mix-up my normal reading groove beyond the usual 95% romance, 5% mystery/suspense.  Here are some quick thoughts on my most recent listens.

But Enough About Me: A Memoir by Burt Reynolds - OK, so I kind of have a thing for Burt Reynolds.  I'll admit it - I'm not completely immune to the whole "good ol' boy" Southern vibe.  This book is written vignette style, with Reynolds not focusing on a linear timeline of his life, but rather talking about people, places etc. that have meant something to him over the years.  The downside to listening to this on audio is that Reynolds narrates and his voice has not aged well.  Reynolds is in his 80s now, and his voice sounds like it.  Sometimes it was strong, and sometimes I could barely make out what he was saying.  But on the plus side?  Reynolds would get emotional at times and it helps to reinforce that he's a real person underneath the persona.  I got choked up hearing Reynolds get choked up talking about Dom DeLuise.  Final Grade = C+

Sing to Me: My Story of Making Music, Finding Magic and Searching for Who's Next by L.A. Reid - Dating myself, but I graduated high school in the early 1990s, so my curiosity about this book stems entirely with Reid's partnership with Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds in LaFace records - which gave us superstars like TLC and Toni Braxton.  The duo also worked with a number of other notable artists that were part of the whole "New Jack Swing" scene at the time (like Bobby Brown and Boyz II Men).  My favorite parts of this were learning more about Reid's life as a performer/musician and the LaFace "stuff."  My interest waned a bit the closer we got to present day (I could care less about OutKast, Kayne, Bieber or Reid's stint on The X Factor) when it kind of descends into more blatant name-dropping.  Still, it serves as a reminder of how awesome R&B was in the early 1990s and I wanted to download ALL. THE. MUSIC after I finished.  Final Grade = B

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye - If other reviews are an indication, I'm the only person who has read this book in Romancelandia who didn't love it to bits.  Part of this is because compared to the author's Supreme-O Awesome-Sauce Timothy Wilde trilogy (which made my Best Of Lists for 2014 and 2015), this is a pale shadow.  The characters aren't as well drawn, their relationships nowhere near as complex and there's a Victorian Drama-Llama Melodramatic Romance in the second half that I was bored with before it even got off the ground.  What I did like?  The "stuff" between Jane and Rebecca Clarke - her bestest friend while they are both at an odious boarding school.  There's lots of "Jane Eyre" stuff here and Jane Steele tends to murder people who deserve it - but meh.  It's entirely possible that my extreme love of the previous trilogy factored into my dissatisfaction more than a little but...I'm sorry folks, I didn't love this.  Come back and talk to me after you've read the Timothy Wilde books.  Final Grade = D+

The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James - St. James is an author I've been meaning to try forever and a recent foray into Barbara Michaels on audio had me on a Gothic kick.  Set after World War I, our office temp heroine takes a job as an assistant to a ghost hunter to investigate a haunting of a barn by a local servant girl who committed suicide.  This is a Gothic very heavy on the woo-woo, it's got great atmosphere, and very good characterization.  I was a little less enamored with the ghost hunting party's lack of urgency in solving the mystery behind Maddy Clare, the girl haunting the barn.  They seem more bent on protecting people that, quite frankly, deserve everything that Maddy's ghost wants to dish out to them.  Maddy wants her revenge for very, very compelling reasons (consider that your trigger warning).  Swoon, I love Gothics! I plan to download more St. James on audio as soon as the holds lists at work allow. Final Grade = B-

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin - Tells the story of Truman Capote, the upper-crust New York society women whom he called "The Swans," and his friendship with Babe Paley (wife of William S. Paley - the founder of CBS). The story covers the timeline of Breakfast at Tiffany's, In Cold Blood, The Black and White Ball, Capote running off the rails and his ultimate break from "The Swans" with the publication of the story La Cote Basque 1965 in Esquire magazine, in which he aired everybody's dirty laundry.

This would have been a DNF had I tried to read it because it's very, very tell-y.  Long stretches with little dialogue and a lot of internal musing so the author can dump back-story on the reader.  Also, these are shallow, sad people and the the job of historical fiction is for the author to "breathe life" into these characters.  That doesn't happen here until the very bitter end, when the fallout of La Cote Basque 1965 comes into play.  Shopping, clothes, affairs everybody was having (sometimes with each other...) and by the end of it I was so bloody sick of hearing about Babe Paley's cheekbones I could just scream.  The ending is interesting because that's when all the glitz and shallow dazzle goes to hell.  Capote fully hits the skids and Babe finally (finally!) gets angry.

As a historical fiction novel it just didn't work for me because the writing didn't work for me.  I felt I would have been better served to just read non-fiction accounts of the era and I would have gotten the exact same story.  Also, I listened to this on audio which means both narrators (yes, there were two) affected Capote's voice.  I did like the glimpse into the bygone, opulent era of society prior to the Atomic Hippie Bomb of the 1960s going off, but that was about it.  Final Grade = C-

Chit Chat and Various Book Ramblings

It's been a while since I've done one of these updates.  Couple that with some books I want to mention that I don't have a lot to say about and general holiday brain-melt, here we are.  So what's going on with me?

+++++

First, the big news - that Big Ol' Leadership Management Class Thing that I did for work?  Yeah, it's now done.  I survived 15 weeks, a group project (20 page written report + presentation), and had "graduation" last week.  Let me tell you how glad I am that's over.  Yes, it was a great experience, I learned stuff, and it looks shiny on Ye Olde Resume but....still.  I'm glad it's over.

+++++

In other news?  Star Wars.  Meh.  Look, I'll go see it.  Eventually.  But I have not been excited about this thing since it was first announced.  Now James Bond?  Spectre?  I was twirling around in circles....months ahead of time.  Maybe they need to put Han Solo in a tux and shove a martini in his hand?  I'd feel like I was missing out but....meh. 

+++++

I've gotten through some mystery/suspense reading and audiobook listening of late.  Chalk this up to buying a new car last year (built-in bluetooth!!!) and finally getting around to downloading the Overdrive app on my new phone which has WAY more memory than old phone.

I listened to Black Irish by Stephan Talty, mostly because the Buffalo, New York setting intrigued.  I went to college in Buffalo and lived there for almost six years.  Verdict?  Meh.  It was OK.  Mostly it was a Buffalo I didn't recognize (hey, I lived there almost 20 years ago and I was a college student pretty much "isolated" to campus life).  You know what this read like?  Like Talty wants to do for Buffalo what Dennis Lehane did for Boston.  It's on the gory side, so be warned, and while I didn't love it - I also didn't hate it.  It was also a fast listen.  I'll try the next book in the series.

On Keishon's recommendation I'm currently listening to The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo.  I'm glad she warned me about the slow start.  There's a lot of set-up and it seems to be all over the place.  I'm thinking I'm finally at the point where we're going to settle in for a more "linear" story - and think it will likely pick up for me now.  The Scandinavian crime "thing"  has largely eluded me - but I've been meaning to try Nesbo for a while and he's one of Keishon's favorites - so here I am.

Over the weekend I read The Sundown Speech by Loren D. Estleman, which is the 25th (!) book in his Amos Walker, Detroit PI series.  This was another OK read.  Estleman originally published it in a local paper as a serial about 10 years ago, expanded it, and now we have a book.  Amos is in Ann Arbor this time out so we have crunchy granola clients and a villain too smart for his own good.  It's not a book I would recommend to someone new to the series (Estleman's style is better suited for the darker noir world of rundown Detroit), but I read it in two gulps so....what am I complaining about again?

In the romance world, I tried but ultimately failed to listen to Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren.  As most of you already know, this book sprang to life out of fan-fiction and that actually isn't my complaint about it.  It also has a boss/secretary trope which, as we all know, Wendy loves despite knowing better.  No, the problem was I loathed these people.  Seriously.  The hero is an asshat and the heroine's body keeps "betraying her."  Seriously, those words are used in the text.  Her body "betrays her."  That's a romance writing tic that just needs to die a thousand burning deaths already.

Anyway, he's a jerk - keeps ripping her panties off - and even though she's a smart-mouth and fires back at him a lot - we still have Ye Olde Betraying Body thing.  I just couldn't see wasting my time on two characters that I literally loathed.  I've DNF'ed books for a lot less.

On the bright side?  While I normally have a hard time with romance on audio (it's a quirk - I have issues with someone "reading" me sex scenes), the narrator here (Grace Grant) was really quite good.  If you like romance on audio, you might want to look her up (my brief search turned up narrating for Christina Lauren, Lisa Renee Jones and Colleen Hoover).

+++++

I'm hoping to squeeze out a couple more reads before the end of the year - which is time to remind folks that if you're waiting with bated breath for my Best of 2015 list?  Keep waiting until early January.  Outside of mentioning a mere three titles as part of H&H's round-ups - I always wait until the new year arrives.  Because, you know, I could read something awesome-sauce on December 31.

+++++

If blogging doesn't happen again this week (and you know, it might not) - I hope that everyone has a nice, relaxing holiday.  Ho ho ho!

Mini-Reviews: The Meh Strikes Back

I want to start off this latest round of mini-reviews with the disclaimer that my reading mood is all over the place right now.  Now, I know me.  I suspect if I was in the best of reading moods I'd likely still have had a similar reaction to both of these books - but given that I seem to be in the extreme minority with one (if not both) of them - well, I figure it's worth the disclaimer.

Mini-Review #1: The Truth About Him by Molly O'Keefe

The Meh: OK, so I really, really liked the first book in this duet (Everything I Left Unsaid) and given that it ended on a cliffhanger, it was pretty much a guarantee I was going to dive into this follow-up book immediately afterward.  I didn't dive so much as slog.  You know how sometimes you get hooked into a series and inevitably there's an entry where you find yourself feeling "full up" with the characters?  Yeah, that.  And this was only book two.

The stuff I loved in the first book just didn't carry over to this one (for me at any rate - every other review I'd seen for this has been SQUEEEE!).  Annie's innocence and naivety were totally understandable in book one, but in book two I was just over it.  Given the stuff that goes down at the end of book one and the beginning of book two?  I started thinking of this as Poor Little Innocent Good Girl Rescue Me Schtick.  Also, what I really loved about the first book was that it was a blend of erotic romance, suspense and women's fiction.  With this second book - way too much time spent on the erotic romance.  In fact I found every single sex scene in this book to essentially be filler.  As in, blah blah blah don't care get back to the good stuff.  What I wanted was much more of the "personal relationship stuff" between Annie, Dylan and all the secondary characters.  Dylan's father.  Dylan's brother.  The residents of the trailer park.  Joan.  DEAR GOD I WANT ALL JOAN ALL THE TIME!!!!

I finally found a reading groove in the final third of the book when the suspense kicks up and the author spends more time putting Annie and Dylan on page with the secondary characters - but the ending kinda ticked me off.  Yes, Dylan and Annie ride off into the sunset - but every other secondary character (save one) is left twisting in the breeze.  Also the epilogue takes place three years into the future, so some stuff was "told" to the reader after the fact, which I found very frustrating.  Especially given how invested I became in the secondary players.  I wanted to read that stuff in "real time, on page" and not have the author tell me what happened after the fact.  No idea if O'Keefe plans to revisit this world in future books, but frankly I'm glad to leave Annie and Dylan to their happy ending and move on.  But if she revisits the world?  Especially if she writes about Joan?!  Shut up and take my money.

Final Grade = C+

Mini-Review #2: Finders Keepers by Stephen King

The Meh: Earlier this year I listened to the first book in this trilogy, Mr. Mercedes, and enjoyed it tremendously.  I had some quibbles (mostly repetition and pacing issues) but by the end of the book I had bitten off all my fingernails and was thinking about taking up chain-smoking.  There were some minor twinges of horror, but essentially King had written a bang-up thriller and totally deserved his Edgar Award.  So it was inevitable I would listen to Finders Keepers, the second book and....meh.

The set-up here is pretty good.  In 1978 a whack-a-doodle breaks into the country home of a reclusive writer (think JD Salinger) with some compatriots.  His partners just want the rumored cash the old guy keeps on hand but our villain is after the rumored unpublished writings.  Bingo bango - author dead, compatriots dead, but before our villain can spend the money or read the stolen unpublished writings?  He's sent to prison for another crime entirely.  He buried his loot before he got nabbed however, and it's eventually found by a young teenage boy whose father was badly injured during the events of Mr. Mercedes.  He uses the money to help his family, but keeps (and reads) the notebooks for himself.  Everything is going along swimmingly until our bad, bad man gets paroled.

As good as the set-up is, the pacing is a real issue.  Remember those great characters we meet in Mr. Mercedes?  Bill, Jerome, and Holly?  Yeah, they don't even show up until halfway through this book.  Prior to that it's all set-up.  Then once we finally get to the "cat and mouse" portion of the story?  It lacks all the urgency of the previous book.  With Mr. Mercedes I couldn't wait to start my commute to and from work so I could listen to more.  With this book?  I pretty much listened because I had it in the car and wanted to return it to the library on time. 

The teaser for the third book also doesn't inspire much hope.  Half the fun of Mr. Mercedes and the concept of this trilogy in general is that King was writing suspense.  A crime novel.  A thriller.  In other words he was doing something a little different.  But the teaser for book three pretty much goes whole hog into supernatural territory and....meh.  Look, I'll likely listen to it because at this point I feel like I want to finish the trilogy - plus more Bill, Holly and Jerome.  But supernatural woo-woo?  Meh.

Final Grade = C

Mini-Reviews: Jacobites, Hit Men and Tiaras

It's time for another round of Wendy mini-reviews!  Books I've either 1) talked about elsewhere 2) listened to on audio and/or 3) just don't have a lot to say about.

Danger Wears White by Lynne Connolly is a Georgian-set historical and the third book in a series.  I read this for Heroes & Heartbreakers, (disclaimer over there - I know Lynne) and it was a patented "OK" read for me.  It's the story of a heroine whose father gambled away the family fortune on the Jacobite cause (which, as history tells us, was a sucker's bet).  All that's left is the eccentric Tudor home where she lives.  She runs up against the hero when she finds him shot and bleeding to death in a rundown hut on her property.  She pegs him for a Jacobite rebel, but can't very well leave him to die - so she secrets him away in her home.  The hero, naturally, is no Jacobite, but a spy and things get interesting when it turns out the heroine is a pawn caught between the rebels and the English crown.

I loved the Georgian period, history and plot of this story.  It reads and feels like a Georgian, not a Regency pretending to be a Georgian.  Also the plot is full of political intrigue which keeps things humming along.  What I was less enamored with was the romance, which was very InstaLust.  Our couple is bumping uglies within two days and the hero is thinking marriage right after because the sex was so amazing.  Then stuff happens, yada yada yada, and we get the happy ending.  So really good everything other than the romance = a C read for me.  I would read a Connolly book again in a hot minute, even without being in love with this romance - because everything else about this I really liked.

Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo is a stand-alone novel and I thought "why the heck not?" after I read Keishon's review.  The Scandinavian crime trend is one that has largely passed me by - but this seemed like something to try on audio.  It's also a fairly short novel - clocking in at just over 200 pages.

This was an instance where the audio production elevated the text for me.  It's read by Patti Smith (yes, THAT Patti Smith) and she's got a perfect voice for noir.  That sort of androgynous gravelly-thing going on.  The story itself was OK.  It's about a hit man who runs afoul of his boss when he refuses to kill the man's wife.  I happen to like noir (similar to Gothics for me - I'm in it for the atmosphere), but the complaint I have about this book is a common one I have for noir - the female characters are all so thinly drawn.  Also, I "get" what Nesbo was shooting for here - he blends in fairy tale allusions and dream sequences and.....meh.  I didn't hate it by any stretch of the imagination, but it also didn't bowl me over.  Also, fair warning - it's pretty dark.  I'm generally fine with dark, but not everybody is so....yeah, dark.

But I'm glad I listened to it because 1) I finally tried Nebso 2) I'm not adverse to trying him again and 3) the audio edition is dynamite.  The book itself would probably be a C for me, but with Patti Smith narrating?  Let's go with a B.

Death By Tiara by Laura Levine is the 13th book in a cozy mystery series about Jaine Austen, hapless freelance writer.  It's pretty much the only cozy series I'm still reading these days and I anticipate each new entry.  I read these for the same reason some folks keep reading Janet Evanovich.  Sometimes a girl just needs a completely fluffy brain-candy read.  This time out Jaine is hired to write original song lyrics to a teen pageant contestant.  When one of the pageant organizers is murdered, everyone is a suspect - including Jaine.

Levine is a former sitcom writer so these books tend to be heavy on "antics" anyway, but the slapstick is a bit heavier than usual in this entry.  However there are some nice moments.  For one thing Jaine HAS A BOYFRIEND (!), which is a new wrinkle.  Also, these books tend to be category length (around 250 pages) and Levine has always done a fabulous job of crafting plenty of suspects and red herrings in such a short word count.  I didn't think the mystery was as strong in this entry (I had it pegged), but Levine does the leg-work of giving the reader plenty of options.  As for the boyfriend?  While Jaine continues to be a train-wreck, I love how the author always turns her around in the end.  I never stay worried about Jaine when the book ends.  Our girl knows her own mind, so while her dating disasters are brutal - I never have to worry about Jaine selling herself short in order to "keep a man."  She has gumption, which is always a good thing in my book.

For newbies to the series?  Honestly this is probably a C read.  But if you like this series, and Jaine is an "old friend?"  This book delivers exactly what you'd expect and is exactly why you keep coming back for more.  So probably a B.

Mini-Reviews: Suspense, Billionaires and Fluff

I love it when other bloggers post mini-reviews or reading recaps, but I'm such a slow reader (also having spent most of 2015 thus far in a slump) that I don't capitalize on the format all that often.  However between books I just never got around to reviewing, audiobooks and books I wrote about at other places, I've finally got enough backlog to deliver some minis!

I tend to really like Jill Sorenson's suspense novels and Backwoods is part of her very loosely connected Aftershock series.  I find that Sorenson excels at writing complicated relationships, and that's certainly on display here - with the hero's ex-wife and the heroine's ex-husband having had an affair with each other and eventually marrying.  The heroine suffers from panic attacks and anxiety thanks to the earthquake that rocked San Diego.  The hero is a former baseball player who had a very public fall from grace thanks to his alcoholism.  They're now spending time together thanks to their college-aged kids and a family vacation hiking in the woods that their exes bailed on.  The suspense here is lighter than in previous books in this series, with the romance and relationships taking more of center stage.  I liked that both hero and heroine had "real" problems, and felt that the author handled the relationship between the 19-year-old step-siblings extremely well.  Honestly, that could have been a disaster.  I missed the stronger suspense thread that I've come to enjoy in the author's previous books in this series though - so it ended up being a B- for me. 

The only reason I would ever read a book with a title like How to Seduce a Billionaire is because of the author name attached to it - which in this case is Portia Da Costa.  Obviously I'm fine with billionaires, per se.  I mean, I do love category romance after all.  But the "new" breed of billionaire who digs BDSM because Mommy didn't love him enough and stalks the heroine in his spare time isn't really in my wheelhouse.  However I figured if anyone was going to make me tolerate the idea of a billionaire hero and a 29-year-old virgin heroine, it would be Da Costa.  I wrote about this for Heroes & Heartbreakers and on the Wendy scale this ended up being the very definition of a C read.  It was nice.  It was pleasant.  But I didn't love it, I didn't hate it and it didn't change my life.  If the idea of this story makes you break out into hives, there's probably not a lot within the pages of this book to make you change your mind.  Likewise, if you like the Alphahole billionaire and the virgin heroine who is so clueless that she doesn't have an e-mail address - there's probably not a lot here you're going to like.  Da Costa doesn't write clueless virgins and while the hero is selfish and a dreaded I'll Never Love Again Now That My Sainted First Wife Is Dead - she pretty much stays away from the tropes that made EL James a butt-ton of money for reasons that largely escape me - but hey, just because that's my yuck doesn't mean it can't be your yum.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins has been compared a lot to Gone Girl - mostly because people lack imagination and feel like they need to compare this with that in order to sell books.  It's similar in respect that it features completely unlikable characters - some of whom are women.  It's different from Gone Girl in the respect that egads, the beginning is slow as mud and the ending is much more traditional suspense (take a wild guess which ending Wendy prefers?).  Heroine who is raging alcoholic prone to blackouts rides train everyday and makes up stories in her head about couple who lives in a house near tracks.  Wife goes missing.  Husband suspected.  And they just so happen to live down the street from the heroine's ex, who cheated on her with a Hot Young Thang and naturally knocked her up.  If I had read this I probably would  have DNF'ed it because of the slow beginning and characters I generally loathed - but like Gone Girl, it's very good on audio.  I did see the ending coming, but I liked it.  A solid B for the audio version.

Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot is releasing on June 2 and I just submitted my First Look of it for Heroes & Heartbreakers.  This is the first adult novel in Cabot's wildly successful Princess Diaries series, with Mia and her friends now being in their mid-twenties.  The last book in the YA incarnation, Forever Princess, in 2009 was, I felt, a very excellent way to wrap up the series - so while I was insanely excited to read this book, I was also a little leery.  Was Cabot going to muck up all my fond memories by giving rebirth to Mia as a grown-up?  Turns out I had nothing to fear.  I really enjoyed this for what it was - pure fluff in almost a chick lit vein.  I have no idea if it will hold up for readers not familiar with the YA series, but if you're already a fan?  You'll want to read this.  As a fan I would say my grade is probably somewhere around a B+.

Audiobook Round-Up: Getting My History Groove Thang On

One thing I've been trying to get better about is audiobooks: listening to them, keeping track of what I "read," and rating them.  I seem to have this mental block against romance audiobooks (I just can't deal with someone reading me a sex scene out loud), so it's also a good way for me to keep up with books published outside my usual genre of choice.

Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye is the second book in her historical mystery series featuring New York City police officer Timothy Wilde.  I listened to the first book last year and enjoyed it enough to include it in my Best of 2014 round-up.  But this book?  This book was ahhhh-mazing.  The premise is essentially 12 Years a Slave-ish.  Free blacks in the city are being accused of being runaway slaves, are kidnapped, and then shipped back south.  Timothy gets roped in when a beautiful (and married) free black woman, Lucy Adams, comes home from her job at a flower shop to discover her young son and her sister have been taken.  Complicating issues?  Timothy's brother, Valentine, and his various Democratic party, Tammany Hall political connections, and Lucy's very white husband.

This is one of those series that I think I would enjoy in print, but dude - the audio productions?  Words cannot express how amazing the first two audiobooks have been for me.  Steven Boyer narrates and he's Jim Dale/Harry Potter good.  Seriously.  That good.  So that's probably colored my enjoyment of the series somewhat.  The story by itself?  Is very good.  I did have one quibble - in that Timothy was sometimes unnecessarily dense (for what I felt) as a way for the author to educate the reader on the lack of civil rights among the free black population in the 1840s.  But, quibble.  Brother Valentine continues to be a reprobate with one foot hovering over his own grave (drugs, booze, women.....and men), but Lord help me - I loved him.  I loved the twisted brotherly relationship, Timothy's relationship with his landlady, the reappearance of many players from the first book (so yeah, book two doesn't stand alone entirely well), and all the political shenanigans. 

These are dark, dark books, so probably not for everybody.  But the historical detail, the immersion in the world that the author has created, the dynamite audio narration?  The third (and final?) book can't get here quick enough.

PS: Dear Hollywood, someone buy the rights to this series.  It would make a killer TV series, like on HBO or something.  Surely Martin Scorsese isn't too busy?

Grade = A

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is a book that her publisher was promoting fairly heavy to librarians at last year's ALA conference.  I took an ARC, and of course, neglected it - but decided it was the kind of thing I'd like to try on audio.  This was totally a second half book for me, and I'm glad I stuck with it.

Opening in 1939, it tells the story of two sisters - steady, quiet Vianne and impulsive, rash Isabelle.  The girls have baggage (a dead mother, a neglectful father haunted by WWI) and their relationship is strained.  Then the Nazis show up, occupy the majority of France, and everything changes.  Vianne's husband goes to the front, and she is left to care for her daughter, Sophie, by herself - all while having to billet a Nazi officer in her home.  Isabelle, ever rash and impulsive, throws her lot in with the French Resistance.

It took me a while to warm up to these characters.  Isabelle comes off as a little girl playing dress up for a long time (Look at me! I'm serious! I want to be remembered! LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) while Vianne is trusting to a fault (to be fair to her, I had the benefit of hindsight).  Sometimes the language got a bit flowery (and repetitive) for me, and there's a huge, whopping amount of Insta-Love going on between Isabelle and a fellow Resistance fighter, Gaetan. I just had to get to the turning point - which is Isabelle growing up, Vianne quietly fighting her own war, and the ending.  I was a crying, sobbing mess while driving my car down the freeway during the last couple of CDs.

It's a war book, so basically it's one huge trigger warning.  But it's women's fiction written in a way that I find intriguing.  There's a line at the end of the book, spoken by one of the characters many years later that is essentially, "Men tell stories, women get on with it."  And that's what happens to Isabelle and Vianne.  They fought the war in ways that only women could fight it, and changed the course of history - their own, and the world's.  If you're part of a book club?  This is one to consider.

Oh, and the film rights have already been optioned.

Final Grade = B+

The Fetishization Of Meggie

Warning: There Be Spoilers.  Hey, the book was published in 1977.  You've had more than enough time to read it.

I've always practiced the fine art of reading what I want, so I've gotten very used to shocking people over the years with titles and authors I haven't read.  I'll be blunt: one of the great joys of being done with school is that my required reading days are over.  I'm done with Charles Dickens, thankyouverymuch.  Which would be why I'm just now getting around to The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough.  Honestly, I had no burning desire to ever read this book before her recent passing.  I knew just enough about the story to be all "meh" about it, and while I appreciate sagas, I have this unreasonable aversion to Big Books.  But I've discovered I'm much more open to trying books on audio that I might not necessarily be interested in reading (at least in the traditional sense).  Lo and behold, work had the audio version, so I snapped it up and got moving through 18 CDs worth of story.

The Thorn Birds tells the story of the Cleary family (mostly that of Meggie Cleary - the only daughter surrounded my numerous brothers) at the start of the 20th century, ending in the late 1960s.  The story opens in New Zealand and eventually the family makes their way to Australia and the large sheep ranching station of Drogheda, owned by Meggie's sour and dour Aunt Mary Carson.  The Cleary family is soon befriended by a Catholic priest, Ralph de Bricassart - young, virile handsome and banished to Australia because he ticked off the wrong person.  He takes one look at Meggie, develops "feelings" and naturally as the story wears on we get the forbidden love story thing that spins out across decades.

Let's start with what I admired about the book, because this is definitely a book I admire more so than "liked." It's hard to not admire the saga that McCullough spins, the sense of place, the pictures she paints with her words, it's no wonder people fell hook, line and sinker for this story.  It's vast, it's epic, and there is a certain segment of reader who cannot get enough  "tragic love story." 

Unfortunately, I can't say I liked anything else about the book - namely said "tragic love story" which I found creepy and wrong and the characters, who I mostly universally loathed.  To a certain extent I knew what I was getting when I started this book, even though I had never even watched the miniseries.  Priest and civilian have illicit affair.  What I did not know is that Ralph is almost 20 years Meggie's senior.  He's in his late 20s when he meets her - which makes her 9-years-old.

NINE YEARS OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And Ralph's tender feelings and love begin developing the moment he clamps eyes on her.  Here's the thing, I have had confirmation from other readers that they read these early Ralph/Meggie interactions as more father/daughter-ish.  However I've long believed that sometimes "listening" to the writing and "reading" the writing can produce different responses.  On the audio?  These feelings between an adult Ralph and child Meggie came off as positively icky to me.  My skin crawled in a few places.

To be fair, this is 2015.  I live in a world that is post Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.  I live in a world where we've learned of the massive cover up and the lengths the church went to to shuffle around priests who were abusing children.  I live in a world where the Catholic Church was essentially playing Russian Roulette with childrens' spiritual, emotional and physical well-being.  So to read about Ralph "loving" a 9-year-old Meggie?

Yeah, baggage.  I haz it.

Now is this a "fair" criticism of a story that was written in 1977, well prior to the cover-up(s) being exposed?  Probably not.  But my other issues besides the creep-o factor are as follows:

I pretty much hate Ralph and Meggie.  Ralph because 1) he loves a 9-year-old girl in a way that I don't think is all that "fatherly" and 2) because he throws that girl under the bus after Mary Carson leaves a second, altered will giving Ralph the option of claiming her vast fortune for the Catholic Church, thereby securing his own ambitions for power and wealth.  Oh sure, the Cleary family is well taken care of, but mostly out of Ralph's guilt for being a scumbag.

Adding to the creepy factor is that Meggie is very, very naive.  Most of this is the fault of her mother, Fiona (Fee) who I wanted to smack upside the head until the second half of the book (she came around for me, eventually).  I mean, Meggie gets her period for the first time and thinks she's dying.  Literally.  She thinks she has cancer.  This naivety puts an added spin of icky on the whole "romance" thing.  Not only is Ralph in "love" with a young girl, he's in "love" with a young, uber-naive one.

For her part Meggie fancies herself "in love" with Ralph and doesn't "get" that she can't be with him until she gets into her late teen years.  Again, did I mention she was naive?  Then she seems more than happy to put herself up on a shelf and pine away for a man who essentially stole a bazillion dollar inheritance from her family.  She goes so far to marry a man who vaguely, sorta, kinda looks like Ralph - Luke O'Neill.  She does this because as much as she "loves" Ralph, Meggie's sole ambition in life is babies.  And she eventually stops being naive long enough to figure out she's going to need a man to get knocked up.

Eventually Meggie has a daughter, Justine and a son, Dane.  I pretty much hated everything about Justine, through no fault of her own.  It was the way McCullough chose to write her character.  The one thing I did like about the girl is that she loathed Ralph.  She actually calls him "smarmy" in the book.   VIVA LA JUSTINE!  Dane is, of course, the love child of Meggie and Ralph which means the sun rises and sets on his ass from the moment Meggie gets knocked up.  The unequal treatment between Justine and Dane, how they were both written as characters, pretty much has me hating Dane from the moment of his birth and counting down the chapters until his eventual death.  Because yes, Dane will have to die.  I mean, HE HAS TO!  It's pretty much telegraphed early on.

Which brings up another matter - at a certain point I knew where this saga was headed. OF COURSE Dane will become a priest!  OF COURSE Dane will die!  I mean, HOW COULD HE NOT?!?!?!?  And remember folks, I had, literally, no inkling of this story outside of "priest gets it on with lady love" prior to diving into the story.

Did I like any of the characters?  Yes.  I liked Meggie's older brother, Frank.

For those of you who have read the book, I'll wait for you to get your laughter under control.

Of course the ONE character I liked McCullough ships off to prison for 30 years.  Colleen McCullough = the reason fan fiction exists.  Seriously.  Frank Cleary is the stuff of romance heroes.  Is there Frank Cleary fanfiction out there?  Gah, I just hope it's not prison slash-fiction.

I also really liked Ann and Luddie Mueller, whom Meggie lives with for a time after her marriage to Luke.  Now there's a love story I wouldn't have minded reading.  Again, is there Ann and Luddie Mueller fanfiction out there?

So where does this all leave me?  I think I'm glad I finally read/listened to this book.  I do think, however, that the story is a bit of a "product of it's time."  It's easy to see why everybody went ga-ga over it in the late 1970s - an era that gave birth to many vast, sweeping epics.  But it ultimately failed for me as I just couldn't seem to get behind any of the characters (at least the characters that stick around for more than a few chapters).  Take a book like, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.  Sure, the characters did things that ticked me off.  And sure, McMurtry had this knack for killing off all the characters I liked - but the takeaway here is that I LIKED them.  More than one of them.  More than just peripheral secondary characters that wandered away after a few chapters.  Although to be fair to McCullough - I thought her ending was much stronger than ol' Larry's.

If I was grading this on my admiration alone, I'd probably say it was around a B.  But ugh, I hated Ralph, and the only time I liked Meggie was when she actually found some nerve and told off Ralph (which she eventually apologizes for - ugh!).  So I'm giving this a C.  I, in good conscience, can't rate it lower than that because it's well-written and evocative.  It's just McCullough made authorial choices that kinda ticked me off.  Which, you know, hey - was her prerogative.

Final Grade = C

Audiobook Round-Up: Trigger Alert Edition

The universal law of putting items on hold at your local public library is that they'll all inevitably come in at once.  So I've been binge-listening to audiobooks that have been equal parts compelling and disturbing.  As in WTFBBQ Did I Just Listen To?!?!?! disturbing.

First up is Still Missing by Chevy Stevens, a debut novel that made a splash a couple years ago.  It's the story of Annie O'Sullivan, a realtor who is kidnapped by a madman while she's packing up an open house.  She's held for a year, and then she manages to escape.

The story hops back and forth in time - from Annie's sessions with her shrink, to her captivity and her eventual escape.  It's a seriously messed up read that should have "Trigger Warning!!!" slapped on the front cover.  We have violence against women (well, one woman - Annie - and yes, she's raped) and Bad Things Happen To Kids.  If you can get past that?  This was a very good psychological suspense story.  It also made a compelling read on audio because the nature of the framework means the style is kind of "tell-y."  There is some showing, but since a good portion is Annie talking to her shrink?  Yeah, telling.  It literally kept me glued to the driver's seat, the narration was very solid, and I was going out to lunch entirely too much that week so I could listen some more.  Not for everybody - but if you can handle the triggers? Highly recommended.

Final Grade = B+

These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf is women's fiction with a dash of suspense thrown into the mix - but it's mostly women's fiction.  I could see it making a good book club selection.  It's one of those books that tells the story of four different women - parolee 21-year-old Allison, her 19-year-old sister Brynn, 19-year-old nursing student, Charm, who is also caring for her dying stepfather (lung cancer) and Clare, married, owner of a bookstore, and mother to an adopted five-year-old son.  What we know at the beginning of the story is that Allison got pregnant when she was 16, hid her pregnancy, and then murdered her baby girl.  She's getting out of prison now thanks to good behavior and wants to reconnect with her younger sister - which seems impossible as Brynn and their parents want nothing to do with her.  How do Charm and Clare fit into the picture?  Well, that's a spoiler.

So yeah, the story starts with a dead newborn - so that's your trigger warning.  This story is a train wreck - which is to say that as the reader you know disaster is ahead for everybody, you're just not quite sure how, why and when.  Watching the author fit her pieces together was fascinating, and even when I wasn't sure I liked this story, I couldn't stop listening.  The narration is done by three different women - and they were all good except for the woman who read for Clare and Charm.  Mostly because every time she did a child's voice the kid was in Perpetual Whine Mode.  The women who read for Allison and Brynn were much better, and I got to the point where I was dreading Clare's sections because that meant inevitably her little boy would get dialogue and - whine, whine, whine.

The one solid quibble I have with this story is the father of Allison's dead baby girl.  He plays a major role in the events that drive this story forward, and yet he's off-page other than to show up in couple of flashbacks.  I felt the story would have been better served had he been a more fully-realized character.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending of this book.  I'm not even sure I liked it.  But I had to keep listening and it certainly kept me engaged.  And even though I knew the train wreck was coming, I couldn't stop myself from listening.  That's hardly a fail.

Final Grade = B-

Audiobook Round-Up: Cats and Cops

My daily commute has been a bit of a trial lately so I thought it was high-time I got back into the swing of things with audiobooks.  It's better than listening to terrible DJs on the radio who play the three same songs over and over again.  Plus if I keep track of what I listen to?  It pads my yearly reading totals and I don't look like so much of a slacker.  It's win-win people!  Here's what I've listened to lately:

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye is a book that has intrigued since an ARC landed on my desk back at The Old Job.  And naturally, since romance novels take up a huge chunk of my time, I never got around to it.  I was at a library recently for a meeting and saw it in their audiobook section and viola!

This is a historical mystery set in 1845 New York City and follows Timothy Wilde, a bartender saving up money to marry the girl of his dreams.  Until his little corner of the City literally goes up in smoke taking not only his job, but his money with him.  His brother is a cog in the political machine and gets him a position with the new formed police department.  A job Timothy has no interest in, mostly because he'd be beholden to his brother and politics (which he loathes).  But he ends up taking to it like a duck to water, and finds himself playing detective when a young Irish girl, in a blood-soaked shift, literally runs into him on the street.

This had excellent period detail, although it's what I would classify as an "ugly history" book.  There's nothing pretty about this, but then we're talking New York City in the mid-19th century.  Pretty was hard to come by.  A huge chunk of the story revolves around the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment at the time, and without going into too much politicking of my own - I think this would make an excellent book club read when you juxtapose 19th century anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment against - well, what we're seeing in the United States today....and I'll just leave it at that.

That said, this is a Bad Things Happens To Kids book (two words: Child. Prostitutes.) and with the historical details comes period language (largely slang).  I know how I am, and I think this would have been a "hard read" for me - but on audio it was excellent (I'd rather see Shakespeare preformed than read it ::shudder::).  Steven Boyer was a wonderful narrator, I thought he handled the accents well, and it kept me glued to my car seat....as it were.  Highly recommended.

Grade = B+

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun is the first in a series and was originally published in 1966 - and boy does that show!  I loved this series as a teen and kept reading each new installment as an adult even though they devolved into saccharine messes featuring Stepford-like characters who lacked a sense of irony.  What can I say?  Nostalgia can be a killer.

Anyhow, revisiting this first book reminds me that once upon a time there was a little bite to this cozy series, namely Jim Qwilleran's a recovering alcoholic and his journalism career is in the toilet.  Where this series doesn't hold up is, naturally, with technology and anytime when the cost of things (oh, like rent) are mentioned.  But the really glaring instance of Oh How Times Have Changed comes in the form of a secondary character (and possible murder suspect) who is the most stereotypical depiction of a lesbian ever put to paper.  Seriously, the woman's name is "Butchy."  No, I'm not making that up.  Which reminds me of the one big quibble I always had with this series.  Braun was crap for writing female characters.  They're either obnoxious, offensive, or waif-like sparrows who need protecting from The Big Bad World.

I would still recommend this for anybody interested in the history of the cozy mystery sub genre, especially in regards to the US market.  Yeah, yeah - Agatha Christie.  But the cozy market as we know it today in the US (magical baking knitting cats that solve crimes!) can directly be led back to Braun.  Anybody not interested in genre history?  Meh.  Still, it was fun to revisit for me and I'll probably listen to more in the series.  Because, you know, nostalgia.

Final Grade = C

Afraid To Die by Lisa Jackson is the fourth in a series that I impulsive-grabbed off a library shelf because I was desperate to avoid DJ chatter until some of my holds came in.  I got through the first two CDs (out of 10) and called it a day.

The first strike against this book was the narration.  When it was descriptive passages or internal monologues I was fine.  Natalie Ross tended to be overly dramatic for my tastes - but it was still OK.  Until the dialogue portions, and then it was eye-rollingly awful.  Male voices were just....bad.  Also accents, especially Detective Alvarez's, were completely fluid.  

I might have kept up with the book though if the story had caught my attention - which it didn't.  Chalk it up to reading too much category romance, but filler drives me crazy and this story had a ton of it.  Do I care about the police station's Secret Santa exchange that both Alvarez and Pescoli are dreading?  Do I care about the secretary who is such a Little Miss Mary Sunshine that whenever she opens her mouth she barfs up stereotypical Christmas cheer?  Do I care that Pescoli's kids are terrible human beings that I want to reach through the car speakers and strangle?

The answer would be no.  To all of that.  If it doesn't pertain to the whack-job serial killer and/or catching said whack-job?  I.  DON'T.  CARE.  Where's my red pen when I need it?

Also how Alvarez reunites with a long-lost lover strains at the seams.

Nothing was happening that I liked, so back I went to inane DJ chatter.

Final Grade = DNF