Sugar Withdrawal & Mini-Reviews

Remember when Wendy used to blog regularly?  Ah, yes.  The Good Old Days.  To condense this down to a few words without (too much) whining: work = busy, current US political climate = dumpster fire, some of my social media = #willfulignorance + #readabookalready.  Add to this that at the start of 2017 I made a pact with myself to take better care of my health.  This has led to a slew of doctor appointments - the first of which was a physical where my blood work showed I have "borderline" high cholesterol and a Vitamin D deficiency.

So, cholesterol.  Not really surprising since I have the sophisticated palate of a 13-year-old boy.  This means I am seriously watching what I eat.  No fast food (none), exercising a lot more, and trying to curb my refined sugar intake in the hopes of dropping some weight.  This last one has been...hard.  I can't remember the last piece of chocolate I had which should tell you what sort of mood I've been in.  The a-lot-less-sugar thing coupled with current events?  The good news is I haven't seriously hurt anyone.  Yet, anyway.

And how the heck do you live in one of the sunniest areas in the world and have a Vitamin D deficiency?!?!  Oh yeah, go to work in the dark.  Come home in the dark.  The whole see-through Irish complexion and I hear skin cancer sucks thing.  Sigh.  Follow-up appointment with the doc this week.  I'm on Week 2 with zero refined sugar junk food.  He'll be lucky if I don't stab him with a pencil.

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My reading has been almost non-existent but I have finished two books in recent memory.  I finally listened to The Angel's Share by J.R. Ward, the second book in her trashy soap opera Bourbon Kings series.  The (supposed) trilogy follows the trial and tribulations of the Bradford clan, a family dynasty that built their fortune in Kentucky bourbon.  Once I let-go of the fact that the first book didn't work as a romance, the recovering soap opera addict in me loved every naughty minute of it.  

This installment felt very much like a "placeholder" or "set-up" book.  For reader's expecting a lot of Edward in this book (and I was one of them) - don't hold your breath.  He's in here - but it's basically a continuation of Lane, Lizzie, Gin's self-destruction with some of Edward's various secrets tossed in for flavor.  We finally meet the Bradford matriarch in this book, Gin's "secret baby" (OK, teenager) Amelia shows up, and wild child brother Maxwell returns.  The characterizations are still board as heck with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and I could have done without all the Lane/Lizzie kissie-face nonsense (yes, they're a couple now - they're so in lurve - we get it already!)

I've heard this is only supposed to be a trilogy, but there's a lot left to tie up here.  Lane's still got to extricate himself from Wife #1, there's Daddy Bradford's murder, Edward's messed up love life, their drug-addicted mother, the cluster that is Gin's personal life, and Maxwell's mysterious return. There's a lot still hanging up in the air.  I'm enjoying this series, but I'll be honest, if Ward pulls a Karen Marie Moning or Sylvia Day and stretches out this series past the "original plan" of a trilogy? I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about that.

Final Grade = B

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It took me the better part of a month to get through Dark Fissures by Matt Coyle, not because it was bad - but more likely it was my mood.  I thought I was in the mood for "dark," but perhaps not?  Anyway, this is the third book in a series about Rick Cahill, a former cop suspected by nearly everyone of murdering his wife.  Now a private investigator, Rick is barely eking out a living (the bank is thisclose to foreclosing on his house) when Brianne Colton hires him.  The cops say that her estranged husband, a former Navy SEAL turned cop, committed suicide.  Brianne doesn't buy it.  Rick's not sure he does either, but the fact that the dead man worked for the La Jolla Police Department, whose chief is, at best, corrupt and, at worst, gunning for Rick, complicates matters.

This series very much fits the mold of California crime noir.  The archetype of a lone hero (almost anti-hero) fighting a corrupt system has been around forever for a reason.  For the first half of this story I was ready to declare it stood alone from the "series baggage" well - but that ultimately changes.  Events in the preceding book definitely come into play, so starting the series here will put newcomers at a disadvantage.  I liked the suspense angle, but had a harder time with the pacing.  By the time I got to around 80% on my Kindle I was thinking, "Wow, he's going to need to wrap this up quick or else it's Cliffhanger Ahoy!"  I'm happy to report there's no cliffhanger, but the result is a rushed, almost mad-cap ending, and the world's most jarring epilogue.  I felt a bit hungover after it all.  The author wraps up some dangling threads (namely the police chief bent on bringing down Rick) but it's dashed off in a few sentences.  It felt really fast, especially after the deliberate pace set forth during the first 80% of the book.  I enjoyed it, as I do most lone wolf noir novels, but the ending really brought it down a notch.  I've enjoyed this series to date, but this one was weaker than the first two books.

Final Grade = B-

Mini-Reviews: Mystery & Suspense Round-Up

I used to be a full-time mystery/suspense reader until I discovered the romance genre in my early twenties and sold my soul to Harlequin.  However, thanks to a new release from the only cozy series I still read, plus my library's upcoming annual literary event (guess who is moderating one of the mystery panels this year?) - means I've spent a good chunk of January tripping over fictional dead bodies.  Here's the rundown:

Follow Her Home by Steph Cha is a debut novel set in Los Angeles and casts a directionless twenty-something Korean American woman, Juniper Song, in the PI role.  One of her best friends is worried that his father is having an affair with a much younger woman who works at his office, and since the last time Daddy had an affair Mommy almost succeeded in killing herself?  He asks Juniper to snoop around.  Naturally, havoc ensues.

This was a pretty solid debut.  I loved that our protagonist was obsessed with Philip Marlowe and still haunted by a tragedy that pertains to her younger sister.  I also thought the author had interesting things to say about the fetishization (is that a word?) of young Asian women.  The suspense thread could have been a little tighter in spots and this is one of those Bad Things Happen To Good Secondary Characters books, so that was kind of a downer.  I've been waffling on my grade, but probably a B-.  The author has another book featuring Juniper slated for an August release and I'm curious to read it.

Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle is another debut and one that I highly enjoyed.  Hero was a cop when his wife was found murdered.  He was the prime suspect, but the DA couldn't make it stick - so Rick leaves the force and moves back to his hometown of La Jolla, California to work at a friend's restaurant.  That's where he meets the femme fatale character, a woman who has a bunch of hired goons looking for her.  If you can get past the set-up (given his past I thought Rick's quick and easy trust of the femme fatale strained), this is a great suspense novel.  It twists and turns and kept me guessing all the way up until the end.  Again it's another Bad Things Happen To Good Secondary Characters book, but between the suspense and the great SoCal setting?  I highly recommend it.  Oh, and at the time of this blog post writing?  It's only a $1.99 on Kindle.  My grade is a B+.

Killing Cupid by Laura Levine is the latest in her Jaine Austen (no relation) series about a freelance writer who keeps stumbling over dead bodies.  This go-around Jaine takes a job writing copy for Joy Amoroso, who claims to run an upscale matchmaking service.  Naturally Joy is pure evil, someone kills her, and since their working relationship was not all champagne and roses, the cops start snooping around Jaine.  This means Jaine starts doing her own snooping and uncovers a whole host of suspects.  Levine used to be a sitcom writer and her books read like it in both good, and bad, ways.  The stories move along at a great clip, there's a lot of humor, and she writes very capable mysteries with enough suspects to keep the reader guessing.  On the downside?  Sometimes that humor can be a tad on the broad side - which it was in this book thanks to a scene involving squirrels (yes, squirrels).  Still, it delivered exactly what I wanted, it was amusing, and the mystery was solid.  Levine is also one of the very few cozy writers who hasn't fallen down the Magical Baking Cupcake Knitting Cats hole and for that reason I think all cozy fans need to be reading her books.  A solid B.

Dating Dead Men by Harley Jane Kozak is the first in a four-book series and was, I'm sorry to say, a hot mess for me.  Our heroine, Wollie Shelley, designs greeting cards and runs a Hallmark-like store.  Then her schizophrenic brother calls from the mental hospital claiming to have witnessed a murder.  When she goes to check up on him, she finds a dead body in the middle of the road, and gets "kidnapped" by a man she only knows as "Doc" who has a pet ferret in his coat pocket.  She doesn't call the police and even after "Doc" lets her go - she continues to help him even though he tells her nothing and the mob is somehow involved.  Oh, and did I mention Wollie is going out with 40 guys in 60 days as part of a pop psychologist's "research" project?  I got 120 pages into the book and just couldn't take it anymore.  There was nothing I liked here, and I mean nothing.  I skimmed my way through the rest of the book, skipping chunks of pages along the way.  Humor is one thing, cozy is another, and I'll even read zany - but when the characters don't behave like rational adults?  I'm out.  Hey, I don't read Janet Evanovich anymore either - so there you go.  My grade is a Big Fat DNF.