Mini-Reviews: Age Appropriate

I'm convinced these kids today don't realize how good they have it.  I LOVED mystery/suspense as a kid, which meant once I outgrew Lois Duncan and Nancy Drew I basically had to run to the adult area of the library to get my fix.  There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins is basically a teen slasher movie in book format.  The heroine, Makani Young, was living with her worthless parents in Hawaii before Something Happens and she's shipped off to grandma's in Nebraska.  Needless to say, she hates it. But she's made a couple of friends and has a blossoming romance with the loner kid (Ollie) who dyed his hair pink because it was "something to do."

But something sinister is lurking in the corn fields.  A serial killer is murdering her classmates.  Before he brutally knifes them to death?  He toys with them.  He breaks into houses, moves things around, and has the victims' thinking they're losing it.  I now know that egg timers are sinister and knives that you leave in the sink that magically end up in the dishwasher are OMG SCARY!!!!!

This starts out great but ends up losing steam.  For one thing, I grew up in a town like Makani.  My high school graduating class was around 170 kids.  I knew everybody in my class (even if I didn't "hang out with them") and a decent chunk of the kids in the grades higher or lower.  Was I BFFs with everybody?  Of course not. But I knew what type of students they were, what clubs they were in, who their friends were etc. etc. etc.  If a police officer were to show up and question me, I could give them something even if it was bare bones info.  The author skirts this by making Makani a newcomer but I still didn't buy it.  When you're a kid in a small town you just KNOW 99% of the student body.

The town's and the adults' response to a serial killer brutally murdering teens strains credulity more often than not.  The town never goes into lock-down mode. School isn't cancelled immediately after the second kid is MURDERED IN A LOCKER ROOM!!!  I don't expect 100% realism in a slasher story but c'mon!

Also the author decides to reveal who the killer is around the halfway mark and this goes from mystery to thriller.  That's fine until the SUPER rushed ending.  If ever a book needed an epilogue, this one did.  It's good, but dagnabit, it could have been great!

Final Grade = C+

Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries world is my happy place.  It's like flying unicorns farting out rainbow sprinkles while I'm gorging myself on cupcakes with pink frosting.  You will pry this world out of my cold dead hands!  Royal Crown is the fourth book in the middle grade series that follows Princess Mia's half-sister, Olivia.  In this book Olivia is dealing with her frenemy and cousin, Louisa being...well, Louisa and her BFF from New Jersey, Nishi, visiting.  The drama here is that her friends are "maturing" faster than she is (OMG, Olivia hasn't kissed her friend-who-is-a-boy yet?!  OMG, Olivia doesn't have her period yet?!?!?).  Added to this is drama surrounding Mia's coronation ceremony and the girls deciding to start a Royal Babysitting Service.

This started out a little slow and bumpy for me, but it picks up steam.  Look, is Cabot rehashing some ground she covered in the earlier Mia books?  Yeah. But some things are just universal when it comes to tweens/teens and the whole "my friends are more 'grown-up' than I am" is definitely one of those things.  It all conveniently works out in the end (a bit too conveniently but heck, this is a story geared towards a tween audience not a cranky old lady like myself!) and I had a great time revisiting this world because...of course I did.  Lemon Drop needs to get maybe another year older and I'm so going to be starting her on this series.

Final Grade = B

Bat Cave Update and Mini-Reviews

The lack of blog activity of late has been a case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak. Work has been nutty.  Yeah, yeah - lather, rinse, repeat.  I'm serious - it's been nutty.  Library grand openings, my staff helping out to fill in for short staffing situations elsewhere, a long-time employee retiring, trying to bring new vendors on board - it's been nutty.  

On top of that, now seemed like a peachy time to look for a new place to live.  Good news, we found a place!  Even better news - it's going to cut my work commute IN HALF!  The bad news?  We've been in the current Bat Cave for 10 years and good Lord WHY did we keep all this crap?!?!  So weekends have been spent cleaning out clutter, figuring out what will be downsized (the new Bat Cave is a teensy bit smaller), and starting the packing process.  We'll do the actual, physical moving the first weekend on November.  I cannot wait!

I also continue to not be reading much.  I did burn through September's TBR Challenge read in one late night sitting, but beyond that?  It's been kind of a slog.  But here's a few things I've gotten through that are worth, at least, a quick mention.

Royal Crush is the third book in Meg Cabot's middle-grade series set in her Princess Diaries world.  This go around Olivia is awaiting for her big sister, Mia (now ruler of Genovia) to give birth to her twins.  As if that weren't exciting enough?  Her school is gearing up for a field trip to the Royal School Winter Games and then there's the realization that she has her *gasp* first ever crush.

Yes, I read a book meant for junior high schoolers.  I have no shame!  I love this world that Cabot has created.  It's like pink bows, glitter, cotton candy and unicorns all rolled into one.  It's my happy place and as long as she keeps writing books set in this universe, I'll be hard pressed to give them up.

Grade = B

Ask the Cards a Question is the second book in Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone mystery series.  Muller is credited with creating the first female PI character and this entry was originally published in 1982.  This time out there's a murder in Sharon's San Francisco apartment building.  Molly Antonio was the nicest person in the entire building, who would want her dead?  There's Molly's unique relationship with her somewhat estranged husband, the creepy fortune teller, Madame Anya, who foretold evil was in store for Molly, and Sharon's BFF and current house guest, Linnea, who has fallen into a bottle ever since her husband left her for a younger woman.

I first read this when I was a teen and it was surprising how much of the story came back to me.  It's interesting that back in 1982 Muller wrote a diverse San Francisco setting (completely reasonable) when so many current authors struggle with showing diversity in their stories.  That said?  Some of these characterizations haven't necessarily aged well - although the worst of them was definitely Sharon's Irish superintendent who always has a beer in his hand.  That said, solid mystery and what I always preferred about Sharon over, say, Grafton's Kinsey Millhone character is that Sharon actually has some people skills and, you know, friends.

Grade = B-

Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase was a recommendation I picked up from author Laura K. Curtis.  As Laura indicates, it's a book that defies easy classification.  It's not a tragedy, and yet it kind of is.  It's not a romance, but it is romantic.  It's not a Gothic, per se, but it definitely has Gothic elements.  It follows the lives of the Alton children in the late 1960s when they arrive at their country estate, Black Rabbit Hall, for the Easter holiday.  Naturally, something bad happens and it sends the family careening down a path of tragedy, drama, and secrets.

I can see why Laura liked this and recommended it.  It's well written, there's a good story, and the atmosphere is compelling.  That said I found it really, really slow.  I don't think I could have read this and even listening to it on audio was a bit of a slog.  Also, while not a tragedy, per se, there's a sense of doom that hovers over the narrative for nearly the entire book.  I found it suffocating.  This is actually a compliment to the author, but it was something that I don't think I was in the right frame of mind for at the time I was listening.  That said, I'm glad I persevered because I did like the ending and the author ties up all the drama leaving us on an "up note."  But I'm also not in any hurry to pick up another one of her books.  Maybe one day.  

Side note, one of the best villains I've read in a long while. 

Grade = C+

Mini-Reviews: Princesses and Bullies

After my disastrous foray into reading the latest "it" book of the moment, I decided that I needed a little fun.  Brain candy. A chocolate chip cookie read. So naturally I went with a book that was written for a middle grade, juvenile audience and an erotic romance.  As you do.

Royal Wedding Disaster is the second book in Meg Cabot's From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess series.  It's a spin-off of her popular Princess Diaries series and Mia's half-sister, Olivia is the star of the show.  In this installment, the royal family is consumed with Mia's upcoming nuptials to Michael (and the fact that she's pregnant - with TWINS!), their father is consumed with renovating the summer palace, and Grandmere has her own plans for making Mia's wedding one for the ages - much to Mia's...uh, "delight."

It's only been one month since Olivia found out she's a princess but she's been busy!  She has her own pony (squee!) and like Mia once did is taking "princess lessons" from Grandmere.  She's also helping Grandmere with the wedding, in between starting a new school (ugh!), having her "first crush," and running afoul of her Mean Girl cousin.

This is a children's book so there's not a lot for me to say here except it's cute, the characters are delightful, and I loved returning to the world that Cabot has created.  I appreciate that while Cabot has returned to this world, Olivia isn't a cookie-cutter of Mia (for one thing, Olivia is more "sure of herself" than Mia was as a teen) and that the author has moved the series out of New York City to the fictional Genovia.  I also don't think it can be overstated that Olivia is biracial - the product of an affair her father had with her pilot mother (now deceased).  I know the "princess thing" is fairly loaded (thank you Disney...) but little brown girls deserve fairy tales as much as little white girls and Cabot has created a pretty sweet one.

Final Grade = B

There have been a ton of glowing, squee'ing reviews for Never Sweeter by Charlotte Stein.  Brace yourself, Wendy won't be squee'ing.  Oh, I liked it.  But given the obscene amount of hype I read about this book I expected to love it beyond all reason and....I didn't.

Letty Carmichael graduated high school two years ago and is just now starting college.  She had an accident thanks to a group of meat head jocks who were her high school tormentors (nothing involving sexual assault).  Imagine her horror when she looks up in her film class to see one of those tormentors, Tate Sullivan, sitting in the lecture hall.

Despite Letty's initial terror (and really, who could blame the girl!), what follows is this slow unfolding romance between her and Tate...her former bully.

I will give Stein credit - this concept is inspired and could have been a dumpster fire.  Given the severity of Letty's accident, and Tate's involvement, the fact she doesn't explore options to get the hell away from him (oh, a restraining order?) or that her parents have zero role in this story (your kid has a horrible accident thanks to a group of bullies and one of them shows up at your daughter's small college and they aren't on the page at all outside of a mentioned phone call early on - and not mentioned AT ALL once Letty and Tate hook up.  Maybe it's just me - but my parents would have had PLENTY to say about that....).  So even though Letty's mental struggle is evident on the page, it really, truly didn't feel like enough to me.  Also, as far as guy's go - Tate oftentimes read like Wish Fulfillment Guy.  He says the things women readers want to hear, but his personal growth (seemingly all on his own - it's like the light magically dawns one day) weren't always convincing for me.

But Wish Fulfillment is a powerful thing (I'm not immune), I liked Letty, I even liked Tate (who is totally smitten with her).  There's lots of dirty talk, a lot of Sexy Times outside of Insert Tab A Into Slot B, and Stein writes the tap dance just about as well as anyone.  But (and you knew there was a but...) - there's a shortcut written into the Black Moment that just smacked me with incredulity.  I kid you not...it involves the mob.  Yes, the mob.  It's borderline absurd and, in my opinion, totally unnecessary.  There's enough baggage between the couple (boy howdy!), enough emotional turmoil that honestly?  THE MOB?!?!?!  It's like someone putting a warm, gooey cinnamon roll in front of you, dripping with decadent cream cheese icing, and when you take a big bite?  Ick.  They put nasty, shriveled up raisins in it.

So while this is good - no, it's not great.  You want great?  Read Stein's Sweet Agony instead.

Final Grade = B

Mini-Reviews: Middle School, Actors and Homicide

I'm going to be out of commission all of this week thanks to work and travel, but before I go dark, I thought I'd take the opportunity to post some mini-reviews. A hodge-podge of titles that aren't romance (for a change of pace).

From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess by Meg Cabot is the first in a new middle-grade series and takes place in the author's Princess Diaries world.  Events in this book run parallel to the events in Royal Wedding, which was the author's first adult book featuring Princess Mia Thermopolis.  Turns out Mia's Dad is a busy boy, and he has another daughter, 12-year-old Olivia Harrison, growing up in New Jersey, being raised by an aunt and uncle after her pilot mother dies.  Word has gotten out that she's a Real Life Princess and naturally you know what that means - a mean girl bully.

This was a really cute read, complete with illustrations (which Cabot drew!), that as an adult reader you can literally plow through in an hour (I whipped through it on a lunch break at work).  What I liked here is that while Cabot is staying in her series world, Olivia isn't a cookie cutter of Mia.  Olivia is more self-assured, but still pretty typical 12-year-old girl.  A nice diversion for fans of the series and something to consider if you know any young girls in your life who may enjoy this sort of read.

Final Grade = B

I don't read (or listen to in this case) a lot of celebrity bios, but So That Happened by Jon Cryer intrigued me.  OK, I was mostly in it for the Pretty In Pink "stuff" since I've never watched Two & a Half Men a day in my life.  This was a really fun listen on audio (Cryer narrates) and a great way to pass the time on my daily commute (which can be annoying).  Cryer comes off as a nice guy, and I enjoyed all the tid-bits about his theater background (which I knew nothing about).  He also dishes some dirt without going balls-out with the mud-slinging.  Are any of us shocked that Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy don't come off so well in Cryer's PiP recollections?  Although James Spader is apparently a pretty nice guy.  Or that even when it became sadly evident that Superman IV was going to be an epic debacle for the ages - that Christopher Reeve was still, as Cryer describes, "a good soldier?"

Most people will pick this book up for the Charlie Sheen meltdown "stuff" - and Cryer doesn't disappoint.  He pretty much lays it all out - right down to his disgust with the media and hangers-on who were feeding this frenzy (Cryer was preparing himself for the day when he would get the phone call informing him Charlie was dead).  I wouldn't say you need to drop your life and pick up this book right now - but as far as celebrity bios go this one was light and entertaining.  I'm not sorry I listened to.

Final Grade = B

 Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy was another audio listen and the sort of book I feel guilty about not liking more.  It's about South Los Angeles and the book is framed around the murder of a cop's son - that cop living in South LA with his family and working for the elite LAPD RHD (Robbery Homicide) division.  His son's case is assigned to a local homicide unit in South LA, and it taken up by one of the best detectives in that unit.

My disappointment in this book stems from my own expectations.  I wanted a more narrative style true crime story.  Where we really get to know all the players, and crawl around in their heads like they were "characters."  Leovy is a journalist and that's how this book is written.  When she starts rattling off statistics and gets into Let Me Educate The Reader mode, my eyes would glaze over.  Largely because a lot of the stuff she is "educating" the reader about is stuff I already knew.  She does do a good job with the homicide detectives and detailing how their work (and world) is different from that of uniformed cops who patrol the streets - but while she does introduce us to some players in those neighborhoods?  Not enough for my liking and her humanization of all the players (cops, criminals, innocent bystanders - all of them) wasn't as in depth as I wanted.

But.

It's an important book.  My gut tells me though that the people who should read it, and really think about it, will likely dismiss it out of hand because again - I don't think Leovy spends enough time on "humanizing" the players and having us "get to know them" outside of their "type."  It's too easy to still put everyone in their own little box (OK, you go in the cop box and you go in the gangster box and you go in the lawyer box).

So Wendy's grade would probably be a C.  But I feel guilty about that C because really that's a Wendy's Gut Reaction C.  It was kind of a slog at times, even on audio.  But the topic, the research?  It's probably more in the B range for a typical non-fiction reader.

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+.

TBR Challenge 2011: Princess Forever

The Book: Princess Forever by Meg Cabot

The Particulars: Contemporary Young Adult, final book in series (#10), 2009, in print

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?:  I read very little YA (good Lord, not enough hours in the day!) but I have been hooked on this series from the beginning (for the record: nothing like the Disney movies).  When Lil' Sis moved to California....oh 2 years ago - she bought a copy of this to read on the plane and promptly gave it to me to read.  Uh, which I've done.  Finally.  Two years later.  Seriously, I suck.

The Review:  So for those of you who know nothing about this series, it follows seemingly average New York City teenager, Mia Thermopolis, who one day, during her freshman year of high school, finds out her dad is a prince to a tiny (fictional) European country.  Thereby, making her a princess.  This 10th, and final book, in the series takes place on the cusp of Mia's high school graduation.  She's worried about finals, the extravagant 18th birthday party her grandmother is planning for her, oh, and the fact that her boyfriend of two-years, J.P.Reynolds-Abernathy IV, hasn't asked her to prom yet. 

On top of all this, her Dad is having problems back in Genovia (uh, which are sort of Mia's doing) and her ex-boyfriend, Michael Moscovitz, is back in New York after two years in Japan, where he has been working on a robotic surgical arm that has now made him a gazillionaire.  The problem?  Mia is still hung-up on Michael, even as she's trying to convince herself that she HAS a boyfriend.  A boyfriend who loves her.  He does, doesn't he?

When I first heard that this was going to be the last book in the series, I was a little bereft.  There have been highs (the first four books) and lows (the less said about Party Princess the better), but it's been a lovely, charming series that has featured many laugh-out-loud moments.  However after reading this book, I've realized that Meg Cabot is way smarter than I am.  She made the right choice ending this series now.  She really has.  Part of the reason is that what made Mia charming as a teenager (she's what I call Teenage Dense, but in a sweet way), could get annoying in anyone over the age of 18.  So best to wrap up the series now, give Mia her happy ending, and let those fond memories carry readers off into the sunset.

Speaking of happy endings, I also think this was Cabot's way of writing a love letter to the romance genre.  It's actually very sweet.  For her senior project, Mia has been telling everyone that she's writing a thesis on Genovian olive oil presses.  In actuality?  She wrote a 400 page romance novel (which Cabot got published, Ransom of My Heart).  She's hidden this fact from everyone, even her BFF, Tina Hakim-Baba, who is obsessed with all things romance.  Seriously, I love Tina.  LOVE HER!  Anywho, this book also details Mia's attempts to get her book published, and the reaction of people around her when they found out she ::gasp:: wrote a romance novel.

While I did feel at times that this book was a bit padded (it clocks in at almost 400 pages), it's a lovely send off to a series that I've really enjoyed.  It ends the way I (and I suspect many fans) want it to end.  It leaves me with the feeling that even if she is only 18, that Mia is going to be alright.  She's gotten her happy ending, and even if she will always be a little clueless, she'll always continue to make the right decisions and choices in the end.

Final Grade = B+