Library Loot Mini-Reviews: Received Recommendations

What can I say? Work has been challenging lately and when work is challenging, Wendy no bloggy. 1) I have to have the spoons and 2) Some energy is required.  Both have, sadly, been in limited supply of late. But the goods news is that I have four glorious days off in a row, I've shipped My Man off to visit his family on the other side of the country, and I'm spending the time recharging - well, when I'm not doing such exciting full-filled tasks like cleaning my oven (which desperately needs it). First on the agenda is to actually put some fresh content on this here blog and that means it's time for another round of patented Wendy mini-reviews. Buckle up kiddies, it's an eclectic mix.  

I picked up The Night Swim by Megan Goldin entirely based on Lynn's Goodreads review. Lynn and I tend to have very similar tastes in books and I was ready for a new suspense listen on audio. Reader be warned, this is a very good read, very well-written, but it is very difficult. Content warnings for rape, gang rape, a rape trial and slut-shaming. 

Rachel Krall's true crime podcast was an overnight sensation that spawned a host of copycats, so she's feeling the pressure for her third season to be dynamite. She decides to head to a small coastal beach town to cover a rape trial. A pretty high school girl has accused the local golden boy, a star swimmer and Olympic hopeful, of raping her. The plan is for Rachel to cover the trial on her podcast as it happens, to put her listeners "inside the jury box." However she is soon distracted with a stalker. Someone is following her, leaving notes on her windshield, at her hotel, begging her to help find her sister's killer. 20-some years earlier Jenny Stalls died in an "accidental drowning." Her younger sister, Hannah, is convinced she was murdered, and she's also convinced that only Rachel can get to the truth.

This is basically two suspense stories in one - the rape trial and the cold case looking into Jenny's death. Both stories are extremely difficult, gut-wrenching, riveting, and if you aren't left seething with anger when the entire truth comes out, well you don't have a heart.  I'm not much for courtroom drama, but Goldin does a great job with the trial scenes here and I could not stop listening to this audiobook. It practically consumed me. Highly recommended, I'm just not sure to whom.  Those content warnings ain't no joke.

Final Grade = B+

I can't remember where I heard about Sleepless City by Reed Farrel Coleman (probably a Book Riot newsletter?) but this one ended up on my wishlist because it smelled hardboiled and promised noir vibes. I've got a thing for lone wolf heroes in the mean city streets, so I took a flier and waited for a library copy to come in for me. This book is the closest I've gotten to feeling the sensation I felt when I fell down a Lawrence Block Matthew Scudder rabbit hole in 2022.

Nick Ryan is a cop, and very good at his job. He's so good he's gotten noticed by some very powerful "behind the scenes" types who offer him a job. At first Nick refuses, but then he gets sucked in when a young cop makes a poor error in judgement, ends up dead, and Nick has to keep New York City from burning down to the ground.  So starts his career as a fixer and it gets very complicated, very quickly.

This is one of those books where the good guys are also the bad guys. If you have a low opinion of a law enforcement to begin with, this isn't a book meant to change your mind. Everyone is either skating edges here or just running right through stop signs.  What made this story so good was the world-building. It's simply dynamite. From the streets of New York City, the long shadow left by 9/11, to the cast of characters surrounding Nick. His former cop father who "ratted" on crooked cops now drinking himself to a slow death. His screwed-up brother. The uptown ex-girlfriend who just dropped the bomb on him that he has a secret baby. The sleazebag conspiracy theory radio host. The oily Madoff-like money man who conned half the city cops out of their retirements. It's a story that soon takes on a life of it's own, spins out of control, but comes together at the end. I loved every grimey minute of it, but I have no idea who I'd recommend it to 🤷‍♀️.

Final Grade = A

I became intrigued about Board to Death by CJ Connor after reading a review for it over at AztecLady's blog. I used to devour cozy mysteries in my younger days, but as I've gotten older and crankier, and cozies have gotten more gimmicky we've had a parting of the ways so to speak. But this sounded cute and the term "quozy" tickled me (queer + cozy - get it?).  

Ben Rosencrantz is back home in Sugar House, Utah overseeing the running of his father' board game shop and licking his wounds over his divorce. Sugar House is a small, trendy area outside of Salt Lake City, meaning expensive, ergo their small business is struggling. Ben's barely keeping things afloat when in waltzes local collector, Clive, trying to sell him a copy of The Landlord's Game (the precursor to Monopoly). Clive is intolerable, he's selling the game for a fraction of what it's worth, and Ben finds the whole thing rather fishy (not to mention odd).  His suspicions are soon confirmed when Clive ends up dead on the shop's doorstep and a bag of money is soon found on Ben's front porch. Panicky that the cops think he killed Clive, Ben decides to do some snooping on his own with the help of Ezra who owns the flower shop next door.

This was a pleasant, albeit unremarkable, read. Ben has anxiety so he's a little too tightly wound for my tastes when it comes to amateur sleuths, but he's funny and nice and I wanted him to succeed.  His burgeoning romance with Ezra is quite charming and unfolds in a bit of a slow-burn fashion.  There's enough romance on the page that I think it will keep romance readers invested.  I also liked that the author didn't ignore reality - cozies not always being terribly strong on reality. He doesn't completely ignore the Mormon elephant in the room, and Ben's challenges growing up gay in Utah are addressed.  Does the author take a deep dive on these issues? No - I mean, this is still a cozy after all. But at least they're mentioned and not swept under the rug entirely - which is more than I can say for a good many books in this sub genre.

This was a solid B- for a long time, but honestly the mystery here is really thin.  Like the minute the killer showed up on page I was like "Yep, that's the killer." I mean, it's just obvious. Because of this the final chapters got a bit tiresome and the humor didn't land the same way towards the end that it did in the beginning.  Still, it's the first cozy I've read in a while that I've "liked" - and I would definitely read the next book in this series.

Final Grade = C+