Mini-Reviews: Barely Any Spoons

Hey, so yeah. This blog has fallen into Dead Zone space again and that's largely because I've barely been reading. And what I have been reading? I don't really have the spoons to blog about - but dead space is dead space, so it's time for some patented mini-reviews of meh reads that I don't have a lot to say about. Strap yourselves in kiddies!

The Great British Bump Off by John Allison and Max Sarin was featured on one of our booklists at the Day Job. I'm not a huge graphic novel reader, but I'll pick one up when I stumble across a plot description that tickles my fancy and this one sounded fun.  The publisher is marketing this as "An Agatha Christie-style murder mystery set in the world of English competitive baking..." and what I was hoping for was the charm of the Great British Bake Off mixed with the sinister underbelly of a traditional British mystery. What I got was the story of an insufferable jerk getting poisoned on the eve before filming starts and a quirky, manic butterfly heroine flitting about. Basically she's the first cousin of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and is annoying beyond measure.  Just because Agatha Christie was British and this riffs on a popular British baking show does not make it a good comparison anywhere on the planet Earth. I finished it, but seriously graphic novel. Those are harder to DNF than category romance.

Final, Not-For-Me, Grade = D

The Michigan Murders by Edward Keyes was on my Kindle because of the Michigan connection (I'm from Michigan...) and the fact that Open Road Media reprinted it 2016.  It was originally published all the way back in 1976, was an Edgar Award Finalist, and it's age is what made it memorable. This true crime book tells the story of several young women, brutally murdered, around Eastern Michigan University in the late 1960s. What makes this interesting is the time in which this book was written - the author changes the names of nearly all the players (including the victims and the murderer) to afford the families some small measure of privacy. In a world where we have amateur cold case detectives digging around in victim's and their family's pain for podcast fame and hopeful fortune this was....quaint is the word I think I want to use.  Also, I found it interesting to read about the murders and how flummoxed the cops were given it was the late 1960s.  These days the case would have been cracked in a speedier fashion thanks to DNA evidence and everybody having a Ring camera installed on their front doors. The methodical first half is where the meat and potatoes were for me and I thought the author did a good job of conveying the tension and difficulties of the investigation.

Of course in the second half, after the cops identify a suspect, they do everything in their power to fumble the ball on the 20 yard line, and it's amazing to me the jury convicts given the sheer brain-melting, confounding hair analysis testimony. The trial part of the book was pure tedium for me, which I suppose means the author did his job since most trials are pure tedium. 

It was interesting and "fine" but what I found supremely perplexing was that there was no updated forward or afterword (yes, the author has since passed but literally throw a stone and you could find another true crime writer to take on that job!). Given that someone else was convicted of murdering one of the victims (who never quite fit the pattern) in 2005 thanks to, you guessed it, DNA evidence, this was particularly glaring.

Final Grade = C

I think I downloaded The Return by Rachel Harrison thanks to a Netgalley promo email and reading the description I think I was thinking it would be suspense.  It's really more horror, which is fine and I do read some horror, but honestly this was the very definition of middle-of-the-road read for me.

It tells the story of four college friends, Julie, Mae, Molly and Elise, with Elise, the least successful of the group, narrating the story. Julie is missing. As in she went for a hike and disappeared. Everyone is in a panic, including Molly, Mae and Julie's husband. But not Elise. Julie and Elise are a lot alike and Elise is convinced that Julie will return. And she does. Two years to the day she disappeared with no memory of what happened to her or where she's been all this time. After the dust settles the girls decide to take a girl's trip to reconnect and head to an exclusive boutique hotel in the Catskills. But the second Elise sees Julie she knows something is very wrong. Julie is not Julie. She's emaciated, with sallow skin, terrible teeth, and odd appetites. As in staunch to the point of insufferable vegan Julie is now eating raw and/or barely cooked meat. But if Julie isn't Julie, than who is she exactly?

This is a story of toxic friendship, with each character being a hot mess in their own way and basically being snide about whichever woman isn't around at that time. Instead of leaning in on each other for support, it's a friendship well practiced in avoidance. There are just things they don't talk about. Ever. It lends itself to not really caring for any of them all that much, so even though the author does a decent job of ratcheting up the creepy tension with Gothic tinged vibes, I spent the whole book kind of wishing everyone would end up dead. By the time I got to the end that tension ends up deflated by an ending that seems to go on forever and a very tell-y recounting of what happened to Julie when she disappeared. The whole thing has an oddly detached feeling and I finished it relieved it was one more book off the pile.

Final Grade = C