Review: The Librarians

This was not good.

I know what you're thinking. The Librarians was written by Sherry Thomas, how can it not be good? 

Folks, trust me - this was not good. I can say with 100% certainty had I tried to read the languishing ARC I had on my Kindle it would have been a DNF. As is, I cannot believe I didn't DNF the audiobook. I have no excuse for this other than it was Sherry Thomas and surely it couldn't be this bad, could it?

Narrator: it was, indeed, that bad.

The story takes place in a suburb of Austin, Texas at a branch library of the Austin Public Library. The staff includes: Sophie, the branch manager, and lesbian single mom; Jonathan, a librarian, former standout high school athlete, former Navy man and gay; Astrid, another librarian who for completely inane reasons presents herself as Swedish, right down to a fake accent and Hazel, the new library clerk who used to live in Singapore but moved to Austin to help take care of her grandmother after her husband was arrested for financial shenanigans. 

It's a couple days before Halloween and the library is gearing up for it's first ever game night (as in board games) and it turns out to be a success - that is until after hours that same night, two people are found dead. The first one is Perry, a British man who had a "situationship" with Astrid before he ghosted her and just recently returned to the scene of that crime, and another woman who had attended game night and whose appearance left Sophie (who has plenty to hide...) all spun up. 

The plot doesn't go anywhere for the first 50% of the book. What happens in that first 50%? Basically it's a big ol' character study, complete with shifting points-of-view, internal musings, and a non-linear timeline, complete with flashbacks. Boring. What it is is boring. 

Then at 50% the two dead bodies thing ramps up with enough police pressure that the characters end up sitting down, spilling their various secrets, and decide to play Scooby Doo, without the talking Great Dane bit. I think what Thomas was shooting for here was a Secret Lives of Librarians vibe, but it's all just so boring and clunky. The pop culture references are especially lumpy and egregious. Seriously, don't play a drinking game with this book and Game of Thrones references - you'll be dead from alcohol poisoning before you get to the final chapters.

This could work if you find the characters compelling, but only Jonathan and Hazel manage to elevate themselves to marginally interesting. Sophie is a panicked mess for the entire book and Astrid is so twee you just want to smack her into next Tuesday. Seriously, she fakes being Swedish - it's all just so...stupid. Astrid, girl, you know why you don't have any friends? Because you smell like desperation after it's rolled in a hot mess. And after a while even Jonathan gets to be too much. Look, I bought the former Navy thing but there's a throwaway bit near the end where we find out he was a NAVY EFFIN' SEAL. Y'all, if this guy was a SEAL start calling me Your Majesty because I'm the Queen of England. I'm not saying gay men can't be SEALs, what I am saying is Jonathan as a character carries himself through life with all the confidence of wet tissue paper. He barely carries himself like former military let alone a NAVY EFFIN' SEAL! 

It all turns out right as rain in the end and Thomas even gives readers two romantic storylines, which are nice inclusions but honestly a detriment to the mystery which hinges on a pile of coincidences. As I sit here typing this up I still can't tell you why I didn't DNF this. Honestly, that would make a more compelling mystery.

Final Grade = D

Review: The Request

I've since learned my lesson, but there was a stretch around 2020 where I got sucked in by Netgalley promo emails and as I've been slowly working through that backlog I have been nothing if not burned by my impulse. The latest in the slog parade is The Request by David Bell, a domestic suspense novel where the theme is "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Ryan Francis has the perfect life. A wife and young son at home. A thriving career in marketing, and he's part owner of a local bar / pub. Then one night, leaving the pub after checking on operations, out from the darkness steps his old college friend, Blake. There was a falling out several months back, when Blake demanded to hold the baby and bonked the child's head against a lamp - at which point Ryan's wife, Amanda, put her foot down. It was the last straw - given Blake's general rich boy attitude and his propensity to drink entirely too much.  But Blake is now sober and he's finally, after a long stretch of on-again-off-again, is getting married to his long-suffering lady love, Sam. He just needs to ask Ryan one small favor...

During one of his "off" periods with Sam, Blake was seeing a woman named Jennifer, who he met through happenstance because she was an almost-client of Ryan's marketing firm. In fact, Jennifer tried to start a flirtation with Ryan through Facebook Messenger, which he nipped in the bud. Blake was so comfortable around Jennifer, and deep in his cups, wrote letters to her unburdening his soul and spilling secrets. Now that he's set to marry Sam, he wants those letters back - and Jennifer is refusing to cough them up.  He asks Ryan to break into her house (he has the alarm code) to get them back. Ryan, naturally, balks at the idea, but Blake twists his arm using the time honored tradition of blackmail.

What is Blake blackmailing Ryan with? When they were in college they were members of a "social club" (a fraternity, it's a fraternity) and in a night of drunken hazing they, and a pledge, get in a car accident that kills a girl and seriously disables another. Ryan was driving and basically black-out drunk - so Blake took Ryan out of the driver's seat and put the pledge, Aaron, behind the wheel. Aaron goes to jail and eaten up by the guilt, Ryan starts leaving anonymous donations in the mailbox of the family with a now disabled daughter. Blake tells Jennifer the truth about that accident in those letters and if the truth comes out? Ryan's perfect life will go up in flames.

So, Ryan goes to Jennifer's house - and what do you think he finds?  Not the letters, but Jennifer, dead on her bedroom floor. And then, while standing over Jennifer's body, his phone pings. It's a Facebook friend request...from Jennifer.

What we have here is a story where you can't root for anybody. Ryan who wants everybody to think he's "a good person" but isn't and Blake who is your prototypical silver spoon frat boy whose fortunes have now changed so he's going to use whomever he can (Ryan, his fiancée) to claw his way into the life he thinks he deserves. The villain in this story is actually the "hero" and our villains are those wronged by these two assholes. 

Compounding all this is that the writing is cliched and lumpy (a house being locked up "like Fort Knox" and don't get me started on the final line in the book that mentions opposable thumbs being good for many things, like deleting social media apps) and one of the "villains" who monologues for chapters (they're short chapters, but still). We also get some ham-fisted commentary on social media being bad. I should have DNF'ed this fairly early but, of course, I didn't. Why? Because I wanted to find out who killed Jennifer and of course once I found that out I just got more annoyed.  

It's a story about man babies who won't take responsibility for their actions and the wreckage they leave in their wake. Seriously boys, man up.

Final Grade = D-

#TBRChallenge 2025: Snowdrops and Scandalbroth

The Book: Snowdrops and Scandalbroth by Barbara Metzger

The Particulars: Traditional Regency, Fawcett Crest, 1997, Out of print, eBook publication by Belgrave House 2010.

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: This one has been in my TBR for literal decades because of two words: Virgin. Hero.

The Review: For this month's optional theme, Previously, In Romance..., I decided to not only go Old School, but to go with a subgenre that no longer exists - Traditional Regency. For you young'uns, Trads were category length, Regency-set historicals often defined by the manners of the era and "just kisses" romances. They had a hearty following back in their day with numerous publishers having their own lines. By the early 2000s however we were in the final death throes and once Signet killed their line in 2006 it was pretty much over. But you can still find many of them floating around in digital reprints, and, of course, in all the places you can find used books.

I picked up Snowdrops and Scandalbroth, quite literally, decades ago because I am nothing if not trash for a virgin hero - and this story has one. What I didn't realize is that this turns out to be one virgin hero who does his damnedest to turn me off his brethren entirely. A more sanctimonious prig you'll never meet - despite the fact he has one really great scene where he talks about the common double standard between men and women being "pure" until the marriage bed. It's not enough to make up for how insufferable I generally found him.

Kathlyn Partland is in a bind. Her mother, gone for many years, was disowned by her blue-blooded family when she married Kathlyn's father, a poor tutor. He, in the fine tradition of Romancelandia Fathers, makes no arrangements for Kathlyn, financially or otherwise, so when he dies she's quite literally on her own. She manages to secure a job as a governess in London but her mail coach is quite delayed through a series of misadventures and when she finally arrives she finds out the family has given up on her, gone to the country and hired someone else.

Riding to her rescue is Courtney Choate, Viscount Chase, who can't just leave the damsel in distress when he spies her lost, carrying her own luggage, down a seedy London street. She's pretty much accosted in no time flat. Courtney is in a bind of his own. He was engaged, but unceremoniously dumped his betrothed after finding out she's had two lovers already. Our Courtney is very principled and having witnessed the pain his father's infidelities caused his mother has vowed to 1) wait until marriage and 2) to never, ever take a mistress. He has vowed to stay true to his future wife, whomever she turns out to be.  Of course the broken engagement gets tongues wagging, and soon Courtney's manliness and sexual preference is called into question (the author doesn't come out and say "everybody thinks he's queer" but it's definitely implied between the lines). Anyway, Courtney goes off to war, and despite coming back a hero with a bullet wound and gimpy leg, the rumors persist. 

We all can guess what happens next. Kathlyn is flat broke with no options. Courtney needs to convince the gossipmongers and the ton he likes girls. She puts up a token resistance but before you can say bingo-bango, she's going by an assumed name and masquerading as Courtney's mistress - for a new wardrobe and a pile of coins, of course.

This sounds pretty straight-forward but it's actually an Everything and the Kitchen Sink romance. It's a farce y'all. Not only do you have the Fake Mistress thing going on, there's also a jewel heist involved (remember Kathlyn's delayed mail coach?) which brings Bow Street calling, along with the dead thief's compatriots he swindled - and they all think that Kathlyn knows where the missing jewels are. There's also a misunderstanding thrown in - Kathlyn thinks Courtney needs a fake mistress to convince the ton he's "still a man" because she speculates the wartime bullet wound damaged his, uh, "little soldier." Courtney, of course, isn't forthcoming as to the why he needs the fake mistress subterfuge so speculation is all our girl has.

The cast soon bloats like a drunk on a 3-day bender to include future appearances and mentions of Courtney's former fiancée (hello, slut-shaming, followed by fat-shaming - because of course she married a decrepit old man after Courtney dumped her and put on some pounds), Courtney's former nanny, two rascally Lords he pals around with (well, sort of), two Bow Street Runners, three members of the jewel thief gang, the nannie's grandchildren, Kathlyn's loathsome aunt, Courtney's mother, and a partridge in a pear tree.

For the record, Trad Regencies are category length, and this one clocks in at a little over 200 pages. The author takes many writing short-cuts to trim down word count (a lot is mentioned but takes place off page), coupled with the farce and the large secondary cast means very little time is given to the actual romance. Which probably isn't a bad thing since what is on page largely didn't work for me. Courtney has one good scene where he talks about "purity" and the double-standard between men and women and why aren't men held to the same standards, yada yada yada - but otherwise he's entirely too smug and self-righteous for my tastes. There's one really good scene where Kathlyn fires both barrels at him - but otherwise there's just not enough here to make be buy into these two falling in love. A lot of what I would consider "courtship moments" take place off page.  The whole thing is entirely too overcrowded by the farcical comedy (Kathlyn gets kidnapped TWICE!) and the wide cast of secondary characters.  Basically folks what we have here is a screwball comedy set in Regency England and it just didn't work for me.

That said, I know there's a readership out there for farce and certainly it can work very well in a Trad Regency setting. However, Courtney nearly putting me off virgin heroes entirely (which I thought was basically impossible - who knew?) coupled with the strong Not Like Other Girls vibe to Kathlyn and the general overall writing of Courtney's former fiancée (deplorable) means that this is a Old School romance that just hasn't aged all that well.

Final Grade = D+

Note: It's not lost on me that I have referred to a book published in 1997 as "old school." Excuse me while I go crawl into my coffin...

Review: Tudor Christmas Tidings

 I have been in a dreadful reading slump. How dreadful? I started Tudor Christmas Tidings back in early November and finally finished it on December 29. That dreadful. Is it the book's fault? Not entirely. I mean it's not bad, but it also didn't help my situation at all either.

This anthology kicks off with the late Blythe Gifford's Christmas at Court. I have enjoyed several of Gifford's full-length historical romances, she really had a way of infusing history into her romances that I always appreciated.  Unfortunately the short format here does her no favors. This story is mostly political intrigue not given enough room to breathe with a teaspoon of romance that never takes off because I never felt invested in the couple either separately or together.

The story is set after the young princes "disappear" and Richard III is King. Lady Alice is our heroine and her family is working in concert with a rebellion to have Henry Tudor (future Henry VII) claim the throne by marrying Elizabeth of York. Part of the scheme involves Lady Alice becoming betrothed to Sir John Talbot.

That's pretty much it and I confess I couldn't figure out why the Alice-John marriage was so reliant on whether Henry married Elizabeth. Also the whole "romance" consists of Alice and John not sure if they can trust each other because they have to act like they're loyal to Richard, even though they're not, but they also can't tell the other that because what if the other one IS loyal to Richard. The short word count means neither the romance nor the political intrigue have room to grow and it comes off convoluted. 

Final Grade = D

Secrets of the Queen's Lady by Jenni Fletcher was by no means perfect, but after slogging through politics it was nice to get back to a story that was mainly romance, even though Anne of Cleves is the main secondary character.

Pippa is a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves who has since been divorced by Henry VIII and living quietly in the country. Landing on their doorstep is Kit, a diplomat, who is delivering a message that Henry wishes for Anne to join the court for the Christmas holiday.  Kit met Pippa years ago and was besotted, despite the fact that she was married. Now widowed, he sees an opening, but he's unaware that despite what everyone may think, Pippa's marriage was not a happy one. Her husband became emotionally abusive due to her in ability to get pregnant.  Needless to say Pippa has no desire to marry ever again, and besides - Kit is 7 years younger than she is, and even though he's not the heir, his political animal of an older brother is determined that Kit do his familial duty. Marry well, keep the future Mrs. pregnant and squirting out babies.

Kit's a rather enlightened hero for the times, and while his lack of concern about being disowned by his family raised an eyebrow, it helps that he's not a fan of court, Henry's tendency to discard wives, nor his brother's machinations. Our Kit wants a different sort of life. Still, during this period family and loyalty were kind of, well, everything. Pippa is ready to tar and feather Kit with the same brush as her husband - which I can understand better here than in other romances because a woman's ability to procreate was pretty much her sole reason for existing during this time period (and future time periods...). It wasn't perfect but it was quick, readable and heavy on the romance.

Final Grade = B-

The anthology ends with His Mistletoe Lady by Amanda McCabe, which is set during that period when Queen Mary was "pregnant" and newly-wed to King Philip II of Spain. Catherine Greaves' father is currently in the Tower of London for his part in the failed Wyatt Rebellion. Catherine's mother came over from Spain with the former Queen, Catherine of Aragon, so the plan is to head to court and hopefully a sympathetic Queen Mary will allow them to see her imprisoned father. The Queen is sympathetic, as is Don Diego de Vasquez, a visiting courtier from Spain who has been sent to help ferret out other plots against the Queen - and turns out that Catherine's father is a double agent. He's Diego's contact on the inside and feeding him information. Oh, and Catherine nor her mother have any clue about any of this. For all they know, their husband and father is a traitor.

Of course these two crazy kids start to fall in love despite the drama and intrigue surrounding them, and there's a little suspense at the end to carry us home to the happy ever after. The story works so long as you don't think about what's going to happen shortly after these events - but I'm convinced it all works out for Diego, Catherine and her parents in the end. One imagines that once they find out the Queen's pregnancy is a "phantom" one, they hightail it back to Spain to live on Diego's lands populated with orange and lemon groves.

Final Grade = B

The last two stories were pleasant enough, but the whole reading experience overall was very much a slog. Certainly this time of year is challenging for a lot of us, but I also think the overt political threads running through all these stories was just not where my mind wanted to go right now. I probably would have been better served reading some cotton candy holiday fluff instead of the political machinations and shenanigans of the Tudors.  Your mileage may vary.

Review: The Final Girl Support Group

I am not a horror movie fan - except for the Scream franchise. Mainly the early movies because they're tongue-in-cheek, have a Gen-X esthetic, and if Courtney Cox is playing a bitch, I. Am. THERE. Anyway, The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix was an extremely popular book in 2021 that has been languishing on my Kindle thanks to, yet again, me getting suckered in by a NetGalley promo email. I thought the premise sounded clever and that's how I got sucked into this nightmare that I should have DNF'ed but didn't, because damn my eyes, I had to see how it ended.

Final Girls are the ones who end up surviving at the end of a horror movie and in Hendrix's world, all horror movies are based on true-life events. The Final Girl world is small, and a group of them meet every month in Burbank, California with a therapist. However after years of living with the trauma and trying to work through it (with very mixed results) the group is splintering at the seams - and the only one who seems to care is Lynette Tarkington - who, if you get down to brass tacks - isn't really a Final Girl. Oh sure, she survived a massacre, but did so by playing dead - which is not the same thing. She did not actively stop a monster, she simply waited to be rescued. But she's in the club, so to speak, and is the only one who seems to care when one of their group misses the latest meeting. Turns out she missed the meeting because her monster came back and she's dead. 

What follows is Lynette running off half-cocked. The proverbial chicken with her head cut off while spouting conspiracy theories like a paranoid delusional. On one hand, Lynette is right - their group is in very real danger. The problem is she's half-crazed and wrong about so much else that nobody takes her seriously.  This is a woman who has turned her apartment into a bunker (OK, understandable), keeps a pepper plant as a pet (seriously, she names it), and thinks she's so smart because she's always one step ahead, planning escape routes, staying off the grid as much as possible - but of course her security and walls are breached in short order. 

The problem with this story is there's literally no one to root for. The secret to a good horror movie is that your Final Girl IS someone you can root for.  The ordinary, everyday girl who thwarts a monster. These characters all did that, but they all left a bad taste in my mouth. Hell, even in Scream III when Sidney Prescott is living off the grid, she's answering phones for a women's crisis hotline. The one character in this group you could potentially root for is the character you never meet on page because she's the first to get killed off. 

Hendrix also makes the choice to have many of the Final Girls in this story be survivors of events ripped straight from horror movies. I suspect this might have been done as a wink and nod to horror fans, but quite frankly (and this cannot be overstated) I found it lazy as hell.  There's Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween. I'm pretty sure the Gnome movie was a rip-off of Leprechaun, and yes, there's even a Sidney Prescott wannabe and Scream rip-off - which, hand to God, Hendrix called Stab in this book.  Yes, the same knock-off name they used in the Scream movie franchise when Neve Campbell's characters finds herself being played by Tori Spelling in the movie version. 

I should have DNF'ed this early but stuck with it mainly because I had to see how it all played out in the end - and shockingly enough, I did like the ending. Unfortunately the ride to that ending was tedious and exhausting and there was just nothing there that worked for me. My New Year's Resolution? Stop getting suckered in by NetGalley promo emails. 

Final Grade = D

Review: Ladykiller

As I've spent the better part of 2024 cleaning out neglected mystery/suspense ARCs from my Kindle, I have managed to learn one thing: I really need to stop getting sucked in by promotional NetGalley emails. Ladykiller by Katherine Wood is one of those debut novels that's not really a debut - the author having published three previous books under the name Katherine St. John. It came out in July, has a cover and blurb that screams beach read, and I'm nothing if not predictable. Of course I downloaded it, only to curse my one-click finger the minute I finished the final page.

Gia and Abby have been BFFs since childhood. Gia, a poor little rich girl with a distant father and mentally ill mother and Abby, the daughter of the cook. Gia's father, seeing the good influence that Abby could have on his impulsive daughter, pays for her schooling - an opportunity that Abby does not take for granted as it wasn't until this particular job that she and her mother were able to crawl their way out of poverty. Further bonding Gia and Abby together is a tragedy that occurred on a tiny Greek island (Gia's father owns a villa there - because of course he does) when they were 18, when a young man ends up dead. The incident was deemed as justifiable homicide and of course Gia goes on to publish a pseudo-memoir about the incident that gained her some notoriety, which has since faded into Where Are They Now? territory.

Then, Gia's father dies and ultimately leaves the bulk of his fortune to charity. Abby is a fledgling new attorney working 16-hour days while Gia continues to drift through her life until she falls head over heels in love with Garrett. They marry just a few short months after meeting and when Abby doesn't drop her life to fly to Europe to attend the quickie nuptials but also has the gall to say to Gia that she might want to slow down just a wee bit - the friends don't speak again for months. That is until Gia talks her into going on a bucket-list vacation to see the northern lights in Sweden. Abby is all set to say no again (work, work, work) until she finds out Gia's brother, Benny, is also coming. Naturally there's unrequited, complicated feelings there, but Abby shuffles some things around at work, digs out her passport, and hops a flight to Sweden.  Except once she and Benny arrive, there's no Gia. Benny was in Greece a month ago visiting Gia, Garrett and some new friends staying with them. Between the weird scene that Benny experienced on his visit and the fact they can't get ahold of Gia now? Yeah, they change plans to fly to Greece to find out what's going on.  Where is Gia?

The book is told in alternating points of view - Abby's and through a series of manuscript pages written by Gia that details her life in Greece with Garrett.  They're staying in the family villa for a few months, getting some renovations done, in preparation for selling the place to Gia's stepmother. Gia doesn't want to sell but she needs the money - apparently so does Garrett, who is in more financial trouble than he's letting on to his new wife. These manuscript pages eventually become the main clue in helping Benny and Abby find out what happened to Gia. 

Rich people behaving badly, Greece, and a load of secrets - this sounds like a perfect beach read. Except, unfortunately, it is not. It's really slow to get moving along.  It takes about half the book to really cook and by then you just want to scream at Gia for being such a trusting dumb bunny. You'd kind of expect Abby to be the moral center to take up the slack, except you'd be wrong. That incident that happened on the island when they were both 18 and a guy ends up dead?  Yeah, let's just Abby doesn't come off looking real good there and I'll leave it at that.

But things do eventually heat up and Lord helped me I got sucked in once it's clear that Gia is missing.  Unfortunately the whole thing is undone by my least favorite plot device in suspense novels and thrillers.

That's right folks, we have a "you as the reader decide" ambiguous ending. 

Like a "romance novel" without a happy ending - these need to be lit on fire and shot into the sun afterward for good measure.

What did our "bad guy" know and when did they know it? Is our "bad guy" Machiavellian or just a delusional narcissist? Did our "bad guy" have intent? 

No idea. Couldn't tell you. It's an ending without being an ending and I hate everyone here thanks for asking.

There's a reason I read genre fiction folks and ambiguous endings ain't it. If it wanted this kind of shit I'd spend a lot more of my leisure time reading general fiction. 

So a book I wasn't madly in love with but was easily a "it's OK, YMMV may vary" ends up sinking like a stone with that ending. Oh well, one more off my catch-up pile I guess?

Final Grade = D

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

#TBRChallenge 2024: A Rendezvous to Remember

The Book: A Rendezvous to Remember by Geri Krotow

Particulars: Contemporary romance, Harlequin Everlasting #20, 2007, Out of print, Available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: My print copy is brand new and unsigned but I'm fairly certain I must have picked this up in either a conference goodie room or a local RWA chapter event. That means it was a freebie and a category romance so of course it was in my TBR.

The Review: Everlasting originally started out as a mini-series within the sadly departed and still deeply mourned Harlequin SuperRomance line. Eventually Harlequin spun it off into it's own short-lived (about a year?) line where the marketing was "Every great love has a story to tell." That translated to non-traditional "historical" settings (mid-20th century in some cases) and present-day settings featuring older couples and plots that leaned in on second chance, marriage in trouble etc. I collected a few of these but it was never a line I was actively drawn to or mourned after Harlequin pulled the plug.

Melinda Thompson is a speech writer for a senator, now living in D.C., after her husband, Nick, is deployed for a second tour in Afghanistan, their marriage in the final death throes. She's upset he hasn't left the Army Reserves yet and that they've been unable to get pregnant. He's upset that she wants to chuck her teaching job to move to D.C. and write speeches for the senator. They haven't been speaking, Nick being overseas and Melinda dealing with a demanding job and the recent death of her beloved grandmother, who essentially raised her. Well now Melinda is back home in Buffalo, New York - the senator grudgingly allowing her two weeks off so she can look in on Grandpa Jack. What Melinda didn't expect was to walk into her own house, the one she used to share with Nick, to discover he too is back in town.

When Melinda goes to check on Grandpa Jack he gives her two journals, one belonging to him and one belonging to her grandmother - both written during and immediately after World War II.  Jack implores Melinda to read them right away, it was her grandmother's wish - which Melinda, of course, does. Melinda always knew her grandparents met during the war - what she didn't know was that her beloved grandmother was a member of the Belgian Resistance, that her grandfather worked for British Intelligence, and Jack was not Grammy's first husband....

The story is told in dual timelines, present day Buffalo and through the journal entries of Jack's and Grammy Esmèe's journals. There's a good, compelling story here with what should be high stakes conflict. Unfortunately it's wasted on a present day couple who were generally terrible and the poor execution of the World War II storyline told through journal entries.

Here's the problem with the journal entries: It's tell, tell, tell. A more elegant way to put this is to steal from Miss Bates who recently wrote in a review for a completely different book, that that writer "recounts without telling at the reader." Folks, what we have in A Rendezvous to Remember is the opposite. It's all tell, no show. And because it's all tell and no show I have less than zero investment in either couple or their conflict. I should have been on the edge of my seat reading about Esmèe's work with the Belgian Resistance, her first marriage to a vilely abusive husband, of Jack's dangerous work behind enemy lines and his eventual time served in a horrid POW camp.  I've been more riveted reading dry-as-dust nonfiction treatises.

The present day storyline doesn't help matters. Nick has lost the lower half of his left leg to an IED explosion but is hiding that (somehow?!) from Melinda because he doesn't want her to come back to him out of pity. I realize that there have been amazing advancements in prosthetics but really?! He had served her with divorce papers but she still didn't find out about his injury? Either from his family or the Army? There's not a dashed off mention in the story that she was removed as his next of kin notification so how?!  Granted, I don't know much about prosthetics but this one strained for me. I mean, maybe it's possible but I wasn't buying it - which still makes it a problem. I wasn't convinced that she just wouldn't notice something like that.

Original cover

Before you think Melinda is the bad guy here, not supporting Nick's    military service and just running off to D.C. - Nick is no prize either. He doesn't understand why she'd want to take that job for the senator anyway when she could stay in Buffalo and keep being a teacher, no matter she obviously isn't feeling challenged or fulfilled by this career path.  Then he implies that she's only taking this job because her biological clock is ticking and they haven't been able to get pregnant. The vibe I got from him was that a wife with any ambition that doesn't involve staying where he wants to stay, doing what he wants to do, is an issue for him.

Great, I hate both of them. She's selfish and whiny and he's an ass.

Of course in the end it's all right as rain. Melinda gets through the journals. Her and Nick find their way back to each other and we get an epilogue where she squirts out a kid at age 41.  There's no confirmation (!!!) but presumably she's given up her high-pressured demanding job for the senator and is back in Buffalo playing happy homemaker.  Or maybe she went back to teaching. Whatever. There's several mentions in the book that she wanted "more," wanted to "escape" Buffalo, and it's a big factor on why their marriage hit the skids in the first place but in the final chapter nothing is confirmed. I'm assuming she quit the senator and moved back to Nick and Buffalo because Nick mentions he wants to leave behind accounting and open his own landscaping / garden center business. 

Besides hating both Melinda and Nick (which I guess means they maybe deserve each other? Hey, maybe this book does work?) the World War II storyline isn't half-bad but there's absolutely no juice behind it. It's like a cake you take out of the oven too soon. The edges are close to done but you still have raw batter in the center.  It's a quick read and I got a kick out of the Buffalo setting (having lived there in my late teens / early 20s) but that's really about it. Oh well, one more off the pile.

Final Grade = D+

Mini-Reviews: Hollywood Sleaze And Mermaids

Hey y'all, I realize this blog has been pretty much a Dead Zone, but I have not been reading. Stress, no spoons, and oh look the Olympics are on! The good news is that I'm working an upcoming author event for a former employer and I have homework reading to do, so hopefully that will kick my butt in gear. In the meantime, here's two recent mystery/suspense reads that I got through on audiobook.  One a success and one that I was glad to be done with.

L.A. Burning by D.C. Taylor was an impulse download back in 2022 and this one started out like a house on fire. There is nothing that will hook me faster in a suspense novel quite like Los Angeles sleaze, and this book ups the ante by giving me a dynamite heroine.

Cody Bonner is the daughter of a celebrated actress, turned LA street kid, turned addict, turned bank robber. It's those last two that land her in prison at the tender age of twenty. At the start of our story she's leaving prison with one thing on her mind, find the scum responsible for her twin sister's murder. A year ago Julie's body was found on a Malibu beach and to find her killer Cody has to go back into her mother's world of Hollywood glitz, power brokers, high priced hookers misogynistic men with violent tendencies, and old high school friends swimming with the sharks. 

The world-building is great and the heroine even better (an excon bank robber!).  When the author works this as a amateur sleuth story featuring a street savvy heroine, I was hooked.  But then he chooses to morph it into a thriller, with Cody planning to murder the man she feels is responsible for Julie's death - and it kind of took the shine off a bit more me. On top of that, while the ending is action packed and very exciting, the resolution to the mystery is a bit of a no brainer.  The minute all the players were introduced I immediately pegged who was swimming up to their eyeballs in muck. 

That said, even though the mystery wasn't a brain-teaser, and I wasn't in love with the thriller aspects, this still was an enjoyable read for me.  L.A. sleaze as a setting for suspense novels is catnip for me and this delivered.  I also think this would make a dynamite series, but alas, so far this is a one off. 

Grade = B

Back in 2020 I read the first book in the Enchanted Bay cozy mystery series by Esme Addison and surprisingly liked it. Yes, even with the paranormal elements. So when the second book, A Hex for Danger came out, I proceeded to add it to my TBR pile, where it's been sitting for the past three years. 

Picking up where the last book left off, Alexsandra Daniels has decided to stay in Bellamy Bay to be close to the family she's just recently reconnected with - her Aunt Lidia who runs the local apothecary, and her two cousins, Minka and Kamila. Alex is helping to run the family business and continuing to get used to the idea of her magical heritage, being a descendant of the Mermaid of Warsaw. Alex has not only just learned of her own magical abilities but that the world is full of magicals hiding in plain sight, even right there in small town Bellamy Bay.

The town is gearing up for their annual Mermaid Festival and a local artist breezes into town to paint a mural.  This artist seems to know Alex's secret but before she can figure out how to approach that problem the artist ends up murdered. Alex's boyfriend, the local police chief, zeroes in on one of her distant cousins who has a ton of motive and opportunity. But Alex just KNOWS that Celeste is innocent! Why is Jack always arresting her family members!  There's nothing for it, she's going to prove Celeste is innocent and find the real murderer.

Is Jack a patronizing know-it-all?  Yes. But does that make Celeste look any less guilty? No. And Alex's argument is basically "She couldn't have committed the murder, she's my cousin!"  Girl, every killer is someone's son, daughter, cousin, brother, sister, mother or father. Sit down and let the grown-ups do their job. The paranormal elements, while unique and interesting in the first book, come off like twee short-cuts to mystery solving here and the plot soon gets convoluted with corporate espionage, bad guys on the hunt for lost magical weaponry, and magicals descended from dragons 🙄

But the worst of it is what I feared would happen after finishing the first book. Yep, the author tries to shoehorn in a love triangle. Never mind the other guy, a magical, has a Shady AF family, is Shady AF himself, and used black magic that very well could have killed Alex in the first book.  Look, Jack is annoying but this other guy manages to be worse.  He's the rich guy who fancies himself the altruistic do-gooder but he's actually clueless with evil tendencies. 

This was published in 2021 and a Book 3 has yet to materialize, so that doesn't instill much hope. No matter, this is where I get off regardless.

Final Grade = D

Review: When No One Is Watching

For easily the last 5+ years My Man and I have had the same conversation when a new critical darling TV series or movie drops that everyone is raving about. Wendy:"People really seem to be raving about that new drama XYZ."  My Man: "Yeah, not interested. Another show/movie about terrible people being terrible."

This conversation, on an endless loop, is what ran through my mind while listening to When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole. This book did not work for me on many, many levels. 

All The Spoilers! Seriously, ALL OF THEM!

Sydney Green was born and raised in Brooklyn and is back home after her marriage in Seattle imploded. Besides the stress of being crushed under the weight of her mother's medical debt, her neighborhood is changing and not for the better.  Gentrification has come calling in the form of For Sale signs, greedy real estate agents, and neighbors Sydney has known her entire life packing up and just leaving. Without saying good-bye. It's like the Brooklyn equivalent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. One minute they're there, the next minute they're gone and nobody really knows where to.

In her former neighbors' place is a pack of clownish racist white people, all except for Theo who has moved in across the street from Sydney with his girlfriend Uber-Karen.  Theo's currently unemployed and what Sydney doesn't know is that he and Uber-Karen have split up. They're no longer a couple but they bought the house together - and he's now relegated to the attic with no air conditioning or working bathroom. 

Eventually Sydney decides to create her own "walking tour" of her neighborhood that she'll debut during their annual block party and the person who was supposed to help her with research has "gone on vacation down south." That's when Theo volunteers for the job and Sydney, not wanting to look petty AF in front of her remaining neighbors, begrudgingly accepts his help.

Gentrification as a thriller boogeyman is certainly inspired, but the execution of this story is not good. The first 50% has about as much thrills as plain oatmeal. Sydney's problems, Theo's problems, Racist White People Being Racist - it's all about as thrilling as a lit fic novel.  Everybody is frankly annoying and terrible in this book - except for Theo (at first), which is also a problem.

You know what raises my hackles the fastest in romance novels? Not Like Other Girls nonsense.  Theo is Not Like Other White People nonsense.  Quite literally every other white person in this book is a vile sack of human garbage. Every. Single. One. Now, I could see some readers thinking this is just helping to balance the scales. How many thousands of books have been published over the years where all the brown and black people are portrayed as stereotypes or relegated to villainous roles?  A lot. You know what? I got problems with those too. You know what's great? Nuance. Layers. And the villains in this story have all the nuance and subtlety of a jackhammer pounding into your skull. 

The thriller subtitle finally shows up in the second half. By this time we know Theo is actually just like other white people - turns out he's a small time grifter / drug dealer (and not a very good one since his grifting and falsifying his job application are why he's currently unemployed). Sydney's Mom turns out to be dead (which I saw coming) but surprise - Sydney buried her in the community garden so nobody would find out she's dead thereby causing Sydney to lose the brownstone to the predatory lender. Sydney's BFF turns out to be a sack of crap who sold Sydney's Mom out and why she fell in with a predatory lender in the first place - and yet, we're supposed to mourn her loss when her dead body turns up in a hidden stairwell? Sure Jan.

And all the missing neighbors? Snatched off the street and put in the "abandoned" hospital so a pharmaceutical company can steal their houses and run experiments on them. Theo and Sydney go in guns blazing, bodies start dropping and SURPISE! Global Conspiracy!  The worst part about all of this?  There's no actual ending.  The people they rescue? What happens to them?  No idea. Does Mr. Perkins get his house and dog back? No idea! But hey, Global Conspiracy! A Cover Up!  Sydney and Theo are safe!  

Ugh.

Seriously, none of this worked for me. Terrible people being terrible. Pacing that's a slog.  Clownish, one-dimensional villains. And two "heroes" who, quite frankly, I didn't like all that much. I can't tell you how close I came to DNF'ing this and honestly, I should have. 

Final Grade = D+

Ranty McRanty Review: That Dangerous Energy

I picked up That Dangerous Energy by Aya de Leon based on my enjoyment of one of her previous books, A Spy in the Struggle. Like that previous reading experience, this more recent release is a genre bender, blending social commentary in a romantic thriller format. Unfortunately unlike the previous book I found this one extremely heavy-handed with all the subtlety of a chainsaw.

Morgan Faraday is grabbing every opportunity she can to pull herself up out of a family legacy of abusive partners, young single motherhood, and poverty. If that means figuring out ways to keep her Oil Tycoon Billionaire Boyfriend happy (OK, his name is Sebastian Reid), by God she'll do it. She's been getting good advice from her BFF who is working her way towards early retirement by being a Sugar Baby, and Sebastian seems hooked.  Then she meets Kevin Templeton, who from here on out I will call Crunchy Granola Climate Change Activist.

Crunchy Granola Climate Change Activist and Morgan spark right away, but she dismisses the attraction because she's hoping to keep her hooks into Oil Tycoon Billionaire Boyfriend. Then Crunchy Granola finds out that Morgan is dating Oil Tycoon, gets all butthurt and tells her her hoped-to-be-future hubby is EEEEEEEVVVVVIIIIIIIILLLLLLL!

So what makes Oil Tycoon Billionaire Boyfriend evil exactly? Well...

1. He inherited and is running his father's oil company
2. Greenwashing (I guess? His investments in wind and solar are legit so....)
3. Lobbying

Wow. So evil. Also, not illegal. 

Eventually some slapdash racketeering charges are thrown in to give readers some ultra-cheesy and laughably bad courtroom drama at the end, but up until the 90% mark I just wasn't seeing it. As far as thriller villains go this guy doesn't even make the Time 100.

Because a hot man has come into her life, and at his urging (so gross), the heroine decides to spy on Oil Tycoon Billionaire Boyfriend because golly, she believes in the cause! Power to the people y'all! That is until she has a fight with Oil Tycoon Billionaire Boyfriend, he leaks out some tears and she inexplicably has a change of heart and thinks she can "change him." Like, WUT?!  He holds all the power in your relationship and you can change him? Sure Jan.

Look, I knew what I was getting when I picked up this book. The author infuses her books with current social commentary (Climate Change, Black Lives Matter, etc. etc.) but a feminist manifesto this most certainly is not. What we have here is a heroine whose sole identity is wrapped up around men - whether it's bagging the Oil Tycoon Billionaire Boyfriend to escape the poverty cycle or Crunchy Granola Climate Change Activist because he sure is dreamy and she hits the land speed record for believing in his cause. On top of this? The social commentary is akin to an Acme anvil falling from the sky and drilling Wile E. Coyote into the desert sand. It's a bunch of buzzwords and slogans with no real meat behind them. It's all Fossil Fuels Bad, Climate Change Bad. There's no depth. There's no nuance. It's like getting beat upside the head with a baseball bat for nearly 300 pages.

Then, predictably, the author comes for the romance genre and I officially lost the last of my f*cks. Hand to God, as we're barreling towards the conclusion Crunchy Granola Climate Change Activist's lawyer takes a jab at romance novels for romanticizing billionaires and whitewashing how terrible real-life billionaires are. Look, does the romance genre romanticize billionaires? Yes. Do I know a single romance reader who confuses Bezos, Musk or Facebook Boy for romance novel heroes? Absolutely not. Maybe give women a little credit for having the ability to separate fantasy from reality.  Although I've already established how decidedly unfeminist this book is so....

(Seriously, I'll read a billionaire romance hero all day long but am just as likely to punch one in the face if the opportunity ever presents itself.  I contain multitudes.)

Other than chuckling a couple of times at some truth bombs there was nothing here that worked for me. I walked into this book knowing I was going to get political commentary and that said commentary would lean fairly far to the left. That's not my problem (at all) with this book. It's the lack of nuance. It's the lack of depth. It's a heroine who I frankly don't like all that much because she lacks an identity outside of the men in her life. The author tries to combat this by including flashbacks to her family's history and including the heroine's artistic passion for textile art (quilting). Spoiler Alert: It's nowhere near enough. 

Final Grade = D-

Review: The New Girl

I realize that Jesse Q. Sutanto is a bigger household name with her Aunties and Vera Wong series of adult mysteries, but I discovered her through her bang-up YA suspense thriller, The Obsession.  That book ended up being one of my favorite reads of 2021, and I was excited to hear that the author was going to continue on with a series, of which The New Girl is book 2 and yes, I'm just getting around to it.

Here's the thing, it's not really a sequel.  It's set in the same universe and is more of a prequel. A few characters from The Obsession are here (Sophie, Logan, the cops...) but not much else. This can be read purely as a stand-alone.

Lia Setiawan is a mid-distance running track star and thinks her ship has come in when she wins a full-ride scholarship to the prestigious private school, Draycott Academy.  However it doesn't take long for Lia to realize she's in way over her head.  She's quite literally getting a tour of campus when she witnesses a girl getting hauled out of a building by security, kicking and screaming.  And the rest of the students? Don't even bat an eye.  Speaking of, the student body is full of rich kids with their designer clothes (and designer drugs) and she quickly runs afoul of mean girl, Mandy, who Lia outperforms on the track, getting Mandy kicked off the varsity squad. Lia quickly becomes a hot topic on the school's anonymous social media app, Draycott Dirt - and naturally everything being said about her is unflattering. 

That's not the worst of it though - that's reserved for Mr. Werner, Lia's English teacher. Lia quickly runs into problems with him as he starts failing her right out the gate.  Then Lia stumbles across a major scandal - it seems Mr. Werner is selling good grades to the highest bidder.  And Lia, she of the single Mom, one-bedroom apartment, on a scholarship, does not stand a chance.  Failing Mr. Werner's class puts her track scholarship in jeopardy and, in turn, puts Lia's hopes for a college education in jeopardy.  The only thing going her way?  Danny, the cutest boy in school seems to have taken a shine to her. But even that gets complicated thanks to his racist parents and the fact that Mr. Werner is his uncle by marriage.

It's a lot. And eventually this toxic stew gets to bubbling and the bodies start dropping - with Lia right in the crosshairs.

A plus of this story is that the heroine acts and reacts like one would think a teenager would when dropped into extraordinary circumstances.  The downside? The heroine acts and reacts like one would think a teenager would when dropped into extraordinary circumstances.  Folks, this is a non-stop cavalcade of bad decisions from our heroine, start to finish.  Even worse? The reader is stuck in her reactionary, frantic brain for the entire story as she continues to make one bad decision after another. 

It is, and this cannot be overstated, exhausting. How this dumb bunny manages to skate out of serious trouble in the end beggars belief. Look, different strokes and all that, but frantic characters running off half-cocked making terrible decisions does not make for compelling reading. It just doesn't. Go ahead, fight me.

The other major problem with this book? Whoever at the publisher approved the back cover blurb has hopefully been fired since this book came out in 2022. There's a huge, honkin' spoiler in the back cover copy.  Look, I may not know much, but I do know that if the author doesn't reveal something until the final chapters? That's a spoiler. Yes, yes - I saw it coming at a certain point - but I would have seen it coming a lot sooner had I decided to read the back cover blurb before I started the book (which, hello, a lot of readers do). 

In the end this just didn't work all that well for me. I tore through it mainly to be done with it and see how the heck the author was going to get her Idiot Heroine Of Bad Decisions out of trouble, but that was the only reason. Too frantic, too frenetic, just too too.  As much as I loved the first book, this one might have killed my interest in the dysfunctionally corrupt Draycott Academy.

Final Grade = D

Review: Never Saw Me Coming

My project of getting through neglected mystery / suspense ARCs by checking out audiobook copies via work continues, this time with Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian. I think this is another one I may have downloaded thanks to a NetGalley promo email and just like A Likeable Woman, y'all I've been burned.  This is a book that's long on clever premise and not much else. 

Chloe Sevre looks like the picture perfect college freshman. Young, pretty, and an honors student to boot. She also happens to be a diagnosed psychopath. Chloe knew one thing when she started to apply to colleges, she had to be in the Washington D.C. area. She ended up at her first choice, John Adams University, receiving a full ride to take part in a unusual clinical study on psychopathy - Chloe is one of seven students taking part and none of them know who is who.  But the study, the free ride, those are incidental.  No, Chloe is at John Adams because that's where Will Bachman goes to school, and Chloe plans to kill Will Bachman in 60 days.

Chloe gets to work right away, but her plan runs off the rails almost immediately when a student is found dead in the psychology department. A student who was taking part in the psychopathy study. Then a second student ends up dead, another one taking part in the study, and it becomes apparent that someone is hunting down the psychopaths.

Into Chloe's orbit enters Charles, another psychopath running for student body president and Andre, also taking part in the study but turns out - he's a faker. Andre's no more a psychopath than I am the Queen of England, but he saw his opportunity for free college and took a shot.  In between her plans to kill Will, Chloe now is "working" with Charles and Andre to find out who is killing the psychopaths because obviously, well she's in danger. But "working" together for this girl is one part manipulation and two parts staying ahead of the curve.

See, clever premise. So what's the problem? Well for a book about someone murdering psychopaths there's an appalling lack of tension in this book. Like none. No edge of my seat. No OMG I have to find out what happens next! Nothing. In fact I really only kept reading because I kept thinking I was going to get some sort of "twist."  More on that in a minute actually....

The story is also told from multiple points of view and honestly? It's a big reason for the lack of tension. Chloe, Andre and Charles. That's all we need. Do we need chapters told from the lead shrink's perspective? From one of his grad assistants? From one of the detectives? No. No, we do not. In fact they don't really add anything other than page count.

But the real issue I disliked this book? Chloe. Thanks, I hate her. And hating her has nothing to do with the fact that she's a psychopath. No, she's one of those characters who thinks she's smarter than she actually is. Lord is this girl a dumb bunny. She bungles her plan with Will early on, she manages to fall prey to another psychopath in the study (who hacks her webcam) and, most importantly, she can't tell Andre is faking it.  For that matter, neither can the shrink or the grad assistants running the study - which who the hell gave this guy a ton of grant money?  God bless America.  

The whole thing lumbers along, Wendy keeps waiting for the twist, and then we get the frenetic ending that ugh - makes me regret not DNF'ing this stupid book.  Our twist here is no twist at all (I saw it coming the minute the plot element was introduced) and is straight up schlocky B horror movie - or like a romantic suspense novel from the 1990s.  And because I'm so annoyed, I'm spoiling it: 

Spoiler: One word. Twins. And of course the eviiiiilllll twin is the one who seems normal.

I've been reading suspense novels since I hit puberty, so it's possible I'm being entirely too cranky about this one. This debut was nominated for an Edgar Award (Best First Novel) and was named a New York Times Best Thriller of 2021. But honestly, who ya gonna believe? Them or your Auntie Wendy, who's always looking out for you.

Oh what might have been with this clever premise if Andre had been the one driving the bus. Missed opportunities y'all. Missed opportunities. 

Final Grade = D

Ranty McRant Review: A Likeable Woman

Yes, I'm still making my way through some long neglected ARCs and I can tell you exactly why I downloaded A Likeable Woman by May Cobb last year. Like a fool I got sucked in by a promo email sent by NetGalley.  The fact that it was slated for July 2023 and the back cover blurb read like a primetime soap opera - I'm only human. I took a flier on what could have panned out to be sudsy, compulsive beach read.  Let's just say it was like getting stung by a jellyfish.

I can't talk about how much of a Hate Read this one turned into without spoiling damn near everything - so that's your warning.

Ranty Spoilery McSpoilerkins Ahoy!

When Kira was a young teenager her mother "committed suicide." Everyone in their small, affluent Texas town had no trouble believing that Sadie killed herself. She was flighty, artistic, prone to dramatics, and behind closed doors everybody knew Kira's father was an abusive asshole. The problem is, Kira has never believed it. She worshipped her mother. Was closer to her than anyone else. Mom wouldn't kill herself and leave her. She just wouldn't. Kira is so vehement that eventually her rich-with-oil-money Granny packs her off to boarding school.  Now living in Los Angeles, Kira hasn't been back to East Texas since and is all set to ignore the invitation to her childhood frenemy's vow renewal ceremony when Granny calls. She has something that belonged to Kira's mother, something that Kira needs to see - something that has convinced Granny that maybe Kira has been right all this time.  Sadie did not kill herself.

The plan is for it to be a quick trip. Get in, get what Granny has of her mother's, get out. Kira is stuck in her own life, marking time. She needs closure to move on and is hopeful she'll finally find some.  Meeting her at the airport is her first and only twu wuv Jack.  Also Jack's booze-swilling, pill-popping bitch of a wife and their young autistic son.  Jack, still as handsome as ever. Jack practically a goddamn father of the year.  Jack, whose wife is a bitch, but still - HIS WIFE!  This guy's life is messy as shit but that doesn't stop Kira from having to change her panties around him the whole damn book.

Folks, I thought this behavior was exceedingly gross and Kira as a character never recovers from it. I'm supposed to root for this person on their quest for the truth? Really?!

Turns out what Granny has is a book that Sadie was writing. A book that was mostly confessional diary written directly to Kira - but that somehow Sadie thought someone might publish someday.  Seriously, I hate everybody.  Anyway, what follows is Kira not dropping her life to read the whole damn book in one sitting because then this book would be 100 pages long and we flit back and forth between Kira being the dumbest dumb bunny ever and chapters told from Sadie's messy and equally dumb bunny point of view.  

The apple definitely did not fall far from the tree folks.

The readership of this blog is primarily a romance genre related one - so y'all will know what I'm talking about when you read a story featuring a heroine who is a young woman, but her pop culture references feel way too old.  The author never comes out and gives the ages her characters definitively but they feel and act like Millennials. Probably somewhere in their 30s.  The problem here is the references are very Gen X.  I'm firmly Gen X and I barely remember 8-Track car stereos. But Kira remembers her parents' car having one. She also had a poster of REM's Green album on her wall (1988) and her high school senior sister pulls on acid-washed jean shorts in one flashback scene. And these are just a few of things that didn't read "right" to me.  Even if I'm being generous - it would put Kira and all her frenemies looking down a very short hill barreling towards 50.  This book was published in 2023. It reads more like something that would have made sense to be published in the early 2000s.

Something like this though, I could look past if I'm enjoying the story and characters. Reader, the only reason I didn't DNF this book is because, Lord help me, I had to find out who killed Dumb Bunny Kira's Dumb Bunny Mommy.  And Kira, besides not reading the damn "book" in one sitting (which the author tap-dances around because golly, there's all these events planned surrounding the insipid vow renewal), is so slow on the uptake you just want to scream in her face after a while.  She starts suspecting people whose motives are weak as hell (if they have one at all).  There's a secondary character who OBVIOUSLY wants to tell her something IMPORTANT but Jack and small town gossip tell her the guy is bad news. 

Take a wild guess how that turns out?

But the thing that really got to me?  The unresolved feelings for Jack and the fact the author damn near writes it like I'm supposed to believe this is some great unrequited love.  Look, is his wife a bitch?  Yes. But, and maybe this is my old age talking, I felt sorry for her. Her son is autistic, and she's obviously still struggling with that diagnosis (this is only natural IMHO).  On top of that her husband is goddamn Mary Poppins ("practically perfect in every way") and now the girl he never forgot from high school is in the back seat of their rental car.  So yeah, Melanie may be a bitch, but maybe there's a reason for that.

It ends exactly the way I expected it would, with the Bad Guy being exactly who I expected it to be. Is this a soap opera? Yes. It ticks a ton of those boxes, and I honestly probably could have gotten behind this more if 1) the plotting was better and 2) Kira wasn't so blindingly stupid and distasteful.  It became a hate read very early on and stayed that way to the bitter end.  Damn my black soul for wanting the whodunit confirmed so I can lord over this terrible book that it didn't fool me.

Although it fooled me into finishing it - so maybe I shouldn't gloat.

Final Grade = D-

#TBRChallenge 2023: The Night Before Christmas

The Book: The Night Before Christmas by Brenda Novak, Day Leclaire, and Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance anthology, Harlequin, 2009, Out of print, not available in digital (but at one point it was so check your digital pile and/or local libraries).

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Molly O'Keefe is an autobuy. Her story won the RITA for Best Novella in 2010 and it's a Harlequin Christmas anthology. I am but a mere mortal.

The Review: Once again I waited until the 11th hour to pick out my TBR Challenge book, let alone actually start to read it - so I did what I always seem to do - I went diving into my cupboard of Harlequins and hit upon this anthology.  And like most anthologies, it was a wildly uneven affair.

"On a Snowy Christmas" by Brenda Novak is distasteful and insulting, especially when you account for the fact this story was published in 2009 (I realize that was 14 years ago - but hear me out...).  Spoilers Abound!

Adelaide and Maxim are political rivals, facing off in the primary. Maxim took over the Senate seat after Adelaide's husband died in a car accident.  Maxim has since strayed from her husband on matters of politics and also implied not nice things about him - which makes Adelaide mad enough to take a run at the Senate seat. She's already garnered support from several wealthy donors which has knocked Maxim back on his heels, but he's not out yet. They're both on the same charter flight down to Los Angeles for a political engagement with the governor when they crash in the Sierra Nevadas. In the middle of a snow storm. One thing, naturally, leads to another.

There's probably a decent story here somewhere but the whole politics thing already had me turning up my nose.  Add to that Adelaide behaves a bit like a dumb bunny, and the Big Secret about her dead husband that Maxim has uncovered, but chosen not to use in the campaign against her?  Well, there's corruption - which would frankly be enough - but no, Dead Hubby was also having an affair with an 18-year-old intern.  A male intern. To be fair, the fact that he was having an affair with a teenager is portrayed as distasteful.  Unfortunately just as much distaste is spent on the fact that it was a gay affair. And folks, I'm just too tired and too old to read this bullshit in 2023 and know it was published in 2009.  This isn't a Harlequin Presents from 1985 (not that it wouldn't have been annoying back then either - but you catch my drift).  Oh, and did I mention Dead Hubby was infertile but bumping uglies with Maxim two times results in Adelaide getting knocked up?  And the first time they have sex she pretends it's her dead husband and Maxim knows she's pretending he's her dead husband? Ugh. I wanted to light this on fire.

Final Grade = D-

"The Christmas Baby" by Day Leclaire starts out distasteful but the author pulls it off in the end by leaning in on the farce. Carrie is having the worst Christmas Eve ever. She woke up late for work, got caught in terrible weather on her commute, showed up to work only to be laid off, and came home to her crummy apartment to receive an eviction notice. Then, her ex, Chaz, has the nerve to show up. She ended things with him when it became apparent that he was a workaholic who would continue to push off making any sort of serious commitment to her because it was never going to be "the right time."  Well, Chaz may want her back, but she's not convinced he's changed. She kicks him out only to have the next knock on her door be an elderly lady leaving a Christmas gift a Chaz. A large box with, wait for it, a baby inside. 

So yes, distasteful. Instead what ensues is a bit of comedy of errors between Chaz, Carrie, Chaz's brother, the brother's former girlfriend and Chaz's estranged parents.  Misunderstandings and shenanigans ensue. The whole thing feels very cinematic and would make a decent Hallmark-style rom-com. Naturally, in the end, all the couples are back together - although I'm nowhere near convinced that any of the male leopards have truly changed their spots because....novella length.  Not my thing, but I can recognize this was well-executed.

Final Grade = C

"The Christmas Eve Promise" by Molly O'Keefe is the gem of the bunch and worth tracking this anthology down at a library or used bookstore.  Merrieta "Merri" Monroe is back home helping out at the family diner and she feels like an utter failure. No job, no more fiancé, and she's 3 months pregnant. A teeny little fact that nobody but her and her rat-fink ex know about. Also back in town?  Gavin McDonnell, the boy she made herself a fool over and the boy she done wrong back in high school.  He and his brother now run a shop repairing and building motorcycles. Gavin is divorced and his teenage son has just come to live with him.  Lucas has become a regular at the diner, him and Merri get roped into helping with the town's annual Christmas celebration, and they both end up spilling their secrets to each other. They agree - she has to tell her parents about the baby and he has to be honest with his Dad by Christmas Eve. 

This was a cozy, small town read with just enough angst to keep the plot humming along. O'Keefe typically does well writing younger characters, and Lucas is a gem. A scared 14-year-old boy at a crossroads, already turned out by his mother and afraid his dad will do the same. Merri is the woman who had big ideas on how her life would turn out and naturally it's been one curveball after another. She needs to learn to be open, honest and to stop running away from happiness as it's smacking her in the face. 

I'll be honest, the romance is a little light here. The author leans hard into the fact that the couple has a past history to help carry us to the finish line, but I could have used a couple more chapters, a few more pages, to beef up this aspect of the story.  But it's a heartwarming story that, frankly, washes away most of the distaste left in my mouth over the Novak entry.  This was fairly early on in O'Keefe's career with Harlequin and you can see all the groundwork here for the superior Harlequin SuperRomances she published while writing for them.

Final Grade = B+

So yes, a fairly typical anthology reading experience. A story I wanted to light on fire, a well-executed story that just wasn't for me, and a superior story that made the experience worthwhile. Added bonus that the best story was also the last in the bunch - meaning I ended the 2023 TBR Challenge on an upbeat note.

Mini-Reviews: Dream Factories

I like traveling...once I get where I want to go.  It's the getting there that tends to be annoying, although the one solid benefit I've discovered over the years to getting on an airplane is Airplane Reading.  I am a champ for reading on airplanes and my recent trip back to the American Midwest (work conference) gave me the opportunity to plow through some books.  That means it's time for another round of Wendy's patented mini-reviews.

The Bull Rider's Cowgirl by April Arrington was a completely random pick off my Kindle.  The thought process went something like this "I haven't read a Harlequin American in a while..." Albeit this book was released under the rebranded "Western Romance" banner that Harlequin put out to pasture in 2018.

This is the third book in the Men of Raintree Ranch series and while past characters do show up, it stands alone just fine.  Colt Mead is a bull rider clawing his way up the ranks and the playboy of the circuit.  Jen Taylor is a barrel racer with ambitions as wide as the Grand Canyon, determined to make something of herself and show all those naysayers back home in the nothing small town where she grew up.  She's mightily attracted to Colt, they shared a kiss, and naturally Colt pushed her away - because while's he's attracted to her that's what guys like this always seem to do.  This incident has made Jen prickly around him, until a tragedy brings them together.

Colt's father and stepmother die in an accident leaving him the guardian to his 9-year-old half-sister.  Jen can't say no to a friend, so takes time away from the circuit to help Colt out in his hour of need.  As Colt reconnects with his sister he realizes that his drifter lifestyle traveling the rodeo circuit ain't all it's cracked up to be.

The world-building is solid and it was an interesting spin to have Colt come from a cold fish wealthy family who chucked it all to be his own man (his father is a piece of work, naturally). Jen is extremely relatable, a wrong-side of the tracks kind of girl that everyone wrote off.  She's going to work hard, bust her butt, and show all those jerks back home!  And Arrington, bless her heart, writes the child characters in the book like kids. They read authentic and not like plot moppets.

Here's the problem, it's one of those books where the heroine chucks aside all her dreams once the hero tells her he loves her.  That's not an automatic nope for me, but I have caveats: 1) It has to be the heroine's idea and 2) The hero damn sure better recognize exactly what the heroine is giving up.  And that doesn't happen here.  Colt's all like is that what you really want, stay me with me, blah blah blah.  To say he needles Jen is overstating it, but he pleads and protests a little too much.  And of course all those dreams the heroine had at the start of the story?  Suddenly don't seem to matter so much anymore.  Sigh.

Final Grade = D+

I love the way Loren D. Estleman writes about the city of Detroit, one of the great all-time settings for crime novels. City Walls is the 31st book to feature Amos Walker, world-weary old-school PI and it delivered exactly what I wanted - snappy writing, Detroit shenanigans, and Amos playing catch-up to piece it all together.

This time out Amos is hired by Emmett Yale, a muckity-muck in the electric car industry to look into the "murder" of his useless stepson.  Amos knows Detroit like the back of his hand, frankly the murder looks and smells like a totally random, senseless killing.  But Yale thinks one of his former employees and the stepson were mixed up in an insider trading scheme and the "random killing" was actually a hit.  Amos has doubts, but takes the case anyway (because of course...) and is soon mixed up with Yale's head of security and the staff at a dying airfield, including a sexy aviatrix, an aging barnstormer and a surly maintenance man.  

When it comes to turning a phrase Estleman is one of the best in the business and as always I was sucked into the writing and world-building from the jump (the story opens in Cleveland, which was serendipitous since that's where my work conference was!) .  Unfortunately the whole thing doesn't tie together as neatly as I would have liked.  Look, sometimes a coincidence truly is a coincidence and people will exploit those coincidences for their own gain.  Doesn't mean I want that in my crime fiction reading. I like tidy, all wrapped up in a bow, where all the pieces fit neatly together.  I had a good time reading this, I enjoyed what I always enjoy about books in this series, but I wanted a bit more oomph in the mystery.

Final Grade = B-