Review: The Paragon Hotel

I dragged my feet a good long while before finally deciding to read The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye.  I was completely besotted, over the moon, borderline trash for her Timothy Wilde trilogy.  However I was the only reader on the planet who really did not like her first book post-trilogy, Jane Steele.  But seriously y'all, I loved the trilogy - so one bump in the road wasn't going to put me off.  However, the plot description for The Paragon Hotel almost did.  Land mines. So many, in fact, that I'm finally reading this book nearly two years after it's publication date.

It's 1921 and Alice "Nobody" James has just landed in Portland, Oregon with a bullet wound in her side and $50,000 in impeccable counterfeit bills.  She hustled her sweet behind out of Harlem (where she got said bullet wound and currency) thanks to a crooked cop - leaving behind a mobster guardian, a childhood friend turned sociopath, and an unrequited love who couldn't kick heroin.  It's on the train to Portland that she befriends a black Pullman porter who, seeing her in a bad way, spirits her to The Paragon Hotel - the only all-black hotel in Portland.  None of the residents are happy to have a white woman in their midst (for obvious reasons), but they patch her up all the same.

It's at the Paragon that Alice's attraction to Max (said Pullman porter) grows, she meets the borderline belligerent Dr. Pendleton, the all-seeing, all-knowing Mavereen, and the charming, can't-take-your-eyes-off-her, nightclub singer, Blossom Fontaine - just to name a few.  But then a young orphan who everyone takes care of at the hotel goes missing, the Ku Klux Klan heats up activities, and naturally there's a vile, crooked local cop stirring the pot.  In the middle of the stew is Nobody - a woman with a nose for secrets, who can blend in anywhere and go unnoticed, a woman who finds herself untangling a web that spun up around her.

Reading that synopsis you can probably guess the elephants in the room.  You've got a white main character surrounded by a large, mostly black, supporting cast.  Is this a white savior narrative?  I think that's up for the individual reader to determine.  I can see how some readers would think so.  For me?  I found there was nuance to it.  Is Alice a white savior?  Yes.  Does Alice, in turn, get saved by some of the black characters?  Yes.  Make of that what you will.  

This is also a story featuring LGBTQ characters and to really dive deeply into this aspect of the story pretty much gives ALL the spoilers.  I don't identify as LGBTQ so take this for what it's worth - but this aspect of the story largely worked for me in a setting and era where it was extremely difficult for people to "live out loud" when they're black and queer - never mind in a city like Portland.  Hell, it can be extremely difficult in the 21st century...

Is this Faye's story to tell?  As a white writer who identifies as queer?  Some readers won't think so - and as readers that is our right.  It largely worked for me.  Does that make me part of the problem?  Some readers will think so - and as readers that is their right.

Not to say I was madly in love with this however.  For one thing the mystery of the missing orphan boy didn't work for me at all. Largely because I didn't see the need for The Big Secret surrounding his disappearance.  It's kept a secret from people who love Davy Lee - and I couldn't abide that - especially when I saw absolutely no reason to keep them in the dark.  Very plausible explanations could have been given. Instead these people who love the boy will never know what happened to him and I cannot abide that.  Also, as much as I liked the audio edition, I'm glad I decided to not read this in print because the beginning is slow.  Really slow.  It takes a while to get anywhere. 

There are flashbacks employed in this story - to Alice's childhood days in Harlem, how she ended up as the ward of a mobster, and what transpired before she found herself on a cross-country train with a bullet wound. 

Did I love this as much as the Timothy Wilde books?  No.  Did I like this more than Jane Steele?  Lord above, yes.  Yes, it's problematic.  Yes, I can see why this problematic content would be a bridge too far for some readers.  I recognize this - but I still liked it.

Final Grade = B

Mini-Reviews: All Things Audio

Audiobooks have been the only thing keeping my reading afloat these days, and it's a way to 1) keep me entertained on my long commute and 2) mix-up my normal reading groove beyond the usual 95% romance, 5% mystery/suspense.  Here are some quick thoughts on my most recent listens.

But Enough About Me: A Memoir by Burt Reynolds - OK, so I kind of have a thing for Burt Reynolds.  I'll admit it - I'm not completely immune to the whole "good ol' boy" Southern vibe.  This book is written vignette style, with Reynolds not focusing on a linear timeline of his life, but rather talking about people, places etc. that have meant something to him over the years.  The downside to listening to this on audio is that Reynolds narrates and his voice has not aged well.  Reynolds is in his 80s now, and his voice sounds like it.  Sometimes it was strong, and sometimes I could barely make out what he was saying.  But on the plus side?  Reynolds would get emotional at times and it helps to reinforce that he's a real person underneath the persona.  I got choked up hearing Reynolds get choked up talking about Dom DeLuise.  Final Grade = C+

Sing to Me: My Story of Making Music, Finding Magic and Searching for Who's Next by L.A. Reid - Dating myself, but I graduated high school in the early 1990s, so my curiosity about this book stems entirely with Reid's partnership with Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds in LaFace records - which gave us superstars like TLC and Toni Braxton.  The duo also worked with a number of other notable artists that were part of the whole "New Jack Swing" scene at the time (like Bobby Brown and Boyz II Men).  My favorite parts of this were learning more about Reid's life as a performer/musician and the LaFace "stuff."  My interest waned a bit the closer we got to present day (I could care less about OutKast, Kayne, Bieber or Reid's stint on The X Factor) when it kind of descends into more blatant name-dropping.  Still, it serves as a reminder of how awesome R&B was in the early 1990s and I wanted to download ALL. THE. MUSIC after I finished.  Final Grade = B

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye - If other reviews are an indication, I'm the only person who has read this book in Romancelandia who didn't love it to bits.  Part of this is because compared to the author's Supreme-O Awesome-Sauce Timothy Wilde trilogy (which made my Best Of Lists for 2014 and 2015), this is a pale shadow.  The characters aren't as well drawn, their relationships nowhere near as complex and there's a Victorian Drama-Llama Melodramatic Romance in the second half that I was bored with before it even got off the ground.  What I did like?  The "stuff" between Jane and Rebecca Clarke - her bestest friend while they are both at an odious boarding school.  There's lots of "Jane Eyre" stuff here and Jane Steele tends to murder people who deserve it - but meh.  It's entirely possible that my extreme love of the previous trilogy factored into my dissatisfaction more than a little but...I'm sorry folks, I didn't love this.  Come back and talk to me after you've read the Timothy Wilde books.  Final Grade = D+

The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James - St. James is an author I've been meaning to try forever and a recent foray into Barbara Michaels on audio had me on a Gothic kick.  Set after World War I, our office temp heroine takes a job as an assistant to a ghost hunter to investigate a haunting of a barn by a local servant girl who committed suicide.  This is a Gothic very heavy on the woo-woo, it's got great atmosphere, and very good characterization.  I was a little less enamored with the ghost hunting party's lack of urgency in solving the mystery behind Maddy Clare, the girl haunting the barn.  They seem more bent on protecting people that, quite frankly, deserve everything that Maddy's ghost wants to dish out to them.  Maddy wants her revenge for very, very compelling reasons (consider that your trigger warning).  Swoon, I love Gothics! I plan to download more St. James on audio as soon as the holds lists at work allow. Final Grade = B-

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin - Tells the story of Truman Capote, the upper-crust New York society women whom he called "The Swans," and his friendship with Babe Paley (wife of William S. Paley - the founder of CBS). The story covers the timeline of Breakfast at Tiffany's, In Cold Blood, The Black and White Ball, Capote running off the rails and his ultimate break from "The Swans" with the publication of the story La Cote Basque 1965 in Esquire magazine, in which he aired everybody's dirty laundry.

This would have been a DNF had I tried to read it because it's very, very tell-y.  Long stretches with little dialogue and a lot of internal musing so the author can dump back-story on the reader.  Also, these are shallow, sad people and the the job of historical fiction is for the author to "breathe life" into these characters.  That doesn't happen here until the very bitter end, when the fallout of La Cote Basque 1965 comes into play.  Shopping, clothes, affairs everybody was having (sometimes with each other...) and by the end of it I was so bloody sick of hearing about Babe Paley's cheekbones I could just scream.  The ending is interesting because that's when all the glitz and shallow dazzle goes to hell.  Capote fully hits the skids and Babe finally (finally!) gets angry.

As a historical fiction novel it just didn't work for me because the writing didn't work for me.  I felt I would have been better served to just read non-fiction accounts of the era and I would have gotten the exact same story.  Also, I listened to this on audio which means both narrators (yes, there were two) affected Capote's voice.  I did like the glimpse into the bygone, opulent era of society prior to the Atomic Hippie Bomb of the 1960s going off, but that was about it.  Final Grade = C-

The Fatal Flame

The Fatal Flame by Lyndsay Faye is the third, and final, book in her historical mystery series set in 1840s New York City starring reluctant police detective Timothy Wilde.  I listened to the first two books in this series on audio and became obsessed.  I loved the history, I loved the vernacular slang dialogue, I loved the characters, I loved the mysteries and I loved the narrator, Steven Boyer.  When I heard that The Fatal Flame was coming I drove my audiobook buyers at work fairly nuts over it.  For months - no audio version listed anywhere.  Wendy took to stalking the Interwebs, hoping for a morsel of news, and finally!  Finally!  Audiobook version announced.  Except......

THEY SWITCHED NARRATORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look, I'm sure Kirby Heyborne is a decent bloke, but he's not Steven Boyer, who at this point I began to obsess over.  But I couldn't just drop this final book - so, I ditched audio and read it like a chump.  And I loved every minute of it.

This time out, "bright young copper star" Timothy Wilde finds himself embroiled in his least favorite pastime - politics.  The odious alderman, Robert Symmes, wants Timothy's reprobate brother, Valentine, to clean up a little mess.  There's a radical suffragette, a former worker at one of Symmes' sweatshops, who is threatening to burn his various real estate holdings to the ground.  Long story short, Valentine is appalled with Symmes' potential "reward" for handling this business, and loathing the man anyway, decides to throw his hat into the upcoming election.  The Democrats are already splintered into two factions, Valentine going up against Symmes could lead to the city tearing itself apart.

When Symmes' suffragette appears to be making good on her threats, it's up to Timothy to ferret her out.  All of this complicated by his brother's campaign, and unrequited love, Mercy Underhill, turning up in New York again, having been living in London for the last couple of years. 

This book can probably be read as a stand-alone but I wouldn't recommend it.  At this point the trilogy has really built itself one on top of the other, and this installment especially shows it.  Timothy loathes Symmes for a lot of reasons (well, the man did want to kill him in the last book - so the animosity is sort of understandable), but finds himself backed into a corner helping him since he very well cannot sit idly by while an arsonist torches the city.  Also the character development has been increasingly getting deeper with each installment.  Valentine's guilt, his various romantic entanglements, Timothy's love/hate relationship with his brother, his very real fear of fire, and his completely jacked up feelings for Mercy, not to mention his relationship with Bird Daly (an orphan waif he rescued in book one) and his landlady, Elena, whom he is sharing a sexual relationship with.

There are a lot of things about this series that recommends itself to romance readers.  For one thing, the history is outstanding.  If you like historical romance but have been whining displeased with the increased amount of wallpaper, this is your kind of series.  Also, despite the unpalatable morphine addiction, Valentine is pretty much textbook rake-slash-wounded hero material.  And Timothy?  Timothy is your Beta hero with some rough Alpha edges (he can hold his own in a street fight) pining away for an unrequited love.  Really, it's fantastic.

Where this series may stumble for romance readers?  Well, it's dark.  And I mean....dark.  The first book is about sexually exploited children.  The second book is about free blacks getting kidnapped in the north and sent south, as supposed "escaped" slaves.  Compared to those previous two books, this one is almost like a Sunday walk in the park, with bitter men bemoaning working women, seamstresses working in appalling conditions, and violence against women.  While sex trafficking, and sexual assault, plays heavily in this story, all of it takes place off-page.  That said, pretty much all of Faye's conflicts have been textbook examples of why trigger warnings exist.

I'm glad I listened to the first two in this series on audio, because I'm the sort who can have a hard time with period language.  I need to get an "ear" for it.  Faye employs a lot of period slang, also known as "flash."  One of the reasons Timothy is so good as a police detective is that having been raised, in large part, by his brother - he can speak and understand "flash."  It's a different way of communicating, that's for sure - but having now been immersed in it for two previous books, this final third installment flowed for me.

I went through this entire book hoping, praying, that Faye would have a change of heart and not end this series as a trilogy.  But the epilogue kind of kills that dream.  I will say that I think she's done the right thing by giving readers closure, and while the romance reader in me was somewhat disappointed (I like pretty endings - and no I won't apologize for that), I think the author ends the series well, the way she has to end it.  She doesn't pull any punches, but she also doesn't pull anything out of left field that doesn't make sense.  Where her characters end up is where they should end up - which, at the end of the day, is all I ever want as a reader.

I have loved these books.  I loved the Steven Boyer audiobooks and I loved reading this final installment (like a chump).  If you love historicals and can deal with dark these are the real deal.  I haven't been this excited about a series in a long, long time and now *sigh* it's all over. 

Final Grade = A

Audiobook Round-Up: Getting My History Groove Thang On

One thing I've been trying to get better about is audiobooks: listening to them, keeping track of what I "read," and rating them.  I seem to have this mental block against romance audiobooks (I just can't deal with someone reading me a sex scene out loud), so it's also a good way for me to keep up with books published outside my usual genre of choice.

Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye is the second book in her historical mystery series featuring New York City police officer Timothy Wilde.  I listened to the first book last year and enjoyed it enough to include it in my Best of 2014 round-up.  But this book?  This book was ahhhh-mazing.  The premise is essentially 12 Years a Slave-ish.  Free blacks in the city are being accused of being runaway slaves, are kidnapped, and then shipped back south.  Timothy gets roped in when a beautiful (and married) free black woman, Lucy Adams, comes home from her job at a flower shop to discover her young son and her sister have been taken.  Complicating issues?  Timothy's brother, Valentine, and his various Democratic party, Tammany Hall political connections, and Lucy's very white husband.

This is one of those series that I think I would enjoy in print, but dude - the audio productions?  Words cannot express how amazing the first two audiobooks have been for me.  Steven Boyer narrates and he's Jim Dale/Harry Potter good.  Seriously.  That good.  So that's probably colored my enjoyment of the series somewhat.  The story by itself?  Is very good.  I did have one quibble - in that Timothy was sometimes unnecessarily dense (for what I felt) as a way for the author to educate the reader on the lack of civil rights among the free black population in the 1840s.  But, quibble.  Brother Valentine continues to be a reprobate with one foot hovering over his own grave (drugs, booze, women.....and men), but Lord help me - I loved him.  I loved the twisted brotherly relationship, Timothy's relationship with his landlady, the reappearance of many players from the first book (so yeah, book two doesn't stand alone entirely well), and all the political shenanigans. 

These are dark, dark books, so probably not for everybody.  But the historical detail, the immersion in the world that the author has created, the dynamite audio narration?  The third (and final?) book can't get here quick enough.

PS: Dear Hollywood, someone buy the rights to this series.  It would make a killer TV series, like on HBO or something.  Surely Martin Scorsese isn't too busy?

Grade = A

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is a book that her publisher was promoting fairly heavy to librarians at last year's ALA conference.  I took an ARC, and of course, neglected it - but decided it was the kind of thing I'd like to try on audio.  This was totally a second half book for me, and I'm glad I stuck with it.

Opening in 1939, it tells the story of two sisters - steady, quiet Vianne and impulsive, rash Isabelle.  The girls have baggage (a dead mother, a neglectful father haunted by WWI) and their relationship is strained.  Then the Nazis show up, occupy the majority of France, and everything changes.  Vianne's husband goes to the front, and she is left to care for her daughter, Sophie, by herself - all while having to billet a Nazi officer in her home.  Isabelle, ever rash and impulsive, throws her lot in with the French Resistance.

It took me a while to warm up to these characters.  Isabelle comes off as a little girl playing dress up for a long time (Look at me! I'm serious! I want to be remembered! LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) while Vianne is trusting to a fault (to be fair to her, I had the benefit of hindsight).  Sometimes the language got a bit flowery (and repetitive) for me, and there's a huge, whopping amount of Insta-Love going on between Isabelle and a fellow Resistance fighter, Gaetan. I just had to get to the turning point - which is Isabelle growing up, Vianne quietly fighting her own war, and the ending.  I was a crying, sobbing mess while driving my car down the freeway during the last couple of CDs.

It's a war book, so basically it's one huge trigger warning.  But it's women's fiction written in a way that I find intriguing.  There's a line at the end of the book, spoken by one of the characters many years later that is essentially, "Men tell stories, women get on with it."  And that's what happens to Isabelle and Vianne.  They fought the war in ways that only women could fight it, and changed the course of history - their own, and the world's.  If you're part of a book club?  This is one to consider.

Oh, and the film rights have already been optioned.

Final Grade = B+

Audiobook Round-Up: Cats and Cops

My daily commute has been a bit of a trial lately so I thought it was high-time I got back into the swing of things with audiobooks.  It's better than listening to terrible DJs on the radio who play the three same songs over and over again.  Plus if I keep track of what I listen to?  It pads my yearly reading totals and I don't look like so much of a slacker.  It's win-win people!  Here's what I've listened to lately:

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye is a book that has intrigued since an ARC landed on my desk back at The Old Job.  And naturally, since romance novels take up a huge chunk of my time, I never got around to it.  I was at a library recently for a meeting and saw it in their audiobook section and viola!

This is a historical mystery set in 1845 New York City and follows Timothy Wilde, a bartender saving up money to marry the girl of his dreams.  Until his little corner of the City literally goes up in smoke taking not only his job, but his money with him.  His brother is a cog in the political machine and gets him a position with the new formed police department.  A job Timothy has no interest in, mostly because he'd be beholden to his brother and politics (which he loathes).  But he ends up taking to it like a duck to water, and finds himself playing detective when a young Irish girl, in a blood-soaked shift, literally runs into him on the street.

This had excellent period detail, although it's what I would classify as an "ugly history" book.  There's nothing pretty about this, but then we're talking New York City in the mid-19th century.  Pretty was hard to come by.  A huge chunk of the story revolves around the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment at the time, and without going into too much politicking of my own - I think this would make an excellent book club read when you juxtapose 19th century anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment against - well, what we're seeing in the United States today....and I'll just leave it at that.

That said, this is a Bad Things Happens To Kids book (two words: Child. Prostitutes.) and with the historical details comes period language (largely slang).  I know how I am, and I think this would have been a "hard read" for me - but on audio it was excellent (I'd rather see Shakespeare preformed than read it ::shudder::).  Steven Boyer was a wonderful narrator, I thought he handled the accents well, and it kept me glued to my car seat....as it were.  Highly recommended.

Grade = B+

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun is the first in a series and was originally published in 1966 - and boy does that show!  I loved this series as a teen and kept reading each new installment as an adult even though they devolved into saccharine messes featuring Stepford-like characters who lacked a sense of irony.  What can I say?  Nostalgia can be a killer.

Anyhow, revisiting this first book reminds me that once upon a time there was a little bite to this cozy series, namely Jim Qwilleran's a recovering alcoholic and his journalism career is in the toilet.  Where this series doesn't hold up is, naturally, with technology and anytime when the cost of things (oh, like rent) are mentioned.  But the really glaring instance of Oh How Times Have Changed comes in the form of a secondary character (and possible murder suspect) who is the most stereotypical depiction of a lesbian ever put to paper.  Seriously, the woman's name is "Butchy."  No, I'm not making that up.  Which reminds me of the one big quibble I always had with this series.  Braun was crap for writing female characters.  They're either obnoxious, offensive, or waif-like sparrows who need protecting from The Big Bad World.

I would still recommend this for anybody interested in the history of the cozy mystery sub genre, especially in regards to the US market.  Yeah, yeah - Agatha Christie.  But the cozy market as we know it today in the US (magical baking knitting cats that solve crimes!) can directly be led back to Braun.  Anybody not interested in genre history?  Meh.  Still, it was fun to revisit for me and I'll probably listen to more in the series.  Because, you know, nostalgia.

Final Grade = C

Afraid To Die by Lisa Jackson is the fourth in a series that I impulsive-grabbed off a library shelf because I was desperate to avoid DJ chatter until some of my holds came in.  I got through the first two CDs (out of 10) and called it a day.

The first strike against this book was the narration.  When it was descriptive passages or internal monologues I was fine.  Natalie Ross tended to be overly dramatic for my tastes - but it was still OK.  Until the dialogue portions, and then it was eye-rollingly awful.  Male voices were just....bad.  Also accents, especially Detective Alvarez's, were completely fluid.  

I might have kept up with the book though if the story had caught my attention - which it didn't.  Chalk it up to reading too much category romance, but filler drives me crazy and this story had a ton of it.  Do I care about the police station's Secret Santa exchange that both Alvarez and Pescoli are dreading?  Do I care about the secretary who is such a Little Miss Mary Sunshine that whenever she opens her mouth she barfs up stereotypical Christmas cheer?  Do I care that Pescoli's kids are terrible human beings that I want to reach through the car speakers and strangle?

The answer would be no.  To all of that.  If it doesn't pertain to the whack-job serial killer and/or catching said whack-job?  I.  DON'T.  CARE.  Where's my red pen when I need it?

Also how Alvarez reunites with a long-lost lover strains at the seams.

Nothing was happening that I liked, so back I went to inane DJ chatter.

Final Grade = DNF