Reading Year in Review 2018

I think we all can agree that 2018 was a dumpster fire of a year and yet, somehow, I managed to get through 95 books.  My reading goal is always 100, so while I did fall short, 95 is the most I've managed to get through since 2014 (when I read an incredible 119).  Here's how it all broke down (and yes, I count DNFs):

5 Stars (A Grade) = 7

4 Stars (B Grade) = 27

3 Stars (C Grades, includes some "low B-") = 38

2 Stars (D Grades) = 10

1 Star (F Grades) = 3

DNF (Did Not Finish) = 10

Audiobooks = 28

My A grades were up this year (although pretty consistent from previous years - I rarely assign 5-Stars in the double digits), my DNFs were up a smidge, my audiobook numbers were down (shorter work commute after I moved last year!), and my C grades outpaced my B grades (which is not great).  But, I'll take it.  This was the most productive reading year I've had in a dog's age.

Now, for what everybody cares about: the books!  A reminder that this is a recap of what I loved and read during 2018, but not necessarily books published in 2018.  I'm perpetually behind, so most of my Best Of list will be books that will, hopefully, be lurking in TBRs already or easy to score at your local library.

Note: Title links will take you to full reviews

The Romance:

Burn Down the Night (2016) and Wait For It (2017) by Molly O'Keefe - After not a single romance garnered an A grade from me in 2017, I vowed to start off 2018 on the right foot - with an author who consistently works for me.  The final two books in a quartet series, Burn Down the Night gives me the closest thing I've read to a true Bad Girl Heroine in the genre and Wait For It is an example of an Asshole Hero done right.  I didn't read these books so much as inhale them.

Breathe (2016) by L. Setterby - My contest judging this year was largely meh, but holy hell where has this book been all my life?!  A perfect example of starting a book, reading the first sentence, and just falling head over feet right into the world.  I'm so hooked that I downloaded the Wattpad app to read the next book in the series (still being released in weekly installments as I write up this post).

An Extraordinary Union (2017) by Alyssa Cole - A historical romance with legit high stakes conflict.  I loved this heroine so much I'm thinking of taking the Gone Fishin' sign off of my ovaries.

The Tycoon's Socialite Bride (2014) by Tracey Livesay - Here it is, the best category romance I read this year.  Livesay hit all her emotional beats, right on time.  I loved the heroine's family baggage and the hero bent on revenge but not needlessly cruel (although this one does rip your guts out in parts).  Don't think you like category romance?  Try this one.  It's damn near magical.

Indigo (1996) by Beverly Jenkins - Arguably the book that Jenkins is best known for, and it's easy to see why.  She puts so much into this story, addressing racism, colorism, and sexism, without preaching from the pulpit or losing sight of the romance.  Also, I've always felt that Jenkins' strength (well, besides her dynamite heroines) is her world-building.  The community she creates in this story, using the Underground Railroad as a backdrop, was so well done.

The Soldier Prince (2018) by Aarti V. Raman - This is my cracktastic read of the year, basically a category romance about a former Black Ops-style soldier, who is really a prince, who falls in love with a struggling college student waiting tables in a New York City deli.  This one is full of ALL THE TROPES and I couldn't get enough of it.  Raman needs to publish the next book in this series, like, yesterday.

Delicious Temptation (2015) by Sabrina Sol - Believable baggage (seriously, families can be the worst), and I loved the East LA family bakery backdrop.  Is it because I live in southern California and know the area?  Maybe.  Because Sol writes it so very well.  My runner up for best category read of the year.

Not Romance, Still Awesome:

The Broken Girls (2018) by Simone St. James - It's to the point now where I'm a squee'ing unreasonable fangirl for Simone St. James, but seriously, I loved this one.  A time slip novel with converging 1950 and 2014 plot treads and a nice "romantic elements" secondary thread involving the 2014 heroine and her cop boyfriend.  

Grant (2017) by Ron Chernow - A long book (47 hours on audio!), this one is worth the time investment.  Grant's life exemplifies the old "truth is stranger than fiction" adage.  That this man, basically a failure is every other aspect of his life, defeated the Confederacy, saved the Union, and became President is simply remarkable.  This is my new Read A Book Already book.  Plus, I learned stuff.  Which is always nice when reading non-fiction.

Jane Doe (2018) by Victoria Helen Stone - The revenge thriller I didn't know I needed.  A cool, methodical heroine who exacts her revenge against the worst sort of hypocritical DudeBro.  I loved every blessed minute of it.

Charlesgate Confidential (2018) by Scott Von Doviak - A crime novel set in Boston with three converging timelines. It did take a while for me to sink into this story and I did have to read about the damn Red Sox way too much for my liking, but this one is excellent.  Excellent world building.  Excellent mystery.  Interesting characters.  It kept me guessing all the way to the end.

Comfort Read/Author of 2018:

Marcia Muller - Every reader I know has what they call "comfort reading."  Either a favorite book or author, maybe a favorite genre.  For me, that's mystery.  I fell in love with reading via mysteries.  I devoured them as a teen, so there's a really high nostalgia factor at play here.  Given what a mess 2018 was, it's probably not surprising that I read 14 books in the Sharon McCone series this year.  I got through books 3 - 15 and one short story collection this year, in a mix of audio and print.  Technically these were all rereads for me, revisiting books I first read or listened to on audio as a teenager and in my early 20s.  Yes, some held up better than others, but the world building! The character arcs! I wanted to read more in the series this year, but other obligations have kept me from them.  I plan to pick up again with book 16 in 2019.

And that's my Year In Review for 2018.  I'm quite pleased with myself, but continue to hope for bigger and better in 2019.  The goal, once again, is 100 books.  Let's see if I make it.

Review: The Broken Girls

I'm a sucker for Gothics.  The suspense, the atmosphere, the woman-in-peril who doesn't realize at first she's in peril who then has to wiggle out of it.  So it seems pretty inconceivable in hindsight that it took me until 2016 to tear through Simone St. James' entire backlist on audio.  Once I was done?  I was bereft.  Because by that point the publication date for her upcoming novel, The Broken Girls had been delayed.  Well, it's finally here and I can say it was well worth the wait.

20 years ago Fiona Sheridan's sister, Deb, was found dead.  Lying in a field, near abandoned Idlewild Hall, in Vermont.  Pretty, vivacious, 20-year-old Deb had been murdered by her popular, rich, boyfriend, Tim Christopher, son of the wealthiest and most important family in town.  Tim was convicted, is still in prison, but Fiona is stuck.  Haunted by the tragedy and the wreckage it left in it's wake.  She's dating Jamie, a police officer, son of the former chief of police who worked Deb's case, and is working as a freelance journalist.  When she hears Idlewild Hall has been purchased and the new owner wants to reopen it as a girls boarding school, Fiona has the excuse she needs to start digging.  Naturally, she unearths a whole lot of secrets.

In 1950 Idlewild Hall was a boarding school for families to dump off their cast-off girls.  Girls who were trouble.  Girls who were "bad."  Four such girls are roommates, become friends, and all of them witness things they can't explain.  There's a ghost at Idlewild Hall, Mary Hand - who shows you things that you can't unsee.  Who confronts you with your greatest fears, your darkest secrets.  They all see her and one day one of the band of four disappears...without a trace.

This is a time slip novel, moving back and forth between the 1950 story and the 2014 story - St. James taking two different threads and expertly weaving them together.  I'll admit to some reluctance when I heard that St. James was leaving her 1920s English settings behind to move to 1950s Vermont, but that uneasiness was quickly replaced with the uneasy feeling this book's atmosphere evokes.  Folks, it's creepy.  Not just the ghost stuff, but the secrets.  Fiona's psyche.  The truth that's lying just below the surface that eventually bubbles up and boils over.  It's riveting and page-turning and I waffled between savoring every delicious word, prolonging my reading pleasure and guzzling it like a college student whipping out a beer bong.

Usually in time slip stories there's one story line thread the reader is drawn to over the other, which was not my case here.  I loved the 1950 girls - the girls nobody wanted, the girls everybody underestimated, the girls who ultimately end up saving themselves and finding their own brand of justice.  In the 2014 story I was drawn to Fiona's emotional turmoil, her relationship with Jamie haunted by ghosts, and her persistent digging into the secrets hidden at Idlewild.

All of St. James' books thus far feature what one would classify as "romantic elements."  That's certainly the case here, given the Fiona/Jamie relationship, but I will say of all her books this one probably is the lightest in the romance department.  This isn't a criticism from me, but a heads-up to readers who were drawn to some of her earlier books where the romantic arc played a bit more of a prominent factor.

If you're already a St. James fan, this is a great book.  I loved it.  I'm jealous of all of you who now get to read it for the first time.  If you enjoy Gothics and are looking for a creepy good mystery with a light touch on the paranormal woo-woo?  This is it.  St. James' monsters in this book feature the unknown supernatural but also the very real, flesh-and-blood terror that only living mankind seems capable of inflicting.  Don't miss it.

Final Grade = A

Mini-Reviews: Thrill-Seeking Librarian and Flapper Medium

Besides the obvious Librarian-Related reason, I have read and enjoyed shorter works by Anne Calhoun in the past - so that was enough for me to give The SEAL's Rebel Librarian a whirl.  The results were decidedly mixed.

Erin Kent is an academic librarian still recovering from a divorce.  Tired of hearing her ex-husband's disapproving voice in her head, she decides she's going to do the things she's always wanted to do. First on the list?  Buy a motorcycle.  Jack Powell is a former SEAL with PTSD and a case of bad nerves (he has tremors in his hands, doctors haven't found any physiological reason for them - hence, PTSD) and he's now at loose ends, post Navy.  He's taking a class at the college where Erin works and they meet through her work at the library.  What follows is an attraction, a Neither Of Us Is Looking For Serious "relationship," and Jack helping Erin with her adventurous bucket list, which also includes sky-diving.

I hesitate to mention it given that I read an ARC that has been languishing on my Kindle since earlier this year and I did not have access to a final copy - but this story had serious editing issues in the beginning.  A prime example?  In one scene Jack is driving a car, then riding his motorcycle, then he's back in the car but wearing a helmet and then when he gets home he finds his motorcycle in the garage.  Yeah, that's not good.  My library didn't have a copy of this and I'm too cheap to buy a final copy to check to see if the errors were corrected - so just take this as a warning.  The editing on the ARC was problematic.

I liked Erin a lot and for those of you who care about such things - the "library stuff" was good.  I got a huge kick out of seeing EBSCO mentioned in a romance novella, dork that I am.  I was less enthralled with how Jack's story wrapped up - namely that his tremors magically seem to vanish in the end, which he chalks up to helping Erin live out her thrill seeking.  Even though the tremors aren't physiological - this smacks way too much of Being Cured By The Love Of A Good Woman for my tastes.  In the end, I liked her and this is a sexy enough read but mostly....meh.

Final Grade = C+

The Other Side of Midnight by Simone St. James was a recent listen on audio and it's my second "read" by this author after her debut novel, The Haunting of Maddy Clare.  In just three short years between those two books, I feel like this one shows tremendous growth for her as a writer.

Ellie Winter is a spirit medium who no longer contacts the dead and instead specializes in helping people find lost items.  She's contacted by the mysterious (MI5) George Sutter after his glamorous sister, a medium, Gloria Sutter is murdered.  Brother and sister were estranged, but Gloria left him a note prior to her death instructing him to seek out Ellie - which he does.  Ellie is compelled to help George because she and Gloria used to be friends - until the day that Gloria had Ellie's own mother debunked as a psychic.  Ellie's mother died shortly thereafter and needless to say the two friends fell out.

Once again the setting is wonderfully drawn (1920s London), the world-building keen, and St. James uses the ghost of World War I to optimum effect.  Romance comes into play in the form of our hero, a former soldier who works for an outfit that investigates reports of psychic phenomenon, and naturally he was part of the tests that ruined Ellie's mother (and by some extension - Ellie).  The mystery here is also quite compelling, which I found more advanced and layered than the author's debut.  The one thing holding me back on totally loving this story was Ellie's relationship with the dead Gloria.  I...well, I just didn't see these two as friends.  I get that Ellie latched on to Gloria because finally she had met someone (who was not her mother) who was a "freak" like she was - but Gloria is just so....unpleasant.  I mean she's vain and narcissistic and just not very nice (even if she does say some pretty smart things).  Other than being Just Like Me in the psychic department I couldn't for the life of me figure out why or how these two were friends.  But everything else?  Top notch.  If you like Gothics you need to be reading St. James.

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-