March in Review

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I read 15 books last month, which is getting to be closer to a normal month for me. And my total page count for the month was only around 300 less than my recent record-breaking month in January. It’s definitely a huge up-tick in having time to listen to audiobooks lately that’s done this, considering that 8 of the books I read last month were audiobooks (leaving only 7 that were read normally!).

Here are the books I read in March:

Lunar 1
HTTYD 8
Mists
Exiles
Smith 3
BSC6
Boone 6
Carpenter 24
Lightkeepers 1
Lunar 2
K Team 4
Lion 1
Sadie
This Book Kills
Mandie 4

Cinder by Marissa Meyer (5 / 5)
How to Break a Dragon’s Heart by Cressida Cowell (2 / 5)
Mists over the Channel Islands by Sarah Sundin (5 / 5)
Exiles by Jaye L. Knight (4 / 5)
Luck and Judgement by Peter Grainger (4.5 / 5)
Kristy’s Big Day by Ann M. Martin (5 / 5)
The Scandal by John Grisham (4 / 5)
Best in Snow by David Rosenfelt (4.5 / 5)
A Kingdom of Shadows by Emily Bain Murphy (3.5 / 5)
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (4 / 5)
Good Dog, Bad Cop by David Rosenfelt (3.5 / 5)
A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers (3.5 / 5)
Sadie by Courtney Summers (4.5 / 5)
This Book Kills by Ravena Guron (2 / 5)
Mandie and the Forbidden Attic by Lois Gladys Leppard (3 / 5)

This list includes 2 ARCs and 3 re-reads. My favorite book from March was Cinder. I started 3 series, continued 6 series, and finished 3 series*. My ever-changing short list of to-be-reads, as well as a flag for the book I’m currently reading and an ongoing list of those I’ve read and posted about can be found here.

*This includes 1 series I didn’t reach the end of, but decided not to continue reading, after being at least 2 books into the series.

I’m also keeping my Goodreads page updated with a more extensive list of to-be-reads. Despite my almost too-long TBR list, I’m always looking for more to add. Feel free to offer suggestions of your favorites or just recent reads you enjoyed.

Book Review: Mandie and the Forbidden Attic

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Mandie and the Forbidden Attic
Mandie #4
by Lois Gladys Leppard

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian historical fiction

I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen, and I read some of them to my now-teen daughter when she was younger. Nostalgia definitely affects my reviews for this series, and I’m okay with that. Though I am also willing to admit the flaws in the books; for example, here we have another guy who is drawn to Mandie as soon as he meets her. Though to be fair, they’re sort of thrust together, and so far, he’s mostly just being polite. Mandie is particularly unruly in this book, breaking a rule at her new school over and over despite being caught and even punished. At least it’s one book in which Mandie isn’t just perfect, but in the end, her rule breaking produced a certain outcome that essentially ends up exonerating her, which isn’t a great lesson for the kids who read this book. It’s too easy for the reader to empathize with her and feel like the authority figures are simply being unfair or overbearing, and reading this as an adult, I kind of wish Leppard had been more careful with that. While I think these books can still be good for younger people to read, especially if you’re looking for something with Christian content, I strongly recommend discussing what’s good and bad in them with your kid(s) after they read it.

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Book Review: This Book Kills

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This Book Kills
by Ravena Guron

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: YA murder mystery

When a murderer copies details from a short story that Jess Choudhary wrote for school, it puts her smack in the middle of the investigation of the murder of one of her fellow classmates. When she starts getting death threats of her own, then police don’t inspire confidence, so she knows it’s up to her to solve the murder.

I am at a bit of a loss with this book. I don’t understand the title, don’t agree with the “perfect murder” claim on the front of the book, and am baffled by a major component of the mystery. The story is 1st-person as if written by the MC to help her cope with what happened, so maybe the title is referring to what she’s writing down, but there’s nothing inherently dangerous about it. The short story she used inspired a killer, but that’s it…no reference to books of any kind killing. The tag line on the front of the book says, “She wrote the perfect murder. One of her classmates carried it out… Now she’s next.” There was literally no mention in the book of the short mystery story she wrote for class being a perfect murder. It was just a murder. And she’s not even the only one who is ostensibly targeted to be another victim, so the tagline is pretty clearly sensationalism that isn’t delivered on.

The murder the MC wrote for her short story had 2 specific elements that were copied (well, 3, if you count the murder happening in the woods, but that’s not super specific): the victim was killed with a trophy and the murderer spelled out “help me” with twigs next to the body. That least one is what baffles me. I kept waiting for an explanation or at least some theories about the “help me,” but nothing ever came. So I can’t help but wonder…why did she have the murderer in the short story do that? To pretend it was the victim who did it (to what end, though, I have no idea)? Was it a cry for help from the murderer, either real or faked? Was it a taunt, saying that the victim needed help even though they were already dead? None of these jumps out as an obvious reason for the twigs, because to me there isn’t an obvious reason, and it’s literally never questioned by anyone in the book. Supposedly the MC put it into her story to show off her creativity, but to me, it’s not creative so much as…pointless? The murderer copied it, and truth be told, I don’t think I ever even understood why the murderer bothered to copy the short story details. Then, at least to me, the author was trying so hard to keep the reader from guessing the murderer (which I didn’t, but I rarely do) that she threw in too many sub plots and red herrings. In the end, it was underwhelming, confusing, and just not enjoyable. Around halfway through, my 15-year-old daughter (who was interested in the book when I started reading it) asked me what I thought so far, and all I could say was, “Meh.” It was just kind of boring. It was clearly not for me, but if the book interests you, please do check out other reviews at the link below.

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Book Review: Sadie (re-read)

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Sadie
by Courtney Summers
read by Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Fred Berman, & Gabra Zackman

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: YA suspense, drama

See original review here.

I don’t normally write a new review when I read a book I already reviewed on my blog. But this is a special case. The first time I read this book, 5 1/2 years ago, I still gave it 4 stars, but I had some issues with the audiobook. I couldn’t handle listening to Sadie’s parts for 2 main reasons. The first is that there was a lot of language, and though it doesn’t generally stop me from reading books, it bothered me more to keep hearing it out loud. But I also struggled with feeling like the narrator made Sadie sound angry all the time, even when giving the description of a room she’d entered or something. So I switched to a format where I read Sadie’s portions myself and listened to the “podcast” parts. Recently, I listened to a couple of audiobooks by the same narrator, and I quite liked her. So when I realized it was the same narrator, I wanted to give it another try.

I can honestly say that I don’t know what my issue with the “angry” narrator was those 5+ years ago. I think that the fact that I had barely listened to any audiobooks back then, but now I have extensive experience with them probably has a lot to do with it (I still cringed when there was a lot of cussing though, especially dialog with many f-words). The story is still dark and gritty with subject matter that means I couldn’t really recommend this YA book for anyone younger than 16 (see content warnings in my original review at the link above), but it’s compelling and engaging.

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Book Review: A Voice in the Wind

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A Voice in the Wind
Mark of the Lion #1
by Francine Rivers

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Christian historical fiction

When Jerusalem falls to Rome, Hadassah is taken as a slave after losing her entire family, and eventually ends up in Rome as a  personal maid for a young woman named Julia. Hadassah is Jewish by heritage, which makes her hated enough in Rome, but she also follows Christ, which is punishable by death. Julia and her family—mother, father, and older brother Marcus—become dependent on Hadassah, and she in turn falls in love with them, praying that she could somehow be a light in the darkness of their lives. 

I’ve heard of this book for a while but wasn’t sure about reading it, partly because the length was daunting. But since I ended up with a copy of the book (and the rest of the series), I figured it was time to give it a try. And yeah, I think the length was more than it needed to be. For one thing, I didn’t even mention an entire POV character in my synopsis, because he’s so far removed from the rest of story. He’s a Germanic warrior who was captured in battle and forced to become a gladiator, and he does intersect with the main story by the end, but it takes a long time, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much of his story was necessary. There’s also a lot of detail about the debauchery that pretty much all of the characters (minus Hadassah, of course) participate in throughout this book that I think was wholly unnecessary. I understand that this is a fact of life and was very common in Rome during this time, and I am not saying that even Christian writers should pretend it didn’t happen or shy away from it. But I also don’t think it needs to be focused on as much as it is in the book to get the point across. It made the book start to feel repetitive and was also at times unpleasant to read. Seriously, I brought the book to church when my husband had to be there early for worship practice, and as I saw reading in the pew, I thought about how awkward it would be if the pastor (or anyone, really) walked by and caught a glimpse of the page. I think there needs to a balance that this book is pretty far from.

Still, I was invested in the family fairly quickly. I expected to not care at all about Artretes whenever it went back to his POV (that’s the barbarian gladiator), but as long as I skimmed the bloody fight scenes, I was fairly interested in his parts too. Hadassah seems almost too perfect as a character, but I appreciated her fears and frustrations and don’t have too hard a time believing that her persecution helped her to be more than she otherwise might have been. It’s pretty clear that God can work that way. I was really rooting for Hadassah to realize that she was doing more than she thought, but to be honest, the book didn’t quite go how I thought it might and really wanted it to. I obviously didn’t love it, but I did like it enough to want to see how the lives of these characters play out and continue the series.

I am nowhere near an expert on this time in history (or any time, really), but I’ve read a few books set around this time, and this felt real to me. Except for the couple of times that Hadassah used more the modern Christian verbiage of having Jesus in our hearts, which is not only theologically muddy at best but almost definitely not an expression that would have been used in this time period. As for recommendations, fans of Christian historical novels or romance would probably enjoy this, but please keep content warnings in mind (there’s more than I mentioned, but here’s a review with more than I shared). It’s not something I’d recommend for teens, for sure.

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Book Review: Good Dog, Bad Cop

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Good Dog, Bad Cop
The K-Team #4
by David Rosenfelt
read by Fred Berman

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

When asked to select a cold case to investigate for the Paterson police department, Corey Douglas insists on being allowed to work on the not-so-cold unsolved case of his old mentor. Though unsolved, it’s widely believed that the retired cop murdered a woman and then killed himself, but Corey is certain that he would have never done such a thing.

The plot of this book is overall decent, with some twisty conspiracies not dissimilar to those standard to the main series. It has an interesting ending that I didn’t see coming, though I could look back and see some hints to the final reveal. Still, Corey himself is just a bland main character to me. In this book, he points out that investigators need to be objective, but that in this case, he’s not going to be able to be, and I thought, “Just in this case? Because I remember another recent case where you set out to prove a guy you didn’t like was the bad guy from the get-go…” I just have a difficult time buying this guy was ever good at being a cop before he retired.

I’m always torn between being happy when Andy shows up in these books and being annoyed, because he comes across so much more snarky and annoying in this series. Maybe that’s intentional, due to that being the way Corey sees Andy, and if that’s the case, then it’s well done by Rosenfelt. I did manage to get used to Fred Berman’s narration, which really threw me off at first, but that’s most likely because I couldn’t help but compare him to Grover Gardner, the narrator for the Andy Carpenter series. If you’re a fan of the Andy Carpenter series and wonder if you should read this, I’d say give the first book in the series a try, because (minor spoiler) a recurring character from the main series comes to an end in that book. Then you can decide for yourself whether to continue on, but the other 3 books in the series don’t contain any major developments for the main series. If you haven’t read any of the main series, don’t start here. But definitely do start on the Andy Carpenter series if you’re interested.

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Book Review: Scarlet

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Scarlet
The Lunar Chronicles #2
by Marissa Meyer
read by Rebecca Soler

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for the previous book in the series, Cinder.

Scarlet’s grandmother is missing, but the police don’t seem to care. She starts following clues to track her down on her own, somewhat reluctantly accepting the aid of a mysterious street fighter called Wolf. Meanwhile, Cinder has to escape from prison and figure out where to go next on her quest to understand her identity.

I didn’t love this book as much as the previous, but I did still enjoy it a lot. I think the main difference here is that there was a lot of focus on the building relationship between Scarlet and Wolf, and I just wasn’t really feeling it. On the plus side, though, since we have a new main character in this book, I was glad that Scarlet is different enough in her personality compared to Cinder that I didn’t feel like it was a repeat of Cinder and I didn’t have a hard time keeping the two characters separate in my mind when Cinder had her own POV scenes throughout this book. Scarlet is quick-tempered and stubborn, though maybe her personality is part of why I had a difficult time buying her growing relationship with Wolf.

Scarlet’s search for her grandmother was broken up by Cinder’s continuing story and, less often, Emperor Kai trying to prevent war with Queen Levana. My favorite thing about this book came in the form of a new side character—Thorne. Though he’s quite inappropriate at times, he’s a great comic relief. The overall advancement of plot in this book kept me invested, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a great job with the different characters, though she seemed to drop Scarlet’s slight accent now and then. I still recommend this book (though definitely start with Cinder; these are not stand-alone books) to fans of futuristic sci-fi and/or fairy tale retellings, maybe around age 15 and up (there was more in the way of physical interaction in this book than the previous, though it was still pretty clean overall).

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Book Review: Best in Snow

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Best in Snow
Andy Carpenter #24
by David Rosenfelt
read by Grover Gardner

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

Finding a dead body in the snow might not have been so bad if it hadn’t led to Andy Carpenter being asked to defend the man accused of the murder. But it’s hard to say “no” to a friend, even a friend like Vince Sanders, the gruff newspaperman who can’t believe that his protégé would commit murder.

Is it weird that I struggle so much with the reviews for this series, not feeling like I have more to say than I said in every review before it, yet I don’t see that as a bad thing? And when I’m ready to listen to the next book, I’m excited and it feels a bit like coming home? The series is formulaic in a good way, but that makes it difficult to know what to say that isn’t the same as I always say. So here goes…Andy is delightfully sarcastic and funny; I laughed out loud a couple of times during this book. Andy’s team is fun and efficient; it’s always fun to see the Boobalah Brigade, though I feel like they weren’t quite as involved in this time as they have been in the past. I can’t remember the last time Andy wasn’t brought into a case by a dog (other than his own), so even that small break in formula was kind of nice. My favorite thing about this book does involve the “dog of the week” though, since someone besides Andy takes the dog in and the whole sequence of what happens is in turns hilarious and endearing. Grover Gardner never fails to do a wonderful job narrating, and if it’s not clear, I recommend this book (especially the audio) for fans of mystery, crime fiction, and courtroom dramas, as well as the books that precede it in the series (and probably all that follow it, but I’m still working my way through).

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